Kaltxì, ma smuk.
I considered beginning this post with:
Tswìlmayon oe ftu Wasyìngton ne kelku. Tewti! Mepunìri oe ’efu ngeyn nìngay!
But I’m not sure old-time American vaudeville humor translates culturally into Na’vi. 😉
John and I did indeed just get back from the east coast, however, after attending AvatarMeet 2013 in Na’rìng Syenentoayä (the Forest of Shenandoah, i.e. Shenandoah National Park in Virginia) followed by a couple of days playing tourists in Washington. (The Air and Space Museum is enthralling!)
And an excellent meet-up it was. We had about two dozen attendees, including five from across the Atlantic. Jon Landau made a virtual appearance just before the showing of the extended version of Avatar, which received a very enthusiastic response, and LEI (Lightstorm Entertainment Inc.) contributed refreshments and funded the use of the room. I taught two Na’vi classes—an informal 101 refresher held at the campsite, with all of us sitting in a semi-circle on the grass (and with the occasional interruptions of close-by yerik ’Rrtayä that stole the show), followed the next day by a “hi-tech” 102 class indoors, complete with PowerPoint and a virtual whiteboard. Mikko and Peter set up the technology perfectly, and Alan recorded it all for posterity. Both kinds of classes had merit, I think, so I’ll keep that in mind for the future.
A highlight of the meet-up was the hike on Sunday to Dark Hollow Falls, a beautiful spot deep in the forest. We had five tute aean along, who scampered across streams and struck poses on rocks. As you might suspect, there were many encounters between the Na’vi and the startled Sawtute who had never before met them up close and personal. I can’t wait to see the pictures.
All in all, it was a wonderful meet-up. Irayo to Mikko, Alan, Peter, DJ Makto, and everyone else who had a hand in making it a success. Irayo for the thoughtful and generous gifts presented to John and me. And of course, irayo to everyone who came. For those who couldn’t make it this time, nìsìlpey alo ahay.
And now a bit of vocabulary, some of which was inspired by the tsawlultxa:
srä (n.) ‘cloth: a piece of cloth woven on a loom’
A srä is created by warp and weft weaving.
Furia txula tsalewti lu srä sìltsan to fngap.Tìng mikyun
‘For constructing that cover, woven cloth is better than metal.’
srok (n.) ‘bead (decorative)’
’En si oe, lora tsafkxileri apxayopin solar Tsenul srokit avozam.Tìng mikyun
‘I would guess that Tsenu used a thousand (lit. 512) beads for that beautiful multi-colored bib necklace.’
pxayopin (adj., PXAY.o.pin) ‘colorful, multi-colored, variegated’
Finally, ‘chocolate’ and ‘pineapple’ both came up for discussion. Since the Na’vi only encountered these food items through contact with the Sawtute, it’s natural that in talking about them they would borrow the English terms, filtered through the Na’vi sound system. So:
tsyoklìt (n., TSYOK.lìt) ‘chocolate’
paynäpll (n., PAY.nä.pll) ‘pineapple’
It’s interesting to speculate whether these terms would evoke associations among the Na’vi, consciously or unconsciously, with common words in their language. For example, tsyoklìt sounds a bit like tsyokx ‘hand’ + litx ‘sharp (as a blade).’ And paynäpll might bring to mind pay ‘water, liquid’ + nän ‘decrease’ + plltxe ‘speech.’ Chocolate as a sharp hand? Pineapple as liquid that decreases speech? If nothing else, these might be the source of Na’vi puns and wordplay.
Hayalovay, ma eylan.
Edit 3 Aug.: Syenendoayä –> Syenentoayä. Irayo, ma Tìtstewan!
Irayo nìtxan nìfrakrr, ma Karyu. Srew oe nìso’ha. 🙂
Photos courtesy of Ftiafpi: http://forum.learnnavi.org/avatarmeet-2013/avatarmeet-2013-pictures/
Lu tsayrel kosman nìwotx! Irayo, ma Alyara Arati.
Thanks for posting that. Hopefully other people will post their various picture galleries in there, too.
ayNa’vi «fascination» fa paynäpl ro ultxa lamu eltur tìtxen si 😉
Irayo, ma Karyu Pawl for all we learned at the meetup, and the good times we all had there. Your presence always makes these events special. You were among us nearly every time we were together. Doing the Na’vi lessons on the grass was something that I will never forget. (and this was attracting attention from other campers around us!) Although being in a park did create some interesting challenges at times, this is the way an Avatar meetup was meant to be conducted, and I am sure will be conducted in the future.
Srä and srok are terms that were (IMHO) long overdue and will see wide usage. Tsyoklìt will put an end to months of debate and speculation that took places on the pages of the Lexical Expansion project. Irayo nìtxan!
‘llngo oeyä stum zoslu. Oe tsun tivìran stum zo set!
