Has anyone seen Avatar yet? Wasn't the Na'vi language so beautiful? I particularly liked the fact that it sounded remarkably like one of my conlangs: Pзhowз. Except for that Pзhowз doesn't have any fricatives (in case you're wondering, the "з" character in Pзhowз is read as the "ay" in day. So Pзhowз is read as "Pay-hoe-way.") Anyone have any comments on their language? Or perhaps better yet, any resources?

For some reason, I don't feel very compelled to go see it.

That's too bad. It was a great movie. I want to see it again, if not just to listen closer to the language (which was four years in the making). I actually found a decent article about it on Wikipedia.

I would describe the movie as "Pocahontas 3000." It was great. And I generally dislike these kinds of movies. Especially when the plot's been done before. But it was just so well done and awesome. <3

I saw it last night and was fairly impressed, but I was expecting to hear more of the language.

Here's a funny thing:

Language Log has presented what's likely to be the best information available until Frommer publishes something comprehensive later this year: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1977.

That's exactly how I described it to my friend - Pocahontas meets Return of the Jedi, with a little Alien thrown in for good measure.

So anyway I read up on the Na'vi language this morning and I have to say I liked it - and I don't care for most conlangs. It has enough unusual features to seem alien to Earthlings (look at the highly productive use of infixes for example, and free variation between prepositions and clitics) while being sufficiently Earth-like to be learnable by humans. I liked how its relative small consonant inventory echoed that of an Amazonian language, but the ejective consonants were a nice touch.

I really love this movie, but I think it's more like Dances with wolves which I also like :3. In fact, in Pocahontas, Indian people speak English, while in Dances with wolves there are some similar scenes while the main character is lerning Dakota (was it Dakota or Lakota or Nakota...?) And the plot is also about a man who meets a tribe before the other (white, in this case) men arrive and he eventually ends up defending the ones whose weak points he had to study in order to destroy them. Apart from this appreciation, I think the movie is very well done and the language is credible as well as exotic.

In light of which, I'd expect first contact quite a while before the movie if the Na'vi are demonstrating English fluency at the level depicted.

Only a few of them were fluent in English, though - the same situation with the humans and the Na'vi language. The rest had to be supplied with a translation.