The language of Avatar revealed

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8408245.stm


By Peter Bowes
BBC News, Los Angeles

It all started with what Professor Paul Frommer now describes as a “fateful e-mail.”

The linguistics expert from the University of Southern California is the brains behind the language used by James Cameron’s 10-foot-tall alien tribe in the much-anticipated science fiction epic, Avatar.

Neytiri

Actress Zoe Saldana plays Neytiri, one of the native Na’vi speakers

“Jim Cameron’s production department at Lightstorm Entertainment was looking for a linguist that would be able to help him develop an alien language,” explains Professor Frommer.

“At that time, it wasn’t even called Avatar – it was project 880 – but the e-mail was forwarded to me and I saw it and jumped on it. I was very excited about it. A week or two later I was called in for a talk.”

The language enthusiast managed to persuade Cameron that he was the man to create a functioning language for a story the director had dreamt up a decade earlier.

“I spent a wonderful 90-minutes with Jim and at the end of it he shook my hand and said ‘welcome aboard,'” says Professor Frommer.

 
A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO NA’VI
Kaltxì – Hello
Nga – You
Tolaron – Hunted
Fngap – Metal
Atxkxe – Land
Tskxe – Rock

The pair worked together for four years to develop the Na’vi language.

The director had already come up with about thirty words, for the characters’ names and body parts. But he was looking to the professor to give the language an authentic but exotic feel.

Crucially, it had to be a language that could be articulated.

“This is an alien language but obviously it has to be spoken by human actors,” explains Professor Frommer.

Professor Paul Frommer

Professor Frommer hopes to expand the language in sequels and games

“It has to be sounds that human beings are comfortable producing.”

It is a unique language, with its own syntactic and grammatical rules.

Its creator says some of Cameron’s original words had “a vaguely Polynesian feel”. Others have suggested that it sounds like German or Japanese.

“It certainly borrows various grammatical structures, sounds, that exist in other languages – but what I hope is that the combination in this language is unique,” says Professor Frommer.

As well as creating the language, Professor Frommer taught the actors how to speak it.

“I met with each of the seven principal actors who use the language beforehand. I helped them with the pronunciation, we broke things down.

“I also created some sound files, MP3 files. I guess some of them downloaded them onto their iPods so they could listen to them at the gym.”

Professor Frommer spent hours on the set, helping the cast fine tune their alien language speaking abilities.

“I gave them quite a challenge. I found that they really rose to the occasion, everybody had a great time. I knew that it had to be something that actors could deal with and handle,” he says.

The language currently runs to about a thousand words. It does not have a huge vocabulary, but Professor Frommer is still working at it. He is also still trying to master his own language.

A sample of Na'vi writing

A sample of Na’vi writing

“I wish I could speak it fluently,” he says.

“As for who at this point understands the grammar and such, I think probably I’m the only one. I wish that eventually that might not be the case.”

In fact, one day, Professor Frommer hopes Na’vi will match Klingon, as the “gold standard” alien language.

“There’s a translation of Hamlet into Klingon,” says Professor Frommer.

“There are Klingon clubs that meet all over the world. There are a very dedicated group of people who meet and try to speak it.

“If anything happened like this with Na’vi I’d be delighted.”

Your Neighborhood Na’vi Xenoanthropologist


Our interview with Avatar’s Joel Moore
By Matt Patches


While I applaud Avatar for shrouding itself in secrecy for the past four years, it’s quickly moving into frustration territory. How am I supposed to nerd out over the flora and fauna of Pandora or study the intricate glottal stops of the Na’vi language if people won’t spill any details? They can’t expect me to wait until after the movie comes out, can they??

Luckily actor Joel Moore, who plays scientist Norm Spellman in Avatar, didn’t hesitate to answer a few of my fanboy questions while discussing his latest.

Matt Patches: So Joel, they tell me you have a little movie coming out soon.

Joel Moore: Yeah, tiny little indie. Hoping it makes a couple screens in New York and L.A.

MP: I heard at least one.

JM: [laughter] Laemmle’s I think.

MP: Is Avatar one of your bigger films, then?

JM: Recently? Yes, in my loooong career. [laughter] Yeah, it’s the biggest movie I’ve ever done and has the biggest chance at being one of the biggest movies.

MP: Exhausted?

JM: Yeah, but we’re having a blast because it’s so easy to be positive about, so easy to talk about. I should be clear, it hasn’t been easy to talk about it, because of the secrecy and mystery of it, but it’s so easy to discuss because you have a guy [James Cameron] behind the wheel of it who is a genius, who has so much passion, so much charisma, and creativity and knew exactly what he wanted since the day he wrote it.

