Author Topic: [For Beginners] FAQ (Please ask your questions here) - II (Read 10082 times)

Atkxìn · « **Reply #60 on:** January 30, 2017, 03:42:52 pm »

As a native English speaker, miscellaneous and other have different meanings and uses. They are not the same. As far as the Na'vi... I am very much a beginner and would need to look at those words and the dictionary and other resources for a while before I could weigh in.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

`Eylan Ayfalulukanä · « **Reply #61 on:** January 30, 2017, 05:53:47 pm »

The deletion of aylahe is worth following up on. It would have to be a dictionary word to be valid, as lahe is an adjective, and can't therefore take the ay+ prefix. The first thought is that, like some other special cases in Na'vi, this needs to be 'worked around'. But since K. Pawl used it in a much more recent post, the word has to be valid (or perhaps is valid in the si alahe form, which itself is unusual).

Ma Archaic, what part of Wm. Annis's post did you not understand?

Vawmataw · « **Reply #62 on:** January 30, 2017, 06:07:52 pm »

It could work as aylahetu or whatever. KP can do what he wants with Na'vi.

`Eylan Ayfalulukanä · « **Reply #63 on:** January 31, 2017, 03:05:30 pm »

Quote from: Vawmataw on January 30, 2017, 06:07:52 pm

It could work as aylahetu or whatever. KP can do what he wants with Na'vi.

That could be an interesting word, as well. It has a meaning that is hard to express in English, and I think Na'vi could use more words like that. The meaning to me is 'other ones' in an existential, almost spiritual sense.

Tirea Aean · « **Reply #64 on:** February 02, 2017, 09:34:35 pm »

Quote from: Eana Unil on January 29, 2017, 02:13:03 pm

Lu oeru tìpawm... Thinking about "saylahe", which consists of "sì aylahe", made me wonder if you could say "aylahe" instead of (for example) "lapo"? Like "miscellaneous stuff" or "miscellanea".
Säfpìlìri ayngeyä srefereiey' nìprrte'

Edit:

Also, how do you use "mìkam"? Is it limited to physical places only? Like "between river and forest", or can it be used for other thinks like "sanity/insanity" or "life/death"?

I feel like I replied to / solved this in the LearnNavi Discord server. Lemme try to scroll through the miles of text chat to find it.........

Found quickly. Wou! Discord has an amazing search function

Here is the whole conversation:

Spoiler

Blue Elf · « **Reply #65 on:** February 03, 2017, 02:47:16 pm »

Quote from: Eana Unil on January 29, 2017, 02:13:03 pm

Lu oeru tìpawm... Thinking about "saylahe", which consists of "sì aylahe", made me wonder if you could say "aylahe" instead of (for example) "lapo"? Like "miscellaneous stuff" or "miscellanea".
Säfpìlìri ayngeyä srefereiey' nìprrte'

Edit:

Also, how do you use "mìkam"? Is it limited to physical places only? Like "between river and forest", or can it be used for other thinks like "sanity/insanity" or "life/death"?

lapo is pronoun with meaning "other one person/thing", apparently comes from lahe + po (if you wonder why po is used for thing, see Naviteri post, where Paul explains fìpo and tsapo).
aylahe is somehow strange construction, as lahe is adjective, so it can't take plural prefix ay- in theory. But aylahe could work as noun (same as rusey can be adjective and noun), compare this:
Give it to the other person (lahea tute) X Give it to the others (aylaheru > aylaru).
So at least lapo is singular, aylahe is plural form, so you can't interchange them.
For "miscellaneous (things)" I'd go with "keteng(a ayu)" or maybe even "kesran(a ayu)" (based on context).

archaic · « **Reply #66 on:** February 03, 2017, 06:37:07 pm »

Quote from: `Eylan Ayfalulukanä on January 30, 2017, 05:53:47 pm

The deletion of aylahe is worth following up on. It would have to be a dictionary word to be valid, as lahe is an adjective, and can't therefore take the ay+ prefix. The first thought is that, like some other special cases in Na'vi, this needs to be 'worked around'. But since K. Pawl used it in a much more recent post, the word has to be valid (or perhaps is valid in the si alahe form, which itself is unusual).

