Meet the man who gave voice to the Dothraki

As in, literally, he wrote their tongue. David Patterson is legitimately brilliant, and yet he agreed to speak to me anyway. Sample:

As a former linguistics major, I’m very amenable to the idea that people who study language are more open-minded, but could you go into detail of what you mean by that?

As tiny little humans, we naturally assume everyone else is like us until reality shows us something different. If our parents speak one language, and the community we’re raised in speaks one language, we think that’s how language works period; we never imagine a language could work any other way than our own. It’s easy to dismiss or “otherize” someone who speaks a different language—one we don’t understand and which doesn’t work the way we feel language “should” work. The first second language one comes to learn is key. It’s the first time we see that language has the ability to work differently—that the logic can be different. Many in the world are fortunate to have their first exposure to a second language occur simultaneously with their first. For those that don’t, the earlier the exposure comes, the better. If someone who otherwise would not be interested in language at all becomes interested due to exposure to a created language, I can think of no higher compliment to the creator.