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The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves to Sand Worms, the Words Behind World-Building
An insider’s tour through the construction of invented languages from the bestselling author and creator of languages for Legendary's Dune, the HBO series Game of Thrones and the Syfy series DefianceFrom master language creator David J. Peterson comes a creative guide to language construction for sci-fi and fantasy fans, writers, game creators, and language lovers. Peterson offers a captivating overview of language creation, covering its history from Tolkien’s creations and Klingon to today’s thriving global community of conlangers. He provides the essential tools necessary for inventing and evolving new languages, using examples from a variety of languages including his own creations, punctuated with references to everything from Star Wars to Janelle Monáe. Along the way, behind-the-scenes stories lift the curtain on how he built languages like Dothraki for HBO’s Game of Thrones and Shiväisith for Marvel’s The Dark World, and an included phrasebook will start fans speaking Peterson’s constructed languages. The Art of Language Invention is an inside look at a fascinating culture and an engaging entry into a flourishing art form—and it might be the most fun you’ll ever have with linguistics.The Art of Language Invention includes a new chapter on phrases, specifically, word order, negation, question formation, pragmatic concerns, relativization, and subordination, providing a complete introduction to language creation and linguistics. Invented languages featured in the book now include Chakobsa from Legendary’s Dune, Trigedasleng (or Grounder) from The 100, Méníshè language from Fort Salem and Ravkan from the Netflix series Shadow and Bone.
336 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 29, 2015
494 people are currently reading
7746 people want to read
About the author
David J. Peterson
10 books222 followersMy name is David Peterson, and I'm a language creator and writer. I'm the author of Living Language Dothraki, The Art of Language Invention, and Create Your Own Secret Language. I've been creating languages for television shows and movies since 2009. Some of the productions I've worked on (and languages I've created for them) are: HBO's Game of Thrones (Dothraki, High Valyrian, Astapori Valyrian); Syfy's Defiance (Castithan, Irathient, Indojisnen, Kinuk'aaz); Freeform's Motherland: Fort Salem (Méníshè); Netflix's The Witcher (Hen Linge); the CW's The 100 (Trigedasleng); HBO's House of the Dragon (High Valyrian); and Legendary's Dune (Chakobsa).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 368 reviews
February 9, 2020
If you are another language nerd, you will find The Art of Language Invention absolutely irresistible. I couldn't put the book down and read it in a day and a half. Peterson, an amiable fanatic who lives and breathes for language, has been fortunate enough to land himself the best job in the world, inventing new languages for movies and TV series. Here, he gives you the details of how he does it and tells you what it's like to be the Tolkien of the early twenty-first century. Basically, it's simple: all you need to do is spend your entire life learning languages, and be prepared to go to any lengths to get the details right in your own creations. Peterson's happy to do all that. Judging from the examples he gives here, he has a good working knowledge of at least English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Latin, Swedish, Russian, Finnish, Mandarin, Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, Hausa, Georgian and ASL, plus bits and pieces of several dozen more languages. He's got a seriously good overview of the subject, and when he's building a new conlang there are any number of places where he can find ideas to adapt.
A lot of the book is just walking you through the linguistic machinery you'll need to master if you want to learn how to do this yourself - phonology, morphology, grammar, language evolution, writing systems - but his background gives him a unique spin on all this stuff. He explains how he invented High Valyrian for Game of Thrones. When he started, he didn't have more to go on than a bunch of proper names, a handful of nouns, and two short sentences:
And that's not even the most amazing thing in the book. Read it to find out how Peterson created the Castithan script,
its relationship to Hindi and Thai writing systems, how it evolved from earlier forms of Castithan writing, and why their spelling is so annoyingly inconsistent. If you want to know how a true master craftsman works, get The Art of Language Invention now.
A lot of the book is just walking you through the linguistic machinery you'll need to master if you want to learn how to do this yourself - phonology, morphology, grammar, language evolution, writing systems - but his background gives him a unique spin on all this stuff. He explains how he invented High Valyrian for Game of Thrones. When he started, he didn't have more to go on than a bunch of proper names, a handful of nouns, and two short sentences:
Valar morghulis. "All men must die."Evidently, that -is ending in some way encodes the idea of "must": but how? From this unpromising beginning, Peterson sketches out how he built the whole verb system, not just for High Valyrian but for the proto-language it evolved from (Tolkien taught us that realistic invented languages always have a backstory), and walks us through the details: the regular, the imperfect, the old and new forms of the perfect, the pluperfect, the future. Finally, he tells where that mysterious -is ending fits in: valar is a collective noun, the -is form of the verb is a third person singular gnomic or aorist form, and the combination of the collective with the gnomic/aorist form is what produces the force of "must". I'm sure a hundred other explanations could have been found by less creative linguists. But this one has real class, and it rings true.
Valar dohaeris. "All men must serve."
And that's not even the most amazing thing in the book. Read it to find out how Peterson created the Castithan script,
its relationship to Hindi and Thai writing systems, how it evolved from earlier forms of Castithan writing, and why their spelling is so annoyingly inconsistent. If you want to know how a true master craftsman works, get The Art of Language Invention now.
July 23, 2019
A 5-star book for any fantasy fan also interested in linguistics (but a 1.5-star book for any fan with a linguistics background).
The Art of Language Invention is a non-fiction book that explores the topic of conlanging, or how to construct your own language. The author, David J. Peterson, is the guy who developed Dothraki (for the TV series Game of Thrones) from a few odd phrases into a fully functional language of over 3000 words. In this book, he shows you how you can do it too.
But to construct your own language, you have to understand how language works. That means that in essence, this is a fantasy-tinged Linguistics 101 textbook. It briefly but thoroughly covers basic phonetics and phonology (sounds), morphology (word bits), syntax (grammar), semantics (meaning), orthography (writing systems), language change, and other various bits and bobs of language. There is also an overview of the field of conlanging and some anecdotes of the author’s experiences on the sets of shows/movies like Game of Thrones and Thor 2. But the bulk of the book is a linguistic “toolbox”, giving you the basics to help construct your own language – or be able to analyse others.
In my opinion, Peterson delivers his subject material very well. I’m a linguistics MA student, and I’d say this book covers approximately the first semester of first year linguistics. I would have been very happy to have had it as a supplementary text then! Peterson’s explanations are pretty clear and there’s always plenty of examples to illustrate how the concept works, some from Dorthraki or Sindarin (one of Tolkien’s created languages), others from “real-world” languages like Chinese or Arabic. He writes in an easy-going style, making it a bit less intense and dry than a normal textbook but no less informative.
However, I do have one serious problem with the book, and that’s how deceptive the blurb is. The blurb implies that the book is mostly a look at conlanging, e.g. its history and current issues, and also includes a bit of “essential tools” for making your own language. I don’t know, maybe the publishers thought people would run away screaming if they realised it was a linguistics textbook. Yes, there’s an (extremely interesting!) overview of conlanging as a whole, but it’s around 30 pages of near 300. The rest is a very thorough intro to linguistics. (You may need to take notes.)
