When Game of Thrones released, its manufactured languages High Valyrian and Dothraki became all the rage, more so because people realised the characters were not speaking gibberish, and that real efforts had been made to create and speak these languages. AdvertisingDavid Peterson, the man behind the painstaking job, speaks about the importance of languages and of keeping them alive in this Tedx talk. Explaining the job of a linguist, he says linguists are people who devote their lives to studying how language emerged, how human languages differ, how they differ from animal communication systems. Like, for example, that human communication systems differ crucially from animal communication systems, and that all languages are equally expressive,” remarks Peterson. That language is not valued in their community, because it is not useful, because the child cannot go and get a job if they speak that language, because if language is just a tool, then learning their native language is about as useful as learning high Valyrian, so why bother.”

Source: Indian Express October 10, 2019 02:03 UTC