Thanks, Tim, for the very kind words. It was a real pleasure for me to see you and the other members of the lì’fayolo’ (or should I say, more inclusively, Uniltìrantokxolo’) and be with you for the meet-up. And I agree: the “class on the grass” was a lot of fun, and perhaps was more conducive to people trying out their Na’vi unselfconsciously than the traditional indoor classroom situation the next day. As I said, I think both kinds of classes have value, and I’m going to keep that in mind for future meet-ups.
Furia ’llngo ngeÿa zoslu, ’efu oe nitram nì’aw.
Wonderful to hear that you had a great time with the group. And what a group it must have been. 🙂
The lessons and activities sound great! Can’t wait to see the recordings of the 102 🙂
Melì’uri amip mllte hu tsmukan alu ’Eylan Ayfalulukanä nìwotx. Srefoleiey nìprrte’ nìtxan 😉
The two loan words also pose the question about our already existing loan words like puk, pätsì, kunsìp (or kun and sìp on their own), ’eyt, nayn and the like whether they don’t already have an ascribed value/meaning in Na’vi. As you often said, not every possible sound combination actually exists in a language but those seem so simple and straightforward that it would be quite a ‘waste’ to asign them just for the meaning of a loan word 😉 if you get my meaning.
Mengari alu Tsan sì nga tolätxaw nìprrte’. 😀 Pxoeng nìsìlpey tsäpìyeve’a fìtsap ye’rìn nìmun.
Thanks, Plumps. You’re absolutely right. It’s possible, even likely, that some of these borrowed terms–i.e., English words borrowed and filtered through Na’vi phonology–already exist as common, bona fide words in Na’vi with unrelated meanings. So, for example, if the word nayn turns up at some point with a meaning unrelated to “nine” in English, I hope no one will be upset. It’s perfectly natural for a language to have homonyms (like right=not left and right=not wrong in English).
Moe sìlpey nìteng tsnì pxoeng tsäpìyeve’a fìtsap ye’rìn nìmun.
It’s great to hear that you had a wonderful time there! And Irayo for these new words!
I’m wondering about pineapple – paynäpll… I mean, the whole world use ‘ananas’, but only in English speaking countries/regions use the word ‘pineapple’…
You’re right: pineapple is indeed a “minority” word. The thing is, though, according to the movie the Na’vi have only encountered English as the language of the Sky People. So if they’re going to borrow a word from the Tawtute language, it will be from English. I realize this smacks of linguistic chauvinism–English is no more worthy of borrowing than any other language–but I think it’s true to the situation on Pandora.
Ma Karyu Pawl. Thank you very much for joining us at the meetup. It was wonderful to see you and John again. Sarah enjoyed meeting you immensely and would love to chat about Latin or Japanese with you again. Hope you aren’t too tired from the trip.
The community is hard at work digesting all of the pictures and video taken during the week. Hopefully you will be seeing many of those soon. I’ll make sure you get copied on each of them.
Thank you for the new words. I hadn’t considered how the Na’vi must view loan words. Very interesting. I expect there is a lot of fun phrases one could make using mixed Na’vi and Tawtute words. I also agree with tsmuk Plumps that there is definitely no reason to “waste” any good word shapes if the ‘Rrta word was created first.
Anyway, back to work for me. Hopefully we can all see each other next year. Hayalovay ma’ eylan.
It was great to see you again and to meet Sarah, ma Ftiafpi. I keep telling people whenever I can that one of the most unexpected and welcome consequences of my involvement with Avatar has been getting to know people in the Community and making wonderful new friends.
I’ve checked out the pics you posted on learnnavi.org. Kosman leiu nìwotx! 🙂
Irayo ma Karyu. I’m glad you liked the pictures. Hopefully many more will be posted soon by people with much better cameras than mine.
If you would like, once everyone has their pictures up, I can send you an email with the full list as I imagine they will be spread out over Facebook, Learn Navi, and Tree of Souls or Avatar Nation.
Sarah was very happy she got to meet you and really enjoyed chatting with you about Na’vi, Japanese, Latin, and languages in general. Hopefully she and I can be at another meetup, soon.
Kìyevame ma ‘eylan sì karyu, ulte tsun nga san kaltxì sìk pivlltxe Tsyonur* fpi oe. 🙂
*John. For some reason that phase feels very inelegant but that may just be the fault of my English teachers. 😛
Aylì’urì amìp oe irayo seiyi ngaru.
Thanks for the new words!
Nìprrte’, ma ’eylan a’ewan. 🙂 Furia sunu ngar faylì’u, ’efu oe nitram.
I just found a typo:
In Na’rìng Syenendoayä the d should be replaced by t, I think. (Na’vi hasn’t a d ;-))
’Ä’!!! Irayo, ma Tìtstewan. (It’s funny how easily these things can slip by.) Fixt. 🙂