How Game of Thrones’ linguist created a new language for Pixar’s Elemental

Making sure a fantasy distinguishes itself from reality is an essential component, and languages play a crucial role in this. Dothraki and High Valyrian were both entirely created for the television series Game of Thrones. They were based on linguist David J. Peterson‘s analysis of the texts’ sparse usage of these languages in the books. Peterson recently created a new language for Pixar’s Elemental.

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How David J. Peterson created a new language for Elemental

In an interview with CinemaBlend, writer/director Peter Sohn described the skill of the House of the Dragon linguist:

“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.”

House of the Dragon scripts are David J. Peterson’s best work yet

In another interview, Peterson said, “Reading them….they are really, really good. And that’s one of the reasons why it was more challenging. It’s like “God, they don’t feel natural, I have to do my best.” And by the way, it was an absolute pleasure working on this. Because I’ve been in a lot of different series and movies and have had a drastic change of experiences from series to series. So it’s been really good to work on this series that’s doing so well.”

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