For me personally, therefore, the vast majority of this book was a mild form of torture. It’s absolutely not the book’s fault, it’s just that I’ve heard the basic discussion on “How do you define a word?” enough times over the last five years that I wanted to scream/sob upon hearing it again. Unfortunately, there just isn’t enough conlang-specific material for it to be worth suffering through the basics for anybody with a background in linguistics.
A final issue I’d like to touch upon is choosing what format to read the book in. I listened to the audiobook. Peterson narrates it himself and is a good reader, and pretty good at pronouncing all the different language examples, whether from Icelandic or Shiväisith (the Thor elves’ language). But I’m not sure I would have been able to follow the audiobook if this was my first time encountering the material. The syntax examples get fairly complex, particularly the ergativity stuff. It’s just easier when you can refer back to the examples in question quickly, as well as to the definitions of various linguistic terms.
On the other hand, imo it’s practically impossible to understand phonetics without hearing the sounds first. Again, not the book’s fault, it’s just that no matter how carefully you word “/ɔ/ is an open mid-back rounded vowel,” it makes more sense when you can hear the sound in question at least once. Perhaps both text + audio together work best, but at the very least I recommend text + checking out Youtube IPA videos during the phonetics chapter.
In short, if you’ve always wanted a crash course in linguistics, it’s an excellent place to start. (And for people who do linguistics, avoid like the plague.)
The Art of Language Invention is a non-fiction book that explores the topic of conlanging, or how to construct your own language. The author, David J. Peterson, is the guy who developed Dothraki (for the TV series Game of Thrones) from a few odd phrases into a fully functional language of over 3000 words. In this book, he shows you how you can do it too.
But to construct your own language, you have to understand how language works. That means that in essence, this is a fantasy-tinged Linguistics 101 textbook. It briefly but thoroughly covers basic phonetics and phonology (sounds), morphology (word bits), syntax (grammar), semantics (meaning), orthography (writing systems), language change, and other various bits and bobs of language. There is also an overview of the field of conlanging and some anecdotes of the author’s experiences on the sets of shows/movies like Game of Thrones and Thor 2. But the bulk of the book is a linguistic “toolbox”, giving you the basics to help construct your own language – or be able to analyse others.
In my opinion, Peterson delivers his subject material very well. I’m a linguistics MA student, and I’d say this book covers approximately the first semester of first year linguistics. I would have been very happy to have had it as a supplementary text then! Peterson’s explanations are pretty clear and there’s always plenty of examples to illustrate how the concept works, some from Dorthraki or Sindarin (one of Tolkien’s created languages), others from “real-world” languages like Chinese or Arabic. He writes in an easy-going style, making it a bit less intense and dry than a normal textbook but no less informative.
However, I do have one serious problem with the book, and that’s how deceptive the blurb is. The blurb implies that the book is mostly a look at conlanging, e.g. its history and current issues, and also includes a bit of “essential tools” for making your own language. I don’t know, maybe the publishers thought people would run away screaming if they realised it was a linguistics textbook. Yes, there’s an (extremely interesting!) overview of conlanging as a whole, but it’s around 30 pages of near 300. The rest is a very thorough intro to linguistics. (You may need to take notes.)
For me personally, therefore, the vast majority of this book was a mild form of torture. It’s absolutely not the book’s fault, it’s just that I’ve heard the basic discussion on “How do you define a word?” enough times over the last five years that I wanted to scream/sob upon hearing it again. Unfortunately, there just isn’t enough conlang-specific material for it to be worth suffering through the basics for anybody with a background in linguistics.
A final issue I’d like to touch upon is choosing what format to read the book in. I listened to the audiobook. Peterson narrates it himself and is a good reader, and pretty good at pronouncing all the different language examples, whether from Icelandic or Shiväisith (the Thor elves’ language). But I’m not sure I would have been able to follow the audiobook if this was my first time encountering the material. The syntax examples get fairly complex, particularly the ergativity stuff. It’s just easier when you can refer back to the examples in question quickly, as well as to the definitions of various linguistic terms.
On the other hand, imo it’s practically impossible to understand phonetics without hearing the sounds first. Again, not the book’s fault, it’s just that no matter how carefully you word “/ɔ/ is an open mid-back rounded vowel,” it makes more sense when you can hear the sound in question at least once. Perhaps both text + audio together work best, but at the very least I recommend text + checking out Youtube IPA videos during the phonetics chapter.
In short, if you’ve always wanted a crash course in linguistics, it’s an excellent place to start. (And for people who do linguistics, avoid like the plague.)
September 7, 2017
"This is just a toe dip." That line is in the concluding chapter of David J. Peterson's The Art of Language Invention and I couldn't agree more.
The topic and practice of language creation feels EXHAUSTING after having read this. And yet, once you've read it, you're quite aware that you've merely glimpsed the tip of the iceberg.
I wanted to learn how to create a new language, which I could incorporate into my fantasy world. As I finish up book two and begin fleshing out number three, all while developing four and five, it has become more and more apparent that I will be creating new races and vocal creatures that should not be speaking English, if my readers are going to have any chance at suspending disbelief. I know it has been done that way and is readily accepted in mainstream productions, but to me, that is the cheese. It is the cheesiest of cheese, by which I mean it stinks. Why would any kind of "alien" race naturally speak English? Obviously advanced civilizations could have translation devices or could be intelligent and advanced enough to cope with learning ESL, but I'm writing old timey fantasy with monsters beating each other over the head with clubs. I doubt they'd have time to enroll in adult ed night courses. So, I wanted to add some realism to my humanoid races. Enter The Art of Language Invention.
Very quickly I realized I was in over my head. This, my friend, is complicated stuff. As an example for your benefit and for my own recollection down the line, here is a list of contents:
Chapter One: Sounds
- Phonetics
- Oral Physiology
- Consonants
- Vowels
- Phonology
- Sounds Systems
- Phonotactics
- Allophony
- Intonation
- Pragmatic Intonation
- Stress
- Tone
- Contour Tone Languages
- Register Ton Languages
- Sign Language Articulation
- Alien Sound Systems
Case Study: The Sound of Dothraki
Chapter Two: Words
- Key Concepts
- Allomorphy
- Nominal Inflection
- Nominal Number
- Grammatical Gender
- Noun Case
- Nominal Inflection Exponence
- Verbal Inflection
- Agreement
- Tense, Modality, Aspect
- Valency
- Word Order
- Derivation
Case Study: Irathient Nouns
Chapter Three: Evolution
- Phonological Evolution
- Lexical Evolution
- Grammatical Evolution
Case Study: High Valyrian Verbs
Chapter Four: The Written Word
- Orthography
- Types of Orthographies
- Alphabet
- Abjad
- Abugida
- Syllabary
- Complex Systems
- Using a System
- Drafting a Proto-System
- Evolving a Modern System
- Typography
Case Study: The Evolution of the Castithan Writing System
There's also a short phrase book at the back that includes approximately one page each of Dothraki, High Valyrian, Shivaisith, Castithan, Irathient, Indojisnen, Kamakawi, Vaeyne and Zaanics.
