#“we work very closely with Frommer but sometimes mistakes happen” is all you gotta say and we get it man we get it. it happens

[nattikay]

ok, I mentioned in tags the other day that I had something else that I wanted to address about Josh Izzo's Omaticon panel but wanted to wait until I had a chance to rewatch the recording (missed several chunks of it when it was live due to technical difficulties on my end) to make sure I had the full proper context. Now that I've done that, here it is:

Mako asked Izzo about how much he consulted Paul Frommer (creator of the Na'vi language) for the games, comics, etc. Izzo responded that he does so very frequently and that all the Na'vi language stuff in official media goes through Frommer to be checked first.

Now, to be clear, I do believe him when he says this. I can 100% believe that he talks to Frommer frequently and that Frommer checks everything. If this weren't the case, the Na'vi we get in AFoP, for example, would be far far far worse than it is (side-eyes old Activist Survival Guide).

However....

Mistakes can still happen. Typos can still happen. Even if Frommer approves an initial name or word or sentence, someone down the line could still mishear it or misspell it (either by transcribing it incorrectly or simply making a typo) etc.

The character "Eetu", for example. The pronunciation of this character's name in the game is perfectly valid in Na'vi, but the spelling doesn't match: it should be Itu. I'm completely willing to believe that Frommer heard the name pronounced "Itu" and said "yeah that works", but I highly highly highly doubt that he saw it written down as e-e-t-u when he approved it because that just does not fit with how Na'vi spelling works.

Same with "P'asuk", I don't doubt for a second that Frommer could've been asked "hey, we want to name this character 'berry', how do you say that?" and responded "sure, that word is Pasuk!" but I just cannot buy that he'd have seen it written down with the unnecessary (and invalid!) tìftang and said "yup that's fine". I'm sorry, I just don't believe that; it doesn't make sense.

And then of course, there's things that are inconsistently misspelled: for example, AFoP usually spells "Zeswa" correctly, but there are a few places in the Hunter's Guide where it's incorrectly spelled "Zes'wa", which is phonetically invalid per Na'vi syllable structure.

Now, I'm not saying this to hate on the team who put AFoP together. I very much enjoy AFoP and the majority of the Na'vi language stuff in it is very good. But mistakes happen. And these are mistakes.

Which brings us to my issue with Izzo's panel: when he noticed some people in the chat bringing up these small typos and errors, instead of acknowledging that "hey yeah, people might have made a few typos, we do our best to avoid it but mistakes happen sometimes", he........basically doubled down on them, insisting that Frommer approved everything and handwaving any inconsistencies as "meh it's just a conlang, there's a wiggle room".

which.......I'm sorry, Mr. Izzo, as someone who both studies and teaches the Na'vi language that is a major L take.

He shared an example story from the first movie, where Zoe Saldaña accidentally mispronounced a word (pähem) and the mispronunciation wound up getting canonized as a synonym (pate).

Here's the problem, though: pähem was not the only word that got mispronounced the first movie. There are tons of mispronunciations to varying levels of severity. But pate is the only one that got canonized as a new word (idk why they decided to do that for this one particular word but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ). At one point Jake says "analu" when he should've said "ngari" but you won't find that in any dictionaries.

It's a kinda fun story that the word pate stems from a mispronunciation, but it's not the norm. 99% of the time, when an actor flubs a word, it's just that: a flub. A mistake. And that's ok, because mistakes happen. But it's a mistake nonetheless. And that applies to typos and misspellings too.

The High Ground Vol 1 consistently misspells skxawng—one of the most well-known Na'vi words outside of the language community—as skwang, but you ain't gonna be seeing "skwang" show up in any Na'vi dictionaries any time soon.

Yes, it's true that Na'vi is a conlang and that it's actively growing and evolving. But hand-waving away very obvious mistakes as "oh it's a conlang it's flexible" was...not good.

Josh Izzo seems like a nice guy who really loves the fans and I understand that he wanted to emphasize how much effort they put into getting things right and that they do consult with Frommer etc—and that's all fine and good!

But, it seems very clear to me that Izzo himself simply does not know all that much about the Na'vi language or how it works. Which is fine of course, understanding the language is not his job; he can (and does) talk to Frommer for that. But if he did know more about the language and how it works himself, I don't think he'd be doubling down to validate these very clear mistakes.