The rest of my chat with Joel Moore after the jump!

MP: How long ago did you shoot Avatar?

JM: I booked it in December of ’06 and so we shot through 2007 and 2008.

MP: And how did you get involved?

JM: I just auditioned like anybody else would have. I’m sure there’s a lot of people who went out for it. I walked into a room, said some lines I didn’t have.

MP: Did they put you in spandex and ping pong balls for your audition?

JM: Not for the test, not for the test. But as soon as they could they put me in that spandex…

MP: How was that?

JM: We spent so much time in them…by day two, it’s pretty much an even playing field. We look like a bunch of drunk athletes. We were essentially in wet suits with a helmet. We looked like someone on a bad BMX tour or Jackass. Covered in balls.

MP: Was it harder to act on the blue screen stages, the motion capture environment or against Paris Hilton in The Hottie and the Nottie?

JM: [laughter] Let me touch on the first thing…there was no blue screen. Motion capture is a whole different way of doing it. You’re not using a real camera. They’re not shooting it the way one would assume it’s being shot. No we did do that on the live action side. We were on real sets, parts of spaceships, or trampling around the land of Pandora. But, all of that is live-action. 3D cameras, set your lighting, gotta get your make-up done…just like a normal movie but 3D. But motion capture is nice because you don’t have to worry about make-up.

MP: You just show up.

JM: You show up, put the stupid thing on, and start acting.

MP: There’s been so much secrecy around Avatar, I’m not sure I’ve heard much about your character.

JM: My character is Norm Spellman, he’s a xenoanthropologist which is essentially a scientist who is studying the land and the alien lifeforms on Pandora. It’s not actually a world, but a moon of another bigger planet, but it was able to give life. Now we can’t breathe in the area, but they have lungs…and we’ve found the humanoid life that we can communicate with and they have their own language, they walk on two feet. So we were able to create these avatars, remotely controlled beings, that I as Norm Spellman can control through my mind. Transfer my consciousness over to this clone. They’ve taken DNA from the Na’vi and DNA from me.

MP: So you’re plugged in to the avatars? We were wondering why the military doesn’t unplug you if all of a sudden the avatars become part of the rebellion.

JM: In a way…they wanted to shy away from any Matrix comparisons. It’s not a virtual world, they’re real beings that are walking around.

MP: I’ve been trying to figure out the timeline, how long have the humans been on Pandora?

JM: : They’ve been there for a long enough time that they’ve built a base, and started to mine the energy source. That’s really the story…well, the story is really a love story and that’s what Jim does so well. He’s whittled it down to the simplest version. It’s a love story, and all the action-adventure, CG, special effects are added extras

MP: Does Norm have a goal, an arc in the story?

JM: Yeah, Norm comes with the full spectrum of understanding. He’s fluent in their dialect, their language. He’s spent hours and hours in his avatar, getting familiar with walking around. He goes there with a world of information. He immediately kisses up to Dr. Grace Augustine played by Sigourney Weaver, and they have a great relationship because I know my sh*t. So there’s a really fun juxtaposition between my character and Sam Worthington who plays Jake Sully.

MP: There have been a few interviews with Sam where he mentions being signed on for sequels. Are you signed up for more Avatar?

JM: On the business side you have the discussions, but it’s ultimately up to Jim if it will happen or not. It’s a story that stands alone, so it doesn’t need a sequel. But it’s good and powerful, so if he were to decide to make sequels, they’d be just as good.

MP: And you’d definitely come back, the world will need more Norm Spellman.

JM: Of course, man, of course. I’d love to.

MP: I hope so, I already have my Norm Spellman Halloween costume picked out for next year.

Am I the only Avatar fanboy in the room? Or are you already painting your face blue for the midnight showing? Let us know in the comments! Avatar hits theaters December 18th and you can find the down and dirty on the movie at our Avatar spoilers page!

USC professor gives Avatar aliens a voice

http://dailytrojan.com/2009/12/02/usc-professor-gives-avatar-aliens-a-voice/


By CHRIStopher byars · Daily Trojan

Posted December 2, 2009 at 11:56 pm in Featured, Film, Lifestyle

5 votes, average: 1.80 out of 55 votes, average: 1.80 out of 55 votes, average: 1.80 out of 55 votes, average: 1.80 out of 55 votes, average: 1.80 out of 5 (Votes: 5; Avg: 1.80)
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James Cameron’s upcoming film Avatar tells the story of a human who comes to live within an alien race known as the Na’vi, eventually becoming a human-Na’vi hybrid know as an avatar.