Some of you GoT fans are probably getting all giddy in your pants at the idea of learning Dothraki. And well you should! This isn't the book to teach you the Horse Lords' language, but it's a start!
That and High Valyrian are Peterson's two most famous creations. They made him semi-famous. Famous enough to be mentioned by the lovable Emilia Clarke on late night tv: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuKcZ...
He does a great job in this book of explaining the basics. You could, if you had plenty of time, construct your own brand new and very real language just from reading this book. It probably would be rather basic itself, but it would function. There aren't exactly step-by-step instructions, but Peterson does lay out this book, feeding you the info you need when you need it, in a way that naturally walks you through a language building education. One way to look at it is that instead of taking the full semester's course, you're reading over the syllabus.
Even if you're not interested in creating a new language, The Art of Language Invention is informative to those who are interested in words and language in general. Peterson relays a good amount of language history to the reader in order to explain his theories and practices. I found that quite educational. Also, this is written in a very casual tone. I think the man knew he needed to sugar-coat this stuff for the vast majority of his audience to get it down. If you're into GoT to the point of reading blogs for background information, you'll definitely get something out of this.
The topic and practice of language creation feels EXHAUSTING after having read this. And yet, once you've read it, you're quite aware that you've merely glimpsed the tip of the iceberg.
I wanted to learn how to create a new language, which I could incorporate into my fantasy world. As I finish up book two and begin fleshing out number three, all while developing four and five, it has become more and more apparent that I will be creating new races and vocal creatures that should not be speaking English, if my readers are going to have any chance at suspending disbelief. I know it has been done that way and is readily accepted in mainstream productions, but to me, that is the cheese. It is the cheesiest of cheese, by which I mean it stinks. Why would any kind of "alien" race naturally speak English? Obviously advanced civilizations could have translation devices or could be intelligent and advanced enough to cope with learning ESL, but I'm writing old timey fantasy with monsters beating each other over the head with clubs. I doubt they'd have time to enroll in adult ed night courses. So, I wanted to add some realism to my humanoid races. Enter The Art of Language Invention.
Very quickly I realized I was in over my head. This, my friend, is complicated stuff. As an example for your benefit and for my own recollection down the line, here is a list of contents:
Chapter One: Sounds
- Phonetics
- Oral Physiology
- Consonants
- Vowels
- Phonology
- Sounds Systems
- Phonotactics
- Allophony
- Intonation
- Pragmatic Intonation
- Stress
- Tone
- Contour Tone Languages
- Register Ton Languages
- Sign Language Articulation
- Alien Sound Systems
Case Study: The Sound of Dothraki
Chapter Two: Words
- Key Concepts
- Allomorphy
- Nominal Inflection
- Nominal Number
- Grammatical Gender
- Noun Case
- Nominal Inflection Exponence
- Verbal Inflection
- Agreement
- Tense, Modality, Aspect
- Valency
- Word Order
- Derivation
Case Study: Irathient Nouns
Chapter Three: Evolution
- Phonological Evolution
- Lexical Evolution
- Grammatical Evolution
Case Study: High Valyrian Verbs
Chapter Four: The Written Word
- Orthography
- Types of Orthographies
- Alphabet
- Abjad
- Abugida
- Syllabary
- Complex Systems
- Using a System
- Drafting a Proto-System
- Evolving a Modern System
- Typography
Case Study: The Evolution of the Castithan Writing System
There's also a short phrase book at the back that includes approximately one page each of Dothraki, High Valyrian, Shivaisith, Castithan, Irathient, Indojisnen, Kamakawi, Vaeyne and Zaanics.
Some of you GoT fans are probably getting all giddy in your pants at the idea of learning Dothraki. And well you should! This isn't the book to teach you the Horse Lords' language, but it's a start!
That and High Valyrian are Peterson's two most famous creations. They made him semi-famous. Famous enough to be mentioned by the lovable Emilia Clarke on late night tv: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuKcZ...
He does a great job in this book of explaining the basics. You could, if you had plenty of time, construct your own brand new and very real language just from reading this book. It probably would be rather basic itself, but it would function. There aren't exactly step-by-step instructions, but Peterson does lay out this book, feeding you the info you need when you need it, in a way that naturally walks you through a language building education. One way to look at it is that instead of taking the full semester's course, you're reading over the syllabus.
Even if you're not interested in creating a new language, The Art of Language Invention is informative to those who are interested in words and language in general. Peterson relays a good amount of language history to the reader in order to explain his theories and practices. I found that quite educational. Also, this is written in a very casual tone. I think the man knew he needed to sugar-coat this stuff for the vast majority of his audience to get it down. If you're into GoT to the point of reading blogs for background information, you'll definitely get something out of this.
October 14, 2015
If you're looking for a quick and fun read about the experience of creating languages for and maybe behind the scenes scoops about Game of Thrones or Defiance, this is not it. If you're looking for a long, complex, and fun read about the experience and practice of creating languages in general, this is definitely it.
I admit, I was expecting the former, which was why I requested a digital galley from Penguin's First to Read program. And it was, shall we say, startling to very early on begin to explore the nuts and bolts of language invention – conlanging. Here, suddenly, were terms I hadn't seen since the days when some school friends and I wandered the halls on our way to Latin class chanting "Nom Gen Dat Acc Abl… Nom Gen Dat Acc Abl… " (which stood for Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Ablative.) (Yes, we were weird.)(You probably should have gotten that from "we voluntarily took Latin".) I hadn't given those terms another thought since. (I kind of liked it that way.) And then came flurries of terms I had never heard before in my life…I admit it: I skimmed. But I never quit, because the writing was so entertaining. (David J. Peterson hates onions. Just saying.)
Every time the skimming almost did turn into "ok, that's enough, moving on", I came across a cool fact – like "The tilde on top of the ń began its existence as a second letter n written directly above the main n" (or "…In American Deaf culture, deaf with a lowercase d refers to the inability to hear; Deaf with an uppercase D refers to the ability to sign."); or an even cooler revelation about language, or life, that made me blink and smile and even possibly let out a faint squeak, like the bit about the pronunciation of "knight". (And "And stories like this one lie behind all grammar.")(And "…Is one a word? Sure. Two? Of course. Twenty-three? Yes… But if that's the case, doesn't English then have an infinite number of words…?") The examples given are interesting and attention-retaining. ("What is David Bowie?"). Even skimming, I learned quite a bit from this book, and had fun doing it.
