Linguist Paul Frommer recalls his first meeting with James Cameron, saying, “It has been a remarkable event in my life.”
While looking for someone to develop a constructed language for a science-fiction film, the renowned director sent an email to the linguistics department of the University of Southern California.
In his application for the job, Frommer clearly expressed his enthusiasm for the challenge.
“You’re welcome,” Cameron told the linguistics doctor at the end of their first 90-minute conversation in 2005.
“My life hasn’t really been the same since then,” Frommer told DW ahead of the release of “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” the third film in the epic franchise 20 years later.
creation of an unusual language
Cameron’s basis for the language was that it should sound “good” – “Of course, it’s a subjective kind of thing,” Frommer says. It should also be quite easy for the actors to learn, as it was clear from the beginning that there would be no electronic manipulation with the characters’ voices.
“So the underlying assumption was that the Na’vi have a vowel production mechanism that is essentially equivalent to ours, so they can make the same sounds that we can in human language.”
Even though Na’vi has various aspects that can be compared to other languages, it cannot be directly linked to any one. “I wanted to make it unusual,” says Frommer.
A language ‘on steroids’
In describing the process of language evolution, Frommer mentions various “modules” used in linguistics – the building blocks with which he worked.
First, at the core of a language are its phonetics and phonology, or its “sounds and sound system,” he explains.
Frommer explains that the sounds that have been removed from the language are as important as the sounds that have been included, “because they are what give it its distinctive flavor.”
For example, they included ejective sounds – popping sounds that can be heard in parts of Africa, Asia, and Native American languages. He also incorporated unusual combinations of consonants into the language, basically “taking familiar sounds, but putting them together in unfamiliar ways.”
Then, Frommer determined the morphology of language, which leads to the formation of words: “It requires a certain amount of creativity,” he says. Although he was inspired by constructions that also exist in other human languages, he “took some things and put them on steroids.”
For example, there are five levels of verb conjugation: present, immediate past, distant past, immediate future, and distant future.
The word order in sentences is also very flexible. In Na’vi the function of a word is determined not by its place in a sentence, but in six different cases, through inflection. By comparison, the German language has four grammatical cases – nominative (subject), accusative (direct object), dative (indirect object) and genitive (possession).
Then there’s the whole question of coming up with terminology. “It’s, in a way, probably the most artistic part of the process,” the linguist says. The words had to fit into the framework of the language, but the way Fromer came up with new words was simply to “play with the words” and see how they moved around in the mouth.
consider every word
With each film in the franchise, new slang and dialects are developed to reflect the way the various Na’vi clans speak. Thus the vocabulary continues to expand, and Frommer estimates that there are now more than 3,000 Na’vi-language words.
With this vocabulary, Frommer explains, you can already discuss all types of human experiences in the context of relationships and everyday activities.
Na’vi does not cover technical or scientific fields, but “you can get your message across even if you don’t have a lot of specifics at this point.”
By comparison, the Oxford English Dictionary contains about 600,000 word forms, and an educated native speaker may know about 40,000 words.
In the two decades since the production of the first “Avatar” film, aye Has emerged as a powerful new tool. But even though larger language models could potentially spit out countless new Na’vi words that would follow Fromer’s rules, the linguist says he would “rather go more slowly and just give each word my thought and make sure it feels right to me.”
Na’vi enthusiasts can also suggest new words through a forum called the Lexical Expansion Project. But the final decision on new additions lies with the linguist: “I am still the sole gatekeeper.”
Finding a Special Community
Fans of “Star Trek” or JRR Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” demonstrate their enthusiasm for these complex fictional universes by learning Klingon or Elvish, which are also constructed languages – or “conlangs”.
Similarly, there is now a community of Na’vi learners around the world, with a printed dictionary and a wealth of online resources for those interested in the language.
“I’m not going to tell you there’s thousands of people in it, but it’s a pretty decent-sized community,” says Frommer. He further said, the two countries most interested in Na’vi are the United States and Germany.
To find out what motivated these people to invest so much time and effort in learning a constructed language, Christine Schreiber, a Canadian linguistic anthropologist, conducted research on a community of Na’vi learners.
He found that some of them were passionate about film; They probably also wish they could visit Pandora, the fictional planet of the movies. Learning the language spoken there is their way of connecting with that world.
Some people are inspired by the linguistics aspect of Na’vi, as it is a completely new and unusual language to learn.
Another motivating factor is that it is comparatively easy to become one of the world’s top experts in the language.
And then, there are others who just want to use it to express their creativity.
Like many other niche hobbies, people who learn Na’vi have “created a space where they can come together and meet other like-minded people.” Frommer is grateful for all the connections and deep friendships he has developed through this ongoing project.
Or to quote a classic Na’vi sentence, people in this community might say to each other: “Ol ngati kamei.” It means “I see you” – or more specifically, “I understand you deeply.”
Edited by: Brenda Haas