The art of inventing language

I have been creating languages since my sophomore year in college in California. At the time, I hadn't planned on a career in language creation, since such a thing wasn't possible. In fact, I had no interest in languages at all until I was 17. All of a sudden, I became very interested and started to study as many as I could. I still do. I grew up with Spanish and English. In the classroom, I've studied German, French, Arabic, Russian, American Sign Language and Middle Egyptian hieroglyphs.

As a student, I planned to be a high-school English teacher, but when the time came to graduate, I got cold feet. I earned my master's degree in linguistics and taught English at Fullerton College for two years. Then, I quit and didn't really have any other plans.

The opportunity arose to create a language for the TV series Game of Thrones. The Language Creation Society hosted a competition among language creators to determine who would get the job. I won and went on to create the Dothraki language for the show. Since then, I've worked on many other shows and have continued to find steady work.

A creative process

First, it's my responsibility to create the language — or as much as I can in the time available. After that, my job is similar to translation work. I receive scripts and translate them. I also record each line, so the actors can hear how it's supposed to be pronounced and imitate it as best they can. Word creation takes a long time, so I target the vocabulary that I'll need. The grammar of a language, however, needs to be at least 90 percent complete before any translation can be done.

I start with phonology — the sounds in the spoken language. Then, I consider the grammar and develop the vocabulary. Sometimes, I spend months working on them, but for television and film, I don't usually have a lot of time.

It's always a delight to hear the languages on-screen. When spoken, a language is, in itself, the full artifact. If the language doesn't work, the audience will figure it out. Everyone knows the languages in Star Wars are mostly gibberish.