Ma Archaic, what part of Wm. Annis's post did you not understand?

Basically, all of it.

English language tech terms are a total wipe out for me, I never did understand most of them.

At school I learned 'Noun', 'Proper noun' and 'Clusivity'. Since then, I've added 'Agent' to the list.
English so wasn't my strongest subject!

Tirea Aean · « **Reply #67 on:** February 03, 2017, 08:43:22 pm »

Quote from: archaic on February 03, 2017, 06:37:07 pm

Quote from: `Eylan Ayfalulukanä on January 30, 2017, 05:53:47 pm
Ma Archaic, what part of Wm. Annis's post did you not understand?
Basically, all of it.

I've been trying for a good while to rid this community of this pre-requisite of a meta-language. Sure, it's great and faster for someone who already has a background in it. For anyone else, it just makes things more complicated, and is literally requiring the learning of a new subset language of English in order to learn this language. It's just not necessary. Any part of the Na'vi grammar can be easily explained without the usage of such extended vocabulary. I have been aiming to do this on my website for years. I just wish I could flash clone 8 of me. Then the website, the Android app, Fwew, the wiki, and whatever else I want to do can all be done and kept up to date, all in a nice clean easy way.

The post:

Quote from: wm.annis on January 25, 2017, 06:04:40 pm

Quote from: archaic on January 25, 2017, 05:46:00 pm
I have a heart breaking one, I want to say "I want my mommy, and you killed her."
I got "Oe new Sa’nu, nga tspang ulte." am I close?

When new is taking a noun direct object, like it is here, you treat it like a transitive verb. So, you need a subject in the agentive and an object in the patientive, oel new Sa'nut.

"Killing" is also a highly transitive act, so you need the agentive here, too. I'm not sure if you left "her" out of the Na'vi translation on purpose, but I'd probably go with — slä ngal poti tspolang "but you have killed her."

Translation:

When you want to use new to say, "I want <A THING>" (as opposed to "I want <to do an action>"),

you need to put the -l (or -ìl) ending on the noun who wants something,
and the -ti (or -it or -t) ending on the noun that is wanted.

oel new Sa'nut.
"I want ((my)) mommy."

"Killing", like "wanting" is also an act which involves two parties whose roles in the action need to be accounted for using -l and -t endings.

So you need the -l ending on the doer here too (in this case, the killer).
I'm not sure if you purposely meant to leave out the word for "her" (which in this case would be "poti") in your Na'vi translation, but I'd probably go with

slä ngal poti tspolang
for
"but you have killed her."

Does that make more sense or make the sentiment easier to grasp?

wm.annis · « **Reply #68 on:** February 04, 2017, 04:30:10 pm »

Quote from: Tirea Aean on February 03, 2017, 08:43:22 pm

I've been trying for a good while to rid this community of this pre-requisite of a meta-language. Sure, it's great and faster for someone who already has a background in it. For anyone else, it just makes things more complicated, and is literally requiring the learning of a new subset language of English in order to learn this language. It's just not necessary.

It may not be necessary, but it makes things much, much easier, and learning faster in the long run.

It is true that we don't know about transitivity and animacy when we first start to speak our mother tongue, but it also takes us years to master the language as a child does. Spending a little time learning some of the metalanguage greatly simplifies the process of learning the language with less agony, ultimately, than we went through as children. It also makes it easier for us to notice and discuss how English and Na'vi differ, which is important if we want to speak Na'vi and not coded English.

The best metaphor I've come up with is if we compare a new language to a communications satellite. The purpose of that satellite is to allow communication. But before you can do that you need to get the thing into space, and in this metaphor the metalanguage part of the booster rocket. It looks intimidating, and can sometimes explode by surprise, but without it we can't get where we want to go. Once you've got the satellite in orbit, you don't really need the rocket any more.

