Kaltxì, ma eylan!
As I’m writing this, it’s still January here in California, so perhaps it’s not out of the question to wish you all a very belated Mipa Zìsìt Lefpom. I wish I could say 2026 has gotten off to a great start, but for many reasons, that’s clearly not the case. Let’s hope things improve significantly on all levels as we move forward into the year.
I assume everyone has seen Uniltìrantokx: Txep sì Txeva by now so that I don’t have to say “spoiler alert” in talking about it. But just in case you haven’t yet seen it, you might want to postpone this post until you do.
As you’ve discovered, there’s not a lot of Na’vi in A3. We don’t hear Ash People speaking very much in the language, and when they do, there’s no new dialect to be examined. When I asked JC back in 2017 about the kind of language Varang would speak, he explained that she would sound like the Omatikaya, which makes sense given her history.
That being said, there is some Na’vi in A3 that I hope attracted your attention!
First, there’s Varang’s lines to the Ash warriors:
Kllkxem kiven! ’Ur fkivan tstew!
‘Stand up straight! Do not show fear!’
I discussed Kllkxem kiven in last November’s blog post, although at the time I didn’t mention it was actually a line from the movie. 🙂
As for ’Ur fkivan tstew, fkivan, as you know, is from fkan, which means something like “come to the senses as” and is used in a basic “middle voice” paradigm. We’ve had examples like:
Nikreri Riniyä ’ur fkan lor.
‘Rini’s hair looks beautiful.’
’Ur is a noun glossed as ‘sight, look, appearance.’ A literal but very clumsy English translation of ’Ur fkivan tstew! would be, “May your appearance come to the senses as brave!” A normal, idiomatic translation would simply be, “Look brave!”
There’s also Varang’s chanting:
Txep payalon, payalon txep!
‘The fire will burn!
Payalon, of course, is the future of palon [PA.lon] ‘burn (vin., not vtr.)’. What’s interesting here is that Varang put the stress on the first syllable: PA.ya.lon, not on the second one, pa.YA.lon, as would be expected. It occurred to me that this might be the result of a small dialectal difference between Forest and Ash Na’vi. As you know, in FN, verbs with infixes always retain stress on the originally stressed vowel of the root: PA.lon vs. pa.YA.lon, since the A in palon is stressed. But the rule might be different in AN: infixed forms keep the stress on the same syllable as the one that’s stressed in the root: PA.lon vs. PA.ya.lon. If there’s a need to develop AN in the future, I’ll consider that possibility.
The more extended piece of Na’vi was the Jake-Quaritch conversation. Jake mentions kame to Quaritch, who responds testily:
Lì’uti oel omum.
‘I know the word.’
Then Jake says:
Ha nume fte kivame! Täpare hu ’uo a ngato lu nawm—’uo a nawm frato mì sìrey.
‘Then learn to See! Connect to something greater than you—greater than anything you’ve ever known.’
I hope that was understandable when you watched the movie!
One question I asked myself when I was thinking about Quaritch’s terse response to Jake is whether omum is the best verb to use when you want to say you know a word. We’ve certainly had precedent for it, as in this sentence from a 2013 blog post:
Pol ke tslam stum ke’ut, omum lì’ut avol nì’aw.
‘He understands almost nothing and only knows eight words.’
So omum used in this sense is perfectly grammatical. But there’s another way to express the idea:
Tsalì’u smon oeru.
‘I’m acquainted with that word.’ OR ‘That word is familiar to me.’
As most of you know, many languages insist on this difference. In French, for example, ‘I know that word’ is Je connais ce mot, where the verb connais means ‘am acquainted with.’ Saying this with the verb for knowing a fact, *Je sais ce mot, is ungrammatical. (French speakers: Let me know if you don’t agree with that!) But in Na’vi, both forms are acceptable.
It occurred to me, however, that there might be a subtle difference between (1) Oel omum tsalì’ut and (2) Tsalì’u smon oer. (2) could merely state you’re familiar with the word, in the sense that you’ve heard it before, while (1) implies you have a deeper understanding of the word’s meaning.
In any event, Quaritch, with his developing but still imperfect Na’vi, would more likely know omum than smon, so I think his response was appropriate.
I have a lot of proposals from the LEP for new vocabulary to consider, which have been sitting and aging on my desk. I’ll get this post out now and then turn to those next. As I often have to say, thank you all so much for your patience.
Hayalovay!
ta P.
A couple of us just had a discussion about omum vs smon in regards to “knowing a language”, so this was a nice surprise. We couldn’t find any evidence of smon being used for things other than people and places, so it’s good to know that it works for lì’u at least.
Since both smon and omum work for lì’u, is that true for lì’fya as well, or would it be better to just say things like “tsun pivlltxe fa lì’fya leNa’vi” or “lì’fyari leNa’vi tok kxamyìt”?
Postìri irayo ulte mipa zìsìt lefpom!
