Na'vi Vocabulary Committee

Started by wm.annis, November 26, 2010, 08:08:53 PM

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Ekirä

Quote from: Kemaweyan on December 06, 2010, 12:45:34 PM
Yeah, sounds good :) But I don't like this way for "read", because Na'vi have not a reading ???

It's possible they use symbols for stuff like marking "good hunting here" "this tree is poisonous" "palulukan territory" or whatever. And then "read" could be used for both reading symbols or reading words.....

But that's part of their culture that we have no confirmation for, so I dunno. :P

Puvomun

Quote from: Kemaweyan on December 06, 2010, 12:45:34 PM
Yeah, sounds good :) But I don't like this way for "read", because Na'vi have not a reading ???
Sran. Someone in Australia had a chance to talk to Karyu Pawl and asked if we had questions. I wanted to know if there would be a word for reading, and Pawl replied that he thought it could be a combination like the Chinese use, which is "looking at information". Alas, Na'vi has no word for information.

To write is also a combination, sound and image and make "pamrel si".
A combination to look at the sound and image might then be "pamrel tse'a". Which is what, in my opinion, anyone can do, also someone who cannot read. They literally just look at the writing.
Which brought me to my original suggestion, "pamrel tslam", sound image understand. Meaning that you know what the pamrel means. Because you can actually read it.
Krr a lì'fya lam sraw, may' frivìp utralit.

Ngopyu ayvurä.

Sireayä mokri

Quote from: Ekirä on December 06, 2010, 12:54:35 PM
It's possible they use symbols for stuff like marking "good hunting here" "this tree is poisonous" "palulukan territory" or whatever. And then "read" could be used for both reading symbols or reading words.....

But that's part of their culture that we have no confirmation for, so I dunno. :P

We do know that they use "V"-like facepaint for Iknimaya. This may be a symbol marking "young hunter" or something.
When the mirror speaks, the reflection lies.

Lisa

#63
Quote from: Kemaweyan on December 06, 2010, 12:45:34 PM
Yeah, sounds good :) But I don't like this way for "read", because Na'vi have not a reading ???

But I think they do, in a way, because what is reading really?  It basically is looking at something and deriving meaning from it.  In the case of sawtute, it's more commonly used for looking at words on a page, we look at these symbols and understand what they mean.  In the case of the Na'vi, it could be looking at the tracks animals have left in the forest, and understanding what happened, e.g. what animals, how many, how long since they passed, were they being chased, i.e. reading the trails or reading the forest.   Looking at something and deriving meaning from it.

Surely the Na'vi, being as closely connected to their environment as they are, would be familiar with the concept of reading as "extracting meaning", and could apply the words they have for that (which we don't know yet) to the understanding of sawtute scratchings on paper.  :)



(Edited the last line a bit to better reflect what I was trying to say)
Oeru syaw "Tirea Ikran" kop slä frakrrmi layu oe "Grammar Skxawng"   :)

Sireayä mokri

Yeah, "reading the forest" can be common expression among Na'vi.
When the mirror speaks, the reflection lies.

Kamean

Quote from: Sireayä mokri on December 06, 2010, 01:00:26 PM
We do know that they use "V"-like facepaint for Iknimaya. This may be a symbol marking "young hunter" or something.
Jacke's war painting in the final battle was also "V" - like. But for Toruk Makto young hunter's facepainting usage seems funny. :D
Quote from: Tirea Ikran on December 06, 2010, 01:08:03 PM
Quote from: Kemaweyan on December 06, 2010, 12:45:34 PM
Yeah, sounds good :) But I don't like this way for "read", because Na'vi have not a reading ???

But I think they do, in a way, because what is reading really?  It basically is looking at something and deriving meaning from it.  In the case of sawtute, it's more commonly used for looking at words on a page, we look at these symbols and understand what they mean.  In the case of the Na'vi, it could be looking at the tracks animals have left in the forest, and understanding what happened, e.g. what animals, how many, how long since they passed, were they being chased, i.e. reading the trails or reading the forest.   Looking at something and deriving meaning from it.

