Our Dictionary

[Txur’Itan]

I suggest using embedded links to definitions in the beginners forum.  This is a better middle ground I think.  If one needs to know, they read the post, if they don't they read the words.

When you use the word coda do this coda. For example...

But even that means their reading is interrupted. It's like reading in a foreign language where you have to look up every other word in the dictionary: after a while it's just not worth the effort. If "coda" came up again and again, yes, linking would be a good idea, because we'll have readers who've forgotten what it is when it comes up the 2nd or 3rd time, or who maybe start in the middle and have missed our explanation. But if it only comes up once, and isn't a difficult concept that needs a separate tutorial, why not just explain what we mean and move on? "The infix comes before the (pseudo)vowel a ä e i ì o u rr or ll." For the more linguistically orientated, we could put "nucleus" in a footnote. Like when we introduce the future tense: tayaron "will hunt". IMO it isn't worth it trying to explain at this point that English doesn't have a future tense; that again is s.t. that we could put in a footnote for the more linguistically attuned.

I understand where you are coming from.  So how do you propose you teach 30-50 new students, when they ask the same questions one at a time, in separate threads?

Doing it the way you propose, one helps the finite group of people reading that specific thread in a finite period of time, but helps those few a great deal more... However, then one has to keep duplicating those efforts across every thread where the question appears.

I am thinking that it is best not to require a approach of duplicating explanations that are posted in such detail already, and already defined elsewhere.  Also, it requires too much micro management to correct for errors when they are shotgunned all over the boards.

[suomichris]

I understand where you are coming from.  So how do you propose you teach 30-50 new students, when they ask the same questions one at a time, in separate threads?

Doing it the way you propose, one helps the finite group of people reading that specific thread in a finite period of time, but helps those few a great deal more... However, then one has to keep duplicating those efforts across every thread where the question appears.

I am thinking that it is best not to require a approach of duplicating explanations that are posted in such detail already, and already defined elsewhere.  Also, it requires too much micro management to correct for errors when they are shotgunned all over the boards.

Well, having some sort of "required reading" thing in the forum rules that serves as a basic reference for linguistic terms.  It's also worth reminding people to use the search feature and answer their own questions.

I don't too much mind answering the same question over and over about Na'vi stuff, since repetition is good for learning.  But I've gotten kind of tired of explaining linguistic concepts repeatedly, since a) a simple google is usually enough to give one at least some idea of what a term means and b) there are a lot of books you can buy to get an overview of linguistics.

So, I guess I feel like explanations of Na'vi are fine, of linguistic terms over and over, not so much.

[Na'rìghawnu]

"The infix comes before the (pseudo)vowel a ä e i ì o u rr or ll."

and - again - DIPHTHONGS.

Well ... techterms have got their advantages too. Their goal is to make things easier to remember, not to confuse people. Building up categorized knowledge is much more useful than splattered bits of information to remember.

What I mean: It's surely easier to remember the concepts "vowel", "pseudo-vowel", "diphthong" and "nucleus", than a sentence like:

"Infixes go in before the a, aw, ay, ä, e, ew, ei, ey, i, ì, o, u, rr or ll in a syllable."

Because THIS sentence only is about infixes and you don't have a chance to use it in other contexts, but if you say:

"Infixes go in before the nucleus of a syllable. The nucleus of a syllable is it's vowel, pseudo-vowel or diphthong"

then you have a structured approach and use terms you can use in other contexts too. It's no waste of time to know, what these terms include.

[roger]

and - again - DIPHTHONGS.

Diphthongs are vowels. Also, they all start w [a] or [e], so they're covered.

[Na'rìghawnu]

Diphthongs are vowels.

Well ... that depends. In German linguistics a diphthong is defined as a sound resulting out of the combination of two vowels (having it's own sound quality). That means, they are separated from vowels - so you have consonants, vowels and diphthongs. That's also reflected in the writing system: a vowel always uses a single letter ... that's why our German umlauts (ä, ö, ü) are indeed vowels, but diphthongs use two letters, that's why our German "ai, äu, ei, eu" are not vowels. I don't know the american definition, maybe here "diphthongs" are just a special form of vowels ... (But there are a lot of non-american Na'vi-learners. And a German pupil surely will ask "and what about the diphthongs?").

