'Avatar': Was Na'vi inspired by a real language? The story behind the creation of Pandora's mesmerizing native tongue
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: 'Avatar: The Way of Water' released last year and has kept shattering box office records one after the other. The movie's success can be attributed to its intricate detailing, especially the Na'vi language that was invented specifically for the film. Of course, this was a hefty task as it basically involved building an entirely new language from the ground up.
Language is the essence of our culture and community. But it also brings out true authenticity when it comes to cinema. It is astonishing that 'Avatar's makers, particularly James Cameron, put so much effort into creating a fictional world and then went so far as to create a whole new language to go with it.
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'Conlang' and its film avatars
In simple terms, conlang means a language that has been artificially created either by taking inspiration from other languages or completely fresh from the ground up. This wasn't the first time a movie franchise thought of creating a language that best went with its world and culture. 'The Lord of the Rings' and 'Star Trek' had both been there and done that before, creating the fictional languages of Sindarin and Quenya respectively. As the world of 'Avatar' takes place on the fictional planet of Pandora, English was out of the list.
The second installment of the franchise, 'Avatar: The Way of Water', didn't feature much of the Na'vi language as the movie adopted the "Instant translation" trick - revealing that the Na'vi people were speaking their native tongue while the audience heard English spoken on screen. But, it was important for the first movie to introduce the language without the translation trick as the language divergence between Earth and Pandora needed to be evident. James Cameron wanted a significant difference between the aliens' and humans' tongues, and called in a linguist for help.
Who created the Na'vi language?
Cameron sought the help of linguist Dr Paul R Frommer, who created a conlang for the people of Pandora with a list of about 30 words the visionary director had come up with, according to Screenrant. Dr Frommer, a communications professor at the University of Southern California, was excited about this task, but it seemed more onerous than assigning English vocabulary with a made-up Na'vi equivalent. To sound authentic and clean, the conlang had to have diction rules, just like other natural languages. Cameron requested Dr Frommer that the Na'vi language must be entirely new, as it's supposed to be from another planet, and that it should sound "nice" to the audience. Besides, Cameron also wanted the language to be easily enunciable for native English actors. He didn't want any additional editing done to their voices and wanted them to sound authentic and not unnatural.
Is the Na'vi language inspired from real life?
Equipped with a vast knowledge of linguistics, Dr Frommer understood what kinds of sounds the Na'vi language would or wouldn't have. Just like “j” and “r” don't exist in Korean, in English, the 'h' sound is unaspirated. In a similar vein, Frommer's conception of the new language totally avoided the sounds of "ch", "th", and "sh". Additionally, Frommer had to decide on the language's syntax — or rules regarding word order. He came up with his own set of constraints and words to be used in the language of Pandora. The tongue took inspiration from the natural languages of the world to create a totally different spoken form.