See what are the secrets behind the creation of Na’vi and how to communicate in Neytiri’s mother tongue
The universe created by James Cameron in the Avatar franchise has not only a totally new planet that presents biomes, tribes and diverse creatures immersed in traditions never seen before, but also shows pop culture an unprecedented dialect among already known cinematographic productions: the na’vi.
Just like the Dothraki language, of the barbarians of ‘Game of Thrones’ and the language of the Klingons, aliens of ‘Star Trek’, Na’vi is a language with thousands of words, grammatical and phonetic rules elaborated from countless languages, and that, like the other languages we know, can be studied and spoken by anyone who is willing to dedicate hours of study to learn it.
How was Na’vi created?
The creation of this dialect, which is used by the inhabitants of the jungles of Pandora, was requested by Cameron during the production of the first film to bring even more verisimilitude to the created universe, that is, to build an alternative reality that was convincing.
For that, Paul Frommeran American professor of communication at the University of Southern California and a linguistics consultant, was brought into the project where he worked for some time to develop the sounds of the pronunciations, the words and the whole set of dialect rules.
Furthermore, according to information published by Folha de S.Paulo in 2009, Frommer’s main inspiration for creating the dialect was Esperanto, a language created in the 19th century with the aim of facilitating international communication.
In 2014, the linguist provided an interview to the UOL portal where he told what was the main challenge during the development of Na’vi:
The na’vi could not sound too alien because it was assumed that the na’vi’s sound production mechanism was very similar to that of humans, so the sounds could be replicated by actors. James Cameron didn’t want any electronic manipulation of the voices, which limited how “otherworldly” he could be.
Even so, frommer detailed that included in the new dialect that has more than 2,000 words, sounds little found in Western languages such as “kx”, “px”, and “tx”. In addition to combining not-so-common sounds that can be heard in the words fngap, which means “metal”; fpxäkìm, “between”; skxo, “chance”;
How to learn to speak Na’vi?
Since it appeared on screens for the first time, the Na’vi dialect has become one of the great curiosities among Avatar fans, for this reason, frommer created the Learn Na’vi blog where it is possible to find details about phonetics and phonology, dictionaries, grammar rules and lessons, as well as texts, stories and poems, most of which are already written in the Pandora dialect.
Also, if you want to learn a few words just for fun, we’ve put together a list of some of the words used in Na’vi below:
THE
‘aw: um
‘amp v: play
AND
‘efu: feel
ean: blue
F
faheu: sniff
H
hufwe n: wind
I
willyo: thank you
ioang: animal
K
kaltxi: hello
kilvan: river
kxetse: tail
L
lehrrap: dangerous
M
menari: eyes
No
nga: you
THE
ontu: nose
P
pähem: arrive
pil: facial stripe
R
king: live
s
sempul: father
skowng: idiot
T
tsam: war
tukru-l: spear
txe’lan: heart
U
utral: tree
V
vul: branch of tree
W
way: song
Y
yawne: beloved
Z
zoplo: offense, insult
Source: Recreio