For professor Paul Frommer — who created the Na’vi language for the film — the idea of living as part of two very different worlds is something he is also familiar with.

The interpreter · Professor Paul Frommer created the Na’vi language for James Cameron’s latest film, Avatar. - James Watson | Daily TrojanThe interpreter · Professor Paul Frommer created the Na’vi language for James Cameron’s latest film, Avatar. – James Watson | Daily Trojan

Frommer, a longtime faculty member at the Marshall School of Business who is also a linguistics specialist, conceived an entirely new language to be spoken by the Na’vi that inhabit the planet Pandora in the film.

To craft a new language, Cameron turned to the USC College of Arts and Letters’ Department of Linguistics in 2005, which recommended Frommer for the job. Two weeks later, Cameron and Frommer sat down to talk about the possibilities. Frommer joined the production team that same day.

“He wanted a complete language, with a consistent sound system [phonology], word-building rules [morphology], rules for putting words together into phrases and sentences [syntax] and a vocabulary [lexicon] sufficient for the needs of the script,” Frommer said. “He also wanted the language to be pleasant sounding and appealing to the audience.”

Frommer, who co-authored the book Looking at Languages: A Workbook in Elementary Linguistics — which includes data from 30 different languages — said he found the opportunity challenging yet incredibly fascinating.

For the next four years, Frommer worked on creating a language that sounded complicated but was also engaging.

“I didn’t quite start from zero, since Cameron had devised 30 or 40 words of his own for the original script — some character names, place names, names of animals, etc.” Frommer said. “That gave me a bit of a sense of what kinds of sounds he had in mind.”

Frommer created three different sonic impressions of the language that included many sounds uncommon in Western languages, known as “ejectives,” which are popping-like sounds that come from the glottis in the larynx. He also made sure to include distinctive elements that differentiate his language from others. Cameron chose one, and the rest of the conception was up to Frommer.

He then created the morphology and syntax.

“The verbal morphology, for example, is achieved exclusively through infixes, which are less common than prefixes and suffixes,” he said. “And the nouns have a system of case marking, known as a tripartite system, that’s possible but quite rare in human languages.”

Once the basics of the language were initially conceived, Frommer, who holds a Ph.D. in linguistics from USC, combined his expertise with the likes of Hollywood and in many ways became an avatar himself: an academic-Hollywood hybrid, who then found himself working on an actual film set.

Frommer worked with many of the film’s stars, including Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver, and coached their progress with the pronunciation as well as observed instances on set that required rewrites.

“There were long stretches of boredom punctuated by instances of terror,” he said, in regard to changes in the script that would often require his immediate help.

His language also caught on with many of the production crew, who all seemed to easily adapt and pronounce the Na’vi word “Skxawng;” its “kx” popping sound translates into English as “moron.”

Amidst all of the momentum required for a film with a monstrous budget like Avatar, Frommer found the most thrilling opportunity of working on a film set to be the time spent perfecting the language.

Although Frommer is the only one who completely understands the language, it’s possible it could catch on in popular culture is quite high, similar to the longevity of the Klingon language of Star Trek — which is the gold standard for sci-fi languages according to Frommer.

“There’s even a translation of Hamlet into Klingon,” Frommer said. “If Na’vi ever came close to that kind of following, I’d be delighted.”

Knowing Cameron and significantly contributing to one of the most anticipated films in recent years might sound perfect to would-be filmmakers, but for a man fascinated by verbal communication, the real glory comes with his creation of a living language.

Brushing up on Na’vi, the Language of Avatar

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2009/12/brushing-up-on-navi-the-language-of-avatar.html


December 1, 2009, 10:45 AM
avatar-language.jpg
Most languages evolved organically over the course of millennia. But James Cameron wanted a new one within a couple of years; a tall order, even from one of the most demanding directors in Hollywood. Still, the Na’vi—the race of 10-foot smurfs who inhabit the distant planet Pandora in Cameron’s upcoming, $400 million science fiction epic, Avatar—had to speak something. So the filmmaker called on linguist Paul Frommer, a professor of clinical management communication at U.S.C., to create the Na’vi language from scratch. Frommer hopes his extensive efforts won’t be wasted, and that his language will have a life beyond Avatar. Just like Cameron’s career, that depends largely on whether the fanboys embrace the film.

