Our Dictionary

Started by Taronyu, December 27, 2009, 09:23:54 PM

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roger

#180
Quote from: Txepäsiyu on January 16, 2010, 10:52:49 PM
Quote from: Mirri on January 16, 2010, 07:30:06 PM
Minor corrections:
It seems that the genitive suffix is "-eyä" or "-yä", not "-ä"
...

Where do you get that?  I kinda hope you're wrong  :-\

It's only attested as -eyä on the pronouns. Otherwise it so far appears to be -ä after consonants, "pseudovowels", and diphthongs, and -yä after pure (one-letter) vowels.

Na'rìghawnu

Quote
Ikranay: do we have any attestation that plural ay- ever occurs as a suffix?

It's from the book. Noted because it's probably wrong.

In the SG the mountain banshee is called with the Na'vi-name "ikran" (page 61), since the (smaller) forest banshee is called with the Na'vi-name "ikranay" (page 67). I don't think so easily, that it's simply "wrong". It's another animal!

Mirri

Quote from: Txepäsiyu on January 16, 2010, 10:52:49 PM
Quote from: Mirri on January 16, 2010, 07:30:06 PM
Minor corrections:
It seems that the genitive suffix is "-eyä" or "-yä", not "-ä"
...

Where do you get that?  I kinda hope you're wrong  :-\

Ah, turns out it's more complicated than that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%27vi_language#Case_allomorphs
Genitive on pronouns is '-eyä' (evidently regardless whether there's a consonant or a vowel. If there's a vowel it's replaced).
On regular nouns it's '-yä' for those ending in vowels and '-ä' for nouns ending in consonants.
Ngaya poanìl new mune 'uti: hrrap sì uvan. Talun poanìl new ayfoeti -- ayfo lu lehrrap ayu leuvan.

Mirri

#183
Edited to add more stuff

Found another discrepancy. The wiktionary lists Lrrtok as a noun (a smile): http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Na%27vi#L
It even mentions 'lrrtok si' as the verb (to smile)


Also, I needed a word for the verb 'to heal' yesterday. Best thing I could come up with was 'fpom si'. I'm not sure what 'a healer' would be (fpomyu?), but I find it odd that the only related word would be a foreign one (toktor). Didn't anyone get sick and injured before the humans showed up? Even the most basic tribal societies seem to have an official appointee who rubs herbs on wounds.


Seems to me that teswotìng (v. to grant) is a compound of swok/swot (sacred) and tìng (v. to give), i.e. to give one's blessing, to grant. Might be worth noting in the definition?

In the same vein, pänutìng (v. to promise) could be a compound of pänu (n. promise? oath? dedication?) and tìng.

emza'u (v. to pass a test) seems to be compounded of 'em (above) and za'u (to come), i.e. to come above.

pamtseo (music) seems to be pam (sound) and tseo (art).
Ngaya poanìl new mune 'uti: hrrap sì uvan. Talun poanìl new ayfoeti -- ayfo lu lehrrap ayu leuvan.

roger

Quote from: Mirri on January 17, 2010, 05:51:02 AM
Also, I needed a word for the verb 'to heal' yesterday. Best thing I could come up with was 'fpom si'. I'm not sure what 'a healer' would be (fpomyu?), but I find it odd that the only related word would be a foreign one (toktor). Didn't anyone get sick and injured before the humans showed up? Even the most basic tribal societies seem to have an official appointee who rubs herbs on wounds.

I would assume that a toktor is one that performs human medicine, the people in the white coats, whereas a Na'vi word would be restricted to a traditional Na'vi healer. If you need to make a word, fpomsiyu might work.

Mirri

Quote from: roger on January 17, 2010, 07:49:06 AM
I would assume that a toktor is one that performs human medicine, the people in the white coats, whereas a Na'vi word would be restricted to a traditional Na'vi healer. If you need to make a word, fpomsiyu might work.

It might, but other than tsam-si-yu (warrior, lit. war make -profession) I can't find any examples of a word that si has been 'absorbed' into, so to speak. There's quite a few with tseng (place) and a couple with tìng (give).
In a language evolution sense I guess you can see how some nouns with a modifier word tacked on would become so commonly used with a particular modifier that eventually the modifier just becomes part of the word.

