How to speak 'Avatar'

Ayftozä lefpom ayngaru nìwotx!

That's "Happy Holidays to You All"

in Na'vi,

the language that was created for the sci-fi blockbuster "Avatar." The professor who made up that phrase as well as all the alien dialogue in the movie hopes Na'vi does as well as Klingon, another fictional alien tongue that has taken on a life of its own. But for now, that's out of his hands.

"I have an in-box that's amazingly full," linguist Paul Frommer, a professor at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business, told me today. "They're all asking the same thing: 'Where can I learn this language?' I'm getting messages from all over the globe. The thing is, I don't own the rights to the language."

Frommer noted that snippets of Na'vi are finding their way onto the Internet - some correct, some incorrect. "What I would love to do is get something out to the people, but I can't do it on my own. I have to do it in conjunction with the movie people," he said.

Those people have been a little busy - which is understandable, considering that "Avatar" has been America's top-grossing movie for the past two weeks. But once the holidays are over and school is back in sesson, Frommer is planning to check in with Twentieth Century Fox, the studio behind "Avatar," and with Lightstorm Entertainment, director James Cameron's production company.

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