Attempting Poetry nìNa'vi

[ToktorGrace]

(If this is posted incorrectly, please feel free to moderate )

Kaltxì ma frapo! Despite months being on the forum, I have only begun to really delve into the language and am committing myself to learning it to at least an intermediate level within the next few months. I have been using Anki software and so far it's helped a lot (in case any other beginners are reading this, I highly recommend it!)

Anywho, here is my first attempts at writing Na'vi poetry of sorts... I'd love any feedback that anyone has the time to provide!

Oe kamameie poeyä vitra
'erong na 'ìheyu
'erefu, hu txopu 'aryampi

Poanìlyä tìng tìyawn poet
txe'lan 'ekong si na au
Poe lu poanyä äie

Spoiler

What I am trying to say (forgive the very basic vocabulary here ) :

I saw her soul, blossom like the spiral plant, feeling, with fear of being touched.
He gave his love to her, his heart beats like the drum, she is his vision.

--

I'd love to see if other new learners would also be interested in posting their work so we can learn together!

[Txonä Unil Stä'nìyu Rolyusì]

(If this is posted incorrectly, please feel free to moderate )

Kaltxì ma frapo! Despite months being on the forum, I have only begun to really delve into the language and am committing myself to learning it to at least an intermediate level within the next few months. I have been using Anki software and so far it's helped a lot (in case any other beginners are reading this, I highly recommend it!)

Anywho, here is my first attempts at writing Na'vi poetry of sorts... I'd love any feedback that anyone has the time to provide!

Oe kamameie poeyä vitra
'erong na 'ìheyu
'erefu, hu txopu 'aryampi

Poanìlyä tìng tìyawn poet
txe'lan 'ekong si na au
Poe lu poanyä äie

Spoiler

What I am trying to say (forgive the very basic vocabulary here ) :

I saw her soul, blossom like the spiral plant, feeling, with fear of being touched.
He gave his love to her, his heart beats like the drum, she is his vision.

--

I'd love to see if other new learners would also be interested in posting their work so we can learn together!

This is a very good attempt and it fills me to see that there are still people out there willing to just step up and give it a try A few corrections though:

kame is a transitive verb, and in Na'vi when we use transitive verbs, we have these things called case endings that look like -l (or -ìl if the words ends in a consonant) to show the doer of the verb and -t(i) (or -it if the words ends in a consonant) to show the reciever of the verb. So in your first sentence Oe takes the -l ending and vitra takes the -t ending. Also for poä/poeyä, we have a short form that is simply peyä

In your second and third sentences, I see you are wanting to use -ing forms of the verbs, but here you want the noun form: the action of the verb as the subject of the sentence. To do this in Na'vi we use a prefix tì- and an infix <us>. So your verbs " 'ong" and " 'efu" will look like tì'usong and tì'usefu. Also in your third sentence, I think that the infix <aly> would work better in " 'ampi" because <aly> indicates that an action will be completed in the future. And I have added (as my teacher calls it) the a of attribution to attribute the fear to being touched.

In your second paragraph, I see you are attempting to use the case endings in the first sentence and you are on the right track, but the -t ending should actually be on the word tìyawn because that is the thing being given (and it should also be -it because "tìyawn" ends in a consonant) and poe needs the dative ending -ru to indicate "to her" because the love is being given to her.
Second sentence looks ok to me.
Third sentence, like I said before, for poä/poeyä, we have a short form "peyä."

So the corrected version would look like:

Oel peyä vitrati kamameie
tì'usong na 'ìheyu
tì'usefu, hu txopu a 'alyampi

Poanìl tìyawnit poeru tìng
txe'lan 'ekong si na au
poe lu äie peyä.

I moved some words around for easier flow when speaking the poem.

If you have any more questions, please don't hesitate to ask!

-Txonä Rolyu

[Eyawng te Klltepayu]

Nice! I love seeing people incorporating stuff like the word 'spiral' because it's one of a whole bunch of words that seem to be underused.

[Txonä Unil Stä'nìyu Rolyusì]

Sran, I like that word too

-Txonä Rolyu

[Carborundum]

Beautiful poem ma Truro. It really is a very good attempt, and I'm sure you will reach an intermediate level sooner than you think.
If you are using Anki to study, I would like to bring your attention to the deck I have created, which is intended to help memorisation of several different aspects of each word and is kept up to date with Taronyu's dictionary and the Wiki dictionary both.

kame is a transitive verb, and in Na'vi when we use transitive verbs, we have these things called case endings that look like -l (or -ìl if the words ends in a consonant) to show the doer of the verb and -t(i) (or -iti if the words ends in a consonant) to show the reciever of the verb. So in your first sentence Oe takes the -l ending and vitra takes the -t ending. Also for poä/poeyä, we have a short form that is simply peyä

That should be -it or -ti, not *-iti.

