Why auxlangers should also support Na'vi

[Mithridates]

Hi there, I'm the admin of the Na'vi language group on Facebook. I live in Korea where we were able to see Avatar about two days before most of the rest of the world, and I started the group right after seeing the movie because I knew that we were dealing with something great. I've been involved with auxlangs (in particular Ido, Lingua Franca Nova and Occidental) since 2005 but have never been interested in conlangs before (I enjoy using languages, not creating them) but Na'vi has something that I believe bridges the gap between the two. Here is the explanation in detail.

http://www.pagef30.com/2009/12/why-auxlangers-should-support-and-maybe.html

The reason why I wrote this is because auxlangers in general (Esperantists for example) are immensely practical: they want to see their languages used, and nearly all of them want to see one language become the world's second language, so they just aren't interested in languages that don't seem to have any real world application. Na'vi is different though, and so I wanted to write up a short explanation to show to Esperantists or other auxlangers that might otherwise just see Na'vi as a fantasy conlang.

[Payoang]

Kaltxì Mithridates! Welcome to the foums.

And great article, thanks for sharing!

[Mithridates]

No problem. It's pretty amazing watching the popularity of Na'vi explode, especially as an auxlanger because usually getting people interested in learning languages that few people speak is like pulling teeth.

[wm.annis]

I've been wondering how many would-be speakers of Elvish will be drawn away from Quenya to Na'vi.  It's almost impossible to say anything in Quenya because a lot of material never got published, Tolkien never stopped tinkering with the language so you're always guessing about what to use.  And if anyone thinks I'm too uptight about linguistic matters, you have clearly never dealt with Quenya fans — a seriously scholarly and cantankerous bunch!  A single sentence may generate pages of notes and argumentation.

The Na'vi are not much like Elves in most ways, but the tree-hugger segment of elf-fans (and I say that affectionately) will be drawn to them, I suspect.  Plus, the inventor is still alive.