David J. Peterson received a BA in English and Linguistics from UC Berkeley in 2003 and an MA in Linguistics from UC San Diego in 2005. He created the Dothraki and Valyrian languages for HBO’s Game of Thrones, the Castithan, Irathient and Indojisnen languages for Syfy’s Defiance, the Sondiv language for the CW’s Star-Crossed, the Lishepus language for Syfy’s Dominion, the Trigedasleng language for the CW’s The 100, and the Shiväisith language for Marvel’s Thor: The Dark World, among others. He’s been creating languages since 2000.
In this essay, David Peterson attempts to explain what a surreal conlang might look like, and provides examples to show where conlangers might push into territory akin to surreal and abstract visual art within the conlang space.
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