Na'vi in Hiragana and Kanji!

Started by Irtaviš Ačankif, July 23, 2012, 01:43:46 PM

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Irtaviš Ačankif

So, one day I got this crazy idea of using Japanese hiragana and kanji to write Na'vi. Yeah. It's a crazy idea. Japanese phonology is WAY simpler than that of Na'vi. How in the world would hiragana work for Na'vi?

Dakuten to the rescue!

That's about the only hint I'll give. Here's a some stuff written in hiragana-kanji-Na'vi:

私るすぬ平仮名に゚い゙だん!日本あ゙文法ける゙語ぷ゚ぴナッヴィや゙、す゚ら゚あ゙美る゙。全人に゚い゚一ラチンあ゙文法ふぁ文れる゙し---今ヴぁぃ!
Previously Ithisa Kīranem, Uniltìrantokx te Skxawng.

Name from my Sakaš conlang, from Sakasul Ältäbisäl Acarankïp

"First name" is Ačankif, not Eltabiš! In Na'vi, Atsankip.

Ezy Ryder

#1
I really like the idea. I'll try to learn this way of writing Na'vi. It could make the experience of using Na'vi better for me, even though it's not an "official"/"real" way of writing this language.

Yawne Zize’ite

Interesting use of handakuten. You might want to look at how kana are used for Ainu and formerly for Taiwanese. Neither of those languages have clusters like Naʼvi does.

This is how I'd try to write your sentence:

私ル好平仮名ニ̅ダン!日本ア̅綴字法不ル゙語ㇷピナッヴィヤ̅、ㇲラ゙̅美ル゙。全人ニ̅一ラチンア̅綴字法ファ書シ--今ヴァィ!

There is a definite tension between Na'vi and Japanese roots, and I tried to use a combining overline to create new vowel kana (in the manner of Taiwanese kana). I'm not sure it displayed very well. The small kana for consonants not followed by vowels come from Ainu.

Infixes are going to be very difficult to mix with kanji. The system works as well as it does because Japanese is almost exclusively suffixing.

Irtaviš Ačankif

We could use Kanji with infixes this way:

kame: 見め
kamame: 見まめ
kolame: 見ら゙め

The kanji could be used only to assign meaning to the verb and get furigana for whatever happens to be the first syllable :)
Previously Ithisa Kīranem, Uniltìrantokx te Skxawng.

Name from my Sakaš conlang, from Sakasul Ältäbisäl Acarankïp

"First name" is Ačankif, not Eltabiš! In Na'vi, Atsankip.

Tsmuktengan

This is very interesting. Yet I see an issue pointing its nose : Kanji can have different meanings, sometimes close to each other in meaning, sometimes very different. There may be confusions in exact meaning of a word with Kanji, even when associated to other Kanji or Hiraganas. I would suggest using Hiraganas only, that may be more simple to interpret in some situations.

This can also help differentiating Na'vi sentence with Japanese characters and pure Japanese.


Irtaviš Ačankif

Quote from: Tsmuktengan on August 17, 2012, 09:24:52 AM
This is very interesting. Yet I see an issue pointing its nose : Kanji can have different meanings, sometimes close to each other in meaning, sometimes very different. There may be confusions in exact meaning of a word with Kanji, even when associated to other Kanji or Hiraganas. I would suggest using Hiraganas only, that may be more simple to interpret in some situations.

This can also help differentiating Na'vi sentence with Japanese characters and pure Japanese.
Na'vi has almost no synonyms. Kanji, used in a standard way, is very precise in meaning actually :)
Previously Ithisa Kīranem, Uniltìrantokx te Skxawng.

Name from my Sakaš conlang, from Sakasul Ältäbisäl Acarankïp

"First name" is Ačankif, not Eltabiš! In Na'vi, Atsankip.

Tsmuktengan

All right then. Just,  what do you mean by 'standard way'?


Irtaviš Ačankif

Well, standard means that I would need to make a standard Kanji reading chart - that is; "I" for example should always be 私 and not something else.
Previously Ithisa Kīranem, Uniltìrantokx te Skxawng.

Name from my Sakaš conlang, from Sakasul Ältäbisäl Acarankïp

"First name" is Ačankif, not Eltabiš! In Na'vi, Atsankip.

