Kind: captions
Language: en
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I was exposed to foreign languages at a
pretty early age. As a Jewish kid in New
York, I was sent off to Hebrew school.
So, Hebrew was actually my first foreign
language. Later on, I studied Latin and
a little bit of French and some German.
And I actually was a US Peace Corps
volunteer in Malaysia teaching
mathematics in the Malay language.
The ability to communicate with someone
who doesn't speak English in their
language was just a great joy for
me. So when I did decide to do my grad
work, I decided that it would be in
linguistics. I realized that every
language is a unique window on the
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world.
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do. One of the great strokes of luck in
my life is that a friend of mine in the
linguistics department at USC, Ed
Finnegan, forwarded me an email asking
for a linguist who could develop a
language for a science fiction film.
When I saw it, I absolutely jumped on. I
said, I really want this. And I was
given the opportunity for an interview
in James Cameron's office. He talked to
me about his vision for the film, about
what he thought the language should be.
At the end, we both stood up. You shook
hands with me and said, "Welcome
aboard." And my life has not been the
same ever since.
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How's your not being?
The first actual step in constructing
the language was to determine the sounds
and the sound system, the consonants and
the vowels and the pseudo vowels and the
diff thongs. sounds like
b-cm-
n-g
and k. So once you do that, then you're
ready to begin
morphology and
syntax
atim. Being part of the avatar
experience was utterly fascinating and
tremendously exciting to me.
Definitely part of my job was to teach
Na'vi to the actors.
And I'd say things like, you know, that
was really good, but remember the vowel
at the end of that word is not a, it's
ah. Sometimes the actor was very
receptive to that. Sometimes they saw me
coming and ran the other way because
they had other things to think about.
Nari.
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By and large, I think things turned out
pretty well.
hearing the language that I had come up
with on the screen in the final version
of the film
was as you might imagine a very special
feeling but in a sense what's happened
to Na'vi post Avatar is at least for me
maybe the most exciting thing of
all people are actually using it for
genuine communication there are a couple
of instances of Na'vi learners in
different parts of the world who don't
share any other common language except
Na'vi. I mean that's something I frankly
did not
anticipate and at this point I'm working
very closely with the community to
develop the language for you. Listen,
always
I get long emails written to me entirely
in Na'vi to get people fired up about
the wonders of language, whether it's
human language or whether it's language
of the Na'vi. I I am I am just tickled.
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