Sorry about that -- I intended to post that to the Conlang Community page. However, since some of you may be interested in seeing a partial description of the Na'vi language from Avatar, I won't delete it.

I don't know what's going on with the links I just posted -- they worked yesterday, but today they return only 404s. However, if you go to Google and type -- "Some highlights of Na'vi" Language Log -- in the search box you can get to the article.

For a while in the 1980s, before the epidemic of Dumbing Down The Magazines began, there was a wonderful magazine called Southern. I was sorry when that one folded. The item below is on page 74 of "Charleston Through a Child's Eyes," by William Price Fox, on pp. 73-74 of the March 1987 issue.

"One of the better walking-around stories about the old town concerns an elderly pair of sisters who had fallen on lean times. Despite their circumstances, they insisted on telling everyone that they were still summering in Paris. At night, they would slip out of their shuttered home and take their constitutional along the Battery. One night, a child recognized them and wanted to say hello. Her mother held her back, saying, 'No dear, we don't speak to them in the summertime. They're still in Paris.' If this isn't the story that William Allen White was referrring to when he said that 'Charleston is the most civilized town in the world,' it should have been."

I've just done a thirty-minute interview about LAadan for the BBC, as part of a segment they were doing on constructed languages; other guests on the segment included Arika Okrent, author of _In the Land of Invented Languages_, someone talking about Klingon, and perhaps a few more. The interview went very well; however, I have no idea how much of the thirty minutes will actually be used.

The show is called "Word of Mouth", and this episode goes out on 5 January at 16:00 [GMT]; you can also listen again for a week at the Radio 4 website which is http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 .

It occurs to me that these might be useful for those of you who are interested...


Thandi

Phonemes:
/b/, /bh/, /p/, /ph/, /d/, /f/, /sh/, /zh/, /TH/, /th/, /g/, /gh/, /l/, /L/, /lh/, /r/, /m/, /n/, /ng/, /w/, /y/, /a/, /e/, /E/, /i/, /o/, /u/, /h/.



Lenadess

Phonemes:
/b/, /bh/, /p/, /ph/, /d/, /t/, /f/, /sh/, /s/, /zh/, /g/, /gh/, /l/, /L/, /lh/, /r/, /m/, /n/, /ng/, /w/, /y/, /a/, /e/, /E/, /i/, /o/, /u/, /h/.



Aubre

Phonemes:
/b/, /p/, /k/, /g/, /d/, /t/, /f/, /th/, /TH/, /sh/, /ch/, /zh/, /l/, /r/, /m/, /n/, /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/, /h/.



Nangdi

Phonemes:
/b/, /bh/, /p/, /ph/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /kh/, /q/, /’/, /g/, /gh/, /w/, /l/, /r/, /R/, /m/, /n/, /ng/, /th/, /TH/, /sh/, /a/, /ae/, /e/, /E/, /i/, /I/, /o/, /u/, /oy/, /h/; three tones -- high, low, and falling.

The Swadesh lists for the four languages in the new U.S. Corps of Linguists novel are now at my SFWA website. The link to the lists is at the end of the first Announcement, at http://www.sfwa.org/members/elgin/Announcements.html .
If you have comments or questions, just respond to this post.