Why not ayharyu?

[Pxia Säsngap]

Whether it's archaic or the norm.

Ah! I thought you were answering to what wm.annis and I wrote about.
But yes, that's true. That was just what kemeoauniaea said. (Ma kewnya: See? I've remembered the name. Yay! )

[Kì'eyawn]

Also, many people (including me, as I happen to like the sound of it ), intentionally or not, have been bringing back the archaic past-participle "gotten" (compare "I get, I got, I have got" with "I get, I got, I have gotten" - which one is more efficient is easy to see).

Wow, shows how out of the loop i am.  I didn't know "gotten" was archaic; i thought "i have got" was bad English.

In AmE it's the norm and "I got" is, as you say, often considered bad English, in BrE, gotten is either considered wrong, an Americanism or Archaic (there are quite a few Americanisms that are more archaic than the equivalent British phrase).

Huh, that's interesting.  So, we colonials are sometimes "more" English than, erm, the English?

Wait, doesn't that make us the Québec to your France?  That can't be good...

[kewnya txamew'itan]

I don't know how Quebecois translates onto French French, but yes, American English has still got a lot of features that are considered archaic in England (like gotten) or features whose isoglosses are retreating in England (such as rhoticity) but at the same time your yod-dropping is more progressed than ours (as in [tub] vs [tjub] and [nu] vs [nju]) as is your loss of rounding (we have a short o sound in the words got, cot, what, coffee). So it goes both ways.

['Oma Tirea]

I don't know how Quebecois translates onto French French, but yes, American English has still got a lot of features that are considered archaic in England (like gotten) or features whose isoglosses are retreating in England (such as rhoticity) but at the same time your yod-dropping is more progressed than ours (as in [tub] vs [tjub] and [nu] vs [nju]) as is your loss of rounding (we have a short o sound in the words got, cot, what, coffee). So it goes both ways.

True indeed.  To compare and contrast BrE with GA:

• Some GA dialects have phomenic æ-tensing (my dialect has the non-phonemic version occuring only before m and n...) while BrE has little or no æ-tensing.
• GA has Canadian raising, where before voiceless consonants (with a few rare exceptions) {aɪ} becomes a shorter {ʌɪ}.  BrE always has {aɪ}.
• In GA, "pa" "pop" and "paw" are pronounced with the same vowel {ɑ}, but in BrE, they are pronounced differently: pa" {ɑ}, "pop" {ɒ}, and "paw" {ɔ}.
• In words like "low," GA has {ɵ̞ʊ}, but BrE has partially unrounded this to {əʊ}.
• BrE has a special split called the trap-bath split.  It is so-called because the words are pronounced {tɹæp} and {bɑθ}.
• GA does indeed have yod-dropping, but only partially, and the {ju} is still intact before non-alveolar consonants.  The "dropped yod" is usually a reduced diphthong: {ɨ̞u} ~ {ʊu}.  In addition, the words "through" and "threw" may be homophones.
• ...and speak of rhoticity, you have just about got it: BrE doesn't like r's pronounced after a vowel, and GA is the exact opposite.

Each of these things has its own advantage over the other in terms of avoiding homophones.  A couple don't have any advantage at all.

There are, of course, a number of other differences, but I will not explain them here for the sake of simplicity.

[Kì'eyawn]

I don't know how Quebecois translates onto French French, but yes, American English has still got a lot of features that are considered archaic in England (like gotten) or features whose isoglosses are retreating in England (such as rhoticity) but at the same time your yod-dropping is more progressed than ours (as in [tub] vs [tjub] and [nu] vs [nju]) as is your loss of rounding (we have a short o sound in the words got, cot, what, coffee). So it goes both ways.

Well, i can't speak for differences in pronunciation, other than to say that, well, they're there.  But Quebecois French has maintained a vocabulary that is more impervious to outside influence than even French French—which is no small feat, given the French government's effort to keep loan words to a minimum.  My favorite example:  In France, a hot dog is un hot dog (not that the French would generally eat something so ghastly), whereas in Quebec it's often un chien chaud (the young'uns might have picked up the English loan word, i don't know).  One must be careful, though, because in France une chienne chaude is a dog in heat.

Apologies to the true francophones here if my tale is apocryphal; i only know what my French-teachers told me.

[wm.annis]

Bringing us back to the original question, right now perfect number concord (or "agreement" if you know a language that expects that of you) seems the safest route until Frommer can confirm or alter the rules for us explicitly.  So:

  po lu karyu
  mefo lu meharyu
  pxefo lu pxeharyu
  (ay)fo lu (ay)haryu

But not:

  *mefo lu karyu
  *mefo lu (ay)haryu

To most of us the dual and trial seem sort of exotic and special cases of the ay+ plural.  But in most human languages with productive duals, their use is pervasive throughout the language.  We would never say "we are a teacher" in English.  I see no reason we'd say moe lu karyu "we two are a teacher" in Na'vi.

