Ma eylan,
Zìskrrmipaw Lefpom ulte Zìskrrtsawn Lefpom! Happy Spring and, for those in the Southern Hemisphere, Happy Fall! (Also Happy Now Ruz, the Persian New Year!)
I’ve owed you a post for a long time, but for now just a quick one to let you know a couple of things:
First, as some of you are aware, this weekend is Conlang Adventure.
It should be interesting and fun. And registration is free. As you see, I’m one of the speakers. But I’ll be speaking to an audience that doesn’t know much about Na’vi. For members of the lĩ’fyaolo’, I’m afraid there won’t be anything new in my talk. So unless you really want to hear me say the same things you’ve heard me say many times before, please feel free to skip my presentation. 🙂
HOWEVER, several members of our community will be speaking about Na’vi as well! These folks are Tekre, Stefan Mir-Mackiewicz, and Tsyili. I’m really looking forward to what they present! Check the schedule for when on Saturday they’ll be speaking.
And just a few new items related to the things I’ve been working on:
lare (vin., LA.re, inf. 1, 2) ‘be watchful, alert’
Lare is more general than nari si ‘be careful.’ You’d use nari si, for example, to tell someone to walk carefully over rough terrain so as not to trip. Lare implies staying alert and watchful, keenly aware of your surroundings, particularly in dangerous circumstances.
Tsun na’rìng lehrrap livu, ma ’eveng. Zene livare frakrr.
‘The forest can be dangerous, child. You need to be alert at all times.’
Here are some words for politely addressing older people. Although the words koaktu, koaktan, and koakte (‘old person,’ ‘old man,’ and ‘old woman’ respectively) do not have any negative connotations, there are variants that are especially polite and culturally significant, especially for direct address:
leiokoaktu (n., le.i.o.KO.ak.tu) ‘respected elder’
leiokoaktan (n., le.i.o.KO.ak.tan) ‘respected male elder’
leiokoakte (n., le.i.o.KO.ak.te) ‘respected female elder’
These words are compounds containing the component leioae ‘respect’ in condensed form.
Note that in normal conversation, these six-syllable words are usually shortened to five syllables: leyokoaktu, etc.
Ngengeyä hafyonìri irayo, ma leiokoakte.
‘Thank you for your wisdom, respected female elder.’
And finally,
keve’otu (n., ke.VE’.o.tu) ‘troublemaker, one who habitually creates chaos and disorder’
From keve’o ‘chaos.’
Aysäleymfe’it peyä yune rä’ä. Lu po keve’otu nì’aw.
‘Don’t listen to his complaints. He’s just a troublemaker.’
Hayalovay!
ETA: I forgot to mention something. A number of you have pointed out that the word Mangkwan, the name of the Ash People which has now appeared in numerous places, is not standard Na’vi, since kw is not a permitted consonant cluster. That’s correct. I’ll have more to say about this as we get closer to the premiere of Avatar: Fire and Ash.
Kaltxì ma Karyu Pawl,
best of luck to you and all other speakers in the Conlang Adventure and I hope all participants will have fun learning about not only Na’vi but some neat other Conlangs as well!
A quick question, is the syllable separation for keve’otu actually ke.VE’.o.tu? I know we got some words (e.g. rangal -> rang.al) that don’t follow it, but a quite common “rule” seems to be to start a syllable with a consonant if possible, so I expected it to be ke.VE.’o.tu instead.
Eywa ngau
– Talisì
Kaltxì ma Pawl! I’m looking forward to Conlang Adventure (and this post is a good reminder that I still need to register… HRH)
Talisì was faster than me, but I was also wondering about keve’o, especially since the syllables of ve’o are given in the corresponding November 2012 post as VE.’o.
And in general, there are some more words in the dictionary that are syllabified as V’.V instead of V.’V. Some examples: ‘I’.a, I’.en. (Many of these have only old sources, such as the ASG or old forum posts, where people were maybe not that careful with the exact stress/syllable markings.) Should we regard all of these as mistakes and correct them to V.’V? I can also prepare a list of these, if that would be helpful?
Kaltxì! Great new words here. I feel like *leio-* has the makings of a non-productive suffix that’ll get more uses in the future. And we finally have a way to say “be alert.” So’ha!
Also, I spotted an interesting typo:
lĩ’fyaolo
with a tilde where a grave accent should be. That is a typo, right? Or did you let something slip you possibly shouldn’t have? 😺
«lĩ’fyaolo’»
Is this a subtle way of introducing something new, or just a typo? 😀
Also, I’m interested to learn how a tribe has ended up with a name that is “not standard Na’vi”, considering what you have said before about the sociological nature of dialectal variation among the Na’vi.
Ma leiokoaktu,
Eywa ngahu.
Kaltxì ma Karyu Pawl,
Faylì’uri amip irayo ulte sìlpey oe tsnì ngaru pxeylanrusì limvu tsawlultxa a’o’.
I confirm that I will continue to use ma Karyu Pawl and not one of these new words. 😉
Hayalovay ulte zìskrrmipaw lefpom!
Kaltxì, ma Pawl. Oh, my…I so wish I could go to this conlang conference, certainly since I am in the midst of making my own called Skasti. I sent you an early rendering of the verbal template, a while ago, but I wager it got lost in your email. I hope you don’t mind if I leave a sample.
●xɑv̗əʍƨıʌ̖ɒxrw̗•wıʍ̗əʍcʋw̖ɒx•
Apùdestíkayò otèdemnóka.
“We made him put y’all to sleep.”
This is a shameless plug, but I’m proud of it.