The next time anyone complains about English being a difficult language, point them to Finnish. Or Chinese. Or "the Tsez language, spoken in the Caucasus mountains, [which] has sixty-four cases, fifty-six of which are local (not a joke)." "It rained. What rained? The clouds? The sky? The … weather?" ("…English, whose orthography was devised by a team of misanthropic, megalomaniacal cryptographers who distrusted and despised one another, and so sought to hide the meanings they were tasked with encoding by employing crude, arcane spellings that no one can explain. ("Ha, ha! I shall spell 'could' with an ell! They will powerless to stop me!")
One of the things I learned was that, quite possibly, conlanging is one of those things – like crochet and making gifs – from which I need to put my hands up and back away slowly, because I could far too easily become interested, find myself sucked down a rabbithole, and *poof* would go vast tracts of time I should be spending on one of the things I'm already involved with. I don't know if I would ever take the plunge – but I have too many hobbies and potential hobbies and projects and distractions than are good for me. Until I learn to do without sleep, I need to keep my distance from anything else that might suck me in.
And remember – "Do not call a conlang a fake language. Those who do only make themselves look foolish."
I admit, I was expecting the former, which was why I requested a digital galley from Penguin's First to Read program. And it was, shall we say, startling to very early on begin to explore the nuts and bolts of language invention – conlanging. Here, suddenly, were terms I hadn't seen since the days when some school friends and I wandered the halls on our way to Latin class chanting "Nom Gen Dat Acc Abl… Nom Gen Dat Acc Abl… " (which stood for Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Ablative.) (Yes, we were weird.)(You probably should have gotten that from "we voluntarily took Latin".) I hadn't given those terms another thought since. (I kind of liked it that way.) And then came flurries of terms I had never heard before in my life…I admit it: I skimmed. But I never quit, because the writing was so entertaining. (David J. Peterson hates onions. Just saying.)
Every time the skimming almost did turn into "ok, that's enough, moving on", I came across a cool fact – like "The tilde on top of the ń began its existence as a second letter n written directly above the main n" (or "…In American Deaf culture, deaf with a lowercase d refers to the inability to hear; Deaf with an uppercase D refers to the ability to sign."); or an even cooler revelation about language, or life, that made me blink and smile and even possibly let out a faint squeak, like the bit about the pronunciation of "knight". (And "And stories like this one lie behind all grammar.")(And "…Is one a word? Sure. Two? Of course. Twenty-three? Yes… But if that's the case, doesn't English then have an infinite number of words…?") The examples given are interesting and attention-retaining. ("What is David Bowie?"). Even skimming, I learned quite a bit from this book, and had fun doing it.
The next time anyone complains about English being a difficult language, point them to Finnish. Or Chinese. Or "the Tsez language, spoken in the Caucasus mountains, [which] has sixty-four cases, fifty-six of which are local (not a joke)." "It rained. What rained? The clouds? The sky? The … weather?" ("…English, whose orthography was devised by a team of misanthropic, megalomaniacal cryptographers who distrusted and despised one another, and so sought to hide the meanings they were tasked with encoding by employing crude, arcane spellings that no one can explain. ("Ha, ha! I shall spell 'could' with an ell! They will powerless to stop me!")
One of the things I learned was that, quite possibly, conlanging is one of those things – like crochet and making gifs – from which I need to put my hands up and back away slowly, because I could far too easily become interested, find myself sucked down a rabbithole, and *poof* would go vast tracts of time I should be spending on one of the things I'm already involved with. I don't know if I would ever take the plunge – but I have too many hobbies and potential hobbies and projects and distractions than are good for me. Until I learn to do without sleep, I need to keep my distance from anything else that might suck me in.
And remember – "Do not call a conlang a fake language. Those who do only make themselves look foolish."
dnf
October 29, 2015Amount read: about 15%
I loved the first chapter. Though created languages aren't something I'm especially interested in and I haven't given them much thought, learning about them was nerdy, and I super appreciate David J. Peterson's performance and love for his art.
However, once I hit the actual first chapter, it became apparent to me that I'm actually not nerdy enough to appreciate this book. His goal really is to teach others how to create a language, so he goes in depth into the creation of sounds and stuff. It's basically a textbook on language creation, one told in a funny manner but still with too much information for me to be able to soak in for a pleasure read.
If you are deeply interested in language invention, I'd recommend this super highly though. If you're only mildly curious, it might be too much for you too.
I loved the first chapter. Though created languages aren't something I'm especially interested in and I haven't given them much thought, learning about them was nerdy, and I super appreciate David J. Peterson's performance and love for his art.
However, once I hit the actual first chapter, it became apparent to me that I'm actually not nerdy enough to appreciate this book. His goal really is to teach others how to create a language, so he goes in depth into the creation of sounds and stuff. It's basically a textbook on language creation, one told in a funny manner but still with too much information for me to be able to soak in for a pleasure read.
If you are deeply interested in language invention, I'd recommend this super highly though. If you're only mildly curious, it might be too much for you too.
May 19, 2017
http://weatherwaxreport.blog
The only reason I picked this book up was for r/fantasy's Bingo Challenge - to read a non fiction booked based on Fantasy
On the cover it said it was written by the person who created the Dothraki language for the tv show Game of Thrones, based on GRRM's A Song of Ice and Fire series - I adore ASOIAF so I picked it up. I'm a little disappointed it had very little to do with Dothraki or Valyrian - probably a total of 30 pages for the whole book. The rest of it WAS interesting though, and I learned a ton of stuff considering I have no background in linguistics.
The book starts off with some background on created/constructed languages - the first known language that was consciously constructed was created by Hilegard Von Bingen - named Lingua Lingua. She thought her language creation was dictated to her by god, and had some interesting word choices Ie: Zirzer meaning "anus".
It briefly went over the history of other constructed languages, but focused on Esperanto which is the most wide spread Auxiliary Language known today - which was created in an attempt to make a widely known alternative language for international use.
Tolkien was one of the first people to create a language not based on 'god' or on and attempt for global communication, and was entirely focused on a fictional world. He actually didn't just create a language, but a language family - which is mirrors what happens in real life ie: romance languages. Two of his most widely known languages are Quenya and Sindarin which both share a common ancestor language - Quendian.
The first person ever hired to create a language for tv/film was Victoria Fromkin for the show Land of the Lost (1974). Paku was unfortunately not featured as much as she would have liked, and so it doesn't get as much credit as it deserved.
The book spent a fair amount of time talking about Conlanger culture and the rise of the Conlang website Conlang Litserv. One of the past times many conlangers enjoy is translating each others languages and giving feedback - but it works like an exaggerated version of the game telephone where some of the paragraphs translated end up hilariously warped.
