Ma eylan,
Tse . . . kezemplltxe, txankrr oel ke tolok fìtsenget. I’ve been busy with things professional and personal that have kept me away, but I’m glad to be back in touch with you all, especially now that excitement is building for the advent of Txep sì Txeva. (See below!)
Before I get to the new vocabulary, let me mention a couple of things I’ve been doing, or will do soon, that I’d like to share with you.
First, a few days ago I attended a book-launching event for Jon Landau’s posthumous memoir, The Bigger Picture: My Blockbuster Life & Lessons Learned Along the Way.
It was a big gathering in a private section of an upscale Japanese restaurant here in Los Angeles, and very well attended. People spoke movingly about Jon, both in person and on video. James Cameron was there, along with Jon’s wife and sons. I had the chance to talk with some Avatar people I hadn’t seen in a while, including the composer Simon Franglen and the actor Joel David Moore, who of course played Norm Spellman. It was a wonderful and uplifting evening.
Also related to Avatar, I completed a little project that you might get a kick out of, once the Blu-ray disc of A3 becomes available. I’ll leave it at that for now. 😉
And for the third time, I’ll have the privilege of attending an Avatar opening. Fire and Ash premieres on Monday, December 1, here in Hollywood. I can’t wait!
OK, on to the new words and expressions. A few of these were LEP submissions—irayo nìfrakrr! And who knows—perhaps some of them might be useful to keep in mind as you’re watching A3. 🙂
txeva (n., TXE.va) ‘ash’
As you know, we already have the word txepìva meaning ‘ash (of a fire.)’ Txeva is a shortened form of the word known to all the clans but used especially by the Ash People.
And so, Avatar: Fire and Ash is, in Na’vi, Uniltìrantokx: Txep sì Txeva.
Speaking of the new clans you’ll encounter in A3, you’ve doubtless heard of the Mangkwan (Ash People) and the Tlalim (Windtraders). These names have already appeared in the media. I suspect you’ve noticed they do not obey the standard rules of Na’vi word formation. The explanation is that these spellings represent how the names are colloquially pronounced. Mangkwan “should be” Mangkuan, and Tlalim “should be” Tìlalim. But the forms in standard spelling have three syllables (Mang.ku.an, Tì.la.lim), while in colloquial pronunciation they only have two. If you’re composing a text in Na’vi and you want to include these clan names, you can choose between the nonstandard colloquial spellings or the standard ones—it’s up to you.
keri (adj., KE.ri) ‘fierce’
Keri can be used either for people (tsamsiyu akeri ‘fierce warrior’) or things (aylì’u akeri ‘fierce words’). As an example of this latter use, note this proverb in the form of a short poem:
Aylì’u akeri
Lekxu to tìtseri.
’Fierce words can be more harmful than you think.’
This has been shortened from the full form of the expression, Aylì’u akeri tsun lekxu livu nì’ul to tìtseri, which, while perhaps clearer, isn’t nearly as memorable. Recall the idiom to tìtseri ‘than is apparent, than you are aware of.’
lekxu (adj., le.KXU) ‘harmful’
fleyul (n., FLEY.ul) (RN: fleyùl) ‘falsehood, falsity’
The expected word for this concept, tìtsleng, is also possible:
tìtsleng (n., tì.TSLENG) ‘falsehood, falsity’
But fleyul is more commonly used.
Fleyul aylì’uä peyä law slolu frapor.
‘The falsity of his words became clear to everyone.’
Fleyulìl pot skola’a.
‘Falsehood destroyed her.’
palate (vin., pa.LA.te, inf. 2,3) ‘crumble, fall apart, disintegrate’
Tsanivi atxawnula nìfe’ hufwemì palolate.
‘That poorly constructed hammock fell apart in the wind.’
kxew (intj.) ‘expression of disappointment or frustration when things don’t go as planned’
This useful word is used like the English expressions Nuts! Darn! Damn!
Kxew! Oey tsko tsìlmawng!
‘Damn! My bow just broke into pieces!’
fpal (vtr.) ‘honor or fulfill a commitment or undertaking’
Oey fänut oel fpal frakrr.
‘I always keep my promises.’
Ngal kea tsonit ke fpal kawkrr!
‘You never fulfill your obligations!’
uturtu (n., u.TUR.tu) ‘refugee, person in need of uturu’
Zene awnga fayuturtur srung sivi.
