[For Beginners] FAQ (Please ask your questions here) - II

[Srungsiyu Ayeylanä]

I want to get started learning Na'vi, but I don't know where to start. I know about all the resources available to help me learn, but where should I begin? Is there a good place for a beginner to start learning or can I just start with anything? Do I focus on common vocabulary? Grammar? Phrases? 

[Tìtstewan]

A good suggestion would be checking the 500 most used Na'vi word vocab at memrise. Then, one could play with the grammar stuff and start to build some sentence.

[Torr te Moa Ekxtuaitan]

Okay I MUST figure this out bc it's driving me INSANE. How in na'vi do u day u "was" or "were" going to do something? 

[Toliman]

What exactly you want to translate?

[Tìtstewan]

Na'vi handles time stuff differently than we do in English. While in English (and some other languages) use verbs in the tense one want to say plus various auxiliary verbs like following example:

  I was eating.

Na'vi doesn't have auxiliary verbs. I Na'vi that sentence is:

  Oe yarmom

Here, the infix <arm> carry the information of "was" or "were" and past tense. (more precisely, past and imperfective aspect)

What sentence do you want to be translated?

[Torr te Moa Ekxtuaitan]

I was trying to translate "I was going to kill them/it" but I just couldn't find how to say "was". 

[Tirea Aean]

"I was going to kill them/it" reminds me a lot of a line from the first film said by Neytiri to Eytukan about Jake. What was done there in that line (*tspìmìyang) has been stricken from the canon. What we have now is something like this:

Oe kìman tspivang pot
I (recently)-intended to-kill them
(or any word order of this, such that kìman comes before tspivang in the sentence, with or without words in between)

or maybe

Oe karman tspivang pot
I was-intending to-kill them
(same deal with the flexible word order, karman needs somehow to come before tspivang)

in this situation,

- kan is a modal verb which means something like to intend to, aim to, have an objective or intention to
- <ìm> infix is a recent past tense. you could use <am> if you wanna talk about further back in time. "was going to" is handled by this kìman or karman or similar form of kan
- <arm> infix as Tìtstewan said has this sort of similar to "was <verb>ing" vibe. ongoing action in the past.
- tspivang (from tspang) is the kill part. it has <iv> infix inside because a modal verb such as kan was used.
- po is 3rd person singular animate gender-neutral. like singular they in English, it works on any person or pet animal etc. it has the -t ending because it's the thing to be killed (as opposed to the killer)
- tsat is a 3rd person singular inanimate. it technically means "that", but it functions a lot like "it" in many situations. it has a -t ending baked in so here it would also function as what's to be killed