Unfortunately, because Na'vi is structurally so different from English it seems like we have to front-load a lot of new metalanguage to describe the most basic things about it.

Because we use language every day it's easy to forget that speaking a language is an astoundingly complex thing, one of the most complex things humans have ever come up with. Learning a new language is hard. Even a simplified language like Esperanto is merely easier than learning French, not actually easy as making pancakes or something. Fluency is a task of years. It's worth it to spend a little time learning the metalanguage. It will make your life easier, even if it's kind of noxious at the beginning.

That said, in the future I'll keep an eye on my jargon density in answers in this thread.

Vawmataw · « **Reply #69 on:** February 04, 2017, 05:13:43 pm »

Before you run away, it's still easy to learn some basic metalanguage.
Even at my age, it's still useful to ask ourselves questions to find the role of a phrase.

Tirea Aean · « **Reply #70 on:** February 04, 2017, 08:02:26 pm »

I remember the days in here when it was literally impossible to get anywhere at all without a decently profound knowledge of technical jargon. I spent what could be compacted to half a week in learning about this stuff alone.

The only way I think it makes sense is with several examples and pointing out what is meant. Horen even does a decent job at this. Examples are found everywhere throughout. Without which, the document would be much harder to understand as someone without a linguistics degree.

I really didn't mean to blast you ma wm.annis or call out your methods as wrong. It's what we have done here from the start.

People like archaic (and there are many other such people) just don't want to deal with technical jargon. Even if we don't go about learning this language in the way that I once thought was a good idea (that is, like a child by means of association, correction, and immersion), we can still explain grammar patterns in laymen's terms. I think that there should be variety of choice. If someone wants to learn the grammatical terms used in the linguistics field, then that's great, nothing wrong with that. I would like to say that people should be able to learn this without those. Especially if this is the only language after mother-tongue they have tried to learn or will learn.

So, people could maybe choose to explain stuff like this:

1) In Na'vi subjects of transitive verbs require the agentive suffix (-l/ìl) and direct objects require the patientive suffix (-ti/-it/-t). For example, oel ngati kame. "I See you." Oe ("I") is the agent and gets the agentive suffix -l nga ("you") is the patient and gets the patientive suffix -ti kame ("See") is the transitive verb

Or, like this:

2)Word order in Na'vi is flexible and therefore an unreliable source of information regarding who's doing something to whom. When you talk about an action that involves two parties, the one doing the action has the -l / -ìl ending and the other one has the -ti / -it / -t ending. For example: Oel ngati kame. "I See you." Oe ("I") is the one Seeing, so it gets the -l ending. nga ("you") is the one being seen, so it gets the -t ending. kame ("See") is the action. Because two parties are involved (oe and nga), their roles must be accounted for with the endings as shown.

I personally find that despite the second version being more lengthy and verbose by word count, it's much more immediately universally understood. I think the most useful part of jargon is that it's shorthand and more concise, using less words to convey complex ideas.

My question is now though... Is the jargon-style learning unavoidable here? Is there or will there be a choice, like a fork in the learning path, where a numeyu could choose to go one route learning and using the metalanguage or go the other route and learn just as well and more or less just as quickly without it?

*dem edits...*

Blue Elf · « **Reply #71 on:** February 05, 2017, 04:48:48 am »

Quote from: wm.annis on February 04, 2017, 04:30:10 pm

Quote from: Tirea Aean on February 03, 2017, 08:43:22 pm
I've been trying for a good while to rid this community of this pre-requisite of a meta-language. Sure, it's great and faster for someone who already has a background in it. For anyone else, it just makes things more complicated, and is literally requiring the learning of a new subset language of English in order to learn this language. It's just not necessary.

It may not be necessary, but it makes things much, much easier, and learning faster in the long run.

