Navi Phonetic For Noobs.

[neosis666]

I was just wondering if anyone has already done a simple breakdown of the phonetics of how to say the Na'vi words.

I am someone who strugles with language somewhat, I often miss pronounce even English words, but the Na'vi language caught my imagination in the film, especially when it mentioned "I see you" not being just I physically see you but being something much deeper, the Na'vi lifestyle and culture represents something I could never attain, living in peace and harmony with the land and their beliefs.
I currently live on the bleeding edge of Technology, (even having a stereoscopic pc setup) but I would give anything to travel to Pandora and live the culture as Jake does and try the complete opposite.

As such, the language is so highly tied in with this and I would like to learn it, or at least some phrases. Perhaps a community effort to take the words, then common phrases and put them down as written phonetics with even a sound bank with the words and phrases said by someone who can read the Lexicon as it is.


My scribblings down looking through clips of the movie I think

English > Na'vi > Phonetic with explaination > Phonetic
I see you > Oel ngati kameie > oel (said like noel without the n (easier to say it was "well" without emphasising the W) nya (said like gnatt extending the n removing the t's) tee kaa mey > oel nyatee kaame

I made a sound recording, apparently I have an incredibly strong English accent so you may hear that but hopefully the phrase is said correctly. If needed I can arrange some webspace to host these files for everyone to use.

http://www.pb-blog.com/Na'vi/I%20see%20you.wma

Is that right?

Many thanks

[Seze]

I'm pretty sure you're missing a syllable in kameie, specifically the last e

[neosis666]

How would I go about adding that extra syllable in? by just forcing another e at the end such as kaame-ei with the dash finishing where I finish in the sound file, then just adding the "ei" sound onto the end?

I think I got it in this one.

http://www.pb-blog.com/Na'vi/I_see_you2.wma

Or maybe I didn't? But something like this where people like myself who learn by repatition repatition repatition it would be invaluble

[Seze]

Take a listen to this interview.  It should help.

[Derek_Schrock]

noesis666,
I am working on a simple breakdown at the moment so keep an eye out, I will post it when I think its ready.

The only major problem I noticed with your pronunciation was in the last word kameie.
Whenever you have a large group of vowels they should flow together quite smoothly but the e is pronounced like the e in "then", and the i as the "ea" in eat. i is never pronounced like the i in "igloo". so the eie should be pronounced something like eh-ee-eh but don't separate them, flow. If it's just kame, then make sure you pronounce the e like I said and you should be ok.

[Seze]

noesis666,
I am working on a simple breakdown at the moment so keep an eye out, I will post it when I think its ready.

The only major problem I noticed with your pronunciation was in the last word kameie although i'm pretty sure its just kame.
Assuming it is kameie, whenever you have a large group of vowels they should flow together quite smoothly but the e is pronounced like the e in "then", and the i as the "ea" in eat. i is never pronounced like the i in "igloo". so the eie should be pronounced something like eh-ee-eh but don't separate them, flow. If it's just kame, then make sure you pronounce the e like I said and you should be ok.

The root verb is kame (see, as in a Spiritual sense).  Adding the <ei> infix changes the verb to have a positive feel to it.  Translated, I See you (and I am happy about it). 

So the final greeting is "Oe-l ngati kam<ei>e"  [the hyphens and "<>" signs are there to help you see the grammar and syntax]

[neosis666]

noesis666,
I am working on a simple breakdown at the moment so keep an eye out, I will post it when I think its ready.

The only major problem I noticed with your pronunciation was in the last word kameie.
Whenever you have a large group of vowels they should flow together quite smoothly but the e is pronounced like the e in "then", and the i as the "ea" in eat. i is never pronounced like the i in "igloo". so the eie should be pronounced something like eh-ee-eh but don't separate them, flow. If it's just kame, then make sure you pronounce the e like I said and you should be ok.

I think I understand you, on the last word getting the eh-ee-eh is quite hard to flow it off the "kaam"


Anway after giving it some practise I think I almost got it.

http://www.pb-blog.com/Na'vi/I_see_you_3.wma


I know i'm a bit of a skxawng (have'nt even tried to say this yet ^^) but even these few posts are so helpful in the understanding.

[omängum fra'uti]

noesis666,
I am working on a simple breakdown at the moment so keep an eye out, I will post it when I think its ready.

The only major problem I noticed with your pronunciation was in the last word kameie.
Whenever you have a large group of vowels they should flow together quite smoothly but the e is pronounced like the e in "then", and the i as the "ea" in eat. i is never pronounced like the i in "igloo". so the eie should be pronounced something like eh-ee-eh but don't separate them, flow. If it's just kame, then make sure you pronounce the e like I said and you should be ok.

Ah the flaw of comparative language description.  I pronounce the "ea" in "eat" the same as the "i" in "igloo", and normally I'm good at picturing regional differences in pronunciation, but I can't imagine how either would sound pronounced different.  In my case, both are pronounced like (What I believe) /i/ in Na'vi should sound like.

[Seze]

noesis666,
I am working on a simple breakdown at the moment so keep an eye out, I will post it when I think its ready.

The only major problem I noticed with your pronunciation was in the last word kameie.
Whenever you have a large group of vowels they should flow together quite smoothly but the e is pronounced like the e in "then", and the i as the "ea" in eat. i is never pronounced like the i in "igloo". so the eie should be pronounced something like eh-ee-eh but don't separate them, flow. If it's just kame, then make sure you pronounce the e like I said and you should be ok.