Surely the Na'vi, being as closely connected to their environment as they are, would be familiar with the concept of reading as "extracting meaning", and could apply the words they have for that to the sawtute scratchings on paper.  :)
Would be fya'tslam?
Tse'a ngal ke'ut a krr fra'uti kame.


Kemaweyan

They don't write, as Pawl wrote in his blog:

Quote from: PawlTrouble is, it's unlikely such a simple verb would have developed on Pandora, since the Na'vi don't have a written language!

So if they have not a writing, they have nothing to read! Then they couldn't create a root for this verb :)
Nìrangal frapo tsirvun pivlltxe nìNa'vi :D

Ekirä

What about reading the tracks of the forest? Could a root word for that be used also for reading words?

Sireayä mokri

Quote from: Kamean on December 06, 2010, 01:13:09 PM
Jacke's war painting in the final battle was also "V" - like. But for Toruk Makto young hunter's facepainting usage seems funny. :D

I think, it's rather "X"-like there.
When the mirror speaks, the reflection lies.

Puvomun

#69
Quote from: Ekirä on December 06, 2010, 01:20:26 PM
What about reading the tracks of the forest? Could a root word for that be used also for reading words?
Watch/look at signs
Tse'a ayaungia
Tse'aungia
Tse'aung

Not a root word, I know. But an idea.

(edit) Or even tsaung, and a new root word could be there.
Krr a lì'fya lam sraw, may' frivìp utralit.

Ngopyu ayvurä.

Kemaweyan

Nìrangal frapo tsirvun pivlltxe nìNa'vi :D

Ekirä

I thought aungia was more used for omens....? Maybe I'm just being a nitpicker, but reading omens and reading physical stuff seems different to me. :P

Puvomun

Quote from: Ekirä on December 06, 2010, 02:51:20 PM
I thought aungia was more used for omens....? Maybe I'm just being a nitpicker, but reading omens and reading physical stuff seems different to me. :P
It was the only sign I could locate in the dictionary...
Krr a lì'fya lam sraw, may' frivìp utralit.

Ngopyu ayvurä.

Kemaweyan

Nìrangal frapo tsirvun pivlltxe nìNa'vi :D

Ekirä

Quote from: Kemaweyan on December 06, 2010, 02:54:59 PM
Maybe pätsì would be better?

It's okay, but isn't it basically a loanword (or whatever they're called)? It seems kind of weird to make a merged word from a loanword to me for some reason. :P

Kemaweyan

I know.. Unfortunately we have not a word with meaning exactly "symbol" or "character". But we have not a writing, so there can be no characters :)
Nìrangal frapo tsirvun pivlltxe nìNa'vi :D

wm.annis

Somewhere I saw that Frommer is already look at verbs meaning... um... "look at" or "see" for this sense (as is common in plenty of human languages).

Perhaps we should get one of the project subforums created sooner rather than later...

Prrton

Quote from: Kemaweyan on December 06, 2010, 03:13:22 PM
I know.. Unfortunately we have not a word with meaning exactly "symbol" or "character". But we have not a writing, so there can be no characters :)

BUT, when K. Pawl said that pamrel was better than lì'rel for alphabetic writing, he said that lì'rel might work for describing Chinese characters or Egyptian hieroglyphs.

It is also not impossible* that the Na'vi would borrow the English verb read as r••itx or r••it or even more likely riting si or ritxing si. I've watched the new abandoned school footage over and over again and it's clear that Grace was teaching them English through the Roman alphabet based on the writing on the blackboard. There are also geometric shapes drawn on the board.

However, I personally find this somewhat distasteful. The Canadian French phrase «Parquer le truck», while hilarious to me, is not a paradigm that I would like to see adopted pervasively in Na'vi.

I was thrilled to hear that Paul told James that he might want to consider a new root for "reading the signs of the forest" extended to "reading words". That seems like a very K. Pawl approach to it and I LOVE it.