There was a whole chapter dedicated to the different sounds that are used or exempt from certain languages and what makes a language sound 'harsh' or 'flowing' to English speakers.
A large chapter in the book went over how we physically make sounds without really being aware of it, large amounts of terminology in this chapter "Oral Stops, Fricative, Affricate, Nasal Stops, flap/Tap, Trill, Lateral" etc. Since describing how we do this doesn't come across easily through text, the author spends a lot of time making up 'throat experiments' so you can understand what it is he's saying.
One of the throat experiments used to explore the meaning of "Backness, Height, Rounding, and Openness" asked you to pay attention to what happens when you say Meet, Mate, Met, Moot, Moat - as an example of "openness".
Sign language was also addressed in the book, and I felt a little embarrassed that I didn't know there were multiple types of sign language, not just ASL - for example Britain as BSL, and France as FSL. That chapter also briefly went over Deaf Culture, and I was woefully ignorant about many aspects of that as well.
There was a chapter that briefly touched on what alien languages may sound like or what body parts outside of a mouth and larynx may be used ie: clapping. Technically, humans have the capability of using claps as a 'letter' in our languages but we just don't.
It wasn't until page 90 that the author went over how he went about creating Dothraki, and it was over by page 97 - so if you don't like ASOIAF or GoT - this may appeal to you, I was a little disappointed though. By page 199 though he addresses Valyrian, and that went a little more in depth even though he only had 6 words and 2 sentences from the original text to create a language. The two sentences were Valar Morhulis - all men must die. And Valar Dohaeris - all men must serve. From there he created an entire language, pretty impressive.
The latter half of the book concentrated a lot on the evolution of language and how English ended up with words like knight vs night, and how the written language was developed and evolved.
The last chapter of the book focused on a written language he helped develop for the show Defiance.
I actually know Alienese from the show Futurama, which is a very simple 1 for 1 replacement code for English. I thought that was nerdy... unfortunately Alienese didn't get mentioned in the book. Not a surprise considering it's really not a language but just a code.
All in all I enjoyed this book, but it was EXTREMELY technical, I'd say about 10% of the page space was dedicated to terminology and charts. I had to take notes and re-read and reference things all the time. It took me a while to make it through this book - I did however enjoy myself and I thought about things that never occurred to me before. This book would have way more appeal to linguists - and may bore the shit out of people who have 0 background in this sort of subject.
The only reason I picked this book up was for r/fantasy's Bingo Challenge - to read a non fiction booked based on Fantasy
On the cover it said it was written by the person who created the Dothraki language for the tv show Game of Thrones, based on GRRM's A Song of Ice and Fire series - I adore ASOIAF so I picked it up. I'm a little disappointed it had very little to do with Dothraki or Valyrian - probably a total of 30 pages for the whole book. The rest of it WAS interesting though, and I learned a ton of stuff considering I have no background in linguistics.
The book starts off with some background on created/constructed languages - the first known language that was consciously constructed was created by Hilegard Von Bingen - named Lingua Lingua. She thought her language creation was dictated to her by god, and had some interesting word choices Ie: Zirzer meaning "anus".
It briefly went over the history of other constructed languages, but focused on Esperanto which is the most wide spread Auxiliary Language known today - which was created in an attempt to make a widely known alternative language for international use.
Tolkien was one of the first people to create a language not based on 'god' or on and attempt for global communication, and was entirely focused on a fictional world. He actually didn't just create a language, but a language family - which is mirrors what happens in real life ie: romance languages. Two of his most widely known languages are Quenya and Sindarin which both share a common ancestor language - Quendian.
The first person ever hired to create a language for tv/film was Victoria Fromkin for the show Land of the Lost (1974). Paku was unfortunately not featured as much as she would have liked, and so it doesn't get as much credit as it deserved.
The book spent a fair amount of time talking about Conlanger culture and the rise of the Conlang website Conlang Litserv. One of the past times many conlangers enjoy is translating each others languages and giving feedback - but it works like an exaggerated version of the game telephone where some of the paragraphs translated end up hilariously warped.
There was a whole chapter dedicated to the different sounds that are used or exempt from certain languages and what makes a language sound 'harsh' or 'flowing' to English speakers.
A large chapter in the book went over how we physically make sounds without really being aware of it, large amounts of terminology in this chapter "Oral Stops, Fricative, Affricate, Nasal Stops, flap/Tap, Trill, Lateral" etc. Since describing how we do this doesn't come across easily through text, the author spends a lot of time making up 'throat experiments' so you can understand what it is he's saying.
One of the throat experiments used to explore the meaning of "Backness, Height, Rounding, and Openness" asked you to pay attention to what happens when you say Meet, Mate, Met, Moot, Moat - as an example of "openness".
Sign language was also addressed in the book, and I felt a little embarrassed that I didn't know there were multiple types of sign language, not just ASL - for example Britain as BSL, and France as FSL. That chapter also briefly went over Deaf Culture, and I was woefully ignorant about many aspects of that as well.
There was a chapter that briefly touched on what alien languages may sound like or what body parts outside of a mouth and larynx may be used ie: clapping. Technically, humans have the capability of using claps as a 'letter' in our languages but we just don't.
It wasn't until page 90 that the author went over how he went about creating Dothraki, and it was over by page 97 - so if you don't like ASOIAF or GoT - this may appeal to you, I was a little disappointed though. By page 199 though he addresses Valyrian, and that went a little more in depth even though he only had 6 words and 2 sentences from the original text to create a language. The two sentences were Valar Morhulis - all men must die. And Valar Dohaeris - all men must serve. From there he created an entire language, pretty impressive.
The latter half of the book concentrated a lot on the evolution of language and how English ended up with words like knight vs night, and how the written language was developed and evolved.
The last chapter of the book focused on a written language he helped develop for the show Defiance.
I actually know Alienese from the show Futurama, which is a very simple 1 for 1 replacement code for English. I thought that was nerdy... unfortunately Alienese didn't get mentioned in the book. Not a surprise considering it's really not a language but just a code.
All in all I enjoyed this book, but it was EXTREMELY technical, I'd say about 10% of the page space was dedicated to terminology and charts. I had to take notes and re-read and reference things all the time. It took me a while to make it through this book - I did however enjoy myself and I thought about things that never occurred to me before. This book would have way more appeal to linguists - and may bore the shit out of people who have 0 background in this sort of subject.
