Game of Thrones Dothraki creator made new language for Pixar film Elemental

David J. Peterson is a conlanger, aka a person who makes up fake languages. He shot to notoriety as the man behind multiple languages featured on Game of Thrones, including Dothraki and High Valyrian. “Dracarys” is such a well-known fake word I expect it to be in the dictionary in a few editions. You know Peterson’s work.

Peterson has also worked on projects like Thor: The Dark World and The 100, not to mention expanding the High Valyrian language for HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon. Now, CinemaBlend reports that he contributed to Elemental, the upcoming new film from Pixar.

Elemental takes place in a city where people made of different elements — fire, earth, water and air — all live together. When a fire woman named Ember meets a water guy named Wade, sparks fly.

Conlanger who created High Valyrian for Game of Thrones worked with Pixar on Elemental

According to writer/director Peter Sohn, Peterson created a language spoken by the fire people. At first, the producers tried using fire sound effects — think the sound fire makes as it crackles in a fireplace — as a language, and brought it Peterson to flesh it out into something intelligible:

"We had a language made as well from David Peterson, who did Game of Thrones. And, they have this amazing, brilliant team trying to take fire, like the fireplace sound effects, you know, that stuff, and then try to make a language out of it… When we first started adding fire sound effects to the characters, it just didn’t sound like a performance. And so they came up with this language again, based on what we knew from fire."

It’s unclear if there are languages based on the glooping of water or the whistling of air. We’ll find out when Elemental releases in theaters on June 16.

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