n his work. But both Frommer and Peterson followed Tolkien’s approach of starting with a proto-language and aging it based on principles of historic linguistic shift, thus creating a flexible, more authentic-sounding language. Both infused their invented languages with cultural specificity: Dothraki, for example, has no word for “please.” Na’vi, due to the importance of ceremony on Pandora, has a ceremonial register with different versions of pronouns.
The real differences may be less linguistic than cultural—and professional. Peterson’s prominence in the conlanging community gave Dothraki an immediate stamp of nerd authenticity, a boon in an age when fan attention to details like period slang and dress has reached obsessive heights. Whereas Klingon and Na’vi fans had to seek out Okrand and Frommer, Peterson was present in online forums from the very beginning, as obsessive as anyone else. And, unlike Okrand and Frommer, who never sought to become full-time conlangers, he’s parlayed the gig into an ongoing career: As far as he knows, Peterson is the only person in the world who earns a living by making up languages. He’s since written conlangs for “Thor: Dark World” and the SyFy show “Defiance.” The upcoming season of “Game of Thrones” features a new Valyrian dialect he wrote, Meereenese, which involves “a lot of shushing” noises, he said. Tolkien’s “secret vice” has, today, become a respectable profession.
Whether Peterson’s “Game of Thrones” languages will endure longer than the run of the show is still in question. And one unexpected threat to Dothraki might be that it does its job too well. Richard Littauer, a Web developer in Brooklyn, helped write the first Na’vi dictionary and also helped found the original Dothraki Web forum. He says he found Dothraki more “fleshed out” and “a little more realistic” than Na’vi. But he couldn’t enjoy the language without thinking of the ferocious Dothraki themselves.
“I’m not a bloodthirsty Mongol warrior,” he explained, with a hint of regret.Britt Peterson is a writer in Washington, D.C.