| Naʼvi | |
|---|---|
| Lìʼfya leNaʼvi | |
 Dialogue fromAvatar spoken byJake Sully in Naʼvi with English translations | |
| Pronunciation | [ˈnaʔvi] |
| Created by | Paul Frommer |
| Date | 2005 |
| Setting and usage | Avatar andAvatar: The Way of Water |
| Purpose | |
| none (in-universe) Latin script | |
| Sources | constructed languages a priori languages |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | (a proposal to use nvi was rejected in 2012[1]) |
08n | |
| Glottolog | None |
| IETF | art-x-navi |
| This article containsIPA phonetic symbols. Without properrendering support, you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbols instead ofUnicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. | |
TheNaʼvi language (Naʼvi:Lìʼfya leNaʼvi[2][3]) is aconstructed language originally made for the 2009 filmAvatar. In thefilm franchise, the language is spoken by theNaʼvi, aspecies ofsapienthumanoids indigenous to the extraterrestrialmoon Pandora. The language was created byPaul Frommer, a professor at theUSC Marshall School of Business with adoctorate inlinguistics. Naʼvi was designed to fit moviemakerJames Cameron's conception of what the language should sound like in the film. It had to be realistically learnable by the human characters of the film and pronounceable by the actors, but also not closely resemble any single human language.
When the film was released in 2009, Naʼvi had a growing vocabulary of about a thousand words, but understanding of its grammar was limited to the language's creator.[4] However, this has changed subsequently as Frommer has expanded the lexicon to more than 2600 words[5] and has published the grammar.
The Naʼvi language has its origins in James Cameron's early work onAvatar. In 2005, while the film was still inscriptment form, Cameron felt it needed a complete, consistent language for the alien characters to speak. He had written approximately 30 words for thisalien language but wanted a linguist to create the language in full. His production company,Lightstorm Entertainment, contacted the linguistics department at theUniversity of Southern California (USC) seeking someone who would be interested in creating such a language. Edward Finegan, a professor of linguistics at USC, thought that the project would appeal to Paul Frommer, with whom he had co-authored a linguistics textbook, and so forwarded Lightstorm's inquiry on to him. Frommer and Cameron met to discuss the director's vision for the language and its use in the film; at the end of the meeting, Cameron shook Frommer's hand and said "Welcome aboard."[citation needed]
Based on Cameron's initial list of words, which had a "Polynesian flavor" according to Frommer,[6] the linguist developed three different sets of meaningless words and phrases that conveyed a sense of what an alien language might sound like: one usingcontrasting tones, one usingvarying vowel lengths, and one usingejective consonants. Of the three, Cameron liked the sound of the ejectives most. His choice established thephonology that Frommer would use in developing the rest of the Naʼvi language –morphology,syntax, and an initialvocabulary – a task that took six months.[citation needed]
The Naʼvi vocabulary was created by Frommer as needed for the script of the movie. By the timecasting forAvatar began, the language was sufficiently developed that actors were required to read and pronounce Naʼvi dialogue during auditions. Duringshooting Frommer worked with the cast, helping them understand their Naʼvi dialogue and advising them on their Naʼvipronunciation,stress, andintonation. Actors would often make mistakes in speaking Naʼvi. In some cases, those mistakes were plausibly explained as ones their human characters would make while learning the language in-universe; in other cases, the mistakes were incorporated into the language.[citation needed]
Frommer expanded the vocabulary further in May 2009 when he worked on theAvatar video game, which required Naʼvi words that had not been needed for the film script and thus had not yet been invented. Frommer also translated into Naʼvi four sets of song lyrics that had been written by Cameron in English, and he helpedvocalists with their pronunciation during the recording ofJames Horner'sAvatar score. At the time of the film's release on December 18, 2009, the Naʼvi vocabulary consisted of approximately 1000 words.[citation needed]
Work on the Naʼvi language has continued even after the film's release. Frommer is working on a compendium which he plans to deliver toFox in the near future.[7] He hopes that the language will "have a life of its own,"[8] and thinks it would be "wonderful" if the language developed a following.[6] Since then, it has developed a following, as is evident through the increasing learner community of the language.[9] The community's Lexical Expansion Project, together with Frommer, has expanded the lexicon by more than 50 percent.