Then again, maybe the one warrior example is all we need to establish a rule ;)

Fpomsiyu it is!

Ngaya poanìl new mune 'uti: hrrap sì uvan. Talun poanìl new ayfoeti -- ayfo lu lehrrap ayu leuvan.

wm.annis

Quote from: Mirri on January 16, 2010, 07:30:06 PMNew words:
And finally my list of suggestions to add to the dictionary. Most of these are based on looking through the dictionary word by word and adding tì-, le-, nì-, -tu, or -yu where it made sense (in a presumable idiomatic Na'vi way). It's the reason I went through the whole dictionary in the first place :)

'upxaretu: n. messenger
auyu: n. drummer
frakrr: adv. always, every time, anytime
fratrr: adv. every day, any day
ftiatu: n. student
lì'law: adj. eloquent, articulate

We have absolutely no business at all indulging this sort of thing.  While the affixes tì-, le-, nì- and -yu seem to be pretty safe to use freely, -tu is really dangerous.

We do not yet know the full vocabulary Frommer has invented.  We have no way to be sure we're not stomping on vocabulary that already exists.  Inventing things like lì'law will not help anyone in the long run.  All new words and new grammar have to pass through one person first, Paul Frommer.  Otherwise we won't have Na'vi, but Mirri'vi, Williamvi, Whoevervi, etc.  Just making stuff up at this point only adds confusion.

Mirri

Quote from: wm.annis on January 17, 2010, 08:24:01 AM
Quote from: Mirri on January 16, 2010, 07:30:06 PMNew words:
And finally my list of suggestions to add to the dictionary. Most of these are based on looking through the dictionary word by word and adding tì-, le-, nì-, -tu, or -yu where it made sense (in a presumable idiomatic Na'vi way). It's the reason I went through the whole dictionary in the first place :)

'upxaretu: n. messenger
auyu: n. drummer
frakrr: adv. always, every time, anytime
fratrr: adv. every day, any day
ftiatu: n. student
lì'law: adj. eloquent, articulate

We have absolutely no business at all indulging this sort of thing.  While the affixes tì-, le-, nì- and -yu seem to be pretty safe to use freely, -tu is really dangerous.

We do not yet know the full vocabulary Frommer has invented.  We have no way to be sure we're not stomping on vocabulary that already exists.  Inventing things like lì'law will not help anyone in the long run.  All new words and new grammar have to pass through one person first, Paul Frommer.  Otherwise we won't have Na'vi, but Mirri'vi, Williamvi, Whoevervi, etc.  Just making stuff up at this point only adds confusion.

I'll concede some of those words I made up are a bit labored, I just wrote down what variations came to mind while I looked at every word in our current vocabulary. Of the ones you mentioned, I think frakrr might be the most natural derivation and it's certainly a word I've needed and used (and the other person understood).

But I think, if we just carefully mark the things that are our own guesses and derivations, it'll be simple enough to get rid of if Frommer comes out with something that overrides it.


Frankly I'd like it if there were a lot more communication between Frommer and the community, but I'm sure he's also a busy man  :P
Inventing a language is a lot of work and he's only one error-prone human (like the rest of us), but using a community might help ensure that there's a bunch of other people to double-check his work, resulting in fewer incidents of him violating his own rules or inventing new words that could have been constructed more naturally from existing concepts, before it's all set in stone with another book.
The grammar is a different issue entirely, I'm talking solely about vocabulary here. But at this point we're guessing most of the grammar too.

Language is a subtle, moldable, fleety, irregular kind of thing, shaped by the people who use it, and considering the amount of illegal and irregular words we've already seen in published material, it doesn't seem to me like there's one big Frommer overlord sitting at the top of the mountain who has a 'complete picture' of everything that's going on ;)
(ironically there isn't an English word for überblick  ::)   --holistic breadth of view?)

From the interviews I've read, it sounds like he's learning the language along with the rest of us, especially when he says how surprised he was at some of the actors' formulations of dialog. Which is the way it's supposed to be! Language is a conversation, not a one-sided set of rules.