In your second and third sentences, I see you are wanting to use -ing forms of the verbs, but here you want the noun form: the action of the verb as the subject of the sentence. To do this in Na'vi we use a prefix tì- and an infix <us>. So your verbs " 'ong" and " 'efu" will look like tì'usong and tì'usefu.

Consider a sentence like he is hunting like a thanator. Here, hunting is clearly a verb, right? Removing the subject, hunting like a thanator, doesn't change that, hunting is still a verb. Now replace the words hunting and thanator with blossoming and spiral, and you will see that blossoming is in fact a verb.
In other words, the original 'erong and 'erefu were correct.

And I have added (as my teacher calls it) the a of attribution to attribute the fear to being touched.

This is a bit sketchy. The thing with clause attribution is that the "anchor-noun" (in this case txopu) will be an argument of the verb in the subordinate clause, unless other arguments are explicit. Because of this, txopu a 'alyampi will be interpreted as either fear which will touch or fear which will be touched.
I'm not really sure how to properly express the original sentiment in Na'vi without an entire paragraph of words, though.

Edit: possibly txopu tì'usampiyä, fear of touching. Kinda ugly, but it might work.

[Txonä Unil Stä'nìyu Rolyusì]

Beautiful poem ma Truro. It really is a very good attempt, and I'm sure you will reach an intermediate level sooner than you think.
If you are using Anki to study, I would like to bring your attention to the deck I have created, which is intended to help memorisation of several different aspects of each word and is kept up to date with Taronyu's dictionary and the Wiki dictionary both.

kame is a transitive verb, and in Na'vi when we use transitive verbs, we have these things called case endings that look like -l (or -ìl if the words ends in a consonant) to show the doer of the verb and -t(i) (or -iti if the words ends in a consonant) to show the reciever of the verb. So in your first sentence Oe takes the -l ending and vitra takes the -t ending. Also for poä/poeyä, we have a short form that is simply peyä

That should be -it or -ti, not *-iti.

That was a typo, my bad.

In your second and third sentences, I see you are wanting to use -ing forms of the verbs, but here you want the noun form: the action of the verb as the subject of the sentence. To do this in Na'vi we use a prefix tì- and an infix <us>. So your verbs " 'ong" and " 'efu" will look like tì'usong and tì'usefu.

Consider a sentence like he is hunting like a thanator. Here, hunting is clearly a verb, right? Removing the subject, hunting like a thanator, doesn't change that, hunting is still a verb. Now replace the words hunting and thanator with blossoming and spiral, and you will see that blossoming is in fact a verb.
In other words, the original 'erong and 'erefu were correct.

I see how hunting is a verb in "he is hunting like a thanator" but the sentence in the poem looks different to me. It's saying "I saw her soul blossoming like a spiral" I saw this thing verbing like something else. Not I am (currently) verbing like something else. Using <er> in 'ong and 'efu I would interpret that as "I saw her soul is blossoming, is feeling with fear..." Which doesn't sound right. Not to me anyway. Perhaps because the sentence is past tense? I don't know. Sorry if what I said doesn't make sense, but something just doesn't seem right about using <er>. Am I just missing something in what you were saying?

And I have added (as my teacher calls it) the a of attribution to attribute the fear to being touched.

This is a bit sketchy. The thing with clause attribution is that the "anchor-noun" (in this case txopu) will be an argument of the verb in the subordinate clause, unless other arguments are explicit. Because of this, txopu a 'alyampi will be interpreted as either fear which will touch or fear which will be touched.
I'm not really sure how to properly express the original sentiment in Na'vi without an entire paragraph of words, though.

Edit: possibly txopu tì'usampiyä, fear of touching. Kinda ugly, but it might work.

My thought process of that was interpreting the sentence as "With fear that (it) will be touched" I can see now though that it is a little sketchy that way.

-Txonä Rolyu

[Carborundum]

Spoiler: spoilered because this stuff really doesn't belong in the beginners forum

In your second and third sentences, I see you are wanting to use -ing forms of the verbs, but here you want the noun form: the action of the verb as the subject of the sentence. To do this in Na'vi we use a prefix tì- and an infix <us>. So your verbs " 'ong" and " 'efu" will look like tì'usong and tì'usefu.