October 11, 2015
A MUST FOR ALL LOVERS OF LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGE INVENTION
It has been an incredible joy and treat to read this book. David Peterson is a linguist and the creator of such languages as Dothraki and Valyrian for the HBO series Game of Thrones, adapted from George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. He has also invented languages for Syfy's Defiance and Dominion as well as the language of Shivaisith for the movie Thor 2: The Dark World and most recently Star-Crossed and The 100. Peterson is also a co-founder of The Language Creation Society - which is a group of not so secret language inventors. If you are interested in the art of language invention and how language works I urge you to read this book. Peterson adapts a very practical (and sometime humorous - this man does not like onions!) approach to laying out for the would be language inventor (and I know they are out there!) the sounds, words, and syntax of invented languages (using many practical examples and case studies from his and others invented languages). He also includes a brilliant chapter on writing systems. I very much enjoyed Peterson's descriptions of how his invented languages actually were used and pronounced by the actors on Game of Thrones and the detail he put into these languages as elements of world-building. This is a must read for all practitioners (or want to be practitioners) of the 'Secret (and no so Secret) Vice' - and you will learn a lot about how language works as well. Highly recommend and Peterson's passion has inspired me to revisit some of my early attempts at language-invention.
February 10, 2017
Though this is written by the linguist behind Game of Thrones’ Dothraki, this isn’t a populist cash-in type of book. It goes into the history of conlangs (constructed languages) a little bit, and then delves deep into all the ins and outs of creating a convincing one — from phonology to grammar to script. It’s fascinating, if sometimes a little hard to follow for someone who isn’t interested in building their own invented language, and thus doesn’t have something to apply the ideas to.
The book covers a lot of ground by including some case studies of invented languages as well (Dothraki, unsurprisingly, included). Less usefully for me, it includes phrasebooks for some invented languages.
Ultimately, I think you have to be pretty darn into conlangs to get much value out of this, but it is a fascinating subject.
Originally posted here.
The book covers a lot of ground by including some case studies of invented languages as well (Dothraki, unsurprisingly, included). Less usefully for me, it includes phrasebooks for some invented languages.
Ultimately, I think you have to be pretty darn into conlangs to get much value out of this, but it is a fascinating subject.
Originally posted here.
October 4, 2015
I got more then I bargained for with this book. While I have learned how Mr. Peterson wrote the Dothraki language for Game of Thrones; I have also learned a lot more about how everyone can read and use the same word in many different contexts. In addition, that there are so many ways to use your vocal range to produce a variety of different pronunciations and sounds. Which if you are a singer or an actor, I am sure you already know how to do the vocal exercises.
Yes, I agree that this book does read like a text book but a very intriguing and informative book. I did not think I would like reading this book as much as I did. Also, the Case Studies that were featured in this book I found to be interesting and like added bonuses. Geared with this additional knowledge, I will now be watching movies, television shows, and books with more of a critical eye on the language used.
Yes, I agree that this book does read like a text book but a very intriguing and informative book. I did not think I would like reading this book as much as I did. Also, the Case Studies that were featured in this book I found to be interesting and like added bonuses. Geared with this additional knowledge, I will now be watching movies, television shows, and books with more of a critical eye on the language used.
August 5, 2024
This book is all about how to literally create a language from scratch and it’s fucking awesome in the nerdiest way possible
February 11, 2017
I might have given this book four stars. The first three chapters, "Sounds," "Words" and "Evolution," were interesting and contained some useful information I can use in developing my own conlangs.* The fourth chapter, "The Written Word," was of minimal use to me and I skimmed through a lot of it.
What I couldn't stand, however, was the writing. Peterson continually interrupted himself to make what he clearly thought were amusing asides. Since they weren't, it made reading tedious.
If you are at all interested in constructing languages, then I would recommend this book to you. Aside from the style, Peterson clearly presents the building blocks of a language and useful tips on creating one.
* My own interest in conlangs began when I read The Silmarillion way back in '78 and fell in love with the all too small Elvish dictionary that was included. When I was around 14, I began developing my own imaginary world, which I still work on to this day and for which I've created several languages. I'm a dilettante conlanger so I've only focused on one language, the dominant tongue of that region of my world most fully realized in my imagination, but I've constructed the skeletons for a variety of others in an effort to avoid having every place and personal name sound the same.
What I couldn't stand, however, was the writing. Peterson continually interrupted himself to make what he clearly thought were amusing asides. Since they weren't, it made reading tedious.
If you are at all interested in constructing languages, then I would recommend this book to you. Aside from the style, Peterson clearly presents the building blocks of a language and useful tips on creating one.
* My own interest in conlangs began when I read The Silmarillion way back in '78 and fell in love with the all too small Elvish dictionary that was included. When I was around 14, I began developing my own imaginary world, which I still work on to this day and for which I've created several languages. I'm a dilettante conlanger so I've only focused on one language, the dominant tongue of that region of my world most fully realized in my imagination, but I've constructed the skeletons for a variety of others in an effort to avoid having every place and personal name sound the same.
October 20, 2015
I have a strong background in Linguistics so this appealed to me from the moment I discovered it existed. It's not for everybody, but if things like the evolution of the word "gonna", descriptions of ergativity, hatred toward onions, examples pulled from popular and incredibly obscure languages all over the world as well as from conlangs created by many different people as well as Peterson's own languages, great pop culture references, analyses of the development of writings systems and how to emulate centuries of evolution of said systems, how conlanging started and grew with the spread of the Internet, or postulations on what language is at its very core and can possibly be, fascinate you then this book is for you.
Superb.
Superb.
February 17, 2016
The Art of Language Invention was one of those books that I felt sad finishing because I knew that even if I read it again I could never have those exact feelings of amazement and wonder a second time. This book is fantastic and while it is a guide to beginning your own conlang, it truly is, at its heart, an exploration of the ingenuity and creativity that goes into creating and evolving a language. Peterson shares profound thoughts regarding culture and language while being an awesome linguistics teacher the whole time. If you have any interest in languages at all, I implore you to read this book.
July 19, 2019
Excellent for what it was- a reference book for people who want to make conlangs. Very informative, but as I said, definitely a thing I'd need to use the pdf. The pdf is CRITICAL in the last portion about orthography.
Also, there are parts that definitely sound like he wrote them at 2 in the morning, so that's fun.
Also, there are parts that definitely sound like he wrote them at 2 in the morning, so that's fun.
August 8, 2021
I love reading about languages, so I gobbled up this short book very quickly. I wanted to write a detailed review, but I'm lazy, so this has been on my "currently reading" shelf for two months after I actually finished it.
Basically this talks about all the things you need to learn in order to create a believable language, for a fantasy or SF work, that resembles real, living languages spoken* by Earthlings. It is essentially a full years worth of introductory college linguistics crammed into a pretty short book. It even contains information on writing systems and about how to create your own font using commercial programs, including how to trick it into doing whatever unusual ligatures your writing system needs.
If you haven't explored these topics before, it will be exhausting, and will probably turn you off of the idea of creating a language for your fiction. And that is a good thing! The only reason you should try to create a fictional language is if you love doing so. Casual readers won't care whether the few words and phrases you put in your novel show evidence of being part of a language that has evolved and mutated and corrupted itself over years.