The way I see it, a language is so difficult to construct that as the complexity rises, you'll start getting mutually exclusive rules, or needlessly complicated rules that native speakers will eventually just ditch (dropping the plural ay off lenited words is a good example of linguistic laziness). And once someone finds a cool way to bypass a bothersome rule, others will follow and after a couple years it turns into slang/colloquialisms, i.e. something that can't be constructed by a strict adherence to rules.
And that's just the grammar part. There's a good reason we only use about 1000 different English words in daily speech ( but understand more), it's usually enough to construct the meaning you want to convey to another person. Even if there might be a more obscure word with a more precise meaning, you can usually construct a sentence or two that mean the same using more common words.


Sorry for getting all philosophical about it. At the end of the day, I'm just as anxious as you for Frommer to get off his txìm and publish the damn thing so we can get out of this language limbo.

I really just want a Frommer Oracle I can feed words into and get a reply in Na'vi. There are sooo many undefined concepts, like basic colors and directions.
Ngaya poanìl new mune 'uti: hrrap sì uvan. Talun poanìl new ayfoeti -- ayfo lu lehrrap ayu leuvan.

Taronyu

Quote from: wm.annis on January 17, 2010, 08:24:01 AM
Quote from: Mirri on January 16, 2010, 07:30:06 PMNew words:
And finally my list of suggestions to add to the dictionary. Most of these are based on looking through the dictionary word by word and adding tì-, le-, nì-, -tu, or -yu where it made sense (in a presumable idiomatic Na'vi way). It's the reason I went through the whole dictionary in the first place :)

'upxaretu: n. messenger
auyu: n. drummer
frakrr: adv. always, every time, anytime
fratrr: adv. every day, any day
ftiatu: n. student
lì'law: adj. eloquent, articulate

We have absolutely no business at all indulging this sort of thing.  While the affixes tì-, le-, nì- and -yu seem to be pretty safe to use freely, -tu is really dangerous.

We do not yet know the full vocabulary Frommer has invented.  We have no way to be sure we're not stomping on vocabulary that already exists.  Inventing things like lì'law will not help anyone in the long run.  All new words and new grammar have to pass through one person first, Paul Frommer.  Otherwise we won't have Na'vi, but Mirri'vi, Williamvi, Whoevervi, etc.  Just making stuff up at this point only adds confusion.

I actually agree with William, here. You'll notice that all of the *words I have are only from the top down: I only identify stems, I don't form (or shouldn't!) new words out of them. It's one of the reasons I'm not totally on the side of the member Prrton, who frequently made up new words. I don't think we have no business at all indulging, but I am not going to include these things in my dictionary, because what I want is a quantifiable tool that can be used to analyze the language, from the main lexicon to word stems.

wm.annis

Quote from: Mirri on January 17, 2010, 09:49:46 AMLanguage is a subtle, moldable, fleety, irregular kind of thing, shaped by the people who use it, and considering the amount of illegal and irregular words we've already seen in published material, it doesn't seem to me like there's one big Frommer overlord sitting at the top of the mountain who has a 'complete picture' of everything that's going on ;)

First of all, I do not think Frommer is incompetent.  It is not hard to create a language of significant complexity without losing one's way.

Second, and the main point, Na'vi is not a language like French or Chinese or Navajo.  It is the artistic creation of one man.  Respect for the creator, and the integrity of his creation, demands a different approach.  The mind-bogglingly powerful thing about language, of course, is that words + rules = near-infinite possibilities, and you hinted at this in your own response.  We should focus our creativity there, rather than intruding on the language creation process itself.

In email (before the semester started), Frommer has said that he does see a future in which other people add to Na'vi's vocabulary, but it has to be handled by people who know how the language works.  At the moment, that's only Frommer.  We have to cultivate patience.  ;)

Mirri

Quote from: wm.annis on January 17, 2010, 10:18:48 AM
In email (before the semester started), Frommer has said that he does see a future in which other people add to Na'vi's vocabulary, but it has to be handled by people who know how the language works.  At the moment, that's only Frommer.  We have to cultivate patience. 

