Pixar's Elemental Recruited A Game Of Thrones Vet To Create A Brand-New Language

If you're someone who loves fictional languages like Quenya and Sindarin from J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," or you tend to speak Klingon at fan conventions, you might want to check out Pixar's upcoming film "Elemental." Didn't expect a "conlang" (constructed language) in an animated film? It's not the first. David J. Peterson, who created the new language, was also responsible for Kumandran, the language of Kumandra in Disney's "Raya and the Last Dragon." Another language he is responsible for making is the Dothraki tongue from "Game of Thrones." Oh, and High Valyrian and its offshoots, Mag Nuk for the Giants, and a number of others. Peterson even created Chakobsa, Sardaukar, and House Atreides' sign language for "Dune." 

So how does he fit into "Elemental?" Peterson created the language of "Firish" for the Fire elemental immigrants in the Fire Town section of Elemental City. If you're not familiar with the premise, "Elemental" features a city full of people made of different elements. Water people settled first, with Earth following them. Cloud people came next, and finally, Fire people. The newest residents have settled in one area, which is full of shops like that of Ember Lumen (Leah Lewis) and her parents, Bernie (Ronnie del Carmen) and Cinder (Shila Ommi). Their native language is Firish, and that required Peterson's expertise. According to a tweet from Disney Animation Promos, Firish is "based on fire sounds that represent Ember['s] family's native tongue."

That's a pretty wild thing to make a language out of, but having heard it, Firish definitely has exactly the elements (sorry) you'd expect from a language based around fire. In an April 2023 interview with Gizmodo, director Peter Sohn said, "David Peterson, who did 'Game of Thrones,' and [his] amazing brilliant team tried taking fireplace sound effects and [making] a language out of it." Sohn told Yahoo at an early press event at Pixar in Emeryville, CA, about the original plan for the characters, and why they brought Peterson in. He said: 

"When we first started adding fire sound effects to the characters, it just didn't sound like a performance. And so they came up with this language again, based on what we knew from fire."

Our own Ethan Anderton's report from the event revealed that there was originally even more of the Firish language in the film, though it was cut down a bit. If you're interested in his techniques, Peterson has a YouTube channel where he speaks about creating languages. 

Part of the "Elemental" story involves Ember's parents not wanting her to be with someone from another element, like her new Water friend Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie). Having a separate language and Fire Town as a haven for Fire people serves to reinforce the separation, and the reasons why Bernie and Cinder have these feelings in the first place. 

Peterson himself spoke to the University of Rochester in 2016 about his work for a lecture series he was doing there, and talked about his profession. He said of why he wanted to create languages:

"For me, the draw is the same as what drew me to sketching as a child and fiction as a teen. Language creation is an art, and the drive to do it is the same drive that led me to engage in visual art and writing over the years. Art is about expression, and language creation is artistic expression in the form of a language."

He mentioned that he based the Dothraki and Valyrian languages to match "the aesthetic, grammar, and phonological character of the material in George R.R. Martin's books." He explained that conlangs that are based on an existing language are called "posteriori," meaning "known from observation." Firish would be "priori," meaning "known through understanding."

He also said that he could work for months on his own languages, but that for some of his projects for TV and film, he explained, "I often get three months if I'm lucky. I've had as little as two weeks." That is insanely fast to do such a thing.

It's a fascinating endeavor, and I do hope you'll join me in the conlanger rabbit hole I'm about to go down on Peterson's YouTube channel. By the way, you can learn Peterson's High Valyrian on the Duolingo app if you're feeling inspired. 

"Elemental" will hit theaters on June 16, 2023.