Frommer also maintains a blog, Na’viteri, where he regularly posts additions to the lexicon and clarifications on grammar. Naʼviteri has been the source of the vast majority of Naʼvi growth independent of Frommer's contract with 20th Century Fox.[citation needed]
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The Naʼvi language was developed under three significant constraints. First, Cameron wanted the language to sound alien but pleasant and appealing to audiences. Second, since the storyline included humans who have learned to speak the language, it had to be a language that humans could plausibly learn to speak. And finally, the actors would have to be able to pronounce their Naʼvi dialogue without unreasonable difficulty. The language in its final form contains several elements which are uncommon in human languages, such asverbal conjugation usinginfixes. All Naʼvi linguistic elements are found in human languages, but the combination is unique.[citation needed]
Naʼvi lacksvoiced plosives like[b][d][ɡ], but has theejective consonants[pʼ][tʼ][kʼ], which are spelledpx, tx, kx. It also has thesyllabic consonantsll andrr. There are seven vowels,a ä e i ì o u. Although all the sounds were designed to be pronounceable by the human actors of the film, there are unusualconsonant clusters, as infngap[fŋap] "metal".[10]
Naʼvi syllables may be as simple as a single vowel, or as complex asskxawng "moron" orfngap above (bothCCVC).
The fictional language Naʼvi of Pandora is unwritten. However, the actual (studio) language is written in theLatin script for the actors ofAvatar. Some words include:zìsìt "year",fpeio "ceremonial challenge",’awve "first" (’aw "one"),muiä "fair",tireaioang "spirit animal",tskxe "rock",kllpxìltu "territory",uniltìrantokx "avatar" (dream-walk-body).
There are seven monophthong vowels:
| front | back | |
|---|---|---|
| High | i⟨i⟩ | u ~ʊ⟨u⟩ |
| ɪ⟨ì⟩ | ||
| Mid | ɛ⟨e⟩ | o⟨o⟩ |
| Low | æ⟨ä⟩ | a⟨a⟩ |
There are additionally fourdiphthongs: aw [aw], ew [εw], ay [aj], ey [εj], and two syllabic consonants: ll [l̩] and rr [r̩], which mostly behave as vowels.[citation needed]
Note that thee is open-mid while theo is close-mid, and that there is no*oy. Therr is stronglytrilled, and thell is "light" (plain), never a "dark" (velarized)*[ɫ̩].[citation needed]
These vowels mayoccur in sequences, as in thePolynesian languages,Swahili, andJapanese. Each vowel counts as a syllable, so thattsaleioae has six syllables,[tsa.lɛ.i.o.a.e], andmeoauniaea has eight,[mɛ.o.a.u.ni.a.ɛ.a].
Naʼvi does not have vowel length or tone, but it does have contrastivestress:túte "person",tuté "female person". Although stress may move withderivation, as here, it is not affected byinflection (case on nouns, tense on verbs, etc.). So, for example, the verblu ("to be") has stress on its only vowel, theu, and no matter what else happens to it, the stress stays on that vowel:lolú "was" (l⟨ol⟩u),lolängú "was (ugh!)" (l⟨ol⟩⟨äng⟩u), etc.
There are 20 consonants. There are two Latin transcriptions: one that more closely approaches the ideal of one letter perphoneme, with thec andg for[ts] and[ŋ] (the values they have in much of Eastern Europe and Polynesia, respectively), and a modified transcription used for the actors, with the digraphsts andng used for those sounds. In both transcriptions, theejective consonants are written with digraphs inx, a convention that appears to have no external inspiration, but could potentially be inspired by the Esperanto convention ofwritingx as a stand-in for the circumflex.