If Frommer wanted us to have patience, he would have given us a word for it ;)

I readily admit it's a fun challenge to my creativity to create a meaning that makes sense to someone else with such a limited vocabulary, but it easily gets frustrating too when so many basic concepts that you just know the Na'vi must have a word for aren't available.
Ngaya poanìl new mune 'uti: hrrap sì uvan. Talun poanìl new ayfoeti -- ayfo lu lehrrap ayu leuvan.

Taronyu

#191
Quote from: Mirri on January 17, 2010, 10:27:57 AM
Quote from: wm.annis on January 17, 2010, 10:18:48 AM
In email (before the semester started), Frommer has said that he does see a future in which other people add to Na'vi's vocabulary, but it has to be handled by people who know how the language works.  At the moment, that's only Frommer.  We have to cultivate patience.

If Frommer wanted us to have patience, he would have given us a word for it ;)

I readily admit it's a fun challenge to my creativity to create a meaning that makes sense to someone else with such a limited vocabulary, but it easily gets frustrating too when so many basic concepts that you just know the Na'vi must have a word for aren't available.

He did. mawey and tam tam. Granted, they mean calm.

The Na'vi don't have more words. They don't exist. This is Frommer's language, not the Na'vi's language.

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Quote from: Mirri on January 16, 2010, 07:30:06 PM
Minor corrections:
It seems that the genitive suffix is "-eyä" or "-yä", not "-ä"
Dealt with above.

Quote from: Mirri on January 16, 2010, 07:30:06 PM
"ka" adv. should be "ka-" adp. affix
Deleted, thanks to Roger.

Quote from: Mirri on January 16, 2010, 07:30:06 PM
Missing the explanation for "kea" in front of nouns.
That's just an attributive adjectival -a. Changed definition of ke to include adj.

Quote from: Mirri on January 16, 2010, 07:30:06 PM
"kangay" somehow seems like it should be "invalid", since ngay is true and the "ka" is a negation?
Just quoting the SG there.

Quote from: Mirri on January 16, 2010, 07:30:06 PM
"lu=" should be "lu"
No, it causes elision in songs.

Quote from: Mirri on January 16, 2010, 07:30:06 PM
"mìn", the word "turn" isn't an adjective in English, is it? Are you sure it's not a verb or noun?
Edited

Quote from: Mirri on January 16, 2010, 07:30:06 PM
"nì'awtu", "nì'awve", "nìtam", "nìtxan", "nì'ul", "nìwin" are all adj according to the Na'vi pocket book.
"nìayoeng" is an adj, i (not sure what i is, interrogative?) according to the Na'vi pocket book.
"nìwotx" is a preposition in the Na'vi pocket book.
"pey" is both c and v categories according to the Na'vi pocket book.
And Karyu Amawey guessed as to them. I changed them as I saw fit.

Quote from: Mirri on January 16, 2010, 07:30:06 PM
"ship" seems like the wrong English word for "sìp" since it has different connotations. It's clearly a foreign word based on the sound of the human word, and not a Na'vi invention. I think "vehicle" would be a better translation. Humans used the word ship for machines that went into space: rocket ships, space ships, etc. But Na'vi who have not invented ships or machines would not have made this reference.
I'm not sure about that. They might have.

Quote from: Mirri on January 16, 2010, 07:30:06 PM
"sutx" the translation of "track" and "lock up" doesn't seem to have any connection. Does it have two entirely different meanings?
I'm annoyed by that too. Looks like it.

Quote from: Mirri on January 16, 2010, 07:30:06 PM
"swok" is marked as a noun in Na'vi pocket guide and unmarked here. But "sacred" is not a noun, it's an adjective.
Hence why I unmarked it. I'll make it an adj.

Quote from: Mirri on January 16, 2010, 07:30:06 PM
"teng-" translation should be "same as" or "like", not "same way as" (copy-paste error from tengfya?)
Edited.

Quote from: Mirri on January 16, 2010, 07:30:06 PM
"turok makto" explanation has spelled "makto'" with an erroneous ' at the end.
Fixed.

Quote from: Mirri on January 16, 2010, 07:30:06 PM
"tute" female should be "tutee"
No it shouldn't. Look here.

Quote from: Mirri on January 16, 2010, 07:30:06 PM
May want to add "tall" to description of "tsawl"
Done.

