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The Na'vi Language

Today we watched the science fiction film "Avatar," in which the inhabitants of the planet Pandora spoke a distinctive language. Moreover, this language was so vivid that the subtitles below almost left no doubt that such a civilisation and such a language truly exist. It turns out that linguists and film artists worked for several years to achieve this effect of reality. And it is now a language that can genuinely be learned.

Today we watched the science fiction film in which the inhabitants of the planet Pandora spoke a distinctive language. Moreover, this language was so vivid that the subtitles below almost left no doubt that such a civilisation and such a language truly exist. It turns out that linguists and film artists worked for several years to achieve this effect of reality.

The Na'vi language - an artificially created language devised specifically for director James Cameron's film "Avatar" (2009). It was developed by professional linguist Paul Frommer. Work on creating this language began as early as 2005. Today a fully developed grammar exists, along with a vocabulary of around 1,000 words. Moreover, on websites such as http://www.learnnavi.org, anyone who wishes can learn Na'vi grammar, basic phrases and their pronunciation.

Here are a few examples from the language:

kaltxì [kal.'t'ɪ] - Hello!

kìyevame [kɪ.jɛ.'va.mɛ] - Until we meet again! / Goodbye!

plltxe [pl:.'t'ɛ] - to speak

pamtseo ['pam.ʦɛ.o] - music

unil ['un.il] - dream

'upxare ['ʔu.p'a.ɾɛ] - message, news, tidings

rutxe [ɾu.'t'ɛ] - to ask, Please!

srane ['sɾa.nɛ] - Yes!

kehe ['kɛ.hɛ] - No!

Incidentally, "na'vi" in the language of Pandora's indigenous people means "the people." In the film "Avatar," this people lives in deep harmony with nature, sensing the soul of flora and fauna, understanding the information conveyed by the roots and branches of trees, and capable of deeply feeling animals' pain. The three-metre-tall, pale-blue humanoids are remarkably agile and skilled hunters, yet peaceable - rising to battle only when humans invade their planet and attempt to take their land and destroy their homes in order to access valuable mineral deposits.

Na'vi is an agglutinative language - that is, when deriving new words and grammatical forms, affixes (prefixes) are added to the root of the word. In its structure this language is close to Papuan and Australian languages, yet there are words whose pronunciation is quite close to German or Polynesian. To my ear, the pronunciation again seemed very tongue-twisting and extraordinarily foreign to a European ear.