Actor's pronounciation

['Oma Tirea]

...and who butchered the pronounciation the worst?

[ToktorGrace]

Hahaha you actually made a thread XD

In all fairness I would bet that the actors/actresses playing the natives likely had more voice training than the scientist bunch.

I still think Grace's Na'vi was deplorable considering her 15 years being on Pandora, and interacting with them literally every day Im giving Jake a bit more lee-way since by the end of the film, he was doing really well.

[Ekirä]

Mooo'aaaat.

I don't think her pronunciation was actually that bad....

[Ftxavanga Txe′lan]

Mooo'aaaat.

I don't think her pronunciation was actually that bad....

Mllte But I answered Eytukan in the poll, because I think he sounds overall pretty much like a real Na'vi I don't know, there's something about his way to talk which makes his speech seem credible.

[Toruk Makto]

If CC wins this poll, someone should let her know...     

[Swoka Ikran]

...voted for Eytukan.

As for who butchered it, Grace (and maybe Norm)...

[archaic]

I'm hoping that all the actors will really practice their 'Narvee' before the second movie, perhaps actually becoming fluent, it'd make learning their lines easier!

Obviously that only applies to those who play Na'vi speaking characters, I wouldn't expect Giovanni Ribisi or Stephen Lang to. 
In fact, as Quaritch and Selfridge would be expected to mangle their Na'vi pronunciations it might even be a liability for them.

Hmm, I wonder if any of them are here already?

[Kamean]

I voted for Mo'at.

[Kätsyín te Zotxekay Tsyal’itan]

I voted for Laz. Just for how well he did the This is Our Land speech.

As for butchering their Na'vi lines...definitely gonna have to go with Grace.

[Eana Tanhì]

But I answered Eytukan in the poll, because I think he sounds overall pretty much like a real Na'vi I don't know, there's something about his way to talk which makes his speech seem credible.

I say Eytukan for the same reasons

[Amaya]

I still think Grace's Na'vi was deplorable considering her 15 years being on Pandora, and interacting with them literally every day Im giving Jake a bit more lee-way since by the end of the film, he was doing really well.

You have to keep in mind here that Grace would have been learning the language starting at an older age than Jake, which actually makes a major difference.  The human brain begins to lose its ability to learn additional languages some time in the 30s, and certainly it loses its ability to hear aspects of other languages (and thus to reproduce those sounds) in some cases even sooner than that, if the skills aren't used.  Actually, the brain begins to "prune" the ability to hear different phonemes as early as (if I remember correctly) 18 months old, and it's all downhill from there.  (Which is why I think it's so vitally important to expose babies to multiple languages, the more the better, but that's a different and rather contentious thread so I won't go off on that rant just now)

The more additional languages a person already knows, the more ability to learn they will retain, but someone who's 15 or 16 can learn faster and better than someone who's 25, and the 25-year-old will learn faster and better than someone who's 40...well, anyway you get the idea.  Presuming that Grace at the time of the movie is somewhere in her 50s, that would mean that she started learning Na'vi somewhere in her late 30s or early 40s, which is a distinct disadvantage in her being able to have the impeccable pronounciation that someone like Norm who presumably started learning at about age 20 (I'm assuming he's somewhere around 25 but that's just my own little logical progression based on his learning of Na'vi beginning in conjunction with his PhD) would have.

Not to mention, in the case of the actors, the fact that Sigourney Weaver has such "good" pronounciation at all at her age is a testiment to her skill as an actor at mimicry (although of course I know nothing of her skill level in other human languages)

[Ftxavanga Txe′lan]

That's a really interesting aspect, ma Amaya Now I don't think so harshly upon Grace's pronunciation anymore (although it's still not particularly pleasing listening to hrh)

[Amaya]

Thanks!  I've always been fascinated by the mechanics of language aquisition, and I'm lucky enough that (although I'm not sure quite how) I managed to retain far more phonemes than a lot of monolingual people I know.  I'm pretty sure it has something to do with my early musical training (starting around age 3) and the fact that both my parents, at the time I was born and when I was an infant and toddler, were archaeologists and my mother especially knew aspects of Chinook Jargon.  I don't know for sure if I was directly exposed to it, but it was certainly a part of what was "in the air" around the house, which probably had some small impact.  Due to this, even if my understanding of linguistic terms is pretty shoddy (and I really have a bit of a "mental block" in learning them, which has slowed my aquisition of na'vi - I'm waiting until the language is a bit more complete so I can learn the way I learn languages - by back-translating) I am an excellent mimic, and can reproduce a word or phrase in almost any language after hearing it only once or twice, although I would need more repetition than that to retain it, obviously

[archaic]

..... my understanding of linguistic terms is pretty shoddy (and I really have a bit of a "mental block" in learning them, which has slowed my aquisition of na'vi - .....

