Translation for "The"

Started by Saphira, May 24, 2016, 07:40:41 AM

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Saphira

I am a new learner and have been trying to make some easy phrases to learn, but was wondering if there is a translation for the word "the". I tried doing a search but couldn't find anything, but I could have used the wrong key words or something. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

~ Eywa ngahu.

Tìlu

Na'vi doesn't have the words for a, an, or the. It's typically just read into the sentence. Such as oel yolom mautiti - I ate a/the fruit.
Though you can use the affix - meaning this or tsa- meaning that to be more specific. :)

Mech

There is a number of human/real languages that don't possess an article. Latin is/was one of them. Domus means either "a house" or "the house". Same is with Na'vi utral. There is some ambiguity but the language can survive it :)

The fi- is a solution, if you definitely need to define a word. In real life the definite articles have been produced from the word for "this". For example since Latin didn't have an article, people were saying "ille domus" (this house), and then ille became the articles il, el, le etc. in Italian, Spanish and French that today mean "the" and not "this".

But Na'vi is still a language without articles, and fi- always means "this" and not "the". Sometimes it can be too specific for "the". For example, if you ate "the fruit", you can't say "I ate this fruit" because there is no fruit to refer to.

Blue Elf

A/an in English marks indefinite thing/person/object. In Na'vi we use -o suffix for this, what could work in some cases, but mostly it translates like some, not a/an:
utralo - some tree, ketuwongo - some alien etc.
Oe lu skxawng skxakep. Slä oe nerume mi.
"Oe tasyätxaw ulte koren za'u oehu" (Limonádový Joe)