For Immediate Release    April 12, 2010
EXPERT CREATES LANGUAGE FOR NEW HBO SERIES GAME OF THRONES

David J. Peterson, an expert language creator from the Language Creation Society (LCS), has been chosen to create the Dothraki language for HBO’s upcoming fantasy series GAME OF THRONES, based on the book series “A Song of Ice and Fire,” by George R.R. Martin.

When GAME OF THRONES executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss needed a language for the Dothraki, Martin’s race of nomadic warriors, they turned to the Language Creation Society. The LCS solicited and vetted a number of proposals for the Dothraki language from its pool of experts, with Peterson’s proposal ultimately being selected by the GAME OF THRONES production team.

Peterson drew inspiration from George R.R. Martin’s description of the language, as well as from such languages as Russian, Turkish, Estonian, Inuktitut and Swahili. However, the Dothraki language is no mere hodgepodge, babble or pidgin. It has its own unique sound, extensive vocabulary of more than 1,800 words and complex grammatical structure.

“In designing Dothraki, I wanted to remain as faithful as possible to the extant material in George R.R. Martin’s series,” says Peterson. “Though there isn’t a lot of data, there is evidence of a dominant word order [subject-verb-object], of adjectives appearing after nouns, and of the lack of a copula ['to be']. I’ve remained faithful to these elements, creating a sound aesthetic that will be familiar to readers, while giving the language depth and authenticity. My fondest desire is for fans of the series to look at a word from the Dothraki language and be unable to tell if it came from the books or from me — and for viewers not even to realize it’s a constructed language.”

“We’re tremendously excited to be working with David and the LCS,” says producer D.B. Weiss. “The language he’s devised is phenomenal. It captures the essence of the Dothraki, and brings another level of richness to their world. We look forward to his first collection of Dothraki love sonnets.”

Did you know? (Hash yer ray nesi?)

The name for the Dothraki people — and their language — derives from the verb “dothralat” (“to ride”).

The Dothraki have four different words for “carry,” three for “push,” three for “pull” and at least eight for “horse,” but no word that means “please” or “follow.”

The longest word in Dothraki is “athastokhdeveshizaroon,” which means “from nonsense.”

The words for “related,” “weighted net,” “eclipse,” “dispute,” “redhead,” “oath,” “funeral pyre,” “evidence,” “omen,” “fang” and “harvest moon” all have one element in common: “qoy,” the Dothraki word for “blood.”

Dothraki for “to dream” – “thirat atthiraride” – literally means “to live a wooden life”; in Dothraki, “wooden” (“ido”) is synonymous with “fake.”

The word for “pride” – “athjahakar” – is derived from “jahak,” the traditional long braid worn by Dothraki warriors (“lajaki”).

More information about the Dothraki language (and their love poems) will be released over the course of the series.

The Houses of Westeros command vast armies of soldiers, some mounted on horses and others on foot. These brave men are armed not only with spears, swords, and bows, but also siege engines and other powerful machines of war. Across Westeros, the martial drums are calling to soldiers, strong and brave, and commanders, cunning and bold. Will you heed the call?

Read the complete announcement at the site above.

After returning from the HBO pilot shoot for A Game of Thrones, which took several weeks away from his writing in late October/November as he visited the set and actors, it seems George delved right into A Dance With Dragons with a slashing sword of work ethic. He has posted more updates in the last three weeks than he has in the last three years, and each update contains information that he has finished another chapter in a book that everyone and their grandmother are waiting for.

I will try to put this in a bit of perspective though. No reason to get super excited yet. In late July 2009, Anne Groell shared with me that George had passed the 1000 manuscript page mark. George later confirmed this as well. On October 6th, George shared via his blog that he had passed the 1100 page manuscript mark. It took him 2 months to write and wrap up 100 pages …

… Today he announced that he has passed 1205 manuscript pages.

Read more at Suvudu.