Engineered languages—even theoretically perfect ones—have a tough time catching on, especially when there is no homogenous culture or community to speak them. Just witness the phenomenal failure of Esperanto, whose universalist aspirations were reduced to a punchline. It’s a different story, however, with science-fiction languages. Frommer is holding out hope that Na’vi will follow the example of Klingon, which he calls the “gold standard for this alien language niche.”

Frommer spoke to me—mostly in English—about the challenges of creating an entirely alien language.

Julian Sancton: Before we get started, how would you greet someone who called you on the phone in Na’vi, if there were such things as phones on Pandora?

Paul Frommer: I would say, “Kaltxì. Ngaru lu fpom srak?” Which is kind of, “Hello, how are you?”

[audio:http://files.learnnavi.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Navi.mp3]

[In a subsequent email, Frommer elaborates: ‘Note the accented “i” in the first word—it represents the vowel in “sit” rather than the one in “seat.” (English doesn’t allow that vowel sound at the end of a word.) Also, the “tx” represents the ejective t-sound. The literal translation would be something like, “Greetings. Do you have a sense of well-being?”’]

How developed is this language?

It’s got a perfectly consistent sound system, and grammar, orthography, syntax, and at this point it probably has about a thousand words. That’s not a huge vocabulary, but it’s certainly something that could be developed further into something that hopefully you could use every day for conversation.

Something like Klingon, to compare it to another language that was developed for science fiction?

Yeah. Klingon is a gold standard for this alien-language niche, if you want to call it that. And that’s much more developed. At this point, it’s been around a long time. I have a translation of Hamlet, on my bookshelf, into Klingon.

Really!?

Yes. This exists. You can actually buy it on Amazon. People have really jumped into that and developed it probably beyond the vision of the original creator, who was Marc Okrand. If Na’vi ever developed into something like that, that’d be quite a thrill.

Would fans help develop it? Is that how it works?

You know, I’m not quite sure how it happened with Klingon. I’m pretty sure it was developed by people beyond the originator. If this ever took off and it got to that point where other people began developing it, that would be great, as long as they did it correctly, within the guidelines of the grammar, of course.

What’s the structure of the Na’vi language? Is it based on the grammar of any human language?

No. It could be a human language in that all the components in the language are found somewhere in other languages. But it’s very eclectic, so it has a grammatical system which is found in some languages, and it has certain sound elements that are found in other languages, but it does not follow any one particular language.

And is there anything particularly alien about it? If I understand correctly, Noam Chomsky says that there is an almost instinctive capacity in people to understand the structure of grammar. Does Na’vi follow that same universal human grammar?

It does, and there are certain reasons for it. I could have come up with rules for this language which are not followed by any human language. The reason that wasn’t an option is that part of the [Avatar] story is that human beings have learned this language, and can speak it. And if a human is going to learn the language, then it has to be something within that capacity that Chomsky was talking about. So there are some elements in the Na’vi language that I think are pretty rare in human language, but nothing that couldn’t be found somewhere in some other language

How would you describe this language? What differentiates it? What are the characteristics of it?

Well, let’s see. We can talk about various aspects. In terms of phonology, you can talk about sounds that it does have, and sounds that it doesn’t have. There’s a whole class of sounds that it doesn’t have—it doesn’t have what we call voiced stops. So, it doesn’t have a “b,” a “d,” or hard “g” sound. What it does have is sounds that are kind of interesting, which I added in to add a little spice to the language: they’re called “ejectives.”

Which are?

They sound like, “tx-ooo,” “tx-aaa”

Like a clicking almost?

It’s not technically a click, but these sort of popping sounds that are produced with something called the glottalic mechanism. Ejectives are produced not with air from the lungs but with air trapped in the glottis, and so, if you say a “k” sound, for example, without breathing, and then add a vowel after that, you can get something like “kx-a.” So I transcribe those as “kx,” “px,” and “tx,” and they add a little interest to the language. So that’s in terms of the sound system. There’s also a major phonological rule called lenition, which changes certain sounds to other sounds in certain parts of the grammar.

Are verbs conjugated?

They are, but they’re not conjugated for a number and a person. So there are no endings that correspond to I, you, he, she, or anything. But they are conjugated for tense and aspect. The conjugation, I think, is interesting because rather than relying on prefixes or suffixes I relied exclusively on infixes. These are found in certain languages, for example, of the Philippines, where rather than tacking something on to the beginning or end of a verb, you kind of take the root and cleave it in the middle, and shove something in the middle of it. So, for example, the root for “hunt” is taron, but to say hunted you say tolaron, so the –ol goes in the middle, right after the t.

