Combining Our Efforts II

[`Eylan Ayfalulukanä]

The concept of pi? Sure, but perhaps not in any more detail than "to pxey lu nì'it txan"

Perhaps you really mean to pxey lu nì'it hì`i

I could see the concept of pi (rather than pi itself) becoming apparent when someone is say, preparing sheets of leather to wrap around a drum frame. Perhaps over time, they noticed that amount of leather required was just a bit over three times the diameter of the drum frame. To make it easier to make drums, maybe they figured out that (and this is a bit of a stretch) that they need 22 units of leather for every seven units of drum diameter. They may have even made a tool that calculates this relationship similar to the tool I described earlier, which extracts a cube root. As far as understanding the concept of pi as a very important transcendental number, that is reserved for my fictitious high-tech Na`vi tribe living mostly underground on the other side of Pandora 

[Payä Tìrol]

I meant "pi" to pxey lu nì'it txan... pi is slightly greater than 3. I'm pretty sure to always attaches to the thing being compared against in the manner an adposition would.

[`Eylan Ayfalulukanä]

I meant "pi" to pxey lu nì'it txan... pi is slightly greater than 3. I'm pretty sure to always attaches to the thing being compared against in the manner an adposition would.

The way you originally worded it, the comparison was not obvious, and I treated to as simply 'than'. So to me, it read 'Than three be slightly larger', which meant to me that pi was inferred as being less than 3.

[Plumps]

I don't see the need for higher math... zero, as far as I remember was a convenience for us ›Earthlings‹ to be able to tell phone numbers...
Honestly, I don't see why the Na'vi would need that.

A kinship paradigm, the spacial directions (north, east, south, west etc.) and verbs are far more important tì'efumì oeyä

[Payä Tìrol]

Yeah, mixing English and Na'vi doesn't always work as intended :/

Also, I was kind of surprised when I found that 0 was represented in Na'vi, considering they don't seem that big on mathematics, which almost seems like a prerequisite for 0, on Earth at least. It makes much more sense to me if it falls under the same umbrella as 8 and 9...

[Kì'eyawn]

I have a new thought—about thought, actually.

In English, we have the questions "What do you think?" and "What are you thinking?", which, maddeningly enough, don't mean the same thing.

"What do you think?" is short for "What do you think of/about X"—what are your thoughts on a specific topic?

"What are you thinking?" is a more general question, akin to "What's on your mind?"

In French, the former is covered with Qu'est-ce que tu penses? and the latter with Qu'en penses-tu? (although, for the former, one can also ask Comment tu trouves X?—lit., How do you find X?)

(And then, of course, there's also "What were you thinking?", which is more of a "you did something really stupid and i can't imagine how you thought it was a good plan" thing, but we can tackle that idiom some other day...)

So, how do we ask these questions in Na'vi?

If we don't already have answers, i would like to humbly put forth my own suggestions:  

"What do you think [ of X ]?" could be conveyed with [ X-ìri ] fyape fpìl nga?—although you could make a case for going the French route and saying X-it pefya ngal run?

Then, for "What are you thinking?", i'd say either Ngari aysäfpìl lu peu?, or the somewhat more idiomatic Ngari aysäfpìlìl tok pesengit?

So, what do you think, ma smuktu?

Ngaytxoa if this has already been covered; i looked but didn't find it anywhere.

Edit:  Went in and fixed a spelling error.  This is what happens when my brain runs on autopilot...

[Carborundum]

STUFF

I've actually raised this very question a few times before, but never gotten a satisfactory answer.
I'm all for including it in the workshop, obviously.

[Lance R. Casey]

the spacial directions (north, east, south, west etc.)