Consider a sentence like he is hunting like a thanator. Here, hunting is clearly a verb, right? Removing the subject, hunting like a thanator, doesn't change that, hunting is still a verb. Now replace the words hunting and thanator with blossoming and spiral, and you will see that blossoming is in fact a verb.
In other words, the original 'erong and 'erefu were correct.

I see how hunting is a verb in "he is hunting like a thanator" but the sentence in the poem looks different to me. It's saying "I saw her soul blossoming like a spiral" I saw this thing verbing like something else. Not I am (currently) verbing like something else. Using <er> in 'ong and 'efu I would interpret that as "I saw her soul is blossoming, is feeling with fear..." Which doesn't sound right. Not to me anyway. Perhaps because the sentence is past tense? I don't know. Sorry if what I said doesn't make sense, but something just doesn't seem right about using <er>. Am I just missing something in what you were saying?

Well, using a gerund in this manner is quite definitely wrong, because gerunds in Na'vi cannot take arguments.

I think you might be misinterpreting the Na'vi imperfective aspect as being identical to English's progressive aspect. That wouldn't be surprising at all, given that the two are very similar, and progressive aspect is used in almost all examples of imperfective aspect.
In English, progressive aspect looks like this: I am running
This is very frequently translated into Na'vi using the imperfective aspect: oe terul
They are not identical however. The Na'vi imperfective aspect is not always best translated to English using progressive aspect.

When translating an -ing word into Na'vi, the first thing to do is to figure out which part of speech the word is in English. As long as you're translating word-for-word (which is not always a good idea), part of speech does not change between languages.
I agree that I saw her soul blossoming like a spiral is a good interpretation of what the poem is saying, and as you correctly pointed out, blossoming is a verb in this sentence. Thus, it will still be a verb in Na'vi.

However, I'm prepared to agree that using <er> looks slightly odd here. It certainly isn't wrong, but it might be preferable to simply use the plain uninflected verb.

[ToktorGrace]

Oh dear looks like I got a grammar mess!

Irayo ma frapo - I really appreciate the help! Between sort of haphazardly working my way through the Na'vi in a Nutshell and Anki I've been missing a few bits and pieces.

@ ma Txonä Rolyu: Thank you so much for the in-depth review! I'm excited to try again now that I know some more of how to correctly write certain sentences.

@ma  Carborundum: The deck I'm currently using lists the status of each word I learn, so I suspect I have been using your deck, just not paying close enough attention  And thank you so much for creating it! It's incredibly helpful!

@ma  Eyawng: I really love the word 'ìheyu for some reason (it might just be my favorite Na'vi word so far) and when both 'ong and 'ìheyu were reviewed the same day I was like "I gotta make a poem!" That way it truly is uniquely Na'vi poetry... not just poetry written nìNa'vi!

[Txonä Unil Stä'nìyu Rolyusì]

Oh dear looks like I got a grammar mess!

Irayo ma frapo - I really appreciate the help! Between sort of haphazardly working my way through the Na'vi in a Nutshell and Anki I've been missing a few bits and pieces.

@ ma Txonä Rolyu: Thank you so much for the in-depth review! I'm excited to try again now that I know some more of how to correctly write certain sentences.

@ma  Carborundum: The deck I'm currently using lists the status of each word I learn, so I suspect I have been using your deck, just not paying close enough attention  And thank you so much for creating it! It's incredibly helpful!

@ma  Eyawng: I really love the word 'ìheyu for some reason (it might just be my favorite Na'vi word so far) and when both 'ong and 'ìheyu were reviewed the same day I was like "I gotta make a poem!" That way it truly is uniquely Na'vi poetry... not just poetry written nìNa'vi!

You're very welcome, always a pleasure to help where I can [tho Carborundum should get some credit too as he further corrected me haha] and don't worry about mistakes, it's part of the learning process. We learn from our mistakes. You should have seen me when I first started learning Na'vi! I commend you again for the great effort you made

-Txonä Rolyu

[Alyara Arati]

It was lovely, what you said, ma Truro (Tìvawm'ia).  It even sounded nice (grammatical errors notwithstanding).  I was inspired to write one of my own, which was originally posted here, but I have since decided that it is not ready.  Mine is not so good; I have only been learning for a couple of weeks or so.  When I figure out what I want to say, I'll start a thread for it, since you said that you'd like to hear what other learners are doing, and I believe this is an idea to be encouraged.