days of the week

Started by roger, April 18, 2010, 06:53:48 PM

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roger

Quote from: FrommerFor the days of the week, I've decided to keep it simple and do what many languages do: just go with First Day, Second Day, etc. The ordinals are simply attached to trr, but without the modifying a. So:

Trr'awve 'Sunday'
Trrmuve 'Monday'
Trrpxeyve 'Tuesday'
Trrtsìve 'Wednesday'
Trrmrrve 'Thursday'
Trrpuve 'Friday'
Trrkive 'Saturday'

Stress is on the second syllable in all cases.

Note the contrast between Trrmuve 'Monday' and trr amuve (or muvea trr) 'second day' (e.g., the second day of a trip).

So you're a bit out of luck if your language is Russian or Chinese, but okay otherwise.

Swoka Swizaw

#1
Trrmrrve...OI.

I gotta say that this is interesting. And it seems like something a Tawtute would derive. No offense in ANY way to Karyu Pawl.

Kemaweyan

Tewti! Irayo, txantsana fmawn ;)
Nìrangal frapo tsirvun pivlltxe nìNa'vi :D

okrìsti

I am starting my week with monday. :-p
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Kì'eyawn

I'm gonna choose to see this as "Na'vi for speaking on Earth."  I see no necessity for Na'vi life on Pandora to be split into weeks, let alone 7-day weeks.
eo Eywa oe 'ia

Fra'uri tìyawnur oe täpivìng nìwotx...

omängum fra'uti

Right this is the sort of thing that would probably come up through tawtute influence, so it seems like the choices are something like this or loan words.  And given the choice, this does seem like the better option.
Ftxey lu nga tokx ftxey lu nga tirea? Lu oe tìkeftxo.
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Nìwotxkrr Tìyawn

I think we should request seabass err payoang to change the days of the week on the calander.
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`Eylan Ayfalulukanä

This is on the same level as the color debate (With all due respect to K. Pawl, who i think realizes that there is a place for some common ground between our world and Pandora). We don't even really know what a week, a month, or a year is, and Pandora being a moon probably complicates this picture. Nevertheless, this is useful conversationally, as the day of the week is usually a pretty important thing, at least in our lives.

Yawey ngahu!
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roger

Yes, presumably he means the Babylonian-derived week, which isn't even universal on present-day Earth.

Ftiafpi

Hmmm, very interesting. I agree with what people have said, this seems like a linguistic thing used by Na'vi to translate tawtute days into their language or vise-versa. I think it would be up to Cameron or one of the people under him who has information on Pandora's orbit to decide what the Na'vi use to describe future days beyond more than a handful of days.

As a guess I would say that they would take the planetary orbits and from there derive how long a year is (which would probably be the time for Polyphemus (sic?) to orbit the binary stars) and I would guess a Na'vi "month" would be the time it takes Pandora to orbit Polyphemus. Somehow I doubt a week would be something the Na'vi would have since, due to their less scientific nature, they wouldn't care much for dividing up months or even years that precisely.

Anyway, no matter what, for what we use the language for, this is extremely useful. Irayo!

`Eylan Ayfalulukanä

Quote from: Ftiafpi on April 19, 2010, 11:30:55 AM
Hmmm, very interesting. I agree with what people have said, this seems like a linguistic thing used by Na'vi to translate tawtute days into their language or vise-versa. I think it would be up to Cameron or one of the people under him who has information on Pandora's orbit to decide what the Na'vi use to describe future days beyond more than a handful of days.

Tawtute days would be fairly meaningless on Pandora unless the Pandoran system behaves very close to earth.

Quote from: FtiafpiAs a guess I would say that they would take the planetary orbits and from there derive how long a year is (which would probably be the time for Polyphemus (sic?) to orbit the binary stars) and I would guess a Na'vi "month" would be the time it takes Pandora to orbit Polyphemus. Somehow I doubt a week would be something the Na'vi would have since, due to their less scientific nature, they wouldn't care much for dividing up months or even years that precisely.