I think I understand you, on the last word getting the eh-ee-eh is quite hard to flow it off the "kaam"


Anway after giving it some practise I think I almost got it.

http://www.pb-blog.com/Na'vi/I_see_you_3.wma


I know i'm a bit of a skxawng (have'nt even tried to say this yet ^^) but even these few posts are so helpful in the understanding.

Sounds pretty good.  I think its pretty safe to say that most of us on here started where you are right now, and that was only, believe it or not, less than 2 days ago...

[neosis666]

noesis666,
I am working on a simple breakdown at the moment so keep an eye out, I will post it when I think its ready.

The only major problem I noticed with your pronunciation was in the last word kameie.
Whenever you have a large group of vowels they should flow together quite smoothly but the e is pronounced like the e in "then", and the i as the "ea" in eat. i is never pronounced like the i in "igloo". so the eie should be pronounced something like eh-ee-eh but don't separate them, flow. If it's just kame, then make sure you pronounce the e like I said and you should be ok.

I think I understand you, on the last word getting the eh-ee-eh is quite hard to flow it off the "kaam"


Anway after giving it some practise I think I almost got it.

http://www.pb-blog.com/Na'vi/I_see_you_3.wma


I know i'm a bit of a skxawng (have'nt even tried to say this yet ^^) but even these few posts are so helpful in the understanding.

Sounds pretty good.  I think its pretty safe to say that most of us on here started where you are right now, and that was only, believe it or not, less than 2 days ago...

Thanks, I wont even pretend to know anything close to the linguistic skills of many of the people on here as shown by their posts, but learning by doing / repatition is what I can do, I noticed in the 3rd one I ended almost on a AH rather than an EH, so practised it for a bit and got this,

http://www.pb-blog.com/Na'vi/I_see_you5.wma

Like I said, if we could get a whole library going of phrases like this, where people could listen to others in the saying then it would probably help a lot of newcomers like myself looking for something like this, but unable to get a grasp on the pretty complex posts elsewhere.


As I said, if webspace / hosting is needed for these files, I am more than happy to provide something

[neosis666]

Take a listen to this interview.  It should help.

Nice find, though that clicking sound in the greetings phrase, thats going to be difficult

[Seze]

Take a listen to this interview.  It should help.

Nice find, though that clicking sound in the greetings phrase, thats going to be difficult

I'm finding the ejectives much easier to pick up than the trills...

[Skxawng]

this might also help


From this topic

[Nume fpi sänume]

Lots of good information here in the few short hours ive been gone. Good job posting all this, and the sound file helped me tons

[Derek_Schrock]

Ah the flaw of comparative language description.  I pronounce the "ea" in "eat" the same as the "i" in "igloo", and normally I'm good at picturing regional differences in pronunciation, but I can't imagine how either would sound pronounced different.  In my case, both are pronounced like (What I believe) /i/ in Na'vi should sound like.

Perhaps igloo was a bad example but as far as I can tell the conventional pronunciation of igloo as described in the english dictionary is ih-gloo not ee-gloo. I'm just curious, where are you from? I have never heard igloo pronounced ee-gloo.  The main point here is that there is a difference between ee and eh.
In Na'vi "i" is pronounced ee, and ì is pronounced ih.

[Derek_Schrock]

noesis666,
I am working on a simple breakdown at the moment so keep an eye out, I will post it when I think its ready.

The only major problem I noticed with your pronunciation was in the last word kameie.
Whenever you have a large group of vowels they should flow together quite smoothly but the e is pronounced like the e in "then", and the i as the "ea" in eat. i is never pronounced like the i in "igloo". so the eie should be pronounced something like eh-ee-eh but don't separate them, flow. If it's just kame, then make sure you pronounce the e like I said and you should be ok.

I think I understand you, on the last word getting the eh-ee-eh is quite hard to flow it off the "kaam"


Anway after giving it some practise I think I almost got it.

http://www.pb-blog.com/Na'vi/I_see_you_3.wma


I know i'm a bit of a skxawng (have'nt even tried to say this yet ^^) but even these few posts are so helpful in the understanding.

You are aaalmost there. Maybe its just the audio quality but what I heard at the end was kam-ee-ah. Break it up into pieces, Kam-eh-ee-eh and then run it all together.

[Uniltìranyu]

I was just wondering if anyone has already done a simple breakdown of the phonetics of how to say the Na'vi words.

I am someone who strugles with language somewhat, I often miss pronounce even English words, but the Na'vi language caught my imagination in the film, especially when it mentioned "I see you" not being just I physically see you but being something much deeper, the Na'vi lifestyle and culture represents something I could never attain, living in peace and harmony with the land and their beliefs.
I currently live on the bleeding edge of Technology, (even having a stereoscopic pc setup) but I would give anything to travel to Pandora and live the culture as Jake does and try the complete opposite.

As such, the language is so highly tied in with this and I would like to learn it, or at least some phrases. Perhaps a community effort to take the words, then common phrases and put them down as written phonetics with even a sound bank with the words and phrases said by someone who can read the Lexicon as it is.


My scribblings down looking through clips of the movie I think

English > Na'vi > Phonetic with explaination > Phonetic
I see you > Oel ngati kameie > oel (said like noel without the n (easier to say it was "well" without emphasising the W) nya (said like gnatt extending the n removing the t's) tee kaa mey > oel nyatee kaame

I made a sound recording, apparently I have an incredibly strong English accent so you may hear that but hopefully the phrase is said correctly. If needed I can arrange some webspace to host these files for everyone to use.

http://www.pb-blog.com/Na'vi/I%20see%20you.wma

Is that right?

Many thanks

Generally, in Na'vi, the 'ng' consonant pairing is the same sound used in English when you say/use the '-ing' ending (<-irony), just without the 'i'.