Shawn Speakman, one of the writers for Suvudu, also had an interesting post recently about George’s process of free-writing vs. outlining.

Read the full post at Suvudu.

*image depicts Castle Black and The Wall from A Game of Thrones, copyright 2009 Marc Simonetti

I finally got around to finishing A Feast for Crows (AFFC). I had read about 700 pages of the 1,000 page saga months ago, anticipating the new book A Dance with Dragons (ADWD) would come out this past spring, but the release date got pushed until the fall, and so I thought I would wait and finish AFFC and then jump directly into the new book when it was released. I heard recently ADWD is not going to be published into fall of 2010 now, so I decided to go ahead and get AFFC out of the way and move on to other books on my shelf.

In true fashion of the other novels in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, A Feast for Crows is full of unexpected plot twists, deep characterization, and solid writing. Martin introduces us to some new POV characters, namely Cersei and Brienne of Tarth. Brienne is still looking for the daughters of Caetlyn Stark, and Cersei borders on paranoia trying to figure out how to save the Kingdom of Westeros for the Lannister family. Many of the well-known characters (Jon Snow, Tyrion, and Daenerys) are missing from this installment, which is one of the major criticisms of the novel from readers.

There are parts of the novel I enjoyed, and parts I really wanted to skip through. I’m obsessive compulsive when it comes to reading every word in a novel, and once I start reading, I feel like I have to finish, but there were several chapters in AFFC I wanted to by-pass. The chapters on Sansa and Arya really don’t go anywhere; they just drag and drag, and readers don’t really learn anything new about their characters. The chapters covering the Iron Islands were interesting, and that faction will certainly play a larger role in the game of thrones, but readers will have to wait to see how much of an impact exactly, most likely not learning much more until book six in the series.

Book five, A Dance with Dragons, supposedly parallels AFFC, revealing the stories of those characters not present (Jon, Tyrion, etc) in the fourth book. Martin had originally written AFFC and ADWD as one novel, but then split it because the volume was growing too large. He says at the end of AFFC that he split the novel and left out some characters intentionally because he wanted to tell the entire stories of some characters instead of telling parts of the stories of all characters.

There has been growing concern over the years that Martin will not complete the series. The first novel, A Game of Thrones, came out in 1996, followed by A Clash of Kings in 1999, and A Storm of Swords only a year later in 2000. There was a much longer delay between the third and fourth books, five years to be exact, and it seems readers will have to wait another five years (or longer) for A Dance with Dragons.

As a fan — and I believe George is the best fantasy writer out there — I’m torn between wanting the next installment quickly and wanting Martin to take his time. The story lines are so complex that I know it must take him hours upon hours of editing to bring everything together consistently, and that can be a daunting task for any writer, a task I’m not sure Martin relishes to finish. He’s been busy with other projects according to his blog, and as readers, we should not expect George (or any author) as Neil Gaiman puts it, “to be our bitch.” Still, readers are in large part responsible for an author’s success (like the fans of a football team), and it’s my contention an author does owe it to his fans to finish what he/she started. And that’s not just with authors and writing. That goes for anything. I’m a firm believer if you start something, you should see it through to the end.

This has been an informal review of A Feast for Crows, and I don’t mean to say that I think Martin will not finish A Song of Ice and Fire. I firmly believe he will, and he will be seen as one of the greatest fantasy authors of this generation, someone who re-invented the genre by moving away from the Tolkien-esk world of elves and orcs and wizards, and engineered a world that is not only supernatural but also believable and real and human in terms of characters and their motivations. So many of the fantasy novels of old were black and white, good and evil, light and dark. But Feast for Crows, like all the other books in A Song of Ice and Fire, remains irrefutably gray, a world where protagonists become antagonists, and the survival of main characters is never guaranteed. Many fantasy authors are now following this path by giving fantasy a shot of realism, which has opened up the door to new readers of the genre who would have never considered fantasy before.