It is true that we don't know about transitivity and animacy when we first start to speak our mother tongue, but it also takes us years to master the language as a child does. Spending a little time learning some of the metalanguage greatly simplifies the process of learning the language with less agony, ultimately, than we went through as children. It also makes it easier for us to notice and discuss how English and Na'vi differ, which is important if we want to speak Na'vi and not coded English.

The best metaphor I've come up with is if we compare a new language to a communications satellite. The purpose of that satellite is to allow communication. But before you can do that you need to get the thing into space, and in this metaphor the metalanguage part of the booster rocket. It looks intimidating, and can sometimes explode by surprise, but without it we can't get where we want to go. Once you've got the satellite in orbit, you don't really need the rocket any more.

Nice comparison. I don't want advocate usage of linguistic terminology (and I want to point out that I'm not linguist), but, IMHO, some very basic terminology is necessary. At least word classes. Dictionary shows word class for every word and you need to know it, as various word classes are used different way in language. For example nouns and verbs. In Na'vi, nouns take case ending to show who performs action and who receives action done by verb. And verb utilizes infixes to show time of action, speaker feeling about action etc.
If you do not know what is verb or noun, you can put infix into noun or case ending to verb, what is wrong.
Maybe point is how languages (even native ones) are taught in various countries. For example here, in Czech, we learn what is word class, what is subject, object, we do sentence analysis. Guys, I was hating sentence analysis in the school and believe most other schoolmates too. Now I appreciate it, while studying Na'vi.
English is probably taught different way in USA / whatever country, what can explain why so much people has problems with even basic language terminology.

Toliman · « **Reply #72 on:** February 05, 2017, 09:08:38 am »

Quote from: Blue Elf on February 05, 2017, 04:48:48 am

Maybe point is how languages (even native ones) are taught in various countries. For example here, in Czech, we learn what is word class, what is subject, object, we do sentence analysis. Guys, I was hating sentence analysis in the school and believe most other schoolmates too. Now I appreciate it, while studying Na'vi.
English is probably taught different way in USA / whatever country, what can explain why so much people has problems with even basic language terminology.

It's completely true. I hated it too (I still good remember, almost whole class hated it ... hrh) and now I very appreciate it too

Tirea Aean · « **Reply #73 on:** February 05, 2017, 11:39:14 am »

In USA we're taught noun, verb, and the word classes as well as stuff like prefix, suffix, subject... But anything beyond that, especially terms for things that English language does not have, should (imo) be considered unknown to a person first learning Na'vi. Sure, the very most basic terms may not be avoidable. But the more specialized terms than those can be described using typical words that every English speaker already knows

I think that if one is going to be technical, bear in mind the audience and their knowledge level of linguistics. For those who are only aware of the basic terms, explanations and examples at least should be given to ensure the discussion is understood by the most people possible.

archaic · « **Reply #74 on:** February 05, 2017, 08:24:53 pm »

Quote from: Tirea Aean on February 04, 2017, 08:02:26 pm

I remember the days in here when it was literally impossible to get anywhere at all without a decently profound knowledge of technical jargon. I spent what could be compacted to half a week in learning about this stuff alone.

I remember those days too, I only joined three days after you, ma Tirea!
I spent a lot of time trying to learn the terminology at school and on and off a fair bit since then, but I just found most of it utterly impenetrable. Truly an exercise in banging my head against a particularly unyielding brick wall.

Quote from: Vawmataw on February 04, 2017, 05:13:43 pm

Before you run away, it's still easy to learn some basic metalanguage.
Even at my age, it's still useful to ask ourselves questions to find the role of a phrase.

Trust me, from a deal of experience, that hasn't proved to be the case. Not that I'm running away just yet.

Eana Unil · « **Reply #75 on:** February 18, 2017, 07:42:43 pm »

K, guys, it's me again... ^^

I'm currently trying to translate stuffs for a new blogpost and I'm stuck on some sentences. Lemme hear what your thoughts are on this, rutxe

---

Translation attempt: Teynga pìmtxan tìsraw si ke tsranten...
Intended meaning: No matter how much it hurts...

