Ma eylan,
Tse, Vospxìvolaw polähem sneyä tì’i’aro, ulte leiu oe txen. 🙂
(If you don’t know the reference, try this.)
We haven’t had any new vocabulary in a long time, so here are a couple dozen words I hope you’ll find useful. They’re taken from, or inspired by, the large backlog of submissions I have from the LEP committee. Seysonìltsan, ma smuk!
In no particular order:
keve’o (n., ke.VE.’o) ‘chaos, disorder’
This is from ke + ve’o ‘order.’
Ngeyä aysäfpìlmì tse’änga oel keve’ot nì’aw.
‘In your thinking, I see only chaos.’
lekve’o (adj., lek.VE.’o) ‘chaotic’
Lam oeru kifkey lekve’o.
‘The world seems chaotic to me.’
vurtu (n., VUR.tu) ‘fictional character’
Txon Kihote lu vurtu nì’aw; ke fkeytolok kawkrr.
Don Quixote is a fictional character; he never existed.
tstunlan (adj., TSTUN.lan) ‘kind-hearted’
From tstunwi ‘kind’ + txe’lan ‘heart.’ It’s the opposite of kawnglan ‘bad-hearted, malicious.’
kalintu (n., ka.LIN.tu) ‘sweet person’
Lu nga kalintu nìngay.
‘You’re really a sweet person.’
Kalintu can be used as an endearing form of address, as in ma kalintu, but it’s not as intimate or affectionate as paskalin.
txeym (adj.) ‘interested’
As an adjective, txeym is used with ’efu. So we now have two ways to say we’re interested in something:
Oeri tsavur eltur tìtxen si.
Tsavurìri oe ’efu txeym.
‘I’m interested in that story.’
Txeym, however, yields the noun for ‘interest’:
tìtxeym (n., tì.TXEYM) ‘interest’
Feyä vurìri lolu txana tìtxeym.
‘There was great interest in their story.’
tengralì’u (n., TENG.ra.lì.’u) ‘synonym’
This is clearly derived from teng ‘same’ + ral ‘meaning’ + lì’u ‘word.’
Melì’u alu pxel sì na lu tengralì’u.
‘The two words pxel and na are synonyms.’
wäralì’u (n., WÄ.ra.lì.’u) ‘antonym’
Recall that wä means ‘opposing.’
zal (n.) ‘clay, usually for pottery’
Fkol fìfnetsngalit txula ta zal.
‘This kind of cup is made of clay.’
let’eylan (adj., let.’EY.lan) ‘friendly’ ofp
tì’eylanga’ (adj., tì.’EY.la.nga’) ‘friendly’ nfp
Ayhapxìtu soaiä ngeyä lu oeru let’eylan nìwotx.
‘Your family members are all friendly to me.’
Ngeyä aylì’uri atì’eylanga’ seiyi irayo.
‘Thank you for your friendly words.’
hasa’ (n. ha.SA’) ‘orphan’
Krrka tsam slängu pxaya ’eveng hasa’.
‘During war, sad to say, many children become orphans.’
yehaw (adj., YE.haw) ‘well-rested, having had enough sleep’
As you recall, ye is an adjective meaning ‘content’ or ‘satiated.’ The second syllable, of course, comes from hahaw ‘sleep.’
Lam frakem letsunslu krra fko ’efu yehaw.
‘Everything seems possible when one is well-rested.’
tseovi (n., TSE.o.vi) ‘work of art’
Fìfkxile lu tseovi alor.
‘This necklace is a beautiful work of art.’
tìnitram (n., tì.nit.RAM) ‘happiness’
We now have three words that refer to happiness: fpom, lawnol, and tìnitram. Although there is overlap, they’re all slightly different in meaning. Fpom refers to the general feeling or situation of peace and well-being in your life. Lawnol is the most intense of the three—a transcendent feeling of joy. Tìnitram usually refers to the happiness resulting from a particular situation or event.
Note the two equivalent grammatical constructions:
Oe ’efu nitram.
Lu oer(u) tìnitram.
