Kaltxì oeyä aysmukan sì smuke leNa'Vi!

[Alìm Tsamsiyu]

[EDIT:] Fixed the subject line.  Change from nìNa'Vi to leNa'Vi.

Greetings my Na'Vi brothers and sisters!

Ever since I saw Avatar in theaters it has dominated my mind.  Nearly every moment in which my mind is not occupied by some pressing task the Na'Vi people and their language invades my thoughts.  I've been lurking around these forums and this website for the past day or so merely attempting to learn 'I See you'.  However, I found that once I learned that simple phrase my mind hungered for more.  So, ultimately, I decided to dive right in and here I am!

I'm sure that I made blatant glaring errors in that sentence, the least of which is probably my inconsistency of using or dropping 'ay-'.  I dropped it off of 'aysmuke' because 'sì smuke' flows better than 'sì aysmuke' in my opinion.

I'm trying to come up with a better sentence for practice and criticism than the one I used as my introduction, but at the moment I'm not quite confident enough to tackle what I want to say and the words I wish to use don't seem to exist in the language yet!  As such, I'm trying to find roundabout ways of saying what I want to say, and I'm getting very confused, haha.

Anyway, the sentence I want to make is:

This is my first attempt at a complicated sentence in Na'Vi.  How did I do?

So far, my Na'Vi version of it is:

Fì'u-ri oe-yä fmi 'awve hu ke-ftu-a 'upxare lu. Peyfa oe s<ol>i?
This-TOP I-GEN try first with NEG-easy-ATTR message be.  How I do<PFV>?
Lit: "This my try first with not easy message be.  How I did?"

Irayo.

[Ikran]

Fì'u-ri oe-yä fmi 'awve hu ke-ftu-a 'upxare lu. Peyfa oe s<ol>i?
This-TOP I-GEN try first with NEG-easy-ATTR message be.  How I do<PFV>?
Lit: "This my try first with not easy message be.  How I did?"

Kaltxì.  Fmi is a verb, so you have to modify it in order to get a noun. The only way to do that is adding tì-: tìfmi. 'Easy' is ftue, not ftu, so it should be keftuea. I'd add an ergative suffix in the question, since si is a transitive verb. But we could drop oe-l, since the subject is already known. My version could be:

Fì'u-ri oe-yä tìfmi 'awve hu ke-ftue-a 'upxare lu. Peyfa s<ol>i?

[shiaru]

the poor guy is trying, there will be mistakes at first no one is perfect we certainly aren't. Just try your best and if you fail then try again, don't give up, that's my advice. And for a first try that sentence came out well, not good but it was your first one, just keep at it.

[Sarkath]

Welcome to the forums, prepare to be corrected

Not by me of course, except the one thing in the topic the 'ay' is optional for 'aysmukan' and the 'ni' before 'niNa'vi' makes that an adverb, or Na'vi-ly.

We have some really helpful people here that will help you so don't worry if you feel overwhelmed and just remeber, we don't even have the full language yet O_o

[Ikran]

the poor guy is trying, there will be mistakes at first no one is perfect we certainly aren't. Just try your best and if you fail then try again, don't give up, that's my advice. And for a first try that sentence came out well, not good but it was your first one, just keep at it.

Yes, of course. I'm just a beginner myself and keep making mistakes all the time, but this is the best way to learn. Please, don't hesitate to correct me!

[Étienne]

Kaltxi, hope you enjoy your stay on this amazing forum.

[Alìm Tsamsiyu]

Alright - forgot that tidbit about adding tì- to a verb to make it into a noun, irayo.

Ok, so editing my own sentence...

Since tìfmi is now a noun, shouldn't that part have the -a- added to it?

tìfmi a-'awve or tìfmi-a 'awve

Also, elsewhere I've seen people (namely Prrton) adding 'hu' for 'with' as a suffix in some cases, so I wasn't sure if I should do that here or not...
Like:

Fì'u-ri oe-yä tìfmi a-'awve ke-ftue-a 'upxare-hu lu. Peyfa s<ol>i?
This-TOP I-GEN (Nounificate?)-try ATTR-first NEG-easy-ATTR message-with be. How (I) do<PFV>?
This is my first try with a complicated sentence.  How did I do?

[Ikran]

Since tìfmi is now a noun, shouldn't that part have the -a- added to it?

tìfmi a-'awve or tìfmi-a 'awve

Yes, you're right. 'First' is an adjective here.

Also, elsewhere I've seen people (namely Prrton) adding 'hu' for 'with' as a suffix in some cases, so I wasn't sure if I should do that here or not...
Like:

Fì'u-ri oe-yä tìfmi a-'awve ke-ftue-a 'upxare-hu lu. Peyfa s<ol>i?
This-TOP I-GEN (Nounificate?)-try ATTR-first NEG-easy-ATTR message-with be. How (I) do<PFV>?
This is my first try with a complicated sentence.  How did I do?

In Na'Vi there are not prepositions, but adpositions. That means you can put hu at the end or at the beginning of a noun as you wish. Now I think it's perfect!

[shiaru]

And I think Adpositions confuse the hell out of most people not familiar with them. If you are familiar with the french language then they seem easier to deal with.

[Alìm Tsamsiyu]

Wow, so that's really it? I thought there were far worse errors with that sentence! Yay!

Hmm... So, would 'yay' in Na'vi be n<ei>ang? Or does that infix only work for verbs?  I suppose it could just be 'iei', a Na'vi saying "yay" - like 'toktor'/doctor and 'kunsìp'/gunship.

Anyway, I digress.  The only part of my sentence that bothers me is 'Fìuri'.  For some reason it just doesn't seem correct with everything else I've seen.  Any thoughts on this?