Tsmuktengan

Ah yes. This is absolutely fine then.


Irtaviš Ačankif

#9

An "improved" way of using hiragana and kanji to write Na'vi. A->ä and I->ì is indicated by adding small え, and consonants without vowels following are also written small. In environments where smaller text would be impossible (in this example, LibreOffice's furigana system), consonants without vowels following get an iteration mark appended as a "vowel-killer".

Voiced hiragana are used to write ejectives.
Previously Ithisa Kīranem, Uniltìrantokx te Skxawng.

Name from my Sakaš conlang, from Sakasul Ältäbisäl Acarankïp

"First name" is Ačankif, not Eltabiš! In Na'vi, Atsankip.

Tsmuktengan

Very interesting. Thank you very much for all your work on this.

Isn't there a way to write Japanese characters in some way to distinguish Na'vi from Japanese by character formating? Writing in Na'vi with italic Japanese characters for example or having the original Japanese in some sort of italic. It is otherwise not immediately evident due to the structure of both languages, in my opinion.

It seems that even with recent relearning and practice, my Japanese notions are still rotten.  :P


Irtaviš Ačankif

Well, people who know either Na'vi or Japanese would easily distinguish the two. For example, both English and Na'vi use the Latin alphabet. This doesn't mean that we need to invent a weird italic font for Na'vi to distinguish it from English!

I have a Japanese friend, and when he saw a sign in Okinawan (which also uses Hiragana+Kanji) which looked pretty "Japanese" to me (I haven't started learning the language yet), he commented, "Hmm...what is that weird language?". And Okinawan is actually a Japonic language  ;D

Two of the easier ways to distinguish Japanese and Hiragana Na'vi would be 1. Obsolete kana "wi" and "we" in use 2. Small kana peppered around 3. Ungrammatical (from a Japanese POV) Kanji
Previously Ithisa Kīranem, Uniltìrantokx te Skxawng.

Name from my Sakaš conlang, from Sakasul Ältäbisäl Acarankïp

"First name" is Ačankif, not Eltabiš! In Na'vi, Atsankip.

Tsmuktengan

#12
Then this can be useful to demonstrate than Na'vi can also be used with ease using other characters that are not occidental. I think this great and reinforces the neutrality of Na'vi, in my opinion, towards regional characters.


Prrton


There are very few if any Japanese folks learning Na'vi. I'm very supportive of developing a kana-only "gateway" phonology map for the purpose of encouraging/assisting Japanese to learn Na'vi, but I feel strongly that the ultimate "goal" of it would be for that purpose. I agree with Yawne Zize'ite that using the Ainu-centric small consonantal katakana is a good way to go. Kanji should be avoided because for it to work in any way that is not confusing, there would have to be a complete dictionary and it would in many cases require the Japanese to learn things that are counter-intuitive to them. Cognitively speaking kanji are correlative to irregular spellings in English. They must be memorized. This would produce an interesting philosophical exercise, but it wouldn't help bring native speakers of Japanese into the fold of the lì'fyaolo' leNa'vi.

I don't see KAME as being written with 見, for example. If such a thing were to happen, I'd expect 魂メ or similar. 見'ア might apply to vision, but as soon as we get to infixing, game over man.


Irtaviš Ačankif

#14
Frankly speaking, I didn't intend this to be of any practical use except as a linguistic exercise and a fun way to write Na'vi. Kanji would be a mess to memorize, but a kana-only system would take tons of space.

My initial motivation was to create a system to this effect: non-Japanese speakers look at it and think, "oh it must be Japanese", and Japanese speakers look at it and think, "oh it must be Okinawan or something". Also, I wanted to write Na'vi stuff with the calligraphy I recently learned rather than crappy newbie Japanese or boring old Chinese.

My thoughts regarding Ainu orthography in Na'vi: my main objection is that it requires the use of katakana, at least in the Unicode code pages. This eliminates the use of katakana for proper names and loanwords (like I did with puk and tavit), and katakana looks ugly when in huge bunches. It might just be my font though.

