Neytiriyä Waytelem   Neytiri’s Songcord

Ma eylan ayawne,

I imagine that everyone reading this post has now seen “Uniltìrantokx: Fya’o Payä” at least once. 🙂 From what I can tell, the reaction of the lì’fyaolo’ has been overwhelmingly positive. Although the amount of Na’vi heard in UFP is somewhat limited, there’s still a lot there for us to discuss. So in this final post of 2022, let’s begin.

The major innovation, needless to say, is the Reef Na’vi (RN) dialect that’s heard briefly in the film. From the comments in the last post, I gathered that people wanted some time to discover as many aspects of the dialect as they could on their own, which is why I haven’t said much (or anything?) about it yet. I’ll remedy that situation after the first of the year. For now, though, let me just mention that those of you who identified a “sh” sound in RN are correct! That sound, of course, doesn’t exist in the Forest Na’vi (FN) that we’re familiar with.

The correspondence is simply that sy in FN is pronounced “sh” in RN. So, for example, syaw ‘call’ sounds like shaw, and syeha ‘breath’ sounds like sheha. This is a very common and natural sound change. It’s why English words like “sugar” and “sure” are pronounced with the “sh” sound, and why in some dialects, “assume” is pronounced “ashoom.” (Question: How would tsyal be pronounced in RN? 🙂 )

It’s likely the word you heard with the sh sound in RN was syawm, pronounced “shawm.”

syawm (vtr.) ‘know’

Syawm exists in FN as a synonym for omum, but it’s rarely used. The situation in RN is the reverse: although the reef people understand omum (keep in mind that the two dialects are mutually comprehensible!), they’re much more likely to say syawm themselves.

There’s a lot more to say about RN, which we’ll get to soon. Right now, though, let me give you the official lyrics to Neytiri’s Songcord, which has received glowing reviews. (Simon and Zoe did a beautiful job, didn’t they!) This is going to come as something of an anticlimax, since a number of you (irayo, ma Tekre!) were able to transcribe 99 percent of it accurately. Seysonìltsan! The problem was in line 15 (see below), where there was a new vocabulary item you couldn’t be expected to know:

huta (adj., HU.ta) ‘unexpected (usually for positive outcomes)’

This word is related semantically to the verb hek ‘be curious, odd, strange, unexpected’ but is generally for positive outcomes, similar to how the adverb ti’a is used. So ‘an unexpected birth’ that you’re happy about would be tì’ongokx ahuta.

A few words about the language style of this Waytelem. You’ll have noticed that Zoe pronounces some of the words a bit differently from what we’re used to in spoken FN. There are several possible reasons for this. One is that the language used may, in places, be more ancient than current FN. Another is that singers in many language traditions will modify certain sounds—most often, vowels—to make them more “singable.” You’ll hear that in some of Zoe’s vowels. You’ll also notice that the glottal stop is largely missing—that’s another change that makes for smoother singing. Finally, the strongly trilled pseudovowel rr is pronounced more like ur.

Let me leave you with another question. Can you identify any syntactic differences in these song lyrics that distinguish them from what you’d expect in ordinary spoken FN?

And with that . . .

MIPA ZÌSÌT LEFPOM, MA FRAPO!!!

ta Pawl

Neytiriyä Waytelem   Neytiri’s Songcord

Verse 1:

  1. Lie si oe Neteyamur,                       I experience Neteyam,
  2. Nawma Sa’nokur mìfa oeyä.       (And) Great Mother, within me.
  3. Atanti ngal molunge,                      You brought light,
  4. Mipa tìreyti, mipa ’itanti.             New life, a new son.
  5. Lawnol a mì te’lan.                          Joy within my heart.
  6. Lawnol a mì te’lan.                          Joy within my heart.

Chorus:

  1. Ngaru irayo seiyi ayoe                   We thank you
  2. Tonìri tìreyä,                                      For the nights of (our) life,
  3. Ngaru irayo seiyi ayoe                   We thank you
  4. Srrìri tìreyä,                                       For the days of (our) life,
  5. Ma Eywa, ma Eywa.                      Oh Eywa, oh Eywa.

Verse 2:

  1. Zola’u nìprrte’, ma Kiri.              Welcome, Kiri.
  2. Ngati oel munge soaiane.            I bring you to the family.
  3. Lie si oe atanur,                               I experience the light,
  4. Pähem parul, tì’ongokx ahuta. A miracle arrives, an unexpected birth.
  5. Lawnol a mì te’lan.                        Joy within my heart.
  6. Lawnol a mì te’lan.                        Joy within my heart.