I also want to make a comment on ngrrpxo. I love the sound of it and I agree that it's a good onomatopoetic approach to the subject matter at hand, but this is a great example of where the etymology comes into play. Ngrr clearly mean root in Na'vi. So generally K. Pawl might want to avoid that syllable. Nrrpxo or nrrpxo' or fwrrpxong* might do the same thing without needing a semantic exception. When thinking about creating new words there are many many layers and pieces to the puzzle in Paul's rigor. Even the word fern, ìpxa (from Taronyu's beer), has a *legitimate* back story:

Quote from: P. Frommer to Taronyu and Prrton via e-mail 07 Oct., 2010

Let's go with ìpxa . . . no final y, and stress on the second: ì.pxa

Thinking about it more, I like that form because it illustrates a diachronic phonetic change we haven't yet seen: ay à a . (This is assuming the origin of the word involved hì'i + pxay, which seems reasonable, given the "small" and "many" qualities of ferns that you mentioned, ma Prrton.)

ay à a ( or a: ), including in word-final position, is attested in many languages. In certain kinds of Southern American English, for example, you have "I" and "my" pronounced "ah" and "mah" respectively. And my paternal grandmother, in her non-standard Galician Yiddish, pronounced the standard word [haynt] 'today' as [ha:nt].

Plus ìpxa preserves the beer/phonetics origin more clearly than ìpxay.

So it's «ìpxa», n. fern

Signed and sealed!

P.

Of course, if there is a *legitimate* story as to why thunder has ngrr in it, then maybe that'll end up being the word. Get your stories ready and you may want to do some reading up on diachronic phonetics* too.  ;)


wm.annis

Quote from: Prrton on December 06, 2010, 04:54:46 PMI also want to make a comment on ngrrpxo. I love the sound of it and I agree that it's a good onomatopoetic approach to the subject matter at hand, but this is a great example of where the etymology comes into play. Ngrr clearly mean root in Na'vi. So generally K. Pawl might want to avoid that syllable.

That doesn't really follow for me.  The whole miracle of language is the arbitrariness of signifier and signified.  Every language I know of is riddled with words that contain parts of other words — whether at the beginning, the middle or the end — that have nothing to do with the meaning that results if you amputate parts.

It seems a mistake to make out Na'vi to be an oligosynthetic language.  Indeed, it seems a positive impediment to new word creation, as well as being highly artificial.  K Pawl had no trouble creating the verb stem tswayon.  I don't see why ngrrpxo, or any other word-shape involving ngrr, should be avoided.

Prrton

Quote from: wm.annis on December 06, 2010, 05:05:05 PM
Quote from: Prrton on December 06, 2010, 04:54:46 PMI also want to make a comment on ngrrpxo. I love the sound of it and I agree that it's a good onomatopoetic approach to the subject matter at hand, but this is a great example of where the etymology comes into play. Ngrr clearly mean root in Na'vi. So generally K. Pawl might want to avoid that syllable.

That doesn't really follow for me.  The whole miracle of language is the arbitrariness of signifier and signified.  Every language I know of is riddled with words that contain parts of other words — whether at the beginning, the middle or the end — that have nothing to do with the meaning that results if you amputate parts.

It seems a mistake to make out Na'vi to be an oligosynthetic language.  Indeed, it seems a positive impediment to new word creation, as well as being highly artificial.  K Pawl had no trouble creating the verb stem tswayon.  I don't see why ngrrpxo, or any other word-shape involving ngrr, should be avoided.

Trust me. It comes up as a factor—especially with things that are word initial. And, in this case in particular,  the no-CrrC rule doesn't allow for *ngrrpx either or any syllable contact complexity. I didn't say that he absolutely would want to avoid it, but he does have some internal creator logic about what passes and what doesn't. Occasionally it's best to offer a few options or at least proactively announce *up front* that "Yes. Even though this may look like 'root-something' it's not because of so-and-so logic/backstory."