It seems almost unfair for criticizing such a short work for leaving something out, but I think the section on writing systems should have at least mentioned featural writing systems, such as Hangul, where the shapes of characters are designed to be directly related to the sound or manner of articulation. Also, I wish there was a bibliography. At one point the author mentioned that there are several great books about the topic of gramaticalization -- and I would like to read one -- but he doesn't give the name of any such book.
Also, when thinking about SF languages, there shouldn't necessarily be a need for those to resemble languages spoken by humans, with all their inherent lack of logic. I can easily imagine that Vulcans, who embrace logic above all else, would cleanse their language of illogical spelling and pointless rules. And creatures with bionic brains, or brains with embedded computer chips, could be capable of using very logical languages (such as loglan) which actual humans can't handle.
* signed languages are briefly addressed, but the author states that a full description would require a separate book. Still, there is a bit of speculation about how squid-like creatures could communicate through elaborate tentacle positions, so, yeah, this does have "talking squids in outer space'.
Basically this talks about all the things you need to learn in order to create a believable language, for a fantasy or SF work, that resembles real, living languages spoken* by Earthlings. It is essentially a full years worth of introductory college linguistics crammed into a pretty short book. It even contains information on writing systems and about how to create your own font using commercial programs, including how to trick it into doing whatever unusual ligatures your writing system needs.
If you haven't explored these topics before, it will be exhausting, and will probably turn you off of the idea of creating a language for your fiction. And that is a good thing! The only reason you should try to create a fictional language is if you love doing so. Casual readers won't care whether the few words and phrases you put in your novel show evidence of being part of a language that has evolved and mutated and corrupted itself over years.
It seems almost unfair for criticizing such a short work for leaving something out, but I think the section on writing systems should have at least mentioned featural writing systems, such as Hangul, where the shapes of characters are designed to be directly related to the sound or manner of articulation. Also, I wish there was a bibliography. At one point the author mentioned that there are several great books about the topic of gramaticalization -- and I would like to read one -- but he doesn't give the name of any such book.
Also, when thinking about SF languages, there shouldn't necessarily be a need for those to resemble languages spoken by humans, with all their inherent lack of logic. I can easily imagine that Vulcans, who embrace logic above all else, would cleanse their language of illogical spelling and pointless rules. And creatures with bionic brains, or brains with embedded computer chips, could be capable of using very logical languages (such as loglan) which actual humans can't handle.
* signed languages are briefly addressed, but the author states that a full description would require a separate book. Still, there is a bit of speculation about how squid-like creatures could communicate through elaborate tentacle positions, so, yeah, this does have "talking squids in outer space'.
August 31, 2024
Kai baigiau skaityti šitą knygą, dar kartą paskaičiau jos pristatymą ant viršelio.
Taip – lk0ingvistas, sukūręs ne vieną dirbtinę kalbą filmams ir serialams (nuo „Sostų karų“ iki...), šioje knygoje išsamiai papasakos apie visus kalbos konstravimo etapus.
Deja, to neradau. Pora šimtų puslapių apie visus lingvistikos niuansus: nuo fonetikos iki gramatikos (ir dar daugybė kitų specialių terminų). Šiek tiek mažiau puslapių, kuriuose jis pateikia pavyzdžius iš savo sukurtų kalbų.
Visa tai įdomu ir labai naudinga norintiems studijuoti kalbas ar tapti kalbotyrininkais. Įdomu net man, nenorinčiam būti tokiu specialistu.
Bet... Jei ant viršelio yra parašoma, kad bus pasakojama apie dirbtinių kalbų kūrimą, tai aš ir tikiuosi surašytų žinginių, kaip tai yra daroma (kokiu tikslu yra kuriama kalba, kokias išgalvotų herojų savybes ji turi atspindėti, kokio sudėtingumo nori tą kalbą sukurti ir t.t.)
3,2
Taip – lk0ingvistas, sukūręs ne vieną dirbtinę kalbą filmams ir serialams (nuo „Sostų karų“ iki...), šioje knygoje išsamiai papasakos apie visus kalbos konstravimo etapus.
Deja, to neradau. Pora šimtų puslapių apie visus lingvistikos niuansus: nuo fonetikos iki gramatikos (ir dar daugybė kitų specialių terminų). Šiek tiek mažiau puslapių, kuriuose jis pateikia pavyzdžius iš savo sukurtų kalbų.
Visa tai įdomu ir labai naudinga norintiems studijuoti kalbas ar tapti kalbotyrininkais. Įdomu net man, nenorinčiam būti tokiu specialistu.
Bet... Jei ant viršelio yra parašoma, kad bus pasakojama apie dirbtinių kalbų kūrimą, tai aš ir tikiuosi surašytų žinginių, kaip tai yra daroma (kokiu tikslu yra kuriama kalba, kokias išgalvotų herojų savybes ji turi atspindėti, kokio sudėtingumo nori tą kalbą sukurti ir t.t.)
3,2
October 10, 2024
Super interesting and written in a way that everyone can understand. A quick intro to very basic and simple linguistics that I feel can spark interest in the field.
August 17, 2024
Great read. Bit technical at the beginning, but very understandable for someone without a linguistic background.
December 16, 2019
I listened to the audio book of this book, I think it would've been a nightmare to read on paper since so much of what the author talks about depends on verbal examples in sentence structure and language sounds that one could never know just by reading.
Good things about this book are that it is a very thorough course in linguistics, there was a lot of great information and he cleared up a few concepts about how certain languages are structured that were fuzzy for me. There is so much terminology in this book that in order to really remember and understand it all I think you would have to re-read certain chapters over several times.
The audio book really would have benefited from including native speakers! Sometimes he just absolutely butchers the pronunciations and it is really distracting and takes away from the examples he has provided and the point he's trying to make. It became really cringey to listen to sometimes.
I really liked that he included a chapter on signed languages! He got the history right and for the most part I was really pleased with the chapter, but I got annoyed when he talked about how he'd created a system for transcribing how signs are produced. The Deaf community has already done that, it already exists and is less complicated than the one you've invented! I eventually had to skip that chapter because it became apparent that in all his research he never actually spoke to the Deaf community because some of his claims or the way he described how to sign a word, were incorrect.
Overall this book was interesting to listen to and it's not a wasted effort because you will learn things, David Peterson should not have tried to speak every single language example because mispronunciation or vocabulary that was slightly wrong really took away from the enjoyment of this book.
Good things about this book are that it is a very thorough course in linguistics, there was a lot of great information and he cleared up a few concepts about how certain languages are structured that were fuzzy for me. There is so much terminology in this book that in order to really remember and understand it all I think you would have to re-read certain chapters over several times.