You are SO not alone in this !

[ToktorGrace]

I still think Grace's Na'vi was deplorable considering her 15 years being on Pandora, and interacting with them literally every day Im giving Jake a bit more lee-way since by the end of the film, he was doing really well.

You have to keep in mind here that Grace would have been learning the language starting at an older age than Jake, which actually makes a major difference.  The human brain begins to lose its ability to learn additional languages some time in the 30s, and certainly it loses its ability to hear aspects of other languages (and thus to reproduce those sounds) in some cases even sooner than that, if the skills aren't used.  Actually, the brain begins to "prune" the ability to hear different phonemes as early as (if I remember correctly) 18 months old, and it's all downhill from there.  (Which is why I think it's so vitally important to expose babies to multiple languages, the more the better, but that's a different and rather contentious thread so I won't go off on that rant just now)

The more additional languages a person already knows, the more ability to learn they will retain, but someone who's 15 or 16 can learn faster and better than someone who's 25, and the 25-year-old will learn faster and better than someone who's 40...well, anyway you get the idea.  Presuming that Grace at the time of the movie is somewhere in her 50s, that would mean that she started learning Na'vi somewhere in her late 30s or early 40s, which is a distinct disadvantage in her being able to have the impeccable pronounciation that someone like Norm who presumably started learning at about age 20...

I hadn't considered this - I remember going to France a few years back, and though my vocabulary didn't really shine, my pronunciation was better than the wife of one of the french men there who had grown up originally in English-speaking Canada.

(if you factor in 6 years in cryo, which doesn't physically age you, she'd be 6 years younger than that - she is 50 at the time of the movie so -21 years she'd be 29 coming out of cryo mentally)

[archaic]

I like the logic, but when are we told how old she is, she just looks like she's around fifty something, which would auto compensate for the six years in cryo.
Are we told she's been fifteen years on pandora? I remember her saying she'd put ten years into her school, but not enough Omatikaya speak ìnglìsì for the school to be running ten years, so part of that may have been prep time possibly on earth.

Say she's older than she looks (improved moisturizers?) and the school was only open for five years, Grace might not have started learning Na'vi until she was as old as fifty!

Or have I missed something?

[ToktorGrace]

I like the logic, but when are we told how old she is, she just looks like she's around fifty something, which would auto compensate for the six years in cryo.
Are we told she's been fifteen years on pandora? I remember her saying she'd put ten years into her school, but not enough Omatikaya speak ìnglìsì for the school to be running ten years, so part of that may have been prep time possibly on earth.

Say she's older than she looks (improved moisturizers?) and the school was only open for five years, Grace might not have started learning Na'vi until she was as old as fifty!

Or have I missed something?

Lol I suspect most of the Omatikaya found it better to learn more practical things than learning the alien language -- and if you think about it a number of the Na'vi did know English, and enough of it to communicate pretty well. I dont remember exactly where I read it, but I did a ton of research on Grace to write my fanfiction, and it said 15 years (I mean, she went originally to collect and study plants, she's a botanist, and to be the person who's written so extensively on fauna of Pandora you have to be there for a while). I also doubt she only spent time at the school and likely spent a good deal of time learning from the Na'vi while she was teaching them. But all that's beside the point ^^;

Sigourney Weaver is about 60 now, while her character, if you go by the date of her birth, would be 50 at the time of the movie's events. Jake didn't age during his 6 years of cryo, so unless for some reason Grace didn't get to use cryo when she went, there is no reason why she should have experienced it differently age-wise.

But its true that Grace got less of a head start age-wise on language-learning, no matter how you slice it.

[Alyara Arati]

I'd like to think it was just good acting on Sigourney Weaver's part, portraying Grace as having struggled with getting the language correct.  Wes Studi and CCH Pounder don't have ears that are that much younger than hers, and they both did a pretty decent job with their Na'vi.  I had to vote for Mo'at, though, over Eytukan because from the moment that she opens her mouth, you just know so vividly what her character is all about.  And that's before the blood-tasting thing.

[Amaya]

Remember, the stats I was giving were for monolingual people, Wes, for one, had a massive jump over the others right away, because "Born in Norfire Hollow, Oklahoma, Studi exclusively spoke his native Cherokee language until beginning school at the age of five." (From his IMDb bio)  You can actually hear his Cherokee accent in the way he pronounces some things, although I'm in too much of a hurry atm to find examples I'm sure others can

As for the lovely Ms Pounder, she was born in Guyana, and although I can't (in my short amount of time free now) find anything on her language knowledge, Guyana has 14 recognised languages, even if its official language is English, so the liklihood of her having more than one is also high.

[Kätsyín te Zotxekay Tsyal’itan]

Off-topic, but I personally think it would be awesome to be taught Cherokee by Wes Studi. Its one of the many languages I want to learn.