Quote from: Mirri on January 16, 2010, 07:30:06 PM
"neto" should be explained as a composite of "ne" towards and "to" away
Done. Derived *to.

Quote from: Mirri on January 16, 2010, 07:30:06 PM
"tsnì" needs a better explanation, it is ambiguous
Added (function word).

Quote from: Mirri on January 16, 2010, 07:30:06 PM
"zong" explanation should be "save" not "saves"
Edited.

Quote from: Mirri on January 16, 2010, 07:30:06 PM
List of words that lack classification:
v 'ampi
adj 'e'al
n 'eko
n 'ekong
n 'ìheyu
n,adj atan
n ätxäle
adj ean
v fkarut
adj fko
v fpeio
n fpom
v ftia
n hapxì
v kin
n kìng
n kìte'e
n kll
? kxll
n meuia
n mokri
v mun'i
adj nulkrr
adj? swok
v tìran
pn tsnì
Where I have removed classification, it is because it is ambiguous. Tsnì, for instance, isn't a pronoun, it is sort of like a conjunction.

±±±

About your new words: I've tried here not to add stuff, but only to take derivations from things. I don't want to fill in gaps, but to show how the language can be used. Refer to the posts above for more.

That having been said, THANKS! To both you AND roger. Very, very useful.

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ROGER, TXANA IRAYO.

Quote from: roger on January 16, 2010, 07:02:35 PM
"It's how the interview went. That's the official translation. "

    Actually, they asked how he'd say "your ship is a garbage scow", and that's what he came up with. That's not the same as saying sngeltseng means "garbage scow"; just try translating w Google and translating back, and you'll see words aren't always equivalent like that. I take it to mean that you'd say "your ship is a garbage dump" in Na'vi; understandable that they wouldn't have the space faring vocab of Klingon.
Fixed.

Quote from: roger on January 16, 2010, 07:02:35 PM
"You sure about that? What about prrte'?"

    Prrte' has a single coda consonant. *Tsawlap' would have two. Not allowed. Also, the only clusters are fric + non-fric, not stop + stop.
Fixed. Was a spelling error.

Quote from: roger on January 16, 2010, 07:02:35 PM
"I want to edit down, not add up."

    But you translated win as "speed", not as "fast".
Fixed.

Quote from: roger on January 16, 2010, 07:02:35 PM
"You're saying that progeny is the same as part of? "

    Not "a part of", but "a bit, a little". Ngayä 'itan would be s.t. like "your little one (male)". Not an uncommon semantic connection in Terran languages.
Still keeping progeny. I think it makes sense, here, and I want people to know that it can be used like this.

Quote from: roger on January 16, 2010, 07:02:35 PM
"It's from the book. Noted because it's probably wrong."

    Yes, I understand that the SG is often wrong. But I doubt that ikranay could be the plural for ikran. Could be, perhaps, but I've never seen it. If that structure is attested somewhere, we should add it to the grammar.
See above.

Quote from: roger on January 16, 2010, 07:02:35 PM
"It's not the attested part, it's the fact that I derived it."

    What did you derive it (neg. "ka") from? I didn't see it.
Deleted.

Quote from: roger on January 16, 2010, 07:02:35 PM
"We don't know about parts of speech. Could be either."

    Kewong is seen to be an adjective in fahew akewong "alien smell" (fills my nose), and ketuwong is seen to be a noun in Mo'at's line fìketuwong(())ti oel stìyeftxaw "I will examine this alien".
Fixed.

Quote from: roger on January 16, 2010, 07:02:35 PM
"Why would you say that? I'm not so sure."

    Because nulkrr is "more time" (longer), and nì'ul is "more". Seems reasonable that it might contract to nul, the same way fì'ut contracts to fut (which is confirmed by Frommer).
Added.

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Quote from: Mirri on January 17, 2010, 05:51:02 AM
Found another discrepancy. The wiktionary lists Lrrtok as a noun (a smile): http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Na%27vi#L
It even mentions 'lrrtok si' as the verb (to smile)
Removed part of speech.