The audio book really would have benefited from including native speakers! Sometimes he just absolutely butchers the pronunciations and it is really distracting and takes away from the examples he has provided and the point he's trying to make. It became really cringey to listen to sometimes.
I really liked that he included a chapter on signed languages! He got the history right and for the most part I was really pleased with the chapter, but I got annoyed when he talked about how he'd created a system for transcribing how signs are produced. The Deaf community has already done that, it already exists and is less complicated than the one you've invented! I eventually had to skip that chapter because it became apparent that in all his research he never actually spoke to the Deaf community because some of his claims or the way he described how to sign a word, were incorrect.
Overall this book was interesting to listen to and it's not a wasted effort because you will learn things, David Peterson should not have tried to speak every single language example because mispronunciation or vocabulary that was slightly wrong really took away from the enjoyment of this book.
August 12, 2015
Have you ever wanted to invent your own language? No, neither have I. But if you love to learn about language and languages, The Art of Language Invention might put a different spin on the way you look at the subject.
David Peterson explains in scholarly detail just what goes into inventing a language. He describes the people who invent languages for fun, and they are an enthusiastically geeky bunch. They strictly apply the rules of language, as we know them, to constructed languages (conlangs). They don't necessarily expect or want people to speak these new languages, the way Zamenhof wanted Esperanto to bring people together. For most of the conlangers, it's a cerebral exercise, like a game of chess or a SimCity community. There is even a small market for invented languages for TV and movie stories.
Peterson's introduction and first chapter takes you into this world, but after that, it's a college level linguistics course, explaining how grammar works and orthography, etc. and how to apply it to invented languages. This was a little deeper than I wanted to go, but the case studies that he sprinkles throughout describing how he solved various linguistic problems in creating languages, were quite interesting.
He finished up with a quick chapter on how to get involved in the conlang community and the job prospects for such skills (dim).
(Thanks to Penguin First Reads for a digital review copy.)
David Peterson explains in scholarly detail just what goes into inventing a language. He describes the people who invent languages for fun, and they are an enthusiastically geeky bunch. They strictly apply the rules of language, as we know them, to constructed languages (conlangs). They don't necessarily expect or want people to speak these new languages, the way Zamenhof wanted Esperanto to bring people together. For most of the conlangers, it's a cerebral exercise, like a game of chess or a SimCity community. There is even a small market for invented languages for TV and movie stories.
Peterson's introduction and first chapter takes you into this world, but after that, it's a college level linguistics course, explaining how grammar works and orthography, etc. and how to apply it to invented languages. This was a little deeper than I wanted to go, but the case studies that he sprinkles throughout describing how he solved various linguistic problems in creating languages, were quite interesting.
He finished up with a quick chapter on how to get involved in the conlang community and the job prospects for such skills (dim).
(Thanks to Penguin First Reads for a digital review copy.)
July 7, 2019
Although I'm a big GoT fan, what interested me most about this book was not the constructed languages but the sheer volume of linguistic information. I majored in foreign languages and studied quite a bit of linguistics in the '70s but much of this information was new to me and in far more detail. The writing style is engaging and humorous. The focus is on the author's conlanguages (notably Dothraki and High Valerian) but I wish he'd have given more natural language examples to illustrate the concepts. It's a lot to swallow for most conlang neophytes, more than most fantasy/sf authors generally need and more than most readers will appreciate. He mentions Edgar Rice Burroughs early in the book but there is no discussion of ERB's linguistic creation (very pedestrian compared to Tolkien and others). I'd like to have seen some discussion of what authors do wrong in language invention, what the pitfalls are for beginners. (I'm a firm believer in teaching by negative examples.) Also I'd have expected something on Klingon and other notable conlangs outside of the author's creation.
Read
April 3, 2021It's unfair how much better linguists do at writing popular work than philosophers. This covers a lot of what you would probably remember from an intro linguistics course, and does a really good job introducing stuff about phonetics and phonology and forces driving language change. The best example in the book is using Eddie Vedder's way of singing "can't find a better" in "Better Man" as illustrating the centralization of front vowels (so it sounds like mush [not a technical term in linguistics], or like Scott Weiland) (p.43).
August 8, 2023
I really loved this book. Despite a certain amount of unavoidable and daunting linguistic jargon for the uninitiated (me), it feels like a jolly and gentle plunge into the conlanger world. Peterson is charming and emphasises his passion for the pure art of creating language. I particularly loved the ending section - a brief treatise on the intersections of creative work and its tricky (and often unrealistic) commodification - as well as numerous small but fascinating details, such as the mouth mechanisms that lead "Tom's son" to becoming "Thompson".
I will now be noticing video game cyphers more intently, probably (they almost always look a bit fake to me - I'm looking at you, Skyrim).
I will now be noticing video game cyphers more intently, probably (they almost always look a bit fake to me - I'm looking at you, Skyrim).
July 23, 2022
If you wanted to make up your own language, you can't get a better starting point than this book. Peterson gives an overview of conlang (constructed language) history and community and then does a bit of a whirlwind tour of linguistics basics (that I know I'll refer to as we learn some concepts that even I didn't learn in my own college classes). The author uses lots of examples from his own languages, including the Dothraki language he worked on for Game of Thrones but also several he made for the show Defiance and others (each chapter ends with a 'case study' using one of his languages for an in-depth look). It was just fun to read, and he points you to lots of other sources to consider in the bibliography.
April 12, 2021
David J. Peterson: Genre writers! Consider hiring a conlanger to help you with your work!
Me: Hahahahaha ABSOLUTELY NOT! I will make ALL FOUR of the languages I need myself and I will make their grammar NEEDLESSLY COMPLEX!
Me: Hahahahaha ABSOLUTELY NOT! I will make ALL FOUR of the languages I need myself and I will make their grammar NEEDLESSLY COMPLEX!
November 5, 2021
It would be extremely useful for people who wanna create their own language without knowing language that deeply, but it was only a tiny bit useful since all the theory I already knew and Dothraki takes only 10 pages of the book. Brilliant but useless to me. (We should have used this book as theory, it’s much more accessible)
January 24, 2025
Ja, dit boek is voor mensen die geen leuke tijd hadden tijdens taal mentaal of taal sociaal het equivalent van een horrorfilm voor mensen die snel last hebben van nachtmerries, maar de man weet wel waar hij het over heeft
December 24, 2024
What a great book.
Really needed this in high school when we tried to create our own conlang....
Author is super funny, too.
Really needed this in high school when we tried to create our own conlang....
Author is super funny, too.
April 8, 2025
This is the book that solidified my resolve to study linguistics, and has been a motivating factor to return to when I start forgetting why I love language in the first place
June 5, 2017
I found this book to be very inspiring, I enjoyed the writing a lot. The topic of the book also is something that I knew I'd enjoy, but that only brings you so far. Surely I think this one would be great for anyone that have a bit of interest in languages.
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