Wired.com presents the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy. And here is your host, David Barr-Kirtley.

Hello and welcome to episode 119 of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy.

Today on the show we'll be discussing constructed languages in fantasy and science fiction

and I'm joined by two guest geeks. So first up we've got David J Peterson. He holds a master's degree in linguistics from UC San Diego and is a co-founder of the Language Creation Society. He created the Dothroki language for the HBO series

Game of Thrones and has also created languages for the sci-Fi channel shows

Defiance and Dominion. He's also the author of Living Language Dothroki and the upcoming book, The Art of Language

Invention.

So David, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

Nice to meet another David.

And also joining us today is Lawrence M. Schoen. He holds a PhD in

cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics and is the director and founder of

the Klingon Language Institute. He edited the Institute's scholarly journal, Hoeked!

And is also a fantasy and science fiction author who's been a finalist for the Campbell Award,

the Hugo Award, and the Nebul Award. So Lawrence, welcome to the show.

Thanks, David.

I'm going to be an honorary David when we're done here, right?

Yeah, that's how it works.

Excellent.

All right, and so on the subject of constructed languages in fantasy and science fiction, obviously the first name that comes

to mind for me on that subject is J.R. Tolkien.

So I'd like to start out and talk a bit about him.

...