‘We must help these refugees.’
kakzir (adj., kak.ZIR) ‘numb’
Compare this word to the other kak– words we’ve had relating to the lack of certain senses—kakrel ‘blind,’ kakpam ‘deaf,’ kakmokri ‘mute.’
Pori pxun kakzir latsu.
‘His arm must be/appears to be numb.’
Kakzir can also be used metaphorically to mean “emotionally numb,” as if your emotions were turned off just like physical numbness.
Teri kxitx peyä stawm a krr, oe kakzir slolu nìwotx.
‘When I heard about her death, I became completely numb.’
tìkakzir (n., tì.kak.ZIR) ‘numbness’
And finally,
ken (vin.) ‘behave assertively and with confidence’
As you know, this verb has a homonym, namely the adposition ken meaning ‘despite, in spite of.’ Since the two kens are totally different parts of speech, there shouldn’t be confusion as to which one is meant.
Eyktan asìltsan, ken ayskxe mì te’lan, zene kiven frakrr.
‘A good leader, despite the stones in his heart, must always behave confidently.’
And note the following idiom:
Kllkxem kiven!
‘Stand up straight!’
The implication here is: stand up straight and proud, projecting a feeling of confidence.
That’s it for now. Hayalovay, ma eylan!
ta P.
P.S.: Irayo nìtxan to all those who contributed suggestions for revising the resource list. I haven’t gotten to that yet, but I will, and I appreciate all of your submissions.
So many wonderful new words! I’ll be honest, I’m a bit disappointed that “Mangkwan” and “Tlalim” turned out to be colloquial forms and not part of a new dialect. There will be a new dialect in A3, right?
I like “palate”: why? Because palatalization has caused so many phonologies to crumble beyond recognition!
*rimshot*
Oh and a minor nit before I go:
tskoti > tsko (tsawng is intransitive)
Thanks for the correcting the booboo. And your rimshot was well earned. 🙂
Also, speaking of “palate” in English, another good set of homophones occurred to me to add to the ubiquitous “to, too, two”: palate, pallet, palette!
Ma Karyu Pawl,
Upon looking through an email you sent back in February I’ve come across an inconsistency.
“About Tlalim: That is indeed the spelling for the Wind Trader clan. This was discussed back in 2017. The Tlalim are originally from an area far from the Omatikayan homeland, **and their regional dialect allows a tl- onset**, which as you know is not permitted in Omatikayan or Reef Na’vi. The Omatikaya would pronounce the name as Tìlalim.”
(Emphasis mine.)
So is this colloquial form also specific to their dialect? Or have plans changed and the email is out of date?
Kxì mar karyu!
It’s surprising that these spellings are actually colloquial pronunciations in already known dialects, despite the syllable structures not being possible, and despite the earlier info we got being that Tlalim would be pronounced Tìlalim.. This indicates those syllable structures are possible at least in colloquial speach, which of course begs the question: What about other words with those patterns?
We do not have any words that have a kuV pattern, but we do have words that end in -ku. Would the sequence “prrku a …” colloquially be pronounced “prrkwa”?
We do have a lot of words starting with tìl- – would the colloquial pronunciation pattern of Tlalim also appear here? Does it only appear word initially, or could “somtìlor” colloquially be pronounced as “somtlor”? Or are both these patters restricted to the two clan names?
Irayo nìtxan!
ta Tekre
A different topic that came up when talking about this new post is the project for the blueray release. While I am of course very excited to see what that’s all about, I’m also a bit worried that we get another “Sign Language Situation”:
For the Sign language, a lot of new signs were released on the blueray, and nowhere else. Unfortunately, this extra content was only available on the (very expensive) special edition of the blueray, and only on the one sold in the US, putting this new language information behind an enormous paywall (it ended up being more than $100 for EU people due to shipping). This led to the community not even knowing about this new info for more than 2 years. And when someone mentioned that they think there is something there, it took another few weeks till someone was able to get their hands on it (Wllìm ordered it from the US, as no one else who was interested could afford it, and now we are sending the disk with the extra content around so others can at least see the original depiction of the signs and not just my bad immitations of them), meaning that only a few months ago the community finally found some language info from the movie that released 2022.
I understand that of course we live in capitalism and not everything can be freely available in the internet, but just so we are “prepared”: Do you know if that project of yours will be available on all blueray editions? Or will it be region locked / only be available on expensive special editions? Also, if you can say something about it (if not I understand): Will it contain new language info, or is it a project using only already available information?
