Julie Merrill

When I saw the movie Avatar, one of the (many) things that fascinated me was the Na’vi language, created just for the movie. In 2005, while Avatar was still in scripted form, James Cameron decided that the residents of Pandora should have their own complete and consistent language. He contacted Paul Frommer, who holds a PhD in linguistics from University of Southern California, to take on the task of developing the language of Na’vi. Here is some information about how the language of Na’vi was developed, and what the language is like.

According to Frommer, the first step in the creation of the language was to develop its sound system. Frommer created three sets of meaningless words for James Cameron to choose from: one with tonal distinctions, one with varying vowel lengths, and one with ejective consonants. It turned out Cameron loved the ejectives, so the sound system was further developed based on that choice. Once he determined the phonetic inventory (e.g., which sounds would be included/excluded), then he determined what combinations of sounds would be allowed.

Next, Frommer created the language’s lexicon, syntax and morphology. James Cameron already had created some vocabulary, mostly names of characters. The lexicon was then expanded upon based on those words/names, and now contains about 1,000 words. The syntax of Na’vi is characterized by an extremely flexible word order. Verbs are conjugated for tense, but not for person – which makes me wonder if this was done intentionally to enhance the central theme of interconnectedness between all beings.

In an interview, Paul Frommer stated that despite his strong awareness of the language Klingon, which was similarly developed for Star Trek, he deliberately did not look at Klingon in order to avoid subconsciously creating similarities between languages. Though Frommer is the only person at the moment with a complete understanding of the Na’vi grammar, he has hopes that it will catch on, and perhaps someday be more widely spoken and understood by Avatar fans around the world.

If you’d like to learn more about Na’vi and the process of its creation by Paul Frommer, here are some links:

This is an interview with Paul Frommer, linguist who created the Na’vi language:  http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/blog/2009/12/usc-prof-says-youre-speaking-my-language.html

Here is the Wiki page, which contains lots of detailed information about the morphology, syntax, and phonology of Na’vi:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na’vi_language

This website has information about the vocabulary, grammar, and sound system of the Na’vi language:  http://www.learnnavi.org/