

Some highlights of Na’vi - waterlesscloud
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1977

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aston
This is pretty awesome, that they got a real linguist to put together the
language for the movie.

One thing I noticed, both when listening and while reading this description:
While the syntax and morphology is nothing at all like English (so it sounds
alien), basically all of the vowel sounds are very American ("ay" and "aw"
instead of the "e" and "a" sounds of French or Spanish). Seems like a nod to
the fact that the people who'd actually need to speak it would be American.

~~~
ugh
“Seems like a nod to the fact that the people who'd actually need to speak it
would be American.”

Yeah, because multi-million marketing campaigns for Avatar didn’t roll over
any other nation but the US, right? :)

~~~
ptarjan
I think he was referencing the actors and not the viewers

~~~
ugh
Is this hyperinflation? Such a voting storm for a honest misunderstanding?

~~~
derefr
It was a highly-voted article (almost hit the top), so lots of people came in
here to see what people had already said. Then some bikeshedding happened:
since the discussion was on linguistics, no one felt qualified to _add_
anything—but they _did_ feel qualified to notice that you hadn't picked up on
something. :)

