Kaltxì, ma frapo.
A very belated Mipa Zìsìt Lefpom. Nìrangal oe tsirvun pivlltxe san fìzìsit sngolä’i nìltsan sìk, slä ke tsängun. At least there’s room for things to get better as the year progresses.
Kezemplltxe, I have a lot of comments and submissions to respond to, but the situation in Los Angeles right now is difficult, and my mind is on other things. I’ll get to the needed responses as soon as I can.
In the meantime, let me share a recent email discussion with you that I think you’ll find interesting.
A member of the lì’fyaolo’ wrote:
A question came up about pum:
Could pum ever be used without a narrowing descriptor attached? (We seem to have no examples of this.)
e.g., Is the following translation valid?
‘You have too many arrows? Give me one!’
Lu ngaru swizaw nìhawng srak? (?)Tìng oer pumit!
Or, is the sentence Tìng oer pumit ungrammatical because pum has no narrowing descriptor like an adjective or clause or genitive along with it?
My response:
Your analysis of pum, in that it requires a narrowing descriptor (I like that terminology!), is correct. That’s the only thing we’ve seen so far, and I’d like to keep it that way.
So I would not consider Tìng oer pumit grammatical. But there’s a simple way out of this:
When you’re saying “Give me one,” it really is one, not two or three or twenty. If it were, “Give me five,” for example, what would that be?
Lu ngaru swizaw nìhawng srak? Tìng oer pumit amrr!
That’s fine, since pumit has the descriptor amrr.
So ‘Give me one’ would be:
Tìng oer pumit a’aw!
That being said, some related things came to mind.
First, when you say “Give me one,” what are you really saying? It’s “Give me one OF THEM,” i.e., give me one of the things you have or that we’ve been talking about.
Some languages make “of them” in this context obligatory. Take French and Italian, for example. (I’ll switch from “arrow” to “book” for familiarity.) For “You have too many books. Give me five.”:
FRENCH: Tu as trop de livres. Donne-m’en cinq.
ITALIAN: Hai troppi libri. Dammene cinque.
Here, en in French and ne in Italian are obligatory particles, often classified as pronouns, that mean “of them.”
But other languages don’t require this.
SPANISH: Tienes demasiados libros. Dame cinco.
GERMAN: Du hast zu viele Bücher. Gib mir fünf.
You could specify “of them” in these languages by adding “de ellos” (Sp.) and “davon” (Ger.), but it’s not obligatory.
I’d like Na’vi to have the non-obligatory “of them” option. That would be sawta (from aysa’u + ta) for non-animates, fota (ayfo + ta) for people. So, for example:
Lu ngaru ’eveng apukap, slä smon oer fota pum amrr nì’aw.
‘You have six children, but I only know five of them.’
Note that without fota, the sentence could conceivably be ambiguous. Perhaps you’re saying you’ve only known five kids in your entire experience, not necessarily the kids of the person you’re speaking to! Adding fota rules out that admittedly unlikely interpretation.
Another thing: “Give me one!” made me consider a different use of “one,” as in “You have a house and I have one too.”
Should we use pum here? *Lu ngaru kelku ulte lu oer pum kop?
That violates the “narrowing descriptor” rule, and this time you can’t save it with a’aw, because you’re not talking about one as opposed to more than one. So I would rule that ungrammatical. How to translate the sentence, then? Probably just:
Lu ngaru kelku, ulte oeru nìteng.
Another hapxìtu lì’fyaolo’ä responded:
The only complication is that the genitive is sometimes used in this partitive sense, adding questions for me for the {sawta} and {fota} uses.
Na’viyä luyu hapxì.
‘You are part of the Na’vi.’
Tsu’teyìl tolìng oer mawlit smarä.
Tsu’tey gave me a half of the prey.
So, you’ve used both genitives and {ta} for a partitive. How would you say, “send five of the warriors” (out of a larger group) vs. just “send five warriors?”
My response:
Good point about the genitive option. I actually considered it myself. The reason I went with the ta forms is because of the ambiguity of genitives like feyä:
Lu ayngaru pxaya tsamsiyu. Fpe’ ayoer __?__ pumit amrr.
‘You have many warriors. Send us five of them.’
The genitive form here would be feyä. But that looks like a possessive adjective, i.e. ‘their,’ with a resulting meaning something like, ‘Send us their five ones,’ which doesn’t make sense in this context. Fota doesn’t run into that problem.
But the examples you’ve pointed out with the genitive aren’t wrong. There are two related ways to form partitives, which are sometimes but not always interchangeable:
1a. Na’viyä luyu hapxì.
1b. Na’vita luyu hapxì.
2a. Tsu’teyìl tolìng oer mawlit smarä.
2b. Tsu’teyìl tolìng oer mawlit smarta.
The a and b forms are acceptable in both cases. I’ll have to consider whether there are rules for preferring one over the other; right now I can’t think of any. But sawta and fota should be used with pum.
Hayalovay.
Mipa ayseomùmìri irayo nìdan!
Frapori nìsìlpey fpom ye’rìn ’ivul.
In the past I have often used «-(ì)ri» to express this kind of meaning, for example «fori smon oer pùm amrr nìaw» or «Tsu’teyìl tolìng oer mawlti smarìri». Is this usage also acceptable?
