Na'vi Pocketmod guide

Started by MidnightLightning, January 04, 2010, 04:22:09 PM

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MidnightLightning

There's several full-page printables for learning, but how about a hip-pocket-friendly version? Borrowing the 8-page foldable design of a PocketMod, here's a printable PDF for easy portability with most of the grammar guides, some useful phrases, and one blank page for putting in whatever words from the lexicon you want easy access to.

Any feedback would be great! There's three versions of this guide (currently); the basic version is a black and white version for basic printing. The "_colored" has colored panels to correlate to the parts of speech (nouns, verbs, pronouns, etc.) used in the Learning Na'vi guide. The "_digital" version has the various panels in a long strip, designed for on-screen viewing rather than printing.

EDIT: Updated as of 9/13/2010.


Na'vi Pocket Reference Guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." --Arthur C. Clarke

Nume fpi sänume

Awesome :D I'm sure one of our grammar people will be along to comb over it and offer advice. Great job though.

Mawey Seze

This is awesome, I'll print it out now.

There is a link on the side for instructions, but here they are for anyone that prints it out (more complicated than just folding): http://www.pocketmod.com/howto/

Ftiafpi

Some things I noticed:

Useful words/phrases:
You write Kaltxì as Kalt'ì.
Perhaps you should put the translations for Kaltxì (hello) and Kìyevame (see you soon) in there rather than just (common greeting/farewell)
I don't think ngari in "Rutxe ngari plltxe tsa'u nìmun" would need the topic marker would it?

Questions
Srak doesn't really need a question marker. Either that or they should all have question markers.

Pronounciation
Very nice, but perhaps you should bold the letters in the example words so people know which ones to use.

Nouns
There are more than just one spelling for the affixes, for example:
Accusative (object): -ti, -it and -t
Ergative (agent): -l and ìl
Topic: -ri and -ìri

I like the brief examples you give though, good idea.

Lenition
I'm definitely no expert on lenition so no comment.

Adpositions
Nice, very useful, perhaps a brief example since there's plenty of space for one.

Verbs
Again, very nice but perhaps another brief example for each one.

Overall, very useful, I look forward to future revisions and will refer to this often.

MidnightLightning

#4
I had pulled "Kalt'i" from another website when I was googling around for "Na'vi phrases", and looks like the other source was misspelled. I put the topic marker on "ngari" because I imagine that in the flow of a conversation, if a new learner needed an experienced speaker to repeat themselves, like the topic of conversation was not just about speaking Na'vi, so a topic change is likely appropriate.

I've added in the alternate accusative, ergative, and topical markers; is there a guide somewhere that conclusively tells when is appropriate to use the alternates? (I presume there's only one right suffix for each noun, and it's not a "pick whichever you like" like choosing whether adpositions go before or after the noun.)

I took your suggestion and bolded the example pronunciation words' appropriate letters, and added in more samples where appropriate. The file in my first post is updated if you want to take another look.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." --Arthur C. Clarke

MidnightLightning

I also added a "colored" version that has colored pages that match the colors used in the Learn Na'Vi Pocket Guide for Nouns, Pronouns/Questions, Verbs, and Adpositions/Prepositions.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." --Arthur C. Clarke

Nume fpi sänume

Awesome. Great work on this so far, once we get it finished and verified for accuracy i'll add it to the list of things we direct new people to. Something like this that's portable and on-hand would do well.

MidnightLightning

Great! One more quick edit; adding my own attribution and officially putting it under a Creative Commons license.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." --Arthur C. Clarke

Eywayä mokri

Quote from: Nume fpi sänume on January 05, 2010, 10:30:16 AM
Awesome. Great work on this so far, once we get it finished and verified for accuracy i'll add it to the list of things we direct new people to. Something like this that's portable and on-hand would do well.

Ok, I'll let you add it to the useful links. :)
°°We don't forget anyone, we only get used to their absence.°°

Aurora

Great job! If you want to, I could translate it into German.

Regards
Aurora
Sorry for some mistakes in my English...^^

MidnightLightning

Quote from: Aurora on January 05, 2010, 11:26:51 AM
Great job! If you want to, I could translate it into German.