Finally, I present two pages from my journal. Half crappy Japanese, half Na'vi written as Japanese, demonstrating the viability of the latter. Karmaboost to anybody who can transcribe the Na'vi and/or translate the Japanese :) My Japanese...とてもわるいですね!
Previously Ithisa Kīranem, Uniltìrantokx te Skxawng.

Name from my Sakaš conlang, from Sakasul Ältäbisäl Acarankïp

"First name" is Ačankif, not Eltabiš! In Na'vi, Atsankip.

Prrton


Your Japanese is not bad at all for someone who's getting started. It's intelligible and that's ultimately all that matters with human communications.

I have no issue with anyone creating art pieces in the vein of Xu Bing, for example, that contain any kind of hodgepodge of textual materials, but the only real SYSTEM that I feel is worth focus now is one that helps native readers of kana bridge to being able to read Na'vi in the roman alphabet, pamrelfya leNa'vi.

Some of what you've done in your notebook text is really creative and interesting. I'm especially enamored of ナッヸ. That is quite inspired. Other things, however, I'm violently opposed to. For example, if Neytiri is speaking to Eytukan, 私る゜君ち敬めいえ is COMPLETELY inappropriate. 君 carries too much baggage related to social hierarchy/honorifics. A child using this word 君 to speak to a parent is UNTHINKABLE in standard Japanese society. Perhaps an adult a$$hole son being verbally abusive to his elderly mother, but even then...

So you end up with all these different nga kanji, 君, お前, 貴方, 様 (ngenga), and it's a mess. I don't know how non-speakers of Japanese would ever really get the differences...

Tsu'tey would never use 私 in the line 武士パㇰ?!つん俺殺いゔぁんぐねぃ容易。These issues would just be a nightmare in any pragmatic system, but have fun with them. For the pure sake of FUN, this could be an entertaining exercise.


Irtaviš Ačankif

#16
Well, uhh, I would rather reinvent a kanji system starting from Classical Chinese, like the Japanese did long ago, rather than trying to carry over idiomatic Japanese kanji combinations. For example, the nga word/morpheme would always be「君」, rather than 「貴方」. Therefore, ngenga would be「け゚君」instead of 「様」or whatever. I know this isn't Japanese usage, but Na'vi does not have the messy honorifics that Japanese has, and also it should not distinguish more words in writing than in speech. Also, 君 was the kanji for the most generic possible way of saying "you" in Classical Chinese.

Tsu'ey would use 私 because it is the only kanji for the Na'vi word oe. Ohe in my system is 私へ, using the kanji for only the first syllable as I did with infixed words.

This creates many words that are NOT present in Japanese, and also a smaller proportion of kanji, since kanji must correspond one-to-one to morphemes which must also be grammatical when standing alone. Tsu'tey's sentence would be this:

戦しゆパクゝ?!彼ちつん私、殺ぴわ゙ん゚にぇ

Also, I'd like to present you The Official Kana Chart of the Na'vi Language, also in my notebook (actually an older one I filled up!):

Previously Ithisa Kīranem, Uniltìrantokx te Skxawng.

Name from my Sakaš conlang, from Sakasul Ältäbisäl Acarankïp

"First name" is Ačankif, not Eltabiš! In Na'vi, Atsankip.

Prrton

Have fun with it. I won't be able to relate to this as an orthographic tool. 君 is only きみ for me and 易 alone means "fortune telling" in Japanese and I'd be surprised if most young Japanese people would even be able to explain why. This is a Na'vi, Chinese, ひらがな mash-up that does not seem firmly, intuitively anchored in any one of the languages or traditions for me, so I'll look forward to checking in on what you come with from time to time with an "art"-focused curiosity.

Ngari viveiar fìtìkangkemvi 'ivong nì'o' nì'aw! :-)


Irtaviš Ačankif

 :) Yeah, one of the purposes of this thing was to be confusing to Japanese speakers  ;D

BTW, could you check out my new Na'vi song, which is translate from Japanese? Thanks! I guessed the meaning of some of the phrases, since the English translation from anime-lyrics.com didn't seem to be too literal.
Previously Ithisa Kīranem, Uniltìrantokx te Skxawng.

Name from my Sakaš conlang, from Sakasul Ältäbisäl Acarankïp

"First name" is Ačankif, not Eltabiš! In Na'vi, Atsankip.