Kaltxì ma karyu anawm ulte mipa zìsìt lefpom!
For the longest time I believed “pum” to refer to a specifically different instance of the noun referred to, like in the “the evil skypeople left, the good ones remain” example. But finally that all was cleared up recently and now we know even more about pum!
Irayo nìtxan for this new grammar you gave us!
(though I have to admit, I kind of liked the idea of a word, referring to a aforementioned noun while stating that I was clearly not talking about the same or at least perhaps same instance but rather specifically NOT about the same instance hrh)
Eywa ngahu
– Talisì
Belated happy new year to you as well!
This is very helpful information, thank you for providing it.
Belated happy new year ma Pawl. It’s always a pleasure to have new posts from you.
I hope everyone is safe and good on your side and you can get your mind off of the bad things happening as soon as possible.
As a French native speaker, this was really easy to understand thanks to your example in French. Thank you very much.
Kaltxì ma Karyu Pawl,
Ngaru livu mipa zìsìt lefpom! Oe sìlpey tsnì txepìl apxa soaiat sì kelkut ngeyä ‘ivawnìm.
Faysäomum eltur tìtxen si ulte lesar si nìtxan. Tsayuri irayo. 🙂
Irayo nìtxan, ma Vawmataw. Oeyä txantsawtsrayri ayawne tìfkeytokìl lefkrr fkot keftxo ‘eykefu nìtxan. Slä ayoe emrayey.
Irayo ma Pawl!
How would one express the concept of “some of” or in Na’vi? For example, “We have many problems and some of them matter a lot”? Also, how would you say “I have an arrow and you have five” in Na’vi? Would pum amrr work? 🤔
Oh, I figured this following point is related. When translating the song Forever Young by Alphaville, somehow this one almost literal translation rhymes and keeps the rhythms:
Some are like water, some are like the heat
Some are a melody and some are the beat
Fko a na pay, fko a na tìsom
Fko a na lawr, fko a na ‘ekong
The only thing keeping it from being perfect is a word for “some” 😁
Kaltxì, ma Karyu Pawl,
Postìri ngeyä irayo nìtxan. Ngaru livu fpom frakrr. Melì’uri alu sawta sì fota, lu oeru tìpawm a’a’aw kop mungwrr pum a Txonpayìl polawm.
How does one say “one of these problems” in Na’vi ? For example, “You need to solve one of these problems.(the word ‘problems’ is mentioned first time)” Can we say :
“Nga kin tìkezin sivi sawta tìngäzìkur a’aw”(I don’t know how to add ‘these’ in it. ) or
”Nga kin tìkezin sivi faysìngäzìkta pumur a’aw”(It might be an immature idea.) or “Faysìngäzìkìri nga kin tìkezin sivi pumur a’aw”(Use topical.)
Ma Karyu,
Firstly, may you and those you care for weather the fires safely! I wish the best to everyone affected.
Secondly, thank you for the clarity of this post. I’ve been avoiding using pum except in very limited circumstances for the past 12 years because my grasp on it was… so-so, no matter who explained it to me. Therefore, this was quite helpful!
Alyara
I’m glad you found the information about pum useful, Alyara.
As for the fires, we’re fortunate in that our little hilly enclave in northeast Los Angeles is stable, and aside from the amazing debris caused by the hurricane-force winds on Tuesday, and the awful air (now a lot better), we haven’t been directly affected. We’re hoping it’ll stay that way, but there are no guarantees. Next week the winds are expected to pick up again, which is troubling.
Good friends of ours who live(d) in Altadena, right in the center of one of the hardest-hit areas, haven’t been so lucky. They lost their beautiful home. We had been there often; it’s eerie to think it’s no more. At least they got out in time.
We have a go-bag ready by the door if the situation changes and we have to evacuate. Our main concern, of course, is our cats, Palu and Lukan. Their carriers are at the ready, but they hate ‘em, associating them with trips to the vet . . . and they’re very observant. So it may take some trickery if we need to get them into their traveling accommodations pronto.
This kind of situation really concentrates your thinking. What do we throw into the car as indispensable and irreplaceable? What is replaceable, or of secondary importance, that can be sacrificed? Lots of decisions.
L.A. is reeling, and the devastation is heartbreaking. I think it’s been driven home to all of us how impermanent everything we take for granted really is, and how in an instant your whole world can turn upside down.
Ayngeyä sìpawmìri sì aysäplltxeviri akosman irayo nìtxan, ma smuk.
I appreciate all your comments and questions, my friends. I’ll get to the substantive ones about pum as soon as possible. For right now, I’ll just respond to a couple of the comments on the Los Angeles fires.
Bottom line: We’ve been very fortunate so far and haven’t been directly affected by the devastating conflagrations. We’re just hoping our luck won’t run out.
Futa nga zeio omun nìprrte’. Ngaru sì soaiaru ngeyä Eywa lrrtok sivi.
Sorry, I misspelled the word, it should be “omum”.😅
Belated happy new year to you as well, and thank you so much for posting this useful information, especially when I see what is going on in LA.
I hope you and everyone around there are safe, and I wish the best for you and everyone afftected!
Late to the game … but thank you for this clarification and solution to the ‘of them’ issue.
Don’t worry about not responding to people right away. I think we are all aware of the situation. Stay safe! Makto zong!