This should indeed be a priority. Here's some extended context:

Klingon does not have four cardinal directions, but three: chan, 'ev and tIng. The first is, simply, due east. The other two are, more or less, 40 degrees west of north and south, respectively, so it's not quite as simple as a division into thirds. To get more specific, any of these terms can be combined, e.g. 'ev tIng or tIng 'ev would signify due west (the middle of 'ev and tIng) etc. Also, as with other directional words in Klingon, these are not actually directions per se, but rather nouns carrying the notion of "area toward the east" and so on, so they are used in a genitive relationship with something else. For example, "I saw the eastern sky grow dark" would be rendered as HurghchoH chan chal 'e' vIlegh (lit. "I saw the sky of the area to the east grow dark").

Turning back to our own world, the Sámi have (or at least originally had) a different basic conception. If you look in a North Sámi-Swedish dictionary, you might find lulip with the meaning "east", oarjip for "south", alip for "west", and nuortap for "north". However, if you looked in the corresponding Norwegian dictionary instead, the same words (or variants thereof) would stand for different directions! But how come?

Well, the answer can be sought in that the underlying concepts are more relative than they are absolute. Even within Sweden, as much is evident from the maps of the mountain areas, where there are a number of places where a feature designated alip is situated directly north of its lulip counterpart. Much of Sámi society has been centered around the reindeer for hundreds of years, and they move up into and down from the mountains with the seasons. In northern Sweden, the rivers rise in the west (the Scandinavian Mountains making up the border to Norway, as well as the central watershed of the peninsula) and flow to the Gulf of Bothnia in the east, and their courses have long served as migration routes, directly or indirectly. So, rather than signifying "west" as such, alip is perhaps better thought of as "upstream the waterways, towards the mountains" and lulip "downstream the waterways, towards the sea" -- and if the river happens to be running in a north/south direction at a certain place, "irregularities" as per above can occur.

[Kì'eyawn]

Ma Lance, i just want to say that your Sámi example is the single coolest thing i've read all day.

[wm.annis]

Also see: pp 250-254, especially the diagram on p.252, in this Hupa Grammar for an even more complex system.

['Oma Tirea]

I don't see the need for higher math... zero, as far as I remember was a convenience for us ›Earthlings‹ to be able to tell phone numbers...
Honestly, I don't see why the Na'vi would need that.

A kinship paradigm, the spacial directions (north, east, south, west etc.) and verbs are far more important tì'efumì oeyä

Mllte nìwotx.  Irayo for getting it across, ma Plumps.

[Plumps]

And there I thought I over reacted Don't get me wrong, I see the usefulness of halves, quarters and so on and I don't want to play down the Na'vi's ability for higher mathematics. Look at the old Egyptians, Mayans, Aztec and so on... Their maths, especially for calculating star constellations is amazingly precise! Then again, that was knowledge only known to the ruling or priest-like class.

Ma Lance, ma William,

I was reminded of that again by reading the NYT article that K. Pawl suggested in his latest blog, the directional system of the Guugu Yimithirr people really racked my brain ... but in a good way

The Klingon system is indeed interesting and I couldn't remember one bit having read that anywhere when I dealt with the language.

The Hupa text is highly interesting.

On a similar note, I remember that the dwarves in Tolkien's world orient(?) their maps eastwards which makes looking at a atxkxerel rather disorienting at first glance...

I know I 'hated' the Irish directional system although it's not that complicated... They mostly differenciate between the speaker in motion or positional (similar to what we have in Na'vi with neto and mìso). But you also distinguish a movement away from the speaker and toward the speaker. So there are at least 3 words for e.g. 'above'

Tá mé thuas. – I am above/on top.
Tá tú ag dul suas. – You go up.
Tá sé ag teacht anuas. – He comes down/from above.
So, although one root (*uas) remains the same, the meaning changes depending on the relative position of the speaker; and the verb you use. (Something like *tá mé ag dul anuas. would not be possible)

Same goes for 'down', 'east', 'west/behind' and 'yonder'
Every time it's confusing to me to think myself into that fpìlfya but it definitely makes you more aware of your surrounding...

[Lance R. Casey]

The subjects from this thread have now been collected into a poll which will run for three days. EVERYONE is encouraged to go there and vote upon which questions are the most important to request answers to.

In the meantime, this thread is locked.