Chorus repeats

Edit 30 Dec.: tireyä –> tìreyä (2X)  Irayo, ma Vawmataw!
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28 Responses to Neytiriyä Waytelem   Neytiri’s Songcord

  1. Tìtstewan says:

    Txantsan nìtxan ulte seiyi irayo!!
    I was thinking about the lyrics of that beautiful and great song just a couple of hours ago.

  2. Eana Unil says:

    Mipa postìri waytelemìrisì Neytiriyä irayo seiyi nìtxan ngaru ma KP!
    No wonder no one understood that one word in the 2nd verse, it’s a new one 😀 It makes sense now, hrhn

    • Eana Unil says:

      ‘ä’, ngaytxoa, räptum ke nolew livu oe. Kezemplltxe sìlpey tsnì ngaru ayyawnturusì ngeyä kosmana ftxozä lefpom lilvu ulte mipa zìsìt lefpom lìyevu!

      • Eana Unil says:

        I should probably shouldn’t let my excitement get the best of me and think before I hit “send”, hrh. Maybe in RN “tsy” would be pronounced like “j” in English, as in jungle?
        syawm, “shawm”, sounded like [ʐ] to me, more so than [ʂ] – which one would be correct (IPA)?
        So “tsy” could be [ʃ] or [ʒ] maybe, but I’m just a complete layman in that area, hrh.

  3. Andi says:

    Fìlì’uri iryo seiyi ngaru ma Pawl.

    • Andi says:

      First when i saw the movie, I was surprised, because I could understand about 90% off all spoken and sung Na’vi.
      This is what I want to learn during the last 10+ years.

      Fì’uri irayo seyi ayngar oe nìtxan.
      I really hope that in the future films more Na’vi will be used (maybe in Special releases on Blue Ray or others).

      Mipa zìsìt amip ulte “Mipa zìsìtìri ultxa siveyi ko!” Andita.

  4. Alìmtsi says:

    Txantsan! Mipa Zìsìt Lefpom, ma Karyu Pawl!
    Hmmm… “tsyal” I would expect to become “chal” if the pattern holds, since “sh” is IPA[ʃ] and “ch” is IPA[tʃ]

  5. elongater says:

    It’s just an assumption about tsyal in RN:
    If syal would sound like shal, it might sound like chal in singular. I assume that it is probably [tʃ] based on that sy is [ʃ] but, maybe, it’s another.

  6. Vawmataw says:

    Kaltxì ma Karyu Pawl,

    Ngaru soaiarusì mipa zìsìt lefpom! Sìlpey oe tsnì liyevu zìsìt amip to pum aspuwin sìltsan sì leNa’vi. 😉

    > How would tsyal be pronounced in RN?
    jal or chal, with some preference for chal.

    > Can you identify any syntactic differences in these song lyrics that distinguish them from what you’d expect in ordinary spoken FN?
    – mìfa oeyä instead of mìfa oe
    – The topical that seems to come at the end of the sentence (line 10), but it seems more like poetic style than new syntax.

    Nivìngkap, you wrote tireyä instead of tìreyä 🙂

    One question about the dialectal synonyms (like syawm/omum and val/kawl): what makes a word more used in a dialect than in another one? (It must be a similar story to the French dialects and accents though hrh)

    Hayalovay!

  7. Wllìm says:

    Huta fìlì’uri alu huta irayo! Ulte mipa zìsìt lefpom, ma frahapxìtu lì’fyaolo’ä!

    (I initially tried posting a longer comment, but I’m getting an error message: “Not Acceptable! An appropriate representation of the requested resource could not be found on this server. This error was generated by Mod_Security.” Any idea if I’m doing something wrong?)

  8. Mesyokx Tìlatemä says:

    Mipa zìsìt lefpom kop ngaru, ma Karyu Pawl!

    YES I WAS RIGHT about the palatalization of /s/ in Sea Dialect! Small question here, there are a few different “sh sounds” in IPA. The one we have in English (and what I heard in the film) is /ʃ/, so syeha could become [ʃɛ.ha]. However, another possible sound shift is to /ɕ/ so [ɕɛ.ha]? Which one should we be using? Likewise for tsyal [tsjal] –> [tʃal] ~ [tɕal]. I’m a big fan of alveopalatal sibilants so I’m hoping for the latter–but that’s more trouble on the actors to say them right.

    For the record I saw this coming as soon as I knew that “Jake” is Na’vified as “Tsyeyk” in Na’vi, and it’s exciting to see it confirmed.

    Lì’fyafnelìri txampayä srefereiey nìprrte’!

  9. Neytiri says:

    So’ha! Meingyentsimur fko tìkezin soleiyi! Set tseiun oe tsaway sivi nìprrte’ ‘iteru fte srung sivi fte hivahaw.