I can imagine a three-way distinction, actually:
1) «oeru smon wionä na’viyä lì’fya a fa mesyokx» “I have heard of the reef na’vi sign language / know what it looks like / have a basic concept of what it is”
2) «oel omùm wionä na’viyä lì’fyati a fa mesyokx» “I know the vocabulary, grammar etc. of the reef na’vi sign language”
3) «oe tsùn pivängkxo fa wionä na’viyä lì’fya a fa mesyokx» “I am able to converse using the reef na’vi sign language”
because, as we know, merely having knowledge of a language is not sufficient for being able to use it to converse, which additionally requires practice, and in this case also functional humanoid arms.
And another question mìftxele: can we assume that all of the nuances about «omùm» discussed here apply equally to its synonym «syawm»?
Kaltxì ma Pawl!
Mipa zìsìt lefpom nìteng! 😀
I can’t say anything about French, but in Romanian, Eu cunosc cuvântul ăsta (Tsalì’u smon oer) vs. Eu știu cuvântul ăsta (Lì’uti oel omum) makes sense, at least for my ears and from what I know. The small difference is maybe when using it since the first one implies that one has heard that word once while the second one implies that one actually knows that word. But there is no clear border and both are ok depending on context.
Fìtìomumìri irayo nìtxan!
Tsarelìl arusikx wrrzolärìp txe’lanti sì eltut le’Ìnglìsì. Kintrro nìwotx tsaeltu ke tsun tìtxen sivi 😁
Great that we have official transcriptions of the Na’vi lines in Avatar: Fire and Ash! By the way, does the Tìlalim clan have a new dialect? If so, is info on it coming in a future post? Maybe with info on how Peylak’s nautical terms translate to Na’vi as well.
Finally, friendly reminder about replying to the comments on November’s post 🙂
Kaltxì, ma Karyu Pawl!
Rangal oe tsnì mipa zìsìt lefpom nìteng!
I love the official transcript of the lines from the movie. More of *official* Na’vi is always appreciated!
Miklora way alu Zusawkrr sì Ftawnemkrr sunu oeru nìteng nì’aw ❤️
Postìri amip, oe irayo seiyi!
~Eltusiyu
Kaltxì ma Pawl ulte mipa zìsìt lefpom ngaru liyevu nìteng!
Thanks for this post, this finally cleared up some confusion about some lines in the movie 😀
Is there any chance you could share what the Tìlalim sang in their song?
What I am pretty sure is in there would be
“(…) hu hufwe srew ulte, ulte ??? tawka, tawka!” – but there’s still a lot which I wasn’t able to decipher.
And there is also a bit that Varang said towards the end of the movie, which sounded like “(…) ke’u ke tsun txepti tivong, kehe!” (kudos to “our” Neytiri!)
Eywa ngahu!
Oh yeah, at OmatiCon 2026, Simon Franglen said that the lyrics in English are
Dream of the wind, dream with the wind
let the wind dance with joy across the sky
Spirit of the wind, take us across the sky
Dance with the wind, the wind, the wind
I’d also love to know the Metkayina farewell song that they sing to the Tìlalim when they leave for the mainland. And I guess I should mention the Mangkuan celebrations, too
Considering that we have «’ùr fkivan tstew» rather than «’ùr fkivan tìtstewnga’», would you say that, when it comes to «fkan», the choice of complementary adjective (for people vs. not for people) is based on the topic and not the subject?
I’m wondering what exactly you mean by “keep the stress on the same syllable”. Is that to say that when an infix is added before a stressed vowel then that infix takes the stress? What if the infix itself is more than one syllable? Or is it based on numbering the syllables, and would that numbering always go from the beginning of the word, or could it go backward from the end? For example, how would it work in forms like «peykayalon», «loneiu», «äpeykìyevatsil»?
Also, we noticed that Varang very clearly pronounces «w» (as in «eywa») as an unrounded labiodental approximant [ʋ] and thought that that could be a characteristic of Mangkwan speech as well? Or is it just her idiolect or something?
Ayseomùmìri amip irayo!
Kaltxì ma Karyu Pawl ulte mipa zìsìt lefpom,
Oe sìlpey tsnì ngari fìzìsìt liyevu tìtstunwinga’ nì’ul.
About the Varang, I noticed during one of their ceremonies (I don’t remember when), they seem to repeat the word “fire”, is that correct? This part was not translated in the French version of the movie.
About the French part: Indeed connaître and savoir have different uses (and definitions). Although I would understand ‘Je sais ce mot’, the correct verb is usually connaître.
A good reference is the first post of this forum thread: https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/conna%C3%AEtre-savoir.25697/
You cannot distinguish them the same way as you would smon and omum. In this case, connaître could be smon or omum depending on the context:
Je connais la réponse – Oel omum tì’eyngit
Je connais Neytiri – Oeru smon Neytiri
Kìyevame ulte Eywa ngahu!
The word that was thought to be “fire” seems to be the «payalon» that Karyu Pawl mentioned.
Varang’s chanting really, really, really surprised me. I listened to it specifically every time I watched the movie and it really sounded just like “fire fire txep txep” to me, so I assumed it is just switching language so the “average” viewer can understand what she is chanting (which makes total sense to me). It sounded very much like only two syllables for me. Someone in the community suggested “flayä txep, txep flayä” which I thought sounded reasonable because two syllables with an f at the start and simlar vowels. I’m gonna be honest, I can’t hear the payalon at all x) Maybe a shortened form, “txep paya paya txep” but where did that third syllable go HRHN