Of course they start with a or e, but people have to learn the term "diphthong" anyways, in learning how to pronounce the sounds. So why not use it here? I would say: Omitting the diphthongs here, would surely cause confusion, because at least some people might ask why diphthongs aren't mentioned. And even without the diphthongs, the sentence you propose still isn't easy to remember and - as said - even if one can remember it, it's just useful about infixes ... splattered information instead of organized and constructed knowledge.

[roger]

In German linguistics a diphthong is defined as a sound resulting out of the combination of two vowels (having it's own sound quality). That means, they are separated from vowels - so you have consonants, vowels and diphthongs. That's also reflected in the writing system: a vowel always uses a single letter ... that's why our German umlauts (ä, ö, ü) are indeed vowels, but diphthongs use two letters, that's why our German "ai, äu, ei, eu" are not vowels.

You're right that national idiosyncrasies might cause confusion. But a diphthong is a vowel for the same reason that a falling tone (a sound which results from the combination of two tones) is still a tone, and that an affricate (a sound which results from the combination of two consonants) is still a consonant: all are contours, but that doesn't change them from being vocalic, tonic, and consonantal contours.

In Greek, the [e] in και [ke] "and" is a diphthong, because it's written with two letters. And since "diphthong" is a Greek word, who can argue with that? (The difference, of course, arises from the fact that most of us use the word for what it meant in Classical Greek, when two letters were a phonetic diphthong, whereas modern Greeks understand it according to the modern language.)

Perhaps in German diphthongs behave as vowel sequences phonologically, while z, pf, and tsch do not behave as consonant clusters, but in Na'vi they appear to simply be contour vowels, just as c/ts is a contour consonant.

[Na'rìghawnu]

και [ke]

Well ... in German schools and universities they Ancient Greek και is pronounced [kaj] - as a diphthong. As said - for us a vocalic sound written with two letters counts as a diphthong, apart from vowels.

The definition in the German wikipedia (reliable in this point) is:

Ein Diphthong (von griechisch δίφθογγος: Dis ,,zweimal" und phthóngos ,,Laut") ist ein Doppellaut aus zwei verschiedenen Vokalen

that is: "A diphthong (from greek δίφθογγος: dis "twice" and phthóngos "sound") is a double-sound consisting of two different vowels" ...

Perhaps in German diphthongs behave as vowel sequences phonologically, while z, pf, and tsch do not behave as consonant clusters, but in Na'vi they appear to simply be contour vowels, just as c/ts is a contour consonant.

That's ok, but nevertheless people starting to learn the basics about Na'vi-pronounciation will be confronted with the term "diphthong" (ay, aw, ew, ey). So I feel, it's quite natural, that they will also ask "what about the diphthongs" when it comes to infix-inserting-positions. At least I nowhere read in the pronounciation-teaching-sections, that diphthongs also are vowels. They are treated there as separate things. So, why should a learner know, that in your infix-sentence you see diphthongs as vowels?

See Frommers famous first sentence:

Na'vi has 20 consonants, 7 vowels, 4 diphthongs, and 2 syllabic "pseudovowels," rr and ll.

This results in: Na'vi has got consonants, vowels, diphthongs and pseudovowels = four different kinds of sounds. Why should I know, that diphthongs are vowels? Pseudovowels obviously are not vowels ... and you name them separately in your sentence. Thats ok and understandable. But where are the diphthongs?

But I feel, we are drifting away much too much from the topic. Sorry, Taronyu.

[Txur Niftxavang]

I feel so overwhelmed... There is only one speed when learning a new language for me, and its SLOW!  I've been through Latin Cambridge courses, on my third right now. Some people think I'm wierd for deciding to learn Na'vi...  Well, It interests me, and I'm not going to give up that easily. I hope they publish a Na'vi Dictionary, so I can have a portible one!    I'm a Ketuwong....  An Alien... err, that makes me feel right at home...  LOL! 

[NeotrekkerZ]

In regards to the linguistic terminology problems that all the people new to learning Na'vi are facing, I'd be willing to write a guide along the lines of the compendium that teaches everything without all the jargon and in as straightforward a manner as possible.  But I would need one of the moderators to post the thing on the main page when I'm finished (assuming it turns out well).  It would be far less useful on some thread in projects.  What do you think?

[Taronyu]

No worries about being off topic. Just try and come to a definite opinion at some point.

Of course, Neotrekkerz, you're always welcome to make a new grammar. Start a new thread about it, and if it's good, we'll probably add it to the site. More stuff is always useful.