There would be no difference from the audience perspective—we wouldn’t know all this—so I’m assuming you did for yourself, to have fun with the language.

Yes, and thinking ahead, that if it ever took off, like Klingon, that that would be something that learners would have fun with as well. It has a very free word order, and that’s something which is radically different, from Klingon for example. It has a a case system, so that by looking at the form of a noun, for example, you can tell if it’s a subject, an object, a subject of a transitive verb, or a subject of an intransitive verb, which means that the word order is almost totally free. You can arrange a lot of elements in a sentence in many different ways and still have it mean the same thing.

And if there are any inefficiencies in the language, nobody would be able to point it out yet, right? You could just fix it without anyone knowing?

Well, I try to be consistent to the rules that I’ve constructed for us. At this point, nothing is—I don’t think anything is published yet on the language, which means that if I want to make a change, I can make a change. This inevitably happens when you’re using it with real people and actors that are trying to learn the lines. There are times when something didn’t come out exactly as I had intended, but if in fact what came out was consistent with the sound system of the language and the rules of grammar, then I said, “Guess what? That’s a word.”

Have you written all the rules out of this language? Do you have a compendium?

I’m working on it. I don’t have it yet. That is something that I’m going to turn in to Fox soon, because that’s sort of going to be the capstone of my work on it. I’ve been working on it since 2005, really.

How did James Cameron approach you?

His production company, Lightstorm Entertainment, contacted the linguistics department at U.S.C. asking for someone who could develop a language for a movie he was working on. At that point it wasn’t even called Avatar; it was called Project 880. Although I’m no longer part of the linguistics department, I have some friends there, so someone saw this and said, “This sounds like Paul.”

Why did your name come to mind? Are you a big science-fiction fan?

The person who forwarded me the email is my co-author on a book called Looking at Languages. It’s a workbook in elementary linguistics in which we had put together data from 30 different languages. So he knew that I loved to play around with data from languages and I had a little artificial language, which didn’t really have any development at all but was just something that I constructed for an exercise.

What is your background as a linguist?

I have a doctorate in linguistics from U.S.C. To backtrack beyond that, I was originally a math major as an undergraduate. I went into the Peace Corps after that. I spent two years in Malaysia, where I was teaching English and math. I taught in the Malay language, which was an interesting experience, and I realized that my real love was in the area of languages. Prior to that I had studied a number of foreign languages. I had studied Hebrew, French, Latin, a little German. So when I went to grad school, I decided to do it in linguistics. During that time I spent a year in Iran, so I learned Persian. And I wound up finishing a dissertation on a certain aspect of Persian grammar. So I had, at that point a somewhat extensive background in languages—not that I spoke all these languages fluently, by any means.

How many do you speak fluently?

One. But I have various competencies in other languages. Probably Persian is my best, although it’s a little rusty at this point. I was in Iran in the mid ’70s, so it was a long time ago.

Of the actors in Avatar, who would you say had a knack for picking up the language you invented?

They were all pretty good. I was quite surprised with the facility that people had. There were seven actors altogether who were speaking the language.

Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, and then …

Wes Studi, C.C. Pounder, Joel David Moore, and Laz Alonso. Of those seven, four were supposed to be native speakers and three were humans who had learned the language.

Is there any difference, in terms of accents, between the humans who had learned it, and the native speakers?

Yeah, well, some of the humans seemed to have more English-y accents than the others, which is good. Also, just in terms of the actual grammar that came out, there were some small grammatical errors that the humans made, which is entirely natural.

And was that intentional?

Not entirely, but some things came out, and I said, “You know, that’d be totally appropriate. That’s exactly what a second-language learner would probably do at this stage.”

What human language would you say it’s most similar to, if you had to choose one?

I really couldn’t. And that’s good, because I don’t want it to be identified with any particular language. You know, I didn’t start from absolute ground zero, because James Cameron had come up with, in the early script, maybe 30 words. Most of them were character names, but there were a couple of names of animals. So at that point I had a sense of some of the sounds that he had in his ear and it reminded me a little bit of some Polynesian languages.

I read in that New Yorker profile that he had gone scuba diving around there.

Yeah, he had spent some time in New Zealand and maybe had some Maori in his ear. But I expanded it considerably beyond that. And of course in terms of the orthography and the syntax and all that, I came up with that entirely on my own. So, I don’t think it can be compared in any aspect to any particular human language.