I looked at the orbits of large satellite around our gas giants, and the period spans from somewhat over a day to about 16 days. Jupiter and Saturn are very similar in this regard. So, a seven day orbit is entirely plausible. Assuming that Pandora's rotational period is clase to 24 hours, there could be normal 'days' and 'weeks' there. The interesting problem though is that there would be a period in each planetary orbit where the night would be much longer. This is due to the moon pasing behind the planet, and would be the normal case, as most moons orbit a planet's equator. But if Polyphemus is significantly tilted with respect to the ecliptic, and so is Pandora (And images of the sky suggest that Pandora's orbit is unusual), there are possible orbits that could result in days and nights being consistently the same length. That said, the ASG strongly implies and day lengths are not all similar, and that dark nights are uncommon. This adds credance to the day/night periods as varying significantly in the course of a 'week'.

Month and year would be trickier. There really is no 'month' period that easy to define unless orbital precession results in a regularly varying day/night schedule that is longer that a 'week' and significantly shorter than a 'year'. A 'year' could be defined as either a regularly repeating pattern of stars in the night sky, or else, a third, even longer period of day/night lengths.

Yes, I agree. JC will need to explain this to us so we can understand!

Quote from: FtiafpiAnyway, no matter what, for what we use the language for, this is extremely useful. Irayo!

Irayo nìteng!


Yawey ngahu!
pamrel si ro [email protected]

Unilfwewyu

Quite interesting he gave us these meanings for the days of the week. As mentioned by others above, he converted these days according to our time, which we don't even know what a day and night is on Pandora, how many days, weeks and months are there on the little blue moon, and + what is the time related to, around the star or around the planet?
Oel ngati kameie.

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roger

I think it's intended to make the language more practical for us. People are writing in Na'vi, and either use the English names, or make s.t. up. We don't have any problem saying 20th of the month, so why not the 3rd of the week?

Prrton

I also think that it's fine for us to have "nicknames" for the days if we choose to. They'll only be relevant/meaningful if people USE them, of course. There will always be something official for us to fall back on now that K. Pawl has made a proclamation. I had suggested themes previously that roughly map to generalities about how it *feels* to go through a work week. The problem with that is that the workweek is not universal. It starts at any point from Friday to Monday depending on which country/culture one might be from. I think that nicknaming days after Pandoran flora/fauna is also a somewhat interesting approach. We don't know enough about Pandoran astronomy/cosmology to try to map anything directly to the 'Rrtan concepts embedded in our day names in the West (IMO).

I have to agree that it seems/feels to me as well that *my* week starts on Monday. I'll always have to "do the math" to make sure I'm talking about the right day in Na'vi.

   ;)

roger

Except for Russian and Chinese, and cultures influenced by them, the week starts on Sunday. That derives from Judaism (and from it Xanity and Islam) and has nothing to do with the work week.

`Eylan Ayfalulukanä

Our 7 day week may be based on creation stories, or on the lunar cycle. (I week is 1/4 of the 28 day lunar cycle). Months are loosely based on the lunar cycle as well, but are longer because the earth does not orbit the sun in even lunar cycles. As far as I know, all cultures use a 7 day week, regardless f where they believe it begins.

Yawey ngahu!
pamrel si ro [email protected]

Prrton

Quote from: roger on April 19, 2010, 08:42:06 PM
Except for Russian and Chinese, and cultures influenced by them, the week starts on Sunday. That derives from Judaism (and from it Xanity and Islam) and has nothing to do with the work week.

TECHNICALLY the weeks may may begin on Sunday, but pragmatically they shift (a LOT). Next time you're around a Mac, take a look at the Preferences settings in iCal. They didn't build in that functionality for nothing. The way the application is constructed allows for the linguistic strings to be localized and the same piece of software can then works globally.



roger

Quote from: `Eylan Ayfalulukanä on April 19, 2010, 10:09:05 PM
Our 7 day week may be based on creation stories, or on the lunar cycle. (I week is 1/4 of the 28 day lunar cycle). Months are loosely based on the lunar cycle as well, but are longer because the earth does not orbit the sun in even lunar cycles. As far as I know, all cultures use a 7 day week, regardless f where they believe it begins.

The 7-day week is actually limited, though widespread due to the European and Arab conquests. Japan still divides the month into ten-day thirds. For many African states, the week is defined by market day, which may be every 4th or 5th day. Most if not all nations now have a Judaic 7-day week as well, but it's really no more universal than the Latin alphabet or the Gregorian calendar. ~~~~

Taronyu

I just want to say thanks to 'eylan ayfalulukanä for saying all of the stuff I would have said.

Kemaweyan

Quote from: wikipediaThe official ISO 8601 Calendar Standard states that Monday is the first day of the week.

;)
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