10 Things You Didn't Know About Avatar
8. A Whole Language Was Created
Even at the earliest stages of development, Cameron wanted much of the film to be spoken in the native language to the Na’vi. He was not the the first director to want his world populated by people who spoke a unique language. A Clockwork Orange novelist, Anthony Burgess created several languages for 1981’s Quest For Fire and Marc Okrand of course developed Klingon for Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
The Na'vi language was created from scratch by linguist Dr. Paul R. Frommer based on the few words of Na’vi Cameron had featured in his original treatment back in 1995. From these fragments, Frommer began to expand the language into one that would sound alien, but still give the actors an emotional range. He took his influence from Polynesian languages and in six months a language with almost a thousand words existed.
Frommer initially created around a thousand words for the movie. As fans and linguistic geeks took over the language’s development this has been expanded to over two thousand. In addition to this apps available for to help you learn the langue and learnavi.org has thousands of members.