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m⟨m⟩ | n⟨n⟩ | ŋ⟨ng (g)⟩ | |||
| Plosive | plain | p⟨p⟩ | t⟨t⟩ | k⟨k⟩ | ʔ⟨ʼ⟩ | |
| ejective | pʼ⟨px⟩ | tʼ⟨tx⟩ | kʼ⟨kx⟩ | |||
| Affricate | ts⟨ts (c)⟩ | |||||
| Fricative | voiceless | f⟨f⟩ | s⟨s⟩ | h⟨h⟩ | ||
| voiced | v⟨v⟩ | z⟨z⟩ | ||||
| Approximant | central | w⟨w⟩ | ɾ⟨r⟩ | j⟨y⟩ | ||
| lateral | l⟨l⟩ | |||||
The fricatives and the affricate,f v ts s z h, are restricted to the onset of a syllable; the others may occur at the beginning or at the end (thoughw y in final position are considered parts of diphthongs, as they only occur asay ey aw ew and may be followed by another final consonant, as inskxawng "moron"). However, in addition to appearing before vowels,f ts s may formconsonant clusters with any of the unrestricted consonants (theplosives andliquids/glides) apart from’, making for 39 clusters. Other sequences occur across syllable boundaries, such asNaʼvi[naʔ.vi] andikran[ik.ɾan] "banshee".
The plosivesp t k aretenuis, as in Spanish or French. In final position, they haveno audible release, as inIndonesian and other languages of Southeast Asia, as well as in many dialects of English in words such as "bat". Ther isflapped, as in Spanish and Indonesian; it sounds a bit like thett ordd in the American pronunciation of the wordslatter / ladder.
The plosives undergolenition after certainprefixes andprepositions. The ejective consonantspx tx kx become the corresponding plosivesp t k; the plosives and affricatep t ts k become the corresponding fricativesf s h; and the glottal stop’ disappears entirely. For example, the plural form ofpo "s/he" isayfo "they", with thep weakening into anf after the prefixay-.
Lenition has its own significance when the plural prefix can optionally be omitted. In the above example,ayfo can be shortened tofo. Similarly, the plural oftsmukan "brother" can besmukan (fromaysmukan).
Naʼvi hasfree word order. For example, the English "I see you" (a common greeting in Naʼvi) can be written as follows in Naʼvi:
As sentences become more complex, some words, like adjectives and negatives, will have to stay in a more or less fixed position in the sentence, depending on what the adjective or negative is describing.
In this case, the adjectivesìltsan(a) (good) will need to stay with the nountrr (day), therefore limiting the sentence to fewer combinations on the construction of the sentence, but as long as it follows or precedes the noun, the sentence is fine. By putting the attributivea before the adjective, the adjective can be put after the noun:
Nouns in Naʼvi show greaternumber distinctions than those in most human languages do: besidessingular andplural, they not only have specialdual forms for two of an item (eyes, hands, lovers, etc.), which are common in human language (English has a remnant in "both"), but alsotrial forms for three of an item, which on Earth are only found with pronouns. Gender is only occasionally (and optionally) marked.
The plural prefix isay+, and the dual isme+. Both trigger lenition (indicated by the "+" signs rather than the hyphens that usually mark prefix boundaries). In nouns which undergo lenition, the plural prefix may be dropped, so the plural oftokx "body" is eitheraysokx or justsokx.
Masculine and feminine nouns may be distinguished by suffix. There are no articles (words for "a" or "the").
Nouns are declined forcase in atripartite system, which is rare among human languages. In a tripartite system, there are distinct forms for the object of a clause, as in "he kicksthe ball"; the agent of atransitive clause which has such an object, as in "he kicks the ball"; and the subject of an intransitive clause, which does not have an object, as in "he runs". An object is marked with theaccusative suffix-ti, and an agent with theergative suffix-l, while anintransitive subject has no case suffix. The use of such case forms leaves theword order of Naʼvi largely free.