‘I feel happy.’
okupsyu (n., O.kup.syu) ‘dairy product’
Clearly from okup ‘milk’ + syuve ‘food.’
stxang (n.) ‘axe, hatchet, tomahawk’
There was some discussion about whether the Na’vi traditionally use axe-like tools, but it seems plausible that they do, since these are natural tools for chopping down trees and other vegetation.
tìwätenga’ (adj., tì.wä.TE.nga’) ‘controversial’ nfp
Recall the word tìwäte, meaning ‘argument’ or ‘dispute.’
Fìpukmì a aysäfpìl lu tìwätenga’ nìtxan.
‘The ideas in this book are very controversial.’
velun (n., ve.LUN) ‘logic’
This is a compound of ve’o ‘order’ + lun ‘reason.’
Ngeyä tìhawlìri ke längu kea velun.
‘I’m sorry to say there’s no logic in your plan.’
säpxor (n., sä.PXOR) ‘explosion’
Stìmawm säpxorit! Tul!
‘(I) just heard an explosion! Run!’
txikx (vtr.) ‘chew’
säkeynven (n., sä.keyn.VEN) ‘step’
This word is colloquially pronounced skeynven and often written that way informally.
Rawng tsaslärä ftu fìtsenge lu vola skeynven nì’aw.
‘The entrance to the cave is only eight steps from here.’
kawlo (adv., KAW.lo) ‘not once’
This is a contraction of ke ‘not’ + ’awlo ‘one time.’
Oel keng kawlo ke solar kea räptulì’fyat ngahu!
‘I have never even once used vulgar language with you!’
That’s it for now. If you see any typos or other goofs, please let me know!
Hayalovay!
Pxaya lì’uri amip irayo nìmun ma Pawl! 😁 Hopefully I can put all my thoughts in one reply.
I could not find any discrepancies in syllable stress after putting the new words into a dictionary format!
Seeing tìnitram, I wonder if there’s a non-people adjective based off of nitram in Na’vi. So far, I used leftxozä (celebratory) as “happy” not for people.
I see that tìtxeym doesn’t appear to be countable from the one example sentence, so I guess that säsulìn (hobby) serves the purpose of a countable interest.
Anyway, here’s some minor formatting stuff:
ke.VE’.o -> ke.VE.’o
lek.VE’-o -> lek.VE.’o
TENG.ra.lì.u -> TENG.ra.lì.’u
WÄ.ra.lì.u -> WÄ.ra.lì.’u
tì.EY.la.nga’ -> tì.’EY.la.nga’
First of all, thanks for the typo corrections. I notice I’ve sometimes been inconsistent in syllabification when the tìftang occurs between vowels, as evidenced by certain dictionary entries. I’ll fix those errors when I notice them.
The nfp form of ‘happy’ would be tìnitramnga’ (n., tì.nit.RAM.nga’) (pronounced colloquially as tìnitranga’). For example, tìlen atìnitramnga’, ‘happy event.’ But I also like your use of leftxozä.
The countable version of ‘interest’ would be tìtxeymtsim (n., tì.TXEYM.tsim), where as you recall, tsim means ‘source,’ so ‘a source of interest.’ For example, Lu oeru pxaya tìtxeymtsim. ‘I have a lot of interests.’
Thanks for inspiring these new lexical items!
This is such a conincident, I wanted to suggest “tìtxeymtsim” in the LEP because I thought it would be useful to have 😀 Melì’uri amip irayo!
Irayo nìtxan ma Pawl!
Aylì’uri irayo nìtxan!
Pxekeyeytsyìp a tsoleri oel:
aysafpìlmì -> aysäfpìlmì
tsavuri -> tsavurìri
vuri -> vurìri
Irayo nìtxan!
Kxì ma Karyu!
I was wondering when we would hear from you again because if I remember correctly, you still wanted to post the video of your presentation. Will that be added to the next post? 🙂
I love the new words, one typo in an example sentence: “Ngeyä aysafpìlmì tse’änga oel keve’ot nì’aw.” -> aysäfpìlmì
Also one question about the topical: In two example sentences you change “vur” to “vuri” for the topical. I would have expected “vurìri” (as it ends in a consonant). Can the topical ending be shortened to just -i if the noun ends in an -r? Or was that a mistake?
Lastly, I don’t know if this has already reached you since “säkeynven” actually had been proposed twice in the LEP and the more recent proposal was a bit more elaborate (and also proposed more words based on skeynven for Sawtute measurements), but could “s(ä)keynven” be used as “meter”? Given that Na’vi steps are longer than humans, a skeynven might actually be about a meter long.
