Giving AVATAR Its Voice: Creating the Na'vi Language

Paul Frommer

Thursday, 03 Feb 2011 at 8:00 pm – Great Hall, Memorial Union

Linguist Paul Frommer found himself on an unexpected Hollywood adventure when he was hired to create the language spoken by aliens on the distant moon of Pandora. Frommer developed the Na'vi language for James Cameron's Avatar, including its grammar, syntax, and vocabulary. He worked personally with the actors to perfect Na'vi pronunciation and handled all translations, from script, to song lyrics, to dialogue for Wii and X-Box video games related to the film. Frommer has an eclectic background that includes teaching in Malaysia with the Peace Corps, working as a strategic planner and business writer in the corporate world and, more recently, as a professor in the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business. Frommer earned a doctorate in linguistics from USC, with a dissertation on aspects of Persian syntax. He also created the Martian language for the Disney film John Carter of Mars. The Quentin Johnson Lecture in Linguistics and part of the National Affairs Series on Innovation.

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Go to Paul Frommer's personal blog about all aspects of Na'vi: naviteri.org

Hollywood Calls USC Linguist for Help
USC News | Arts, December 18, 2009

When the alien characters voice their feelings in James Cameron's sci-fi epic Avatar, they are literally speaking a new language, one developed by Paul Frommer, a professor at the USC Marshall School of Business.

With the film opening on Dec. 18, Cameron is seeking to top his 1997 box-office smash Titanic, while Frommer, a professor of clinical management communication, is using a different standard to judge his own work on the film.

Frommer said that Klingon, the full-fledged language developed for the fictional warrior race in the Star Trek universe, is currently the gold standard by which all constructed alien languages are compared. There is a Klingon dictionary and Hamlet, believe it or not, has been translated into the fictional language.

But while Klingon has a rough sound, Frommer intended his language, which is spoken by the Na'vi, the humanoid race living on the planet of Pandora, to be "musical and mellifluous."
Frommer began working with Cameron on the language in the summer of 2005 after representatives from Cameron's production company e-mailed USC's linguistics department, where Frommer received his Ph.D., about developing an alien language.

USC College linguistics professor Edward Finegan, with whom Frommer wrote Looking at Languages: A Workbook in Elementary Linguistics, passed the request on to Frommer, who ended up meeting with Cameron and landing the job.

"It's probably the most exciting thing that's ever happened to me," Frommer said.

For 10 years, Frommer, who said he speaks "bits and pieces of 15 languages," was a strategic planner and business writer in the corporate world before he joined USC Marshall in 1995. From 2005-08, he served as director of USC Marshall's Center for Management Communication.

Frommer currently teaches an upper-division advanced writing for business course, as well as cross-cultural business communication for non-native speakers. He said that he tried to bring the communication principles of precision and clarity to his crafting of the Na'vi language.

Cameron already had come up with about 30 words that provided Frommer with some of the types of sounds the director had in mind. Frommer's next step was to create a sound system - a palette of consonant and vowel sounds in various combinations - that would be unique to the Na'vi.

"It's not based on any particular human language," Frommer said, "as the Na'vi live light-years away from Earth and are humanoids, not humans."

After constructing the grammar, Frommer then translated scenes in the Avatar script, coming up with vocabulary on an as-needed basis.

The next part of his job was to conduct a "Berlitz-type course in Na'vi pronunciation" to prepare the actors and help them learn their lines.

Frommer said he spent a lot of time on the state-of-the-art set, which he compared to "NASA headquarters" because of the highly sophisticated technology employed to create the Pandoran jungle on a bare soundstage.

Frommer provided on-the-spot changes to the script and between takes would counsel the actors who he said had "the hard job of memorizing lines in a language that doesn't exist and make it sound like they've been speaking it all their lives."

After finishing production on the film, Frommer spent three weeks translating dialogue for the Wii and X-Box versions of the film, work that he said gave him a chance to expand the Na'vi vocabulary.

Future opportunities could include expanding the Na'vi language for a sequel, a Na'vi dictionary or - who knows? - a Na'vi version of Hamlet.

Cosponsored By:

• Intensive English and Orientation Program
• Interdisciplinary Linguistics Program
• National Affairs
• Committee on Lectures (funded by Student Government)