Dothraki Secrets: An interview with David J. Peterson

If you don’t know David J. Peterson by name, you most certainly know him by his work–he’s the mind behind the languages you hear in popular shows like Defiance, Star-Crossed, Dominion, and of course, Game Of Thrones. Peterson is famous for creating the Dothraki language used in the HBO series and his new book, Living Language Dothraki (out Oct. 8 from Random House) is aimed to help show and book fans alike become immersed in that culture.

Winter Is Coming had the opportunity to meet with Peterson during his recent visit to New York, and are delighted to bring you this exclusive interview with the genius behind the words in Game Of Thrones‘ world. 

Winter Is Coming: I know the gist of your background and the work you’ve done in terms of creating languages, but can you go into a bit more detail about how you got into doing this, and what made you want to pursue it as something more than just a hobby?

David Peterson: When I went to Berkeley in 1999, I went in as a declared English major. And because I got a 5 on the AP English test at Cal Berkeley, I was able to skip ahead of the beginning classes and start taking major classes, which meant that for the English major, I was way ahead for where I needed to be to graduate. With that free time, I thought, “well, I’m at college, let’s do some fun stuff.” So first I took an Arabic course, which I absolutely loved because I love languages. At this point, I just wanted to learn as many as I could and that was kind of a trial and it seemed to work out pretty well. So second semester I took second semester of Arabic, first semester of Russian, a first semester Esperanto course, an English class, and then because it fulfilled the requirement, a linguistics course, mainly to please my mother because she thought I would like it. I didn’t think I would like it! I was just interested in learning languages. It was that second semester I created my first language, and it just kind of hit me.

I was familiar with Esperanto as far as creative languages go, and I wasn’t aware of Klingon or Tolkien or any other people that did this. It was in one of my linguistics courses, it started in one of my notebooks…and after that, I found other language creators online and basically kept at it. It was a thing that I did throughout college and grad school that I shouldn’t have been doing because I should’ve been doing other stuff.

WiC: But you turned it into a career!

DP: Yeah, it managed to work out, which is really strange to me because language creation was always what I would do when I was supposed to be doing other things, and now it’s the thing that I’m supposed to be doing.

WiC: When you’re creating languages–for example, the Dothraki language in Game Of Thrones–do you draw from other ones you’ve learned in your studies, such as Arabic or Russian?

DP: There are a couple of ways of looking at it. First, as a language creator, if you follow the naturalist tack – which is trying to create languages like natural languages – most languages go through a progression. And this is usually the first language, which is bad. And the second stage is consciously imitating other languages; finding languages you like and then creating languages that are very similar to that. So if you look at the languages that I’ve created, I have the language that’s very clearly based on Hawaiian/Polynesian, another language that was very clearly based on Turkish in certain ways. But after you get through that, the next stage is just shoehorning that, going project by project. It will share features in common with other spoken languages, but it’s not necessarily the case that you’re emulating specifically.

WiC: How would you describe the difference between something like Dothraki and Castithan, the language used in Defiance?

DP: Dothraki is actually a nice one to compare to the Defiance language because they’re very different. Dothraki is very much kind of an inflectional language. Verb systems are always complex, but it’s always a question of, is the complexity built into the verb, or is it actually the verb system is simple and it’s a matter of combining it with auxiliaries and other things? Dothraki is the latter. It’s similar in that way, where the verb system is simple and more complex than English, but still fairly simple and you have to know a lot about how the verbs combine with noun cases. And that’s the other part–the nouns inflict, so they conform depending on what role they play in the sentence. Neither Defiance languages are really like that. They’re different from each other, but they’re also quite different than that.

WiC: Your new book, Living Language Dothraki, is now available. I’m assuming part of the reason for putting this out there was to further immerse fans in the Game Of Thrones world, but can you talk a little bit about what your personal intentions were in publishing this?

DP: I always think this is for Jason Momoa fans. At the end of season one, it had to happen. It was in the books. If you knew the books, you knew it was coming…but man, him as Khal Drogo was just so dynamic and so magnificent to see on screen, and his performance of Dothraki was so great.

WiC: Absolutely. And that speech is still one of my favorite moments ever, across all four seasons.