As I said, I understand you might not be able to answer any of those questions, but I thought I’ll just go ahead and still ask, as it got a few of us worried.
Excellent questions. I’ll have to give this some thought. For the time being, let’s restrict the colloquial spellings to the two clan names. In fast, natural speech, however, I would imagine that pronunciations like “somtlor” and “prrkwa” would sometimes be heard.
That’s kinda exciting as it means we might be seeing language change in form of a change of the phonological rules in process right now – I imagine, if the “current generation” colloquially uses kwV and tlV syllable structures, in a few generations these might end up being valid syllable structures in standard Na’vi too 😀
Kaltxì ma Pawl!
Nìfrakrr aylì’uri amip irayo seiyi!
Wonderful new additions, I am always extra happy about new idioms and expressions.
Speaking of which, I was wondering about “kllkxem kiven” – I assume these are sequential verbs, but shouldn’t be used in both verbs then? Or is it that the original format was “kllkxivem kiven” and was just shortened to “kllkxem kiven” over time of being used idiomatically, so both words have two syllables only and they “flow” better?
Also, I am super excited about which new language info and lore we’ll discover once A3 is released. Tsari srefereiey nìprrte’ nìtxan!
*”but shouldn’t iv be used in both verbs then” – I used angle brackets, but I think your blog thought this was HTML and doesn’t display it, haha.
Or was it originally “kllkxem fte kiven”?
Thank you for addressing the clan names; it was admittedly something that was bothering me and I feel better about it now that we have an official explanation 🙂
Concerning “kakzir” and the other kak- words, does this “kak” prefix come from somewhere? Fì’uri newomum oe txankrr!
Fayseomùmìri amip irayo seii!
Since evidently all of the transcriptions in this post are of lì’fya na’rìnge, could you confirm whether these new words use «u» or «ù» in dialects that preserve the distinction such as lì’fya wione? I’m particularly wondering about «fleyul» since that has no obvious etymology to me. Is it related to «flel»? Is the second syllable related to anything we’ve seen before? Also, would it be «Mangkuan» or «Mangkùan»? (By the way, how are «Mangkwan» and «Tlalim» stressed?) Aside from those two, I would assume we have «utùrtu» and «lekxu» in accordance with the related words.
Also very interesting is «palate». Is this some kind of compound? If not, it would be our first trisyllabic verb root! But perhaps the first «a» is actually just an epenthetic vowel added in by those dialects that need it? 👀
I would be very grateful for clarity on the sociolinguistic implications of the term “standard Na’vi” because, well, who is standardizing anything mì yrra Eyweveng? I have to admit I find it a little surprising to see this term used like this after the beautiful deconstruction of it that you wrote when introducing lì’fya wione…
Ngari nìsìlpey mirvakto zong nìaw!
ta Zángtsuva
Oh, one more question: in the sentence with «ayskxe mì te’lan», has an «…a…» been omitted for the sake of poetic rhythm?
Kosman fwa stawm ngata nìmun, ma Pawl! ’eykefu oeti nitram. 🙂
Mipa aylì’uri irayo nìtxan!
Hì’ia kxeyeytsyìp: kakmokri ‘dumb’ => ‘mute’ 😉
Säwìntxuri Uniltìrantokxä apxeyve alu Txep sì Txeva, liyevu prrte’ ngaru.
“Dumb” is a synonym of mute, albeit a dated one. So it’s not an error per se.
Ayngeyä aysäplltxeviri seiyi oe irayo, ma eylan. Busy day today, but I’ll respond to them as soon as I can.
Faylì’uri lesar irayo!
Speaking of homomyms, ken being an adposition and a verb make keyken. KEY.ken is “despite a face” and key.KEN is “cause to behave assertively”
Also, we’ve been spelling the shortening of futa as f(u)ta this whole time. If Tlalim and Mangkwan are acceptable spellings, does that mean we can spell f(u)ta as fta just like “knot”?
Finally, is there a separate adverbial form of lekxu? While we’re on the subject, are there separate adverbial forms of lehrrap and lekye’ung?
Tolätxeiaw nìprrte’ ma Karyu Pawl!
Tsaylì’uri amip oe ‘efu nitram ulte ngaru irayo si!
Seems like a good day for sengralì’u and homonyms! Assuming fleyul and tìtsleng are synonyms. I also second Txonpay’s question about lekxu.
