You can learn to speak Na'vi
Retired University of Southern California professor Paul Frommer created the Na'vi conlang (an invented language designed for human communication), which Cameron memorably used when he won his second Golden Globe for directing in 2010, translating his words as “I see you, my brother and sisters.”
To match Cameron's vision, “the Na'vi had to be completely new,” Frommer said. Writing by the campfire in 2024. “It had to sound 'pretty'; it had to correspond to the thirty-odd words he had already come up with – mostly the names of characters and animals.”
It had to be a language that people could learn, like some do in the film. And since Frommer believed that several people could see Avatar“I wanted to make sure it was interesting, different and would stand up to criticism.”
The professor compiled workbooks that included “word-for-word interpretation and English ‘phonetic’ transcriptions, which some of the actors found helpful,” he said. “But the most important tools were MP3 recordings that they could download and use for practice.”
He then personally trained them, he said, “to fine-tune their pronunciation and ensure that the intonation of the sentence was appropriate. On several occasions, the spontaneous sound the actor made became the canonical battle cry. And on one occasion, the actor unwittingly coined a new word.”