Quote from: Mirri on January 17, 2010, 05:51:02 AM
Also, I needed a word for the verb 'to heal' yesterday. Best thing I could come up with was 'fpom si'. I'm not sure what 'a healer' would be (fpomyu?), but I find it odd that the only related word would be a foreign one (toktor). Didn't anyone get sick and injured before the humans showed up? Even the most basic tribal societies seem to have an official appointee who rubs herbs on wounds.
See note on adding words above.

Quote from: Mirri on January 17, 2010, 05:51:02 AM
Seems to me that teswotìng (v. to grant) is a compound of swok/swot (sacred) and tìng (v. to give), i.e. to give one's blessing, to grant. Might be worth noting in the definition?
In the same vein, pänutìng (v. to promise) could be a compound of pänu (n. promise? oath? dedication?) and tìng.
emza'u (v. to pass a test) seems to be compounded of 'em (above) and za'u (to come), i.e. to come above.
Noted.

Quote from: Mirri on January 17, 2010, 05:51:02 AM
pamtseo (music) seems to be pam (sound) and tseo (art).
Roger got to this.

this post was edited to add responses.

Taronyu

I've added all of the stress indications, and some words, from here.

Should be at version 6.584, now.

Kiliyä

*tears out hair*

Irayo...
Peu sa'nokyä ayoengyä?  Pefya ayoeng poeru kìte'e sayi?
Pefya ayoengìl poeti hayawnu, na poel ayoengit hawnu?

What of our mother?  How shall we serve her?  How shall we protect her as she protects us?

Eight

Quote from: Kiliyä on January 17, 2010, 01:44:26 PM
*tears out hair*
Oel ngayä keye'ungit tslam.

It's impossible to finish a project based on Taronyu's opus... the dictionary is like painting the forth bridge. By the time you get to the end of it, you need to start going through it again. :D

Irayo ma Taronyu.  ::)

;)  ;D

Erimeyz

Quote from: Mirri on January 17, 2010, 10:27:57 AM
If Frommer wanted us to have patience, he would have given us a word for it ;)

LOL!

Erimeyz

Quote from: roger on January 17, 2010, 07:49:06 AM
Quote from: Mirri on January 17, 2010, 05:51:02 AM
Also, I needed a word for the verb 'to heal' yesterday. Best thing I could come up with was 'fpom si'. I'm not sure what 'a healer' would be (fpomyu?), but I find it odd that the only related word would be a foreign one (toktor). Didn't anyone get sick and injured before the humans showed up? Even the most basic tribal societies seem to have an official appointee who rubs herbs on wounds.

I would assume that a toktor is one that performs human medicine, the people in the white coats, whereas a Na'vi word would be restricted to a traditional Na'vi healer. If you need to make a word, fpomsiyu might work.

I think it's clear (but obviously not canonical) that "toktor" doesn't mean healer, or human doctor, or medicine person, or anything like that.  It means "human scientist."  It's a Na'vi-ification of Dr. Grace Augustine's title, applied to her and others like her that the Na'vi have met.  If they did meet a human medical doctor, and he was introduced to them as "Doctor So-and-so", they would probably consider him to be the same type of human as the scientists.  If it was explained to them that he healed sick people, they would probably start calling him by the Na'vi word for "healer" (whatever it is), but would still think of him as a 'toktor' - one of the less violent but still stupid-as-a-baby humans.

  - Eri

Taronyu

Quote from: Kiliyä on January 17, 2010, 01:44:26 PM
*tears out hair*

Irayo...

Think how the russians feel. This is why I have the changelog - every change should be attested in there.

NeotrekkerZ

I don't know if this was intentional on your part, but I noticed that the word for above ('em) is not in your dictionary.  I saw it in the pocket guide, but don't know the actual source for the word.
Rìk oe lu hufwemì, nìn fya'ot a oe tswayon!

Taronyu

Quote from: neotrekkerz on January 17, 2010, 06:34:45 PM
I don't know if this was intentional on your part, but I noticed that the word for above ('em) is not in your dictionary.  I saw it in the pocket guide, but don't know the actual source for the word.

I am not sure if that should have a glottal stop in front of it. I have it in the dictionary like this:

Quote from: The Dictionary
*(')em: [(ʔ)ɛm] T prep. above derived from
ta'em from above and emza'u pass

Hope that clears this up.