[Taronyu]

Mirri: I manually sort this dictionary, which does cause some issues. Particularly with i versus ì. Please let me know if you find more errors. I don't know about kalin: I assume it means taste.

okrìsti: fixed the IPA errors. Glottal stop underlining is inconsistent in the sources I worked from. Yes, new sources for stress should be pointed out to me, if you could. Higher sourcing would be nice, if you'd like to take that on. I don't, that's a massive task.

Na'rìghawnu: I've trying to change the underlines to stress markers. Give me a bit to work that out, I need Tuiq's help with code. As for the periods: this is a reference for people who need it. I do explain that it is not normal IPA. I don't see any issue with this: if breaking from academic standard is much easier for the majority of people using this, I don't see the point of questioning such a movement.

Updated Dictionary.

[kewnya txamew'itan]

I'm not sure when the decision was made, I've only just noticed it, but why are the adpositions now marked as prepositions? Obviously it's another word to learn but people already have to learn some to be able to speak this language at all, one more isn't going to hurt.

Surely this will encourage people to think that post-positionally used adpositions are wrong.

[Plumps]

Yes, I noticed that as well - there are actually both adposition and preposition in the dictionary. I think Taronyu explains that with the way they are attached/stand by the noun.
It would be good if you could explain your decision again, Taronyu.

What I've noticed now is that there could be a mix-up between, e.g. vay- (ADP that doesn't cause lenition) and le- (adjective diriving affix), the issue being that vay doesn't attach to the word (vay kilvan) but le- does!
Or is vay? Thinking of vaykrr... I'm confused again

[Mirri]

In this article the term "nucleus" isn't used, but it says, that the infix is inserted between the consonant(s) and the vowel of a syllable. This is exactly the same, as to say, that the infix goes in before the vowel. (And this is also made clear through the given examples.)

Frommer's language log only says: "With monosyllabic verb roots, first-position infixes simply come before second-position ones. With multisyllabic roots, however, first-position infixes occur in the penultimate syllable and second-position ones in the final syllable."
And then the bit about each syllable being a (C)(C)V(C) structure. That's all straight from the pa'li's mouth, anything else is what we've derived.

And let me ask back: Where did you get the misleading information about "consonants" having something to do with the infix-positions. I'm reading in many posts here, that people have problems with the infixes, because they believe, infixes are put "after a consonant" ... where on earth did you get this (mis)information? Things could be so simple sometimes, if there wasn't spread out halfcooked stuff.

I've already shown you that. The wikis and the pocket guide and every document we've based all the grammar documents and beginner's guides on have all mentioned consonants until Suomichris thought up the nucleus thing and changed the Na'wiki a while ago.
So I think I'm entitled to be confused about this since all the learning materials except for one have been wrong for a long time and still are

The original of that document was at Wikipedia, now at Wikibooks. It continues to be updated. If you have specific problems with it, you can request corrections or clarifications. There's also a Q&A page for questions on the language, though they're not likely to generate the lengthy discussions you get here.

Do you mean that the Na'vi Pocket Guide project has ended and it's been absorbed into the wikibook here? http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Na%27vi

Going to start a thread here, because the pocket guide has lots of errors to discuss.

Do you have a way to contact the author? I've already sent several corrections to the Na'vi Pocket Guide to the author and asked him to make a thread for corrections. Nothing happened for a week so I made my own thread: http://forum.learnnavi.org/beginners/corrections-for-the-navi-pocket-guide/
I asked for it to be stickified, but nothing's happened in that vein either.

I've also tried to get a hold of the learnnavi.org webmaster to hear whether they think it's a good idea to have links to the terribly outdated and error-laden Pocket Guide and JMemorize lists on the download page. I think they're so far behind that they're in danger of doing more harm than good to beginners at this point 
(The Pocket Guide would still be okay if you took the lexicon out of it, I think)

I'm maintaining an updated JMemorize list of Our Dictionary in the projects section of the forum that could replace the one on the download website. http://forum.learnnavi.org/your-projects-other-resources/new-jmemorize-lists/

If anyone here can help getting this stuff fixed, I'd appreciate it

[wm.annis]

That's all straight from the pa'li's mouth, anything else is what we've derived.

If it is in any way upsetting to you that what is being said about Na'vi grammar is derived, rather than straight from Frommer's mouth, you should not be studying Na'vi at all yet, and should wait for him to publish a grammar.  The vast majority of what is said about Na'vi is derived, with a few edge cases graciously cleared up by occasional email from Frommer.

