Ma eylan,
Ayngeyä kosmana aysäplltxeviri a teri tsapostì oeyä, seiyi irayo nìtxan! I always look forward to the useful and thought-provoking comments I get from the lì’fyaolo’. Thanks to everyone who wrote!
I’ll get to all those comments as soon as I can (including the ones from November!). But for right now, let me address Eana Unil’s question about the Tìlalim song, since I had forgotten to include that in the post.
Only one line of the song made it into the final cut of the film, and as often happens, that line underwent several transformations until it reached the form we all heard in Txep sì Txeva.
Here’s the recording:
And here are the words:
Txong hufwesru ’ulte, ulte ’efu nitram tawka.
‘The ship glides in the wind, and (we) feel happy across the sky.’
As you see, there are some new lexical items here.
txong (n.) ‘Windtrader airship’
sru (adp.+) ‘through’
Sru and kxamlä both mean ‘through’ and can sometimes be used interchangeably. But sru has the special connotation of moving inside and through a continuous substance, whether it’s water, air, or gel. So regarding the proverbial expression na kenten mì kumpay, ‘like a fan lizard in gel,’ i.e., being in an environment where you’re prevented from doing what’s natural to you, we could simply say,
Ke tsun kenten tswivayon sru kumpay.
’A fan lizard can’t fly through gel.’
To help you further distinguish these two adpositions:
-
- Walking through the forest: better to use kxamlä. A forest is not a continuous substance.
- A ship sailing through the water: better to use kxamlä. The ship is on the surface of the water, not inside it.
- Swimming under water: better to use sru. You’re swimming inside and through a continuous substance.
- A knife cutting through butter: better to use sru.
- A yerik running through the grass: Debatable! Grass is not actually a continuous substance since it’s made up of individual stalks, but it can sometimes seem like an ocean. Either kxamlä or sru can be used here.
And finally:
’ulte (vin., ’ul.TE) ‘glide’
So there’s nice wordplay here with ’ulte followed by ulte.
Hayalovay!
Kaltxì nìmun ma Karyu Pawl,
Yay for new words! Interestingly it’s been many years (if not the first time in 16 years) since a new *leniting* adposition has appeared. That being said it’s a nice addition to the language.
I’m intrigued by the use of sru vs kxamlä. For instance, either word can be used with grass. Are there any other environments where it could apply? Also, I think the height of the grass (or any similar ground/sol) can guide the choice of the adposition. I would use sru more if it’s especially tall and it feels more like I’m “swimming” through it and if it’s shorter, kxamlä seems better (considering the example of the ship sailing through the water). That being said my theory is subject to my interpretation of the English language. hrh
Hayalovay!
Here’s a little bit of fun:
I don’t know if you remember those old Kool-Aid commercials where a giant sentient pitchers destroys the wall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n69H0JwsGI
Since it’s a continuous substance, but it’s solid unlike in the previous examples, do you think sru could still be used?
Irayo nìli!
Tìlalimä tìomum irayo nìtxan!
I wonder if the windtraders’ purpose could mean that Na’vi language has an idiom for hearing gossip equivalent to “thorugh the grapevine” 😁
I ran the homonym detector and it found nothing other than the two lenited ones I thought of:
Ulte (“and” and “glide (lenited)”)
Tong (“extinguish” and “Windtrader airship”)
By the way, what are the infix positions on ‘ulte? Are they the expected ‘.ult.e (1,2)?
Finally, my Metkayina brain asks if ‘ulte is an ù-word in reef or not 😁
Two more things:
My first sentence should have been Tìlalimä tìomumìri irayo nìtxan! (my mistake)
My detector found something else actually:
Tì’usulteri
[tì-‘(us)ul-teri] About increasing
[tì-‘(us)ulte-ri] Regarding gliding
I thought for convenience’ sake we decided that only the ù-words get a special mention, otherwise we can deduce that it’s u. 😉 Same with the infixes: if it’s not mentioned, it follows the known paradigm … I presume.