There are two other cases—genitive in-yä,dative in-ru—as well as atopic marker-ri. The latter is used to introduce the topic of the clause, and is somewhat equivalent to Japanesewa and the much less common English "as for". It preempts the case of the noun: that is, when a noun is made topical, usually at the beginning of the clause, it takes the-ri suffix rather than the case suffix one would expect from its grammatical role. For example, in,
Oe-ri
I-TOP
ontu
nose
teya
full
l⟨äng⟩u
be⟨PEJ⟩
Oe-ri ontu teya l⟨äng⟩u
I-TOP nose full be⟨PEJ⟩
"My nose is full (of his distasteful smell)",lit. "As for me, (my) nose is full"
Besides case, the role of a noun in a clause may be indicated withadpositions. Any adposition may occur as either as apreposition before the noun, or as anenclitic after the noun, a greater degree of freedom than English allows. For example, "with you" may be eitherhu nga orngahu. When used as enclitics, they are much like the numerous cases found inHungarian andFinnish. When used as prepositions, more along the lines of what English does, certain of them trigger lenition. One of the leniting prepositions ismì "in", as inmì sokx "in the body". This may cause some ambiguity with short plurals:mì sokx could also be short formì aysokx "in the bodies".[11]
Naʼvi pronouns encodeclusivity. That is, there are different words for "we" depending on whether the speaker is including his/her addressee or not. There are also special forms for "the two of us" (with or without the addressee), "the three of us", etc. They do not inflect for gender; although it is possible to distinguish "he" from "she", the distinction is optional.
The deferential forms of "I" and "you" areohe andngenga. Possessive forms includengeyä "your" andpeyä "her/his". "He" and "she" can optionally be differentiated aspoan andpoé.
The grammatical distinctions made by nouns are also made by pronouns.
Naʼviadjectives are uninflected—that is, they do not agree with the noun they modify—and may occur either before or after the noun. They are marked by a syllablea, which is attached on the side closest to the noun. For example, "a long river" can be expressed either as,
or as,
The free word order holds for all attributives: Genitives (possessives) andrelative clauses can also either precede or follow the noun they modify. The latter especially allows for great freedom of expression.
Theattributive affixa- is only used when an adjective modifies a noun.Predicative adjectives instead take the "be" verblu:
kilvan
river
ngim
long
lu
be
kilvan ngim lu
river long be
"The river is long"
Verbs are conjugated fortense andaspect, but not forperson. That is, they record distinctions like "I am, I was, I would", but not like "I am, we are, s/he is". Conjugation relies exclusively oninfixes, which are like suffixes but go inside the verb. "To hunt", for example, istaron, but "hunted" ist⟨ol⟩aron, with the infix⟨ol⟩.
There are two positions for infixes: after the onset (optional consonant(s)) of thepenultimate syllable, and after the onset of the final syllable. Because many Na’vi verbs have two syllables, these commonly occur on the first and last syllable. In monosyllabic words likelu "be", they both appear after the initial onset, keeping their relative order.
The first infix position is taken by infixes for tense, aspect, mood, or combinations thereof; also appearing in this position areparticiple,reflexive, andcausative forms, the latter two of which may co-occur with a tense/aspect/mood infix by preceding it. Tenses arepast, recent past, present (unmarked),future, and immediate future; aspects areperfective (completed or contained) andimperfective (ongoing or uncontained). The aspectual forms are not found in English but are somewhat like the distinction between 'having done' and 'was doing'.
Tense and aspect need not be marked when they can be understood by context or elsewhere in the sentence.
The second infix position is taken by infixes foraffect (speaker attitude, whether positive or negative) and forevidentiality (uncertainty or indirect knowledge). For example, in the greeting in the section on nouns,Oel ngati kameie "I See you", the verbkame "to See" is inflected positively askam⟨ei⟩e to indicate the pleasure the speaker has in meeting you. In the subsequent sentence,Oeri ontu teya längu "My nose is full (of his smell)", however, the phraseteya lu "is full" is inflected pejoratively asteya l⟨äng⟩u to indicate the speaker's distaste at the experience. Examples with both infix positions filled:
The Naʼvi language currently has over 2,600 words. These include a few Englishloan words such askunsìp "gunship". The complete dictionary, including the inflectional form, is available online athttps://reykunyu.lu,http://dict-navi.com orhttps://fwew.app. Additionally, the community of speakers is working with Dr. Frommer to further develop the language. Naʼvi is a very modular language and the total number of usable words far exceeds the 2,600 dictionary words. For example:rol "to sing" →tìrusol "the act of singing" orngop "to create" →ngopyu "creator". Workarounds using existing words also abound in the Naʼvi corpus, such aseltu lefngap "metallic brain" for "computer" andpalulukantsyìp "littlethanator" for "cat".
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