[Muzer]

I don't know how Quebecois translates onto French French, but yes, American English has still got a lot of features that are considered archaic in England (like gotten) or features whose isoglosses are retreating in England (such as rhoticity) but at the same time your yod-dropping is more progressed than ours (as in [tub] vs [tjub] and [nu] vs [nju]) as is your loss of rounding (we have a short o sound in the words got, cot, what, coffee). So it goes both ways.

True indeed.  To compare and contrast BrE with GA:

• Some GA dialects have phomenic æ-tensing (my dialect has the non-phonemic version occuring only before m and n...) while BrE has little or no æ-tensing.
• GA has Canadian raising, where before voiceless consonants (with a few rare exceptions) {aɪ} becomes a shorter {ʌɪ}.  BrE always has {aɪ}.
• In GA, "pa" "pop" and "paw" are pronounced with the same vowel {ɑ}, but in BrE, they are pronounced differently: pa" {ɑ}, "pop" {ɒ}, and "paw" {ɔ}.
• In words like "low," GA has {ɵ̞ʊ}, but BrE has partially unrounded this to {əʊ}.
• BrE has a special split called the trap-bath split.  It is so-called because the words are pronounced {tɹæp} and {bɑθ}.
• GA does indeed have yod-dropping, but only partially, and the {ju} is still intact before non-alveolar consonants.  The "dropped yod" is usually a reduced diphthong: {ɨ̞u} ~ {ʊu}.  In addition, the words "through" and "threw" may be homophones.
• ...and speak of rhoticity, you have just about got it: BrE doesn't like r's pronounced after a vowel, and GA is the exact opposite.

Each of these things has its own advantage over the other in terms of avoiding homophones.  A couple don't have any advantage at all.

There are, of course, a number of other differences, but I will not explain them here for the sake of simplicity.

Some of those are quite overgeneralised - the north of England and presumably Scotland too doesn't have the trap/bath split, for instance.

[kewnya txamew'itan]

I think Scotland might have the trap/bath divide, or if they don't, it's certainly at a different vowel than in the North.

Anyway, if you're comparing with GA, the usual BrE accent to use would be RP which is the 'standard' for BrE for which all of these apply.

Also, ma ll.sxkxawng, RP also has yod-dropping, just to a lesser degree, for example it used to be (until fairly recently) the norm to in RP pronounce "suit" [sjut] but now it would be more common to say [sut], same with similar words like suitable etc.

['Oma Tirea]

Also, ma ll.sxkxawng, RP also has yod-dropping, just to a lesser degree, for example it used to be (until fairly recently) the norm to in RP pronounce "suit" [sjut] but now it would be more common to say [sut], same with similar words like suitable etc.

In the event some of this yod-dropping does occur, does this mean "suit" rhymes with "soot" or are the transcriptions {sɨ̞ut} and {sut}?

[omängum fra'uti]

In the English I speak, suit rhymes with boot, and soot rhymes with foot.

[kewnya txamew'itan]

Also, ma ll.sxkxawng, RP also has yod-dropping, just to a lesser degree, for example it used to be (until fairly recently) the norm to in RP pronounce "suit" [sjut] but now it would be more common to say [sut], same with similar words like suitable etc.

In the event some of this yod-dropping does occur, does this mean "suit" rhymes with "soot" or are the transcriptions {sɨ̞ut} and {sut}?

<suit> as [sut] as opposed to [sjut] with <soot> being [sʊt]

[Tirea Aean]

Bringing us back to the original question, right now perfect number concord (or "agreement" if you know a language that expects that of you) seems the safest route until Frommer can confirm or alter the rules for us explicitly.  So:

  po lu karyu
  mefo lu meharyu
  pxefo lu pxeharyu
  (ay)fo lu (ay)haryu

But not:

  *mefo lu karyu
  *mefo lu (ay)haryu

To most of us the dual and trial seem sort of exotic and special cases of the ay+ plural.  But in most human languages with productive duals, their use is pervasive throughout the language.  We would never say "we are a teacher" in English.  I see no reason we'd say moe lu karyu "we two are a teacher" in Na'vi.

Totally with you on this one. I dont know where NeotrekkerZ found that rule that says that last one is correct. if it happens to be canon, I want to see it. I personally always match them. I never say something like moe lu karyu. that is just as mismatch as oe lu meharyu...so it seems to me.