Eywa ngahu nìfrakrr!
ta Tekre
We were just going over the new words in a small vocab session and found another typo in the example for tìwätenga’: Fipukmì -> Fìpukmì 🙂
Yup. Thank you!
Posting the video: Coming right up! 😊
Thanks for the typo catches, and also for *vuri. That was an error on my part . . . although I’m thinking it may have occurred naturally, since I suspect that in colloquial conversation, vurìri would in fact often become vuri. It’s rather like the English word “probably” becoming “probly” in conversation, which seems quite parallel. Nevertheless, we should probably keep the full spelling in writing unless we specifically want to indicate exactly how someone is talking.
I’d rather not use säkeynven for ‘meter.’ ‘Meter’ is scientific and precise, while ‘step’ varies from person to person. I think this is a reasonable place for a borrowed item–probably either meter or metro. (The former is English and German, the latter Spanish and Italian.) Any preference? 😊
Given that the Na’vi mostly came in contact with English, I assume that “meter” (or “miter”/”mitrr”?) is the most likely one to be borrowed into Na’vi 😀
Or mìtrr / metrr
I have to admit that I’m a little confused about the exact circumstances under which such borrowings from Terran languages are supposed to occur (not to mention the linguistic situation on Earth / among humans at the time of Avatar), but if you’re taking suggestions, then I’d like to note that the word in question comes from Greek by way of Latin and in that light could be rendered as «metron» or «metrùm» respectively in Na’vi (for greater neutrality as it were). Another consideration would be that this word is most often used with a numeral or other word of quantity, which in these European languages usually means that it will take a plural form (as in “three meters” or “several meters”) whereas in Na’vi the analogous construction would typically use the noun without redundant number marking, so that perhaps Na’vi speakers would tend to “mistakenly” borrow the plural form as the uninflected root (which incidentally would give us «metra» in the case of both Greek and Latin).
With all that being said, my first inclination would have been to use something like «mitrr» based on the actual pronunciation in (American) English as that seems to be the main language used by humans on Pandora (and some of the Linnaean names of Pandoran life forms make me skeptical about the Greek and Latin skills of RDA scientists hrh).
On other thought, since it comes to units of measure, do Na’vi measure? Or rather, do they do it in the same way? What would be their idea of measure and then interpretation of how and what would they borrow?
Irayo seiyi fìtxan nang! Lesar sayi faylì’u nìwotx.
Irayo, ma Neytiri!
Irayo nìtxan ma Karyu Pawl!
I hope you are doing well.
Is säkeynven meant as the pure physical step like the example you gave makes it look like or would it be also used for a “step”, like in a procedure?
Is there some meaning or rule to why words that incorporate “lì’u” shift between keeping the stress on and like in “lì’u” and sometimes placing it on other parts?
In today’s new words they shifted away from “lì’u”, but other times like in ftxulì’u, räptulì’u and lì’ukìng they stayed with it. Just wondering.
Nìmun, irayo ulte Eywa ngahu
ta Maksìl alu Talis
Irayo, ma Maksìl!
I think the progression from a physical step to a metaphorical one is quite natural. So yes, säkeynven could be used as a step in a procedure. Good observation.
You’re right that stress in lì’u words is inconsistent. I’m afraid there’s no rule; the correct stress simply has to be learned for each item.
Ma nawma Karyu,
I think there is a typo here:
**Feyä vuri lolu txana tìtxeym.**
*‘There was great interest in their story.’*
I should be:
**Feyä vurìri lolu txana tìtxeym.**
**‘There was great interest in their story.’*
So, **”vur + -ìri = vurìri”** instead of **”vuri”** 🙂
Nìvingkap, tìkangkemìri valmrrängìn oe nìfkrr a oeykta, furia ftia lìfyat, tskxekeng si tsaru tìk’ìn tafral oeru nängän nìkeftxo…
Thanks for pointing out the typos.
Furia vrrìn oe tslam, ma ‘eylan. Slä ngari txe’lan mawey livu. Ngal sla’tsu a fìtìfkeytok tsan’ayul.
Does kawlo cause verb negation?
Yes, it does. For example, Oe kawlo ke kolä tsatsengne. ‘I have never once gone there.’