Skrapul nìNa'vi?

[Amaya]

Yes I'm insane, and yes I'm aware that there would probably never be a way to market this, but as a teaching tool, I think it would be awesome to be able to play some form of Scrabble among ourselves (physical or computer)

To that end, I'm putting the idea out into the ether, to some extent, since I'm quickly realizing with only a little research that I'm going to need the help of more experienced members and/or someone who can do math and help figure out letter frequencies to decide what letters should be worth more, which there should be more or less of, and such.

As for the letter tiles themselves, my thinking is there should be separate tiles for:
', A, Ä, AW, AY, E, EW, EY, F, H, I, Ì, K, Kx, L, LL, M, N, NG, P, Px, R, RR, S, T, Tx, TS, V, W, Y, Z

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrabble_letter_distributions is a useful resource to get an idea of how the tiles are distributed in different languages. Do you think we can do this with the traditional 100 letter tiles plus 2 blanks or do we need to use some other number?  So many questions...

Ultimately too, I'd like to have the board lettering (DL, DW, TL, TW) in Na'vi as well...  What does everyone think of this idea?  Might be fun?  Or is it ridiculous and should I just fiddle with it on my own in the dark? 

['eylan na'viyä]

I vaguely remember that this has been a big topic in the past.

These are the posts i could find:
http://forum.learnnavi.org/projects/na%27vi-scrabble/
http://forum.learnnavi.org/projects/navi-scrabble-letter-count/
http://forum.learnnavi.org/projects/the-navi-word-puzzle-game/

You don't have to start from kew

[Amaya]

HRH and there I thought I was being unique...  At least, in my defence, all of these seem to be from quite a while ago before I was very active at all on the forums...

I'm still going to work at this though, I think.  I'd much rather make myself a non-virtual game even though there's nobody around here to play with.  Something to take to conventions and sit and play and weird people out HRH!

['Oma Tirea]

As for the letter tiles themselves, my thinking is there should be separate tiles for:
', A, Ä, AW, AY, E, EW, EY, F, H, I, Ì, K, Kx, L, LL, M, N, NG, P, Px, R, RR, S, T, Tx, TS, V, W, Y, Z

...or you could also have a simplified, single-character version (C and G are of optional usage here):

', A, Ä, C, E, F, G, H, I, Ì, K, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z.

...for Eastern Europe, Germany, and Scandinavia, J can replace Y

[Amaya]

I had put some thought into how I would make single-character tiles, and I had a plan for almost all of them.  I can leave out the tiles for the AY, AW, EY, EW and just re-adjust the tile distribution, but the difficulty would be TS and NG

I actually really dislike the use of "C" as a replacement for Ts - if anything my own tendancy would be to use the japanese character for Tsu, which looks rather like a backward C, and for NG it really isn't the same sound as G, so most likely I'd go to the Runes, ᛝ is Ingwaz and represents NG.

For the ejectives I would very likely write them as Ḵ, P, Ṯ

For the LL and RR I would use Ṟ, Ḻ



But that's just the way I'd work it

[Kayrìlien]

HRH and there I thought I was being unique...  At least, in my defence, all of these seem to be from quite a while ago before I was very active at all on the forums...

I'm still going to work at this though, I think.  I'd much rather make myself a non-virtual game even though there's nobody around here to play with.  Something to take to conventions and sit and play and weird people out HRH!

Hehehe, you don't have to defend yourself or anything, rather...it's nice to see that someone else is actually thinking along the same lines. If you look at the links that 'eylan Na'viyä posted, you'll see that I had gone through and worked out a 100-tile set for Na'vi Scrabble that uses only single letters per tile. That is, digraphs like KX and TS are only playable if you get, say, both a K and an X tile. The more I think about that, the more illogical it was; I definitely think that it would be more "natural" to play the game with the real Na'vi alphabet.

And this is the direction you (and a few other people from many months ago) seem to be going. (AKA, the Smart way.) Personally, I found it fun going through a piece of Na'vi literature and working out letter frequencies from scratch, much as the creator of Scrabble did. (He used the New York Times.) I used the January 20th letter to the community from Dr. Frommer, which was one of the first and easily the most important direct Na'vi-language communication we received from him. You can find the results on that second link in a big tally sheet.

But yeah, this was always a cool idea, and one that I was sad to see never got all that much attention. I'd be more than willing to help you with it, especially if more people take an interest.

Kayrìlien

[Amaya]

I agree, ultimately it would be best to use a "Na'vi script" eventually, but for now see above XD  I'm still debating whether I want to keep the diphthongs as single tiles, but I already covered that HRH

I suppose I could try to work out the frequencies but math is...not my best suit so it might take a bit of working.

Anyway glad to see a little interest

[Txonä Unil Stä'nìyu Rolyusì]

Oh wow! I had this idea many months ago as well....but then my life distracted me and I totally forgot about it until now. I think a Na'vi Scrabble game would be an absolutely amazing and fun way to learn! I agree that having the real Na'vi alphabet would be best. And yes, I'd be willing to help too. Not sure what I can do, but I'm here to help of you need me

-Txonä Rolyu