The Art of Language Invention

David J. Peterson, the linguist behind constructed languages for Game of Thrones, Marvel's Thor: The Dark World, Legendary's Dune, and other productions, walks through the process of building a language from scratch.

The book traces the history of conlanging from Tolkien and Klingon to today's community of language creators, then works through phonology, grammar, and vocabulary using examples from Dothraki, Peterson's other invented languages, and real-world languages. A later edition added a chapter covering word order, negation, question formation, and subordination.

The book includes a phrasebook for several of Peterson's constructed languages and behind-the-scenes accounts of building Dothraki, Shivaisith, Chakobsa, and other languages for screen productions.