Until recently Karyu Pawl did provide an explicit note for new roots either way (for example he wrote that «nun» uses «u» in lì’fya wione). I think this practice should be encouraged so that we have a clear difference between “yes, this root uses «u» in LW” and “oops, I forgot to take LW into account”. For this same reason I intend to make and maintain a comprehensive list of «u» words in addition to the list of «ù» words already maintained by me and patmo, and pending clarification the new words «fleyul/fleyùl», «Mangkuan/Mangkùan» and «’ulte/’ùlte» as well as the infix «uy/ùy» shall be excluded from both of them.
ulte (lenitied ‘ulte) and ulte (conjunction) would not be homonyms though, right? The stress is different from what i understand… ULte vs. ‘ulTE
Yeah, the detector looks for spellings and doesn’t consider syllable stress (though I label which ones change and which ones don’t on my LN forum post) 🙂
Ah, so it’s a homograph detector? Was just wondering because you always speak about your homonym detector so I assumed that’s what it is 😀
Or homonym and homograph detector (long name). 😁 As it is, it’s the most complicated thing I ever built. It’s also designed to detect non-homograph homonyms like ayokka (across rememberances), ayyoka (across surfaces) and ayyokxka (across shields). They’re all spelled differently, but I’m certain they’re pronounced the same.
Actually, some past statements by Karyu Pawl would imply that whereas «ayokka» and «ayyoka» would be pronounced [ajˈoka], «ayyokxka» would be pronounced [ajˈokːa] with a longer «k» sound.
Wou! Two posts in three days. Evi yayom fìtxon!
So I listened to the song and… did they use an [ɹ] sound for Na’vi in nitram and sru? I’d guess this is a change to the sound for singability, but the dialect nut in me wonders if this is part of the Tlalim dialect.
In nitram, the /i/ sound became an ì, as though it were nìtram. I’m guessing this is also for singability but it could be a Tlalim thing.
Also, I think I heard two different u-sounds in ‘ulte and hufwesru / ulte? The former sounded fronted, closer to [ʉ] or even [ʏ] and the latter is the familiar old high back vowel. Am I tripping?
Yay for Windtrader information 🙂
Aysäomumìri amip irayo nìtxan, ma Pawl!
I think Germans speaking English with a heavy accent will have no problem memorizing sru 😀
Hrhn!
Ee, tewti! Irayo nìtxan nang ma Pawl! So’ha 😀
Also a completely unrelated question… Just last month new beginner groups have started in the German Study Group (“Deutsche Na’vi Lerngruppe”), and the group I am teaching is called Mimikyun. My students and I are curious to know on which syllable mimikyun would be stressed – any chance you would/could clarify its stress? 😀
‘ä’, in case it’s unclear, it’s a new tarnioang from the Frontiers of Pandora game, and is called Echo Stalker in English, Echoschreiter in German.
‘Sru’ is too close to the English word ‘through’, being English I have enough of the fellow natives here speaking badly. As a result I’m personally rejecting ‘sru’. It should be more of alien languages if you ask me, words like “mepa” or “tus”, or at least a different arrangement “rus”. I’m gonna use one of them, I think.
Isolated similarities like this are normal. There is an indigenous language in Australia for example, where the word for dog is… “dog”, virtually identical to the English one, and it’s nothing more than a coincidence, a false cognate.
Even between two unrelated languages — and Na’vi is by design utterly unrelated to any Earth language — this can and does happen. Nothing wrong with _sru_!
Kxì nìmun!
The things about kxamlä vs sru inspired me to think of all the canon lines with the word “through”. But we got stuck on two phrases:
Avatar (2009): “She must pass through the eye of Eywa and return”. Could be kxamlä, could be ìlä, could even be fa. Any comment?
Avatar: Fire and Ash: Varang sees bullet wounds and asks “What goes through?” We’re not sure if that’s kxamlä or sru.