Sure, if you supply the text, I'd be glad to drop it into the design. There would likely need to be literal translations of the cover text, the sample English words for pronunciation would need equivalent German words that have the same phonics, and I'm guessing the English "latter/ladder" would need to be replaced with something appropriate. Does German have ejectives? Or would native German speakers still need description of what an ejective phonic is? And then all the translation examples would need the german equivalent.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." --Arthur C. Clarke

MidnightLightning

Quote from: Nume fpi sänume on January 05, 2010, 10:30:16 AM
Awesome. Great work on this so far, once we get it finished and verified for accuracy i'll add it to the list of things we direct new people to. Something like this that's portable and on-hand would do well.
Who's officially going to be the one verifying it for accuracy?
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." --Arthur C. Clarke

Nume fpi sänume

Not sure on that yet (sorry, in twenty places at once) but i'll find out. Maybe I can convince Will to take a look.

Aurora

Quote from: MidnightLightning on January 05, 2010, 11:48:39 AM
Quote from: Aurora on January 05, 2010, 11:26:51 AM
Great job! If you want to, I could translate it into German.

Sure, if you supply the text, I'd be glad to drop it into the design. There would likely need to be literal translations of the cover text, the sample English words for pronunciation would need equivalent German words that have the same phonics, and I'm guessing the English "latter/ladder" would need to be replaced with something appropriate. Does German have ejectives? Or would native German speakers still need description of what an ejective phonic is? And then all the translation examples would need the german equivalent.

I did a translation, but I'll go through it once again.. There are too many special linguistic terms in it (I don't think any German will know what those are :D).

Quotethe sample English words for pronunciation would need equivalent German words that have the same phonics
And yes I searched the equivalents for the pronounciations (still one or two to find).

Quoteand I'm guessing the English "latter/ladder" would need to be replaced with something appropriate.
The "latter/ladder" thing is a little bit tricky in German. I had to fall back on the Low German Language (there is one word that matches to that^^).

QuoteDoes German have ejectives? Or would native German speakers still need description of what an ejective phonic is?
No German has no ejectives, but I already got a description for the germans how to pronounce those. (The one Prof. Frommer explained in an interview (stop breathing and then articulate the p...))

I'll send it to you tomorrow.

Aurora
Sorry for some mistakes in my English...^^

Ftiafpi

Very nice, I love it, this will be extremely useful.

A couple last minute suggestions:


  • In the sentence "Oe rayol hu nga: I will sing with you." isn't it preferred to do ngahu rather than hu nga? I believe either is correct but that's the way Frommer and others have done it.

Perhaps a few more good common words/phrases would be:


  • Ngaru lu fpom srak? (Are you well?)
  • Tsun oe ngahu pivängkxo a fi'u oeru prrte' lu. (It is a pleasure to be able to chat with you.)
  • Oel nagti kameie (I see you (meta-phyisically))

Ftiafpi

Oh, and perhaps we should have a version rotated for digital reading since this is such a concise guide it would be great to have on the computer as well.

MidnightLightning

Quote from: Ftiafpi on January 05, 2010, 01:58:28 PM
In the sentence "Oe rayol hu nga: I will sing with you." isn't it preferred to do ngahu rather than hu nga? I believe either is correct but that's the way Frommer and others have done it.
I was under the impression that Adpositions can come before or as a suffix, and either are correct, so my two examples in that section show the two placement options (torukta'em shows the suffix, and ha nga shows the 'as word before' variety). If the actual "I will sing with you" phrase has a precedence set of having it the other way, I'll put in another example of the 'as a word before' placement of an adposition.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." --Arthur C. Clarke

Mawey Seze

Quote from: Ftiafpi on January 05, 2010, 02:15:07 PM
Oh, and perhaps we should have a version rotated for digital reading since this is such a concise guide it would be great to have on the computer as well.
I would love a fully digital version (flipped right-side up, of course) that I could check out on my iPhone, just as a pdf.  Love having so many options!

Ftiafpi

Oh, and to answer your question the best description of how to use the proper errgative affix is in taronyu's worksheet: http://zombat.roosteredge.com/navi/grammar/final/navi_grammar_1.4_erg.accu.pdf

MidnightLightning

Quote from: Mawey Seze on January 05, 2010, 02:49:36 PM
Quote from: Ftiafpi on January 05, 2010, 02:15:07 PM
Oh, and perhaps we should have a version rotated for digital reading since this is such a concise guide it would be great to have on the computer as well.
I would love a fully digital version (flipped right-side up, of course) that I could check out on my iPhone, just as a pdf.  Love having so many options!

All right, I added a "digital" version that's a horizontal scroll of the seven panels (and in a double-whammy update, I corrected my spelling of "Pronunciation" which no one caught).
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." --Arthur C. Clarke