David J. Peterson

G'vunna (Zudǝllǝ g’Vunnǝ, "language from the abyss"), a polypersonal descendant of Veda spoken by Lokheim. It has vowel harmony, 8 noun classes and its own alphabet called Oz ("blade").

Peterson has worked to popularize the activity of language creation, or "conlanging". He produced a number of videos on YouTube, in a series called The Art of Language Invention, and published a book of the same title in 2015. Peterson also worked as an executive producer on the 2017 documentary film, Conlanging: The Art of Crafting Tongues.

In 2009, the television network HBO needed a fictional language for the Game of Thrones television series and turned to the Language Creation Society for help. This resulted in a contest, which Peterson won.

Peterson has created the Dothraki and Valyrian languages for the HBO series Game of Thrones and the Castithan, Irathient, Indogene and Omec languages for the Syfy show Defiance; he has been creating languages since 2000. He also created the language used by the Dark Elves in the movie Thor: The Dark World. Peterson's recent projects include the creation of the Inha and Munja'kin languages for the NBC series Emerald City.

Studying at University of California, Berkeley (1999–2003), Peterson received BA degrees in English and in linguistics. He received an MA in linguistics from University of California, San Diego (2003–2006). According to an interview given to the publication Conlangs Monthly, he had his first contact with constructed languages while still at Berkeley, after attending an Esperanto class in 2000. In 2007, he co-founded the Language Creation Society with nine other language creators and served as its president (2011–2014).

David Joshua Peterson (born January 20, 1981) is an American language creator, writer, and artist, who has constructed languages for television and movies such as Thor: The Dark World and Doctor Strange and the Dothraki and Valyrian languages for the television series Game of Thrones.