The Valyrian language is described in the books of novelist George Martin, author of the best-selling A Song of Ice and Fire novels from which the series Game of Thrones was adapted, as the language of the dragon-taming rulers of a once-great fantasy empire.
The Valyrian language was introduced in 2012 in the third season of “Game of Thrones” by linguist David G. Peterson. The first Valyrian language course was launched on Duolingo in 2017, according to the company The British newspaper “The Guardian” reported.
As for the Hollywood film industry, the producers of films and series did not care much about innovative languages before 1984, but the actors who performed roles that required speaking in a new language were characterized by anything incomprehensible. But in 1984, linguist Marc Okrand came up with the idea of creating a new language in the “Star Trek” series of alien characters. It is a language that can also be learned in Duolingo.
“It doesn’t matter if people didn’t really notice it after 1984, but innovative languages have always been around,” said Peterson, who was previously described by the Los Angeles Times as “Hollywood’s language man.”
Since then, Peterson and his language partner Jessie Sams have developed several languages, including those used in the “Dawn” films, “The Watcher” and “Vampire Academy”. In 2005, the producers of the famous “Avatar” movie asked Paul Vormer, a professor of communication at the University of Southern California, to develop a language for the project, after which he began working on the language that is now known as “Avatars Navi.”
Vormer said his life “hasn’t been the same since he started working on the new language,” and added, when commenting on how to make a language out of nothing: “It wasn’t a completely blank page. There were some parameters, we wanted the language to be completely new, to look like Latifa”.
“We came up with about 30 words of his and the important criterion was that the language be learnable by humans,” Vormer explained, adding that this point “was crucial in building the language. Any linguist would be able to come up with a logical language, but it may be non-human.” So completely that no one can learn it.”