---

How would you say "Now that...", in like "now, that the skypeople are gone, blabla can happen blabla"

---

What about feeling bad? Not sad, unhappy, not hungry, just bad, opposite of good. No fpom, just bad. 'efu fe'?

---

It doesn't matter, if you go. Ketsran fwa txo nga kivä. Correct?

It's late and I'm confused, as always. ^^

Irayo nìli nìfrakrr :3

Vawmataw · « **Reply #76 on:** February 18, 2017, 08:13:28 pm »

Quote

Teynga pìmtxan tìsraw si ke tsranten...
No matter how much it hurts...

Ketsran fwa pìmtxan tìsraw si...

Quote

How would you say "Now that...", in like "now, that the skypeople are gone, blabla can happen blab

Sawtute holum, set X tsun liven.

Quote

What about feeling bad? Not sad, unhappy, not hungry, just bad, opposite of good. No fpom, just bad. 'efu fe'?

KP says: Fe’ is generally used for things, ideas, events, etc., but not for people.
There's nothing against using fe'.

Quote

It doesn't matter, if you go. Ketsran fwa txo nga kivä. Correct?

I think so.
Ke tsranten ftxey nga kä fuke?

??

Blue Elf · « **Reply #77 on:** February 19, 2017, 04:13:30 am »

Quote from: Eana Unil on February 18, 2017, 07:42:43 pm

Translation attempt: Teynga pìmtxan tìsraw si ke tsranten...
Intended meaning: No matter how much it hurts...

Your version is not correct, what tried is: Answer (which is) how much hurts, is not important. There's something missing...
I'd go with one of these:
Hìmtxan tìsrawä ke tsranten (amount of the pain is not important)
Teynga pìmtxan tsaw tìsraw si ke tsranten (Answer how much it hurts, is not important)
Teynga pìmtxan tsal tìsraw seyki oeti ke tsranten (Answer how much that hurts me, is not important)

Quote

How would you say "Now that...", in like "now, that the skypeople are gone, blabla can happen blabla"

Set, krra sawtute halmum, .....

Quote

What about feeling bad? Not sad, unhappy, not hungry, just bad, opposite of good. No fpom, just bad. 'efu fe'?

As Paul said, fe' is not for people, what IMO disqualifies it for *'efu fe'. So you can say:
Ke 'efu oe nitram; Sì'efu oeyä lu fe'; Ke lu oer fpom; Tìrey yak si - choose based on context/level of unhappiness. IMHO more similar sentences can be created.

Quote

It doesn't matter, if you go. Ketsran fwa txo nga kivä. Correct?

Ftxey nga kayä fuke/ ftxey 'ì'awn, ke tsranten/ oeru ke'u.
Ketsran fwa... doesn't seem correct, as kesran is used either as adjective or conjunction. But here is nothing to connect...

Eana Unil · « **Reply #78 on:** February 19, 2017, 07:19:03 am »

Thanks for your input, as always

Ok, maybe the complete sentence would help; "It feels good to be back, no matter how much it (to be back, 1st sentence segment) hurts.

Blue Elf · « **Reply #79 on:** February 22, 2017, 03:01:05 pm »

Quote from: Eana Unil on February 19, 2017, 07:19:03 am

Thanks for your input, as always

Ok, maybe the complete sentence would help; "It feels good to be back, no matter how much it (to be back, 1st sentence segment) hurts.

I'm not sure if it can be translated directly as is, so I'd use some variations with the same or close meaning:
Furia tolätxaw 'efu oe nitram ketsran tsaw tìsraw si - I feel happy that I'm returned, no matter that hurts.
Furia tolätxaw 'efu oe ye ulte teynga pìmtxan tsaw tìsraw si ke tsranten - I feel satisfied that I'm returned, and it doesn't matter how much it hurts.
Sunu fwa tätxaw ulte teynga pìmtxan tsaw tìsraw si ke tsranten - It's pleasant to return and it doesn't matter how much it hurts.
+ combinations...
Seems quite hard to use ketsran as conjunction.