Past tense descriptives

Started by Nuyuvitrayä, January 28, 2019, 09:36:56 AM

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Nuyuvitrayä

Kaltxi

So, while learning infixes and suffixes, i tried composing a simple sentence, "Amkintrr <was> ma <birthday> (i simply don't know the word for birthday) I understand it is probably some form of Lu, but I looked for the past tense and couldn't find it. Might I get some help?
All energy is only borrowed, and one day, you have to give it back.

Tirea Aean

Kaltxì :)

The word for "Last week" is kintrram

the general past tense infix for verbs is <am>. Though since you already said 'last week', it's clear already that the sentence is about the past and thus there is no obligation to redundantly add the past tense to lu to make lamu.

ma is a particle for addressing someone. e.g., Hello, Neytiri! => Kaltxì ma Neytiri!

The word for "my" is oeyä

Birthday is indeed an interesting one. It is not currently known if the Na'vi even track or celebrate birthdays, so there is no word for it in the language. We do however have the words for anniversary and birth.
zìsìtsaltrr : anniversary
tì'ongokx : birth
So we could construct this idea of birthday by saying "anniversary of birth": zìsìtsaltrr tì'ongokxä

Altogether, we would have:

Kintrram lu zìsìtsaltrr tì'ongokxä oeyä
Last week was the anniversary of the birth of me
Last week was my birthday

or we could reverse the word order (which then happens to follow English word order) to make a slightly different feel

oeyä tì'ongokxä zìsìtsaltrr lu kintrram
My birth's anniversary is last week
My birthday was last week

Other word orders are possible as well.

Hope this helps :)

Nuyuvitrayä

Quote from: Tirea Aean on January 28, 2019, 10:05:34 AM
Kaltxì :)

The word for "Last week" is kintrram

the general past tense infix for verbs is <am>. Though since you already said 'last week', it's clear already that the sentence is about the past and thus there is no obligation to redundantly add the past tense to lu to make lamu.

ma is a particle for addressing someone. e.g., Hello, Neytiri! => Kaltxì ma Neytiri!

The word for "my" is oeyä

Birthday is indeed an interesting one. It is not currently known if the Na'vi even track or celebrate birthdays, so there is no word for it in the language. We do however have the words for anniversary and birth.
zìsìtsaltrr : anniversary
tì'ongokx : birth
So we could construct this idea of birthday by saying "anniversary of birth": zìsìtsaltrr tì'ongokxä

Altogether, we would have:

Kintrram lu zìsìtsaltrr tì'ongokxä oeyä
Last week was the anniversary of the birth of me
Last week was my birthday

or we could reverse the word order (which then happens to follow English word order) to make a slightly different feel

oeyä tì'ongokxä zìsìtsaltrr lu kintrram
My birth's anniversary is last week
My birthday was last week

Other word orders are possible as well.

Hope this helps :)

Overall summary: Na'vi is beautiful. Very helpful, thanks.
All energy is only borrowed, and one day, you have to give it back.

Tirea Aean


Nuyuvitrayä

I think my favorite parts are double RR, it feels crazy rolling off of your tongue  ;D
All energy is only borrowed, and one day, you have to give it back.