Now, in his Lingua Franca interview, Frommer sure does seem to imply that those people doing analysis of the texts are doing a good job of it.  He used words like "remarkable" and "some of them are really good."  So I don't think we're leading anyone terribly astray with most of the derived grammar, though doubtless some small details will need to be corrected from time to time.

[Mirri]

That's all straight from the pa'li's mouth, anything else is what we've derived.

If it is in any way upsetting to you that what is being said about Na'vi grammar is derived, rather than straight from Frommer's mouth, you should not be studying Na'vi at all yet, and should wait for him to publish a grammar.  The vast majority of what is said about Na'vi is derived, with a few edge cases graciously cleared up by occasional email from Frommer.

I fully agree. I only mentioned this because there seemed to be confusion about what Frommer actually said. He never mentioned where the infixes go.

[tsrräfkxätu]

I fully agree. I only mentioned this because there seemed to be confusion about what Frommer actually said. He never mentioned where the infixes go.

He actually explains it all in the article written for the Log.

In it, he says:

1) The syllable structure of Na'vi is (C)(C)V(C), where V can either be a vowel or a diphthong. The two pseudovowels can appear in CV syllables only.
2) "With monosyllabic verb roots, first-position infixes simply come before second-position ones. With multisyllabic roots, however, first-position infixes occur in the penultimate syllable and second-position ones in the final syllable."

After giving us these rules, Frommer goes on to show how a few of the infixes alter the verb taron. In all of those examples, the infix is inserted before the V. The only question is, can we posit that this is true of all verbs? Not directly, we cannot. But we can prove that the opposite (when the infix follows the syllable) breaks rule #1 above, thus our original assumption that infixes precede the V must hold true.

Rule #1 above states that the core of a syllable is the vowel/diphthong/pseudovowel, because the three consonants around it are optional (hence the parentheses.) So the infixes need to go either before or after the v/d/pw.

If you look at the infixes he lists, you can see that their syllable structure is (V)V(C)(C). This is why the infixes must precede the vowel, because if they came after, they'd create invalid syllables -- e.g. a CVC verb (like 'ong from Frommer's response) with a VC infix (e.g. er from the Log article) would result in *CVVCC (*'oerng), which is not permitted as per rule #1. On the other hand, if the infix precedes the V, then not only does this work out fine (er'ong 'erong), but even a maximally consonant-heavy CCVC verb (such as ftang from the movie) has no problem taking a maximally consonant-heavy VCC infix (e.g. ìrm from the Log article) without breaking the syllable rule (CCVCCVC; ftìrmang.)

[NeotrekkerZ]

I was looking through the dictionary and a few things caught my eye:

1.  Should fay+ be listed as an adposition?  The only canonical example I know of is  Fayvrrtep fìtsenge lu kxanì.  If it were an adposition, wouldn't it be Fay vrrtep?

2.  I know teri- was in a Frommer email, but I'm not seeing how it could be an adposition.  If it were, then about the fire could be written as txepteri.  But wouldn't this violate the phonotactics as pt is not a valid consonant cluster?

3.  Should the plurals be listed as adpositions?  We never attach them as suffixes.

I guess it boils down to my understanding of adpositions.  I thought that they are separate entities if they precede their complement and attached as suffixes if they follow their complement. 

Example:  in the star could be either mì sanhì or tanhìm.

[roger]

1.  Should fay+ be listed as an adposition?  The only canonical example I know of is  Fayvrrtep fìtsenge lu kxanì.  If it were an adposition, wouldn't it be Fay vrrtep?

It's a contraction of two prefixes. Uncontracted fìay- is also found.

2.  I know teri- was in a Frommer email, but I'm not seeing how it could be an adposition.  If it were, then about the fire could be written as txepteri.  But wouldn't this violate the phonotactics as pt is not a valid consonant cluster?

I think it's only a preposition, though I'm not sure. But "pt" does not violate Na'vi phonotactics; it's only forbidden as a syllable onset. Here we'd have ?txep.te.ri, which is okay.

3.  Should the plurals be listed as adpositions?  We never attach them as suffixes.

No. They're prefixes.

[Mirri]

On the other hand, if the infix precedes the V, then not only does this work out fine (er'ong), ...

Don't you mean 'erong? The glottal stop is a consonant.

*points to Skitt's Law*


This doesn't have anything to do with si turning into seiyi, does it?