I also hope you’ll have a great time in the next few weeks and months, espexially with these projects and Avatar-related things.
Finally, I have an unrelated question about tsnì: I’m wondering what’s the reason you came up with tsnì rather than use other existing constructions in Na’vi.
Hayalovay!
Kaltxi ma Pawl, ulte aylì’uri amipirayo seiyi!
Regarding fleyul and tìtsleng, I was wondering if they would also cover the noun “lie (a specific instance of lying)”, or if they only cover the generic concept of falsehood/falsity?
Hayalovay ta Kälvìn
Tolätxaw nìprrte’! Nga poleng nì’it teri sìlen a tìreymì a tsari irayo seiyi, ma ‘eylan. Ulte kosmana aylì’uri amip irayo nìfrakrr.
Pxelì’u alu keri, fpal, sì fleyul nìpxi sunu oeru. Lu oeru tì’efu a pxesari oeyä memikyun layare. 😉 Heiek pum alu palate… Tsari pesim?
Yìt a oel so’ha fìrelit arusikx ke tsun oe sliva’tsu nìngay akum, fìtxan lu txanwawe. Ngane Txep sì Txeva zìyevawprrte’ nìwotx!
Kllkxem wivem.
Stand and fight.
Tolätxaw nìprrte’! 😀
As allways a great post! Regarding the clan names, I wonder which syllables are stressed in Tlalim / Tìlalim and Mangkwan / Mangkuan?
> Tìve’kì.
> Tìyawn ‘i’a. Tìyawnìl zärìp fkoti nì’ul ulte ‘eykefu lehoan nì’ul. Nì’ul kalin. Leykam kifkeyt hewne sì prrte’.
> Tìve’kìl tok pa’ot aketeng… Tìve’kì lu tsawa var sleykivu fkot sang aytono a fkeyä tìyawnìl holan reypayt. Tìve’kì lu tsawa var keykivä fkot ka fratìsraw sì fratìsnusäm. Tìve’kì lu nìtxan tswalnga’ to tìtseri. Tìve’kìl tìng fkoru tìtxurit, teswotìng fkor tswalit nuä swal. Krra fkey aysre’ snäpew fìtsap, ulte fkey sngem tsawng talun tsuktseria tìsti atxewluke, tìve’kìl tok fìtsengit fte fkot sleykivu txur nì’ul, kivärìp fkoti nuä aytew, sleykivu kakzir fkey mehinamti sì mepunti ulte teya sivi fkey ronsemur fa sanga yapay atun a frakrr zamunge ne atan to ne tìvawm.
> Tìyawn srak? Tìyawnìl sleyku fkoti meyp. Susyang. Kxäl. Sleyku futa fkol aylaheti mong. Tìyawn kavuk sayi fkor. Tìyawnìl nayekx fkot. Tìyawnìl sngayap fkoti ulte var sngivap. Tìve’kì ‘olongokx ta tìyawn fte vivar reykivey fkoti, krra tìyawnìl fkoti txolìng. Krra fko tsngerawvìk sì rerìkxi nì’awtu ro hllte fkey yäpurtsengä, ulte pay asom ‘oli’a txana krro aham, tìve’kì lu tsawa var sleykivu fkot sang. Tìve’kì lu tsawa var reykivey fkot. Tìve’kì lu tsawa yomtìng fkor krra fko var ‘ivefu ohakx talun lewng a za’u ta fwa fkol holan tìyawnit. Tìve’kì lu fra’u. Tìve’kì lu sngä’itseng. Tìve’kì lu tìtsyul. Tìve’kì lu tì’i’a. Tìve’kì lu kxam. Ulte tìve’kì lu tstal a tsafa fkol takuk zamungeyut tseyä.
> Tìve’kì lu tswalnga’ to meypa tìyawn a waweluke. Tìve’kì lu fkey le’awa Tìyawn Angay.
> Tìve’kì frakrr lu tswalnga’ to tìyawn. Talun tìve’kì lu nìtxan, nìtxan lefkeytongay. Tìyawn tsun livu kemwiä, tsun kawngsivar, slä tìve’kì kawkrr ke lu kemwiä, kawkrr ke kawngsar. Tìve’kìl fkoru tsweyka’ kifkeyti, tengkrr tìyawn ke tsun fìkem sivi nìftxan. Mì sìyawn fkol srefey ayut aketeng, tengkrr tìve’kìl ke’ut ke srefey.
*Mangkan: mi man, mi lu tìkan