Snewsyea Ftxozä Hälowinä—A Spooky Halloween

With a few more hours of Halloween left here in California, let me wish those of you who celebrate the holiday a fun and spooky experience:

Ayngari ftxozä Hälowinä livu ’o’ sì snewsye txantxewvay.Tìng mikyun
‘May your Halloween be as fun and spooky as possible.’

This requires some explanation. 🙂

First:

snewsye (adj., SNEW.sye) ‘weird, spooky’

This compound derives from:

snew (vtr.) ‘constrict, tighten’ + syeha ‘breath’

Ke tsun fko tspivang torukit fa fwa pewnti snew.Tìng mikyun
‘You can’t kill a great leonopteryx by constricting its throat.’
(Proverbial expression for a method that will not work.)

Oeri lu fìtseng snewsye nìhawng. Hivum ko.Tìng mikyun
‘This place is too spooky for me. Let’s get out of here.’

And two useful pairs of nouns and adverbs:

txantxew (n., txan.TXEW) ‘maximum’

hìmtxew (n., hìm.TXEW) ‘minimum’

txantxewvay (adv., txan.TXEW.vay) ‘maximally’

hìmtxewvay (adv., hìm.TXEW.vay) ‘minimally’

If you recall the word txew meaning ‘edge, brink, limit, border, end,’ you’ll get a sense of how these words were derived.

Importantly, txantxewvay is used in expressions equivalent to English ‘as (adj., adv.) as possible’:

Tìran nìfnu txantxewvay fteke ayyerikìl awngati stivawm.Tìng mikyun
‘Walk as quietly as possible so the hexapedes won’t hear us.’

Hayalovay, ma frapo.

Edit Nov. 1: ayyerik –> ayyerikìl

I also changed the word order in the proverb from torukit tspivang to tspivang torukit. The original was perfectly correct grammatically, but for stylistic reasons I found I preferred having the two ts-words closer together, and also torukit closer to pewnti. Na’vi lets you make those kinds of adjustments without worrying about changing the meaning.