The guy who made Dothraki for Game of Thrones crafted the Fremen language for Dune
David J. Peterson is one of the biggest conlangers (artificial language creators) in the business, lending his talents to Game of Thrones, Dune and much more.
By Dan Selcke
David J. Peterson is a conlanger, a person who creates fictional languages. He really put his name on the map when he fleshed out the Dothfaki and Valyrian languages for Game of Thrones (he also works on the spinoff series House of the Dragon). Since then, he's made languages for shows like Shadow and Bone, Lovecraft Country, Halo and much more. He has the market cornered on this kind of thing, and you probably won't be surprised to hear that director Denis Villeneuve hired Peterson to work on his Dune movies, creating the Fremen language of Chakobsa.
Like A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin, Dune author Frank Herbert described this fictional language in his book, but didn't go about creating much in the way of grammar or vocabulary. That job fell to Peterson. After that, actors like Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya and Javier Bardem had to learn it. “All the actors went to Fremen school!” Villeneuve told Entertainment Weekly. “I’m not joking. They took weeks to learn the language and came on set absolutely fluent. There was even a dialect coach on set. Everybody took it so seriously, and I was so moved to see Timothée give whole speeches in Chakobsa.”
There's a particularly important scene towards the end of the movie where Chalamet's character Paul Atreides gives a lengthy speech to a huge gathered crowd of Fremen, the native people of the plnaet of Arrakis. “Those five days on set, speaking in a language that was conceived for the films, I was just savoring those days,” the actor said. “I wanted to bring justice not just to the arc of Paul, but also to Dune. And I knew that those were the days. Even when we rehearsed that scene, we went all in.”
This was my favorite scene in the movie, so apparently Chalamet's passion paid off. “Of course it was one of Timothée's favorite moments, because he was looking for that since Part One!" Villeneuve said. "He was begging for that moment, dreaming about it, for weeks and months — the moment where Paul will finally become the Lissan al-Gaib.” Villeneuve said he was “amazed by what Timothée brought to life. It’s something to see that shy boy from the beginning bring all the firepower in that scene. I was moved to tears by how magnificent and powerful he was.”
Dune: Part Two opens in theaters today! Language modules sold separately.
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