David J. Peterson

Protect your diary from snooping siblings. Share your secrets with a BFF. Guard your texts from unwanted eyes. Create the lingua franca for your own fantastical secret world! Expert language creator David J. Peterson (inventor of languages for Game of Thrones, the Marvel Universe, and more) guides you as you create your own secret languages, codes, ciphers, and hidden messages. From simple cyphers to entirely new alphabets, master the skills of secret communication, whether it’s written, drawn, or spoken. By the time you're finished reading, you’ll be able to share messages memora vosak laz vos otihoe vosecchi! (“that no one will be able to understand!')

An insider's tour through the construction of invented languages from the bestselling author and creator of languages for the HBO series Game of Thrones and the Syfy series Defiance From master language creator David J. Peterson comes a creative guide to language construction for sci-fi and fantasy fans, writers, game creators, and language lovers. Peterson offers a captivating overview of language creation, covering its history from Tolkien's creations and Klingon to today's thriving global community of conlangers. He provides the essential tools necessary for inventing and evolving new languages, using examples from a variety of languages including his own creations, punctuated with references to everything from Star Wars to Michael Jackson. Along the way, behind-the-scenes stories lift the curtain on how he built languages like Dothraki for HBO's Game of Thrones and Shiv isith for Marvel's Thor: The Dark World, and an included phrasebook will start fans speaking Peterson's constructed languages. The Art of Language Invention is an inside look at a fascinating culture and an engaging entry into a flourishing art form--and it might be the most fun you'll ever have with linguistics.

Exiled from her wealthy San Francisco family five years ago, Cate Lyr has struggled to build a new life for herself halfway across the globe. But when her vengeful sisters take control of the family empire and threaten to expose the secrets that her ancestors have safeguarded for centuries, Cate must learn the family's constructed language, evade dangerous secret societies, and team up with a childhood friend to set things right. Taking the reader on a journey from modern-day Istanbul to plague-stricken 14th century Paris, from San Francisco's financial district to the tropical islands of Micronesia, The Zaanics Deceit is the first in a series of novels featuring Cate Lyr and the V yne Zaanics language. As the first book in this series inspired by Shakespeare's King Lear, The Zaanics Deceit introduces the reader to the origins and usage of the language, including a functional character set, English pronunciation, and translation. Co-developed by David J. Peterson (creator of the languages from HBO's Game of Thrones and Syfy's Defiance) and Nina Post (author of five previous novels including Danger in Cat World), V yne Zaanics is a constructed language with its own grammar and lexicon. Inspired by Latin, Middle English and Old French, the language was designed to be passed on from generation to generation within the Lyr and Severn families, and plays a prominent role within the fictional universe of the series.