Monday, January 18, 2010

Kaltxi! New Words from a New World!

(click for podcast)

By this time, it would be surprising to find anyone who hasn't heard of James Cameron's new blockbuster, Avatar. The most exciting thing about it - at least to me is the Na'vi language!

The Na’vi language is the constructed language of the Na’vi, the sapient humanoid indigenous inhabitants of the fictional moon Pandora in the 2009 film Avatar. It was created by Paul Frommer, a professor at the Marshall School of Business with a doctorate in linguistics. Na’vi was designed to fit James Cameron's conception of what the language should sound like in the film, to be realistically learnable by the fictional human characters of the film, and to be pronounceable by the actors, but to not closely resemble any single human language.

Even better, there is a terrific community already discussing and providing resources to learn the language at http://www.learnnavi.org - check it out!







They have the vocabulary, and linguistic background - even simple phrases:











I've also created a simple lookup tool at http://navi.mrklingon.org


In other news - I've rebuilt a number of my pages using Google pages:


In addition, you'll now find the complete Mando'a vocabulary available, as well as a Mando'a version of the Universal Translator Assistant!