Generating Vocabulary (split from: Help from Polyglots)

Started by Prrton, March 04, 2010, 02:53:47 PM

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Prrton

Quote from: Na'rìghawnu on March 04, 2010, 01:26:52 PM

QuoteAh, what the heck. Klingon version!

:o Tewti! Just awesome!

(I thought about translating it into Esperanto too, but I refrained from it, because it most likely wouldn't be read in this language ... but maybe I should do it, just for the fun of it. But unfortunately it would take too much time.)

Instead of spending that time there, please bring HERE to the project itself all the cool things from Esperanto (part of speech changers/word augmenters come to mind) that are applicable to new vocab coinage that K. Pawl might want to consider during his inevitable[?] root expansion activities coming up. Please don't be bashful about suggesting words that FUNCTION very interestingly in other languages, not just ones that have distinct/unusual/unique meanings. (cf: tìng, nì- (from Farsi ba), ko (from Mandarin 把 ba). If something's not interesting to him, he'll not include it, but I think it's better that a list of things like that go in now as opposed to at stage C, when they *may* be a bit late to the table.

Na'rìghawnu


Very well. I'll think it over and post some hopefully interesting ideas ... tomorrow. Now fetching  some sleep (it's night at my place now). So I'm looking forward to - as usual - find a lot of new ideas from you girls and guys, when I log in tomorrow.  ;D

Kì'eyawn

Quote from: 'itan Na'rìngyä on March 03, 2010, 12:09:49 AM
I like the Portuguese saudade, which has its own Wikipedia article, possibly because it's often used as an example of a word that doesn't exist in English. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudade -- a mix of feelings related to the insatiable longing for someone or something that has passed to return... mixed with the knowledge that it cannot happen, but loving them nonetheless. Perhaps with a "fatalist tone."

From a Metafilter discussion: "A more or less melancholy sense of incompleteness, linked to the memory of situations in which one is deprived of the presence of someone or something, or of being far away from some place and thing, or of the absence of certain prior life experiences or pleasures, which the affected person deems desirable." -- http://www.metafilter.com/24976/Are-You-Ready-To-Be-Hearbroken

Similarly, there's a concept in Hinduism that's made it into bhakti traditions, musical modes... well, it's ubiquitous... that has to do with longing for the object of one's love while that (typically) person is absent.  The love of Radha for Krishna after he left Vrindavan is taken as the ultimate example and, at least in some versions of Hinduism, is considered the purest form of love--if i understand correctly, because that love cannot be tainted by the fulfillment of desire.  I don't know that you would see something quite like this in Na'vi culture, but it's food for thought.

And now for something completely different:  Please, for the love of Eywa, somebody translate for the Turkish folks.  I only know about ten words in Turkish, but i know the language has some really beautiful and profound use of metaphors in its word etymology, so i would love to see some Turkish influence in the furthering of Na'vi.
eo Eywa oe 'ia

Fra'uri tìyawnur oe täpivìng nìwotx...

roger

Quote from: Prrton on March 04, 2010, 02:53:47 PM
Instead of spending that time there, please bring HERE to the project itself all the cool things from Esperanto (part of speech changers/word augmenters come to mind) that are applicable to new vocab coinage that K. Pawl might want to consider during his inevitable[?] root expansion activities coming up.

Esperanto is great for the way you can expand vocab on the fly: you can make up new words while you're speaking and your interlocutors won't even notice, that's how productive it is. Unless it's particularly poetic - they will notice that. But I have a feeling Paul wants to stay away from Esperanto and Klingon, as he doesn't want to copy those languages.

If we want to suggest some things from Esperanto so that Paul can avoid direct contact, check the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_vocabulary article on Wikipedia, