Excuse me, how do you say that in Na'vi?

James Cameron has high hopes for his new 3-D film, Avatar, which has its worldwide premiere on 18 December. It's a big day, too, for University of Southern California professor Paul Frommer. He became part of a dramatic Hollywood story when he was hired to create the language spoken by aliens on Cameron's planet of Pandora.

Frommer has now spent four years working on the language of the Na'vi people. "I'm still working, and I hope that the language will have a life of its own," he told the Los Angeles Times. "For one thing, I'm hoping there will be prequels and sequels to the film, which means more language will be needed. I spent three weeks in May, too, working on the video game for Ubisoft, which is the name of a French company. That's not a French word, though."

Between his work on the film and the video game, Frommer has created more than 1,000 Na'vi words, as well as the structure and rules of the language itself. Na'vi sounds, to some ears, a bit like Polynesian, while others hear the rhythms of African languages in it. "Someone said it sounded German to them, someone else told me Japanese, and I think that's good. If everyone were saying one single language, then it would be bad," Frommer said.