'Game of Thrones' language inventor to talk Dothraki at UofL

Calling “Game of Thrones” fans: Linguist David Peterson, who created the Dothraki language for the HBO series, will talk about “The Art of Language Invention” April 14 at the University of Louisville.

The author’s free, public talk will begin at 6 p.m. in Room 110, Davidson Hall, on the Belknap Campus. The comparative humanities department in the College of Arts and Sciences is sponsoring the event.

Peterson has been creating languages since 2009 for “Game of Thrones” and other Hollywood productions such as Marvel’s “Doctor Strange,” NBC’s “Emerald City,” the CW’s “The 100” and Syfy’s “Defiance” programs.

His most recent book, “The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves, the Words Behind World-Building,” looks at language creation from J.R.R.Tolkien characters to Star Trek’s Klingon to Dothraki. He wrote “Living Language Dothraki” as a guide to the language he built for the nomadic warriors in the HBO series adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s works. He also created a language for the Nina Post novel “The Zaanics Deceit.”

Peterson helped found the Language Creation Society in 2007 after earning a University of California-San Diego master’s degree in linguistics and University of California-Berkeley undergraduate degrees in linguistics and English.

The comparative humanities department in the College of Arts and Sciences is sponsoring the event.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user BagoGames.