DP: All the shows I work on, I record all the dialogue, so I consciously know it because I’ve spoken all the lines – I know which ones are easy, I know which ones are tough, I know which ones are inexplicably tongue twisters and those always drive me nuts because they’re usually not very long, and I sit there and try to record it like forty times and keep screwing it up. But that speech that he gives, I remember looking at it and thinking, “there’s no way I can get this in one go.” I actually had to piece together several different mp3s, because I couldn’t do it beginning to end and I was sitting there reading it. And as I put this together and sent it of, I just looked at the lines and said, “how is he going to do this?” So apparently what he did was he got a six pack of beer and a pizza and went back to his hotel room and just spent all night reciting that speech over and over again, listening to the recording. And god, it was so worth it. Because it was so good.

WiC: You watch that scene and you don’t even think about if he practiced it or not. It’s all just effortless.

DP: And that’s one of the things I love, because especially meeting with the actors, I get a sense of how much work they put into it, and I appreciate it so much. Because it’s not like this is a language spoken anywhere, there’s no heritage or anything they have to honor. It’s just me, and it’s such a tremendous feeling to know they put that much effort into something that I’ve put together.

WiC: So would you go on record to say that Khal Drogo’s Dothraki speech is the most challenging thing you’ve written or had to have someone perform so far?

DP: I can think of some doozies, but for Dothraki, I think that was the most difficult. There were some other ones that were tough. I think for a second most difficult, just because of the extras that it would’ve been involved, was in Season 3 when Missandei is translating the Valyrian. Not because the lines were particularly difficult, but when they had me translate it, they had me translate it in just one long block. But that’s not what they did in shooting. They broke it up themselves and so Nathalie Emmanuel, who’s speaking English, actually had to make it look like she was translating for this guy. So they had to find their own breaks, and she had to look like she was listening to him, understanding him and translating back in English. So I think that was pretty challenging for them.

WiC: What would you say some of the most distinct differences are between Valyrian and Dothraki?

DP: I almost want to say Valyrian is stricter, but Dothraki is pretty formal. Dothraki feels simpler to me, but I know it’s not. It feels simpler to me because I’ve spent a lot of time with it and I know it the best. But with Dothraki, I think a lot of the really interesting stuff happens with the nouns, with Valyrian, most of the interesting stuff happens wit the verbs. The verbs are very complex and very demanding, and it’s always hard for me when I’m doing translation. I don’t think as much of the weight of the meaning of the sentence lies with them as it does with Dothraki. The verbs for Dothraki, I don’t even have to think about it. I’ve internalized it at all.

WiC: Season 5 is currently in the middle of shooting. Have you completed the process of working with the cast and creative team?

DP: The wonderful thing about Game of Thrones is that they get me all this stuff way ahead of time, which is great for me. It’s also great for all of them, because they have a lot of time to work with it. The only thing that will come up at this point is if they have to do ADR.

WiC: Any future projects you’re excited about or want to share with us?

DP: I’m excited about Season 2 of Dominion and Season 3 of Defiance! But that’s so new there aren’t even plans drawn up yet, so I’m waiting to hear about that. Right now, I’m working pretty heavily on Season 2 of the CW’s The 100. They’re shooting episode 2X09 right now. I kind of don’t know what I expected when I came out of that show–I didn’t think there would be a lot of stuff for me, but there actually is a lot of stuff for me. It’s been a lot of fun. And then the other project that I’m working on I can’t say.

If you’re heading out to New York Comic Con, Peterson will be making appearances throughout the weekend. Be sure to check out Living Language Dothraki!

• Dothraki Happy Hour Meetup: Friday, 10/10, 7-9pm, Lansdowne Road, 599 10th Ave (at 43rd St). Put your language skills to work, meet other fans, play games and win prizes! (RSVP at Eventbrite)
• Dothraki 101: Learn to Speak like a Khal: Sunday, 10/12, 11:15am, New York Comic Con, Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, Room 1A24
• How A Game of Thrones Changed Fantasy…or Did It?: Sunday, 10/12, 1:15pm, New York Comic Con, Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, Room 1A05 (Panelists include: David Peterson, Patrick Rothfuss, Garth Nix, Gail Z. Martin, Cinda Williams Chima, and Seth Fishman).

• Published on 10/09/2014 at 8:00 AM CDT
• Last updated on 10/21/2016 at 12:40 PM CDT