Ma eylan,
Fìzìsìtìri, mawl a’awve solew, mawl amuve polähem.
To quote the beautiful song written by Sandy Denny and memorably sung by Judy Collins, who knows where the time goes?
In any event, July has arrived, and many of us are hoping the second half of 2025 will be better than the first. On that hopeful note, then, here are some new words to mark the occasion. The majority of these came directly from my backlog of submissions from the LEP Committee or were inspired by their suggestions.
ketengsyon (n., KE.teng.syon) ‘variety, diversity’
This is clearly a compound of keteng ‘different’ + syon ‘characteristic.’
leketengsyon (adj., le.KE.teng.syon) ‘diverse, various’
Plltxe Sawtute fa aylì’fya leketengsyon.
‘Humans speak diverse (OR: a variety of) languages.’
tengwotx (adj., TENG.wotx) ‘uniform, non-diverse’
From teng ‘same’ + nìwotx ‘completely, all’ where the nì– prefix has dropped.
tìtengwotx (n., tì.TENG.wotx) ‘uniformity’
Nawnumtsengä aynumeyuri ley ayngaru tìtengwotx, ayoeru ketengsyon.
‘Regarding university students, you value uniformity, we value diversity.’
nawnumtseng (n., naw.NUM.tseng) ’university’
From nawm ’great, noble’ + numtseng ‘school.’ Notice that the -nm- combination has evolved simply to n.
kxapay (n., KXA.pay) ‘spit, saliva’
This is literally ‘mouth water.’
kxapay si (vin.) ‘salivate’
Note that this does not mean to spit deliberately. That would be:
kxapaytsre’ (vin., KXA.pay.tsre’, inf. 3,3) ‘spit’
This is from kxapay + tsre’i ‘throw.’
Fwa kxapaytsre’ lu txavä’.
‘Spitting is disgusting.’
zäfizal (n., ZÄ.fi.zal) ‘fired clay, ceramic material’
From zäfi ‘processed, cooked’ + zal ‘clay.’
Zal by itself can refer either to clay in its natural state or to baked clay; zäfizal is exclusively the latter.
Fìtsngalit fkol txula ta zäfizal.
‘This is a ceramic cup. OR This cup is made of fired clay/ceramic material.’
ketstun (adj., ke.TSTUN) ‘unkind, emotionally cold’
Here tstunwi ‘kind’ has contracted simply to tstun.
A proverbial expression:
Tute aketstun slivu ’eylan ke tsun.
’An unkind person cannot be a friend.’
tìktstun (n., tìk.TSTUN) ‘unkindness, emotional coldness’
spxintu (n. SPXIN.tu) ‘sick or ill person’
Längu zama spxintu mì sray oeyä.
‘I’m sorry to say there are sixty-four sick people in my village.’
räzekx (n., RÄ.zekx) ‘curse’
tìng räzekx (vin.) ‘to curse’
Räzekx is the opposite of syawn ‘blessing.’ Tìng räzekx is a strong way of wishing someone ill.
Oe ngaru tìng räzekx, ma kalweyaveng!
‘I curse you, (OR: Damn you!), you SOB.’
rayl (adj.) ‘feeling pity and sorrow for someone’s misfortune’
Pori sa’nok tìmerkup; ’efu oe rayl.
’His mother just died; I feel bad for him.’
To end on a positive note:
lornusrr (adj., LOR.nu.srr) ‘radiant’
From lor ‘beautiful’ + nrr ‘glow,’ in the active participle form with <us>.
Eyweveng lu lornusrr.
‘Pandora is radiant.’
Hayalovay, ma eylan!
Kaltxì ma nawma Karyu anawm,
mipa aylì’uri irayo seiyi oe ngaru.
Sìlpey oe tsnì ngaru fpom livu sì lìyevu.
A great start to the second half of 2025!
Kìyevame ulte Eywa ngahu
ta Talisì
Two more small corrections or additions perhaps:
Räzekx is the opposite of syawn ‘bless.’ -> should probably be “blessing”, I think, as syawn is the noun?
tìktstun (n., tìk.TSTUN) ‘unkindness, coldness’ -> “emotional coldness” to fit the given wording for ketstun and to disambiguate it.
Eywa ngahu
ta Talisì
Fixed. Thanks!
Irayo, ma tsmuk! Ngaru nìteng.
Aylì’uri amip irayo nìtxan!
Mekeyeytsyìp tsoleri:
Shouldn’t
Oel ngaru tìng räzekx (…)
be
Oe ngaru tìng räzekx (…)
?
And Vospìkin -> Vospxìkin?
I hope the summer weather is kinder at your place, Central Europe currently is way too hot to be productive in any way, hrh.
See? Mekeyeytsyìpit, of course, haha!
«Vospìkin» is actually the usual form of the word “except in very careful speech”.
Ah, my bad – TIL, irayo!
Kea tìkin!
Yup!
Irayo, ma E.U. And yes, you’re right about “OE ngaru tìng räzekx,” since it’s vin. Good catch. As for Vospìkin, see Zángtsuva’s comment.
We’ve heard about the summer heat in Central (and now maybe Western too?) Europe. It was bad on the east coast of the USA as well. Here in coastal Southern California it’s been delightful–perfect temperatures. That’s not the case in the desert communities like Palm Springs, however. where it was something like 44 degrees Centigrade recently.
How about shortening to räzekx ngaru in faster speech?
Yes, I think that would be natural. You could even shorten it further to “Räzekx ngar!”