    Agreeing with others who say tsy is pronounced as a kind of tsh. If sy is not voiced, tsy wouldn’t be either, tì’efumì oeyä. Otherwise we’d see zh and dzh or j. Looking forward to learning more about the lì’fyafnel wionä!

    • Mesyokx Tìlatemä says:

      Yeah that checks out with the established rule of “Jake” becoming “Tsyeyk” — the voicedness is lost, and in RN, /tsy/ becomes [tʃ] or even [tɕ]. English speakers would hear either of those as “ch”.

  10. Pawl says:

    Ayngeyä faysäplltxeviri akosman seiyi oe irayo! And forgive me if I don’t respond to everyone individually right now—I’m working on several projects and the deadlines are coming up fast. But I just wanted to say I’m delighted to see some very astute linguistic analysis from the community! I’ll wait a bit longer before I answer the questions I posed so that everyone who wants to weigh in can do so, but the answers won’t be surprising.

    What will be surprising, I think, is some of the details of the RN dialect—and let me hasten to add: you won’t be able to pick most of them up from the limited amount of data in the film. I’m planning to talk about the differences in two posts—first one about the phonetics and phonology, second about the morphology, syntax, and lexicon. Stay tuned!

    Mipa zìsìtìl zamivunge ayut asìltsan nì’aw awngaru nìwotx.

  11. Tobi says:

    Kaltxì ma Pawl, ulte postìri sì lì’uri amip irayo nìtxan seiyi ngaru! That line now makes a lot more sense, hrh.

    Speaking of the new word, the question came to my mind whether ‘huta’ is somehow etymologically related to ‘hek’, given the close semantical relation (and maybe also the same onset). I’ve always been curious about etymology and language change (not only, but especially concerning Na’vi, hrh), and I’m excited to learn more about RN and its phonology next year!

    Mipa zìsìt lefpom ngaru nìteng, ma Pawl!

    ta Tobi (from the German Lerngruppe)

  12. Eclipse says:

    Irayo ma Pawl!
    I’m surprised by the “te’lan”. I don’t speak Na’vi yet so there may be a rule I missed, but in the song, since it’s singular, shouldn’t it be “txe’lan” instead? I thought it said “hearts” because of this.

    • Pawl says:

      Your confusion is understandable! This is a tricky part of Na’vi grammar.

      When certain adpositions come before the noun–i.e., when they’re prepositions–the “lenition” rule kicks in. is the prime example of this. Under lenition, certain initial consonants change to different ones. In particular, tx –> t. So you would think that “in the heart (singular)” would be *mì txe’lan, but in fact it’s mì te’lan.

      As you noted, because of the “short plurals,” mì te’lan can also mean “in the hearts.” The phrase is ambiguous, but in most cases you can determine which meaning is meant through context, and it shouldn’t cause a problem. (No one seems to mind that “deer,” “sheep,” and “fish” in English are both singular and plural. 😊 ) If you want to be certain to get the plural meaning across, however, you can avoid the short plural and use ay-: mì ayte’lan OR ayte’lanmì. (Ay- triggers lenition as well.)

      Siva ko, ma tsmuk!

      • Eclipse says:

        Irayo!
        I knew about the lenition in plural with ay+, but I didn’t know it also occured with other words. I guess I still have much to discover about Na’vi!

  13. Tekre says:

    Kaltxì ma Karyu anawm!

    I know I am very late to answer this post, but i always forgot to comment on it hrh
    I was very happy to see that the one problematic line indeed did have a new word – I think you would have had a lot of fun reading through our desperate discussions trying to make sense of that line. From “plausible, just a bit off” to “this theory makes zero sense, but better than nothing” everything was there, we really came up with a lot of different ideas what that line could be!

    One thing I noticed in the pronunciation that hasn’t been talked about is her pronunciation of “ngaru” in the chorus. I guess that is one of the modified vowels you mentioned, as it sounds clearly like “ngaro” to me. I wondered – was that planned/done on purpose to create a rhyme withing the line “ngArO irAyO”? I’ve been singing the song a lot myself, and while I understand a lot of the vowel shifts for ease of singing, doing the u sound there wasn’t a problem for me, so the rhyme is the only way I could explain that one to myself, especially since she sings the u very clearly at other places.

    I hope you two have a lot of fun on your cruise! Enjoy the free time 😀

    Eywa ngahu,
    ta Tekre

  14. Megan says:

    Irayo! Do we know what other things might go into a songchord? This shows us births, obviously, and adoption, but what else?

  15. sarfi says:

    I love that you translated it i am a huge fan. But i think the translation of Ma eywa makes more sense if it says MOTHER EYWA bcz they consider eywa as mother nature.

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