Alphabet

Started by Skxawng, December 22, 2009, 04:29:51 PM

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Tiri

Quote from: Seabass on December 22, 2009, 06:22:09 PM
Yoink!

I'm also starting an audio section in the forum to post recordings and all listenable examples.

Okay, awesome!  I'll save any further mp3s until this goes up. :)

Karyu Amawey

Seabass, I was curious as to if you have gotten a chance to change the Na'Vi pocket guide to the new PDF I created yet?
Oel ayngati kameie

Payoang

#22
Yup, commented on it too! Great work!

Karyu Amawey

Ah, yikes!  I may just be a pain in the royal behind, but I actually incorporated the IPA into the dictionary and changed all the explanation analysis back into standardized Na'Vi in a newer document!  I can totally understand if you are completely swamped right now, but if you ever wanna take a look at the newer one, I can let you decide for yourself!  Once again, I am really sorry about the confusion!

http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0BxURBDXVBWhHYTA5ZGMyNzUtNTFhYi00ODQ1LThhNDctMTgwYmZiZGM3ZDNl&hl=en

Oel ayngati kameie

Payoang

No worries at all! *updated*

Karyu Amawey

Irayo nìtxan Seabass!  Oe mawey set lu:)
Oel ayngati kameie

Skxawng

lol 'literal'

I prefer idiot  :-*


"prrkxentrrkrr is a skill best saved for only the most cunning linguist"

wm.annis

Quote from: Seabass on December 22, 2009, 06:22:09 PM
Yoink!

For IPA for the syllabics ll and rr see syllabic consonant.  In some older texts it's a wee circle under a letter, instead of the hash mark.

Beduino

I saw it somewhere, dunno where haha

I think a better idiot example for "ew" would be ee-oo, like a very "closed" ew

"- ewwwwwwww, thats disgusting!"

hope i was clear enough :)
tsun ngal tslam fì'uti srak?

Eywayä mokri

Kaltxì frapo,

As I didn't see any document compiling the alphabet, I made one for you to be printed out then.

That's not something enormous but it can help to have material to work with.

Here is the link to the document:

https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B6t8Bhfq-QNhYjk5YmRlMGQtMDgyZi00YTdiLThlYTktMGJkYzZlYTJkNDBi&hl=en
°°We don't forget anyone, we only get used to their absence.°°

Kiki

Omg, this is so helpful! Thank you for the alphabet! :D

I was having a little trouble with some of these, this will definitely help!
† official member of Risembool Rangers †

Txen Txelan

This helps so much! Irayo.

roger

#32
One of the problems is that we don't all pronounce our English vowels the same. For instance, for New Zealanders, the Na'vi "e" sound is closer to bat than it is to bet. So I've tried coming up with a chart, just for the vowels, that is specific to each of the major traditionally English-speaking countries. Just find your country and scan down.

For England, Canada, and the US, I'm assuming television-broadcast English (RP, GA, etc.). For the other countries, I used the "IPA chart for English dialects" on Wikipedia. So for India, Malaysia, Jamaica and many others who have been left out, my apologies! I just don't know enough, or there may be too much variability in your country to make a useful chart.

A — means that the vowel does not occur in this dialect. For example, Scottish English doesn't have a back vowel [ u ] or [ʊ], while Australian English only has the [ʊ]. (The /u/ in these and several other dialects is much further forward than Na'vi /u/.)

A ~ means that the word is only an approximation of the Na'vi vowel. For instance, in my US dialect, cow is pronounced closer to what would be "äw" in Na'vi, if Na'vi had such a vowel. I don't know of any English dialect that has the Na'vi [ɑw] sound. In several cases it was a tossup whether to use ~ or —; I picked what I thought would be most helpful.

A ? means that I cannot be sure of a specific word, though the dialect likely has this vowel somewhere. I will fix these if I find out how.

SA is South Africa.

Erimeyz

roger, you have just rocked my world.

  - Eri

Erimeyz

... what's SA?

... and can you really lump England, Canada, and the U.S. into the same column?  Isn't BBC rather different from NBC?

