Category Archives: General

Today’s vocabulary centers around clothing—items of apparel, some specific to Pandora and some more general, plus ways of talking about putting on, wearing, and taking off. As usual, thanks go to the vocabulary committee for some of these ideas and … Continue reading →

Number in Na’vi—not just the actual numbers in the octal system but, more generally, the whole question of when to use the singular, dual, trial, and plural forms—can be a little tricky.  So let me try to clarify some of … Continue reading →

Kaltxì nìmun, ma frapo. I see there was some consternation about the headline of the last post! Since it’s an important point, I thought I’d explain it here in a separate post rather than as a response to a comment. … Continue reading →

Hello again, everyone. Nì’i’a tok oel nìmun fìtsenget! The get-together and panel discussion two weeks ago at the EMP/Science Fiction Museum in Seattle, in conjunction with their current Avatar exhibit, were terrific. It was great to meet new people in … Continue reading →

Aysäplltxeviri* sì sìpawmìri ayngeyä irayo, ma eylan. Thanks for your comments and questions, friends. I’ll offer some responses as soon as I can. In the meantime, however, I thought you’d be interested in this article which appeared two days ago … Continue reading →

Here’s the next vocabulary installment, making heavy use of the excellent proposals of the Vocabulary Committee. (Most of the examples and much of the discussion below is taken, with only light editing, from their submissions.) may’ (vtr.) ‘try, sample, evaluate, … Continue reading →

Kaltxì nìmun, ma oeyä eylan— After an unexpectedly busy month, I’m happy to be back to present and discuss more of the excellent suggestions of the vocabulary committee. The members have now given me a lot of food for thought; … Continue reading →

Kaltxì, ma frapo— As you may know, I’m giving a talk this Saturday at the Southern California Undergraduate Linguistics Conference at UCLA. Since the audience will largely be linguistics students, I thought I’d take the opportunity to expand my standard … Continue reading →

1. Weeks and months As you know, the days of the ’Rrtan week are: Trr’awve Sunday Trrmuve Monday Trrpxeyve Tuesday Trrtsìve Wednesday Trrmrrve Thursday Trrpuve Friday Trrkive Saturday But what about “week” itself and related words? Here’s some useful vocabulary: … Continue reading →

Here’s the first of several posts about weather language. Thanks to the Vocabulary Committee for some great ideas! To begin with, the subject of our discussion: yafkeyk (n.: YA.fkeyk) ‘weather’ To understand the derivation of this word, note the following: … Continue reading →