Simplified Terms Begged For

[Taikomochi]

Hey everyone.

I've been having conversation with a good number of the people coming to this forum, and there's kinda of a problem.

It seems that there is a large number of people that are really motivated to learn the language, however are challenged and to the extent of discouraged because they do not grasp the advanced vocabulary that is used on the current explanations and "tutorials" as terms to refer to sentence, structure and grammar usage. I'm talking here about words like "aspect", "clusivity", "enclitic", "fricatives" (well that's a category of pronounciation, but you know what I mean <.<) and so on and so on.

So, in resumé, what's happening here?
We're getting people who are either on the verge or actively, progressively giving up on learning Na'Vi because they find the walkthrough to its acquisition too steep and out of reach for common knowledge.
What I've heard most often is "You need to me a linguist (w/ or w/o the adding of the term "major") in order to understand all of it." and "I am dedicated, but it doesn't seem like that's enough..."

I find it really sad.

Look, I'm not trying to me a whiner or anything, but it seems that no one's gonna post this either because of being afraid to sound like fools or being really certain that by hitting that wall long enough they'll break it. So I figure someone had to bite the bullet. And I figured I could do that, since I wanna try so hard for this place. My bad.

It's true that I'm not actually completely capable of making what I'm going to suggest myself (at least, not in the most part), but we really should take together and try to make simplified forms of explanations of the grammar, syntax and linguistic terms for those people. Last thing we need is people giving up on this language because it's too hard. Because it's not. It's just hard to understand what the terms mean and it sounds hard.

And the last thing we want is people to think Na'Vi is hard to learn. Seriously.

...

...looking around and kinda hoping I'm not a fool and the only one standing for this, here. <.<

[Coda]

You do bring up a good point.  While the language itself is pretty simple, the terms getting thrown around left and right don't really do grammar newbies any favors.  Some folks are working on putting together a curriculum over in the Projects/Resources forum, but that kind of thing takes time to really iron out.  There's also a sticky in this forum that's begun to address this, but I don't think it's really been fleshed out in a comprehensive way yet.

I think most of the confusion stems from the noun case forms, probably because most English grammar education tends to stop at noun/verb/adjective.  So what we really need is a way to get past all those confusing words and just give a ton of examples of when to use which particle.  Which, now that I write it, sounds suspiciously like some of the worksheets that are being put together.  Maybe we should make those a priority, so we can ride the wave of enthusiasm the film is generating and get as many people hooked as we can?

[tute nuereime]

i was trying to make a guide for people with the suffixes/prefixes that doesn't use the grammar terms here is the link if anyone is interested.

http://forum.learnnavi.org/index.php?topic=353

[Nume fpi sänume]

The best thing i can say, honestly, is just to post your attempts of Na'vi writing on the forums, and ask for corrections. The people who come along and correct phrases are very knowledgeable already, and offer to correction, and then the explanation of the corrections. The thing that most of us here have learned is that to learn this language, you must first fail, and then come to terms that out of your failure is the opportunity to learn and try again. I am by no means a linguist, i failed Spanish. Twice. And I live in southern California, but because of my failures and the corrections i was given, and then paying close attention to other corrections, my understanding has increased dramatically. Dont give up, because were all still learning too It may not seem like it, but just stop in the intermediate forum and read a bit. Theres all kinds of corrections and such going on there.

Also, irayo for stepping up and posting this, as im sure there are 30+ more people who have the same thoughts but didn't want to find some kind of negative feedback for it. Were here to help, but we need to know what we need to help with, because this is a community, and as a community we must stand together and support each other

[tute nuereime]

there is an saying "if you think you can, you can. if you think you cant, your right but you never know until you try" or something like that and    for southen california

[Nume fpi sänume]

there is an saying "if you think you can, you can. if you think you cant, your right but you never know until you try" or something like that and    for southen california

Kinda wordy for a saying, i prefer the "Do or do not, there is no try"...but now im crossing my nerd universes.

[tute nuereime]

well i found mine on the bottom of my daily planner but i think thats pretty off topic

[Is.]

http://www.learnnavi.org/docs/Linguistic-terminology-crash-course.pdf

I learned everything important from this document by Karyu Amawey. (And I were a complete grammar nub prior to reading.) Enjoy.

[Is.]

Hello, I'd like to share this video below with you (all) too. Personally, distinguishing between what is a transitive verb and what is an intransitive verb took some time. If you're in the same position, this teacher offers a nice technique of checking out whether the verb is transitive (a verb which takes a direct object) or intransitive (which stands on its own):

6. English Grammar Lesson. Transitive Verbs and Direct Objects

After you've said or written a sentence, and want to find out whether the verb you used is transitive or intransitive, just ask yourself, as if you didn't hear correctly: "What was [verb]...?"

If the answer makes sense to you, then the verb is transitive. If it doesn't make any sense, then it most probably is intransitive. For example:

"I fed the dogs last night." Ask:
"What was fed?" Answer:
"The dogs". See? This sentence makes sense! How about this one...

"Stephan died in his room last night." Ask, again, as if you kinda didn't hear correctly:
"What was died?"
"Err... what?" Yeah, this doesn't make any sense at all! This is because the verb "died" used no direct object, it just informed you about the subject - Stephan. Here's another intransitive verb:

"I went to school with Anna".
"What was went?"
"...ummh." Yeah, if someone would have asked you that question you'd have thought there were something wrong with that person. Now the final exercise, in Na'vi!

1: "Oe[?] na Ikran[?] faheu."

Translation should be: "I smell like an ikran."

2: "Oe[?] ikranyä fehew[?] folaheu."

Translation should be: "I smelled the Ikran's smell."

Which one is transitive, and which one is intransitive? Insert -l and -ti in the question mark-boxes for the transitive sentence, and don't fill them with anything for the intransitive sentence.



(I'm not trying to be a teacher or anything. It's just that I learn really well myself by doing these kinds of exercises, heh.)