  - Eri

suomichris

#35
A couple of other issues with the IPA transcriptions...

Na'vi ts should be IPA [t͡s] (I have a suspicion that isnʼt going to show up right...)

Naʼvi a is really IPA [ɑ], not [a].

As noted above, the syllabic rr and ll should be [r̩] and [l̩], respectively.

Also, youʼre missing the glottal stop, which should be [ʔ].

And, if I might second the opinion about the English illustrations: Naʼvi t is much closer to the English d in dog than it is to the t in two...  Since people probably wonʼt like that, Iʼd suggest probably "spin," "stand" and "skip" for the non-ejective stops...

Okay, positing... Letʼs see if the fonts work...ǃ

EDIT: Hey, it shows up, but it looks like crap... Let me make an image file that has the characters the right way...

EDIT EDIT: Meh, my computer is doing something weird....  The correct forms can be found on Wikipedia :p

roger

#36
Quote from: Erimeyz on January 20, 2010, 01:17:23 AM
... what's SA?
South Africa. (Added.)
Quote from: Erimeyz on January 20, 2010, 01:17:23 AM
... and can you really lump England, Canada, and the U.S. into the same column?  Isn't BBC rather different from NBC?
AFAIK, I chose words which shouldn't differ between these countries. I had originally set up separate columns for RP and GA/CanE, but once I filled them out I realized they weren't necessary. For example, "out" would not have been a good illustration for aw, due to raising in much of Canada. But "cow" has pretty much the same pronunciation in all three standards. Of course, you will still be able to tell where someone is from from their accent, but I hope listeners would agree that a speaker is using the correct vowels if they follow this chart.

On the other hand, I could have chosen "kit" as the illustration for ì, and it would've worked for all countries but New Zealand. But by choosing "bit" for everyone else and "kit" for SA, I made it clear that for South Africans, Na'vi ì is not like their vowel in "bit", which who knows, could potentially clear up a point of confusion for someone.

roger

#37
Quote from: suomichris on January 20, 2010, 01:41:06 AM
Na'vi ts should be IPA [t͡s] (I have a suspicion that isnʼt going to show up right...)
Yes, you're quite right. That tie bar is often left out as a distraction, but in some languages this is an important distinction.  (It's also often left out because it doesn't display correctly on many computers due to a bug in a large number of Microsoft fonts.)
Quote from: suomichris on January 20, 2010, 01:41:06 AM
Naʼvi a is really IPA [ɑ], not [a].
We don't really know that, though I assumed it for the purposes of my chart. Frommer said it's a back vowel, but transcribed in [a], which is a front vowel, but formerly stood for a central vowel. I see two reasonable readings: (1) that it truly is a back vowel [ɑ], but that he took a shortcut in transcribing it, or (2) that it truly is an [a] (at least as a central vowel), but that it is back in the sense that the vowels can be divided into two sets, "front" and "back", and that [a] is in the back set. After all, ì isn't really a front vowel either, not if we take him literally when he says it's [ɪ]. If he can call not-quite-front [ɪ] "front", he could've called not-quite-back [a] "back". But it's certainly easier for English speakers if we assume (1).

This is one of a bunch of questions that Frommer's promised to answer, but as we know, he's been pretty busy.

thg

#38
Ideally it seems to me that for digital representation of Na'vi it would be better to use something other than the Apostrophe (U+0027) for the glottal stop, because this character is actually "punctuation" rather than a "letter" and is often ignored in text processing operations like sorting, matching, and searching. In Hawaiian, for example, the analogous letter (called ʻOkina) is represented by Modifier Letter Turned Comma (U+02BB).  Also punctuation cannot be used in an internet domain name, so www.na'vi.com cannot be registered.  But whether such a change would be possible at this point is unknown.

*Nattiri*

плииииззззззззз.
я оч плохо знаю англиский ( на слабую 3-ечку), но оч хочу научиться понимать на"вийский,
плиз помогите ребенку разобраться с етим языком ( мне всяго 13 с хвостиком),
и примите в свою семейку на"вийцев.
и еще, мне обезательно надо знать крутя англиский, или мона незнать его!!!!