Faylì’uri lesar irayo, ma Pawl, ulte fpom livu awngaru fte tsivun nivìn mipa Uliltìrantokxä relit arusikx ro sì’i’a fìmawlä.
Tìkenongìri lì’uä alu leketengsyon, srake fko tsun pivlltxe lì’fyat? Fpolìl oel futa zene fkol sivar fyalì’ut lì’fyayä fu lì’ut alu fa.
Oeru tĩprrte’, ma tsmuk. Ulte spaw oet, oe sko oe new tsarelit arusikx nivìn niteng! 🙂
Ngey säplltxeviri amuve . . . oeru txoa livu if I switch to English here. Your comnent clarified something for me, so thank you for that. The thing about plltxe is that it can, as you know, be both intransitive and transitive. The transitive use–that is, where it takes a patient or object, is less common but possible, as in Poltxe pol paylì’ut? ‘What did she say?’ (Literally, ‘What words did she say?’) But the question is, what types of things can be the object of plltxe when it’s used transitively? They might include languages, as in English, where we say, “He speaks French.” But it seems more in the spirit of Na’vi to restrict the object of plltxe to words: you speak words; you use a language. So I’ve revised the example to Plltxe Sawtute fa aylì’fya leketengsyon. Irayo nìmun!
This comment confirms what I thought for years, so I’m happy to read it. However, one question: How strict is the “only lì’u as a direct object for plltxe” rule?
I’m asking because recently I’ve been teaching Na’vi immersion classes, where I talk about Na’vi grammar in Na’vi, and I’ve been using “plltxe lì’kongit” (for describing stress – since there is not word for it I’ve described a stressed syllable as a “syllable that one says a bit stronger”) and “plltxe lì’ukìngit”. Could those two also work? Could one also “plltxe” a “lì’uvi”, and a “pam” (when refering to speech sounds)?
The rule about the object of transitive plltxe is that it should be either lì’u itself or a derivative that contains lì’u. So lì’ukong, lì’uvi, fyalì’u etc. are all possible as objects of plltxe. Pam, however, is not.
Is «lì’ukong» supposed to be «lì’ukìng» or «lì’kong» (or is it a new word)?
Tsoleri oel geyeychìpti alahe:
«KXA.pay. sre’» -> «KXA.pay.tsre’»
Aylìuri amip irayo!
Furia tsoleri ngal tsageyeychipti irayo! 🙂
Irayo nìtxan! According to Fwew, we’re just 21 words away from 3,000 dictionary entries!
I noticed the definition of rayl says “feeling of pity or sorrow” like it’s a noun, but the part of speech is an adjective. Should it be “feeling pity or sorrow”?
Does ketstun only apply to people or can it apply to actions, too?
Speaking of adjectives for people or not, when compiling a list of such distinctions, I realized that “smart” has kanu (ofp) and sìlronsom (nfp), but “dumb” just has snumìna (I think it’s ofp). Does they have have different antonyms?
The only word for “weak” is meyp, and it seems to be the antonym of txur (strong), txantxur (physcially powerful, ofp), tìtxurnga’ (physically powerful, nfp), even txanatan (bright/vivid).
Speaking of antonyms, I thought a few times about having an antonym for vrrtep (demon).
Fra’uri oe fpìl 😁
Well, when I’m asked about the size of the Na’vi lexicon, I’ve lately been throwing out the 3,000 item figure, so I’m glad we’re actually there! ‘Ivong nìk’ong, kefyak? 🙂
Yes, rayl is an adjective, so I’ll delete “of” in the definition. Thanks.
Let me get back to you soon about the other questions . . .
Irayo nìmun! Ngeyä tì’eyngìri oe peiey!
Good question about the scope of ketstun! Since tstunwi ‘kind’ is ofp, with a parallel form tìtstunwinga’ that’s nfp, the same distinction applies to ketstun. Ketstun is ofp; the nfp form is tìktstunga’. I’ll include this information in a future post, since it might get lost in the comments. Irayo!
As for your other ofp/nfp questions, let me think about those! I think there may be some new vocabulary here. 🙂
Kaltxì ma Karyu Pawl ulte vospxìkin lefpom!
I just noticed that we already have the word hiup, what is the difference between that and kxapaytsre’?
Irayo ulte hayalovay!
Oe zìma’u fte tenga tìpawmit pivawm!
I suspect they are mostly synonymous, but I can’t imagine that the hiupwopx (cloud spitter; plant that ‘spits’ clouds of seeds) could ever have been kxapaytsre’wopx instead. So maybe hiup is more general and has overlap with other words like tsä’.
Good point about hiupwopx–that wouldn’t work at all with kxapaytsre’! See my response to Vawmataw.
Ma Vawmataw, ma Neytiri–tìpawm atxantsan! I should have explained that clearly. The difference between hiup and kxapaytsre’ is that hiup can be both transitive (vtr.) and intransitive (vin.), while kxapaytsre’ is exclusively vin. So we can say, for example, “Ngal tsautumautit holiup pelun?” “Why did you spit out that banana fruit?” Historically, the transitive sense of hiup was probably original–expelling anything at all from your mouth–while kxapaytsre’ was used in the special case of expelling saliva. But since hiup is a lot easier to say, it also developed the sense of expelling saliva when no object was mentioned.
Txantsan, tsuktslam nìwotx. Irayo!
Is that okay to say “palukantsyìp lu layon hu heyr aneyn” to imply “a cat is black with lighter-on-color chest”? Specifically about using “hu” here and not running into issues such as “there is a cat and a chest floating around”.
I, personally, can “parse” this case just fine, but I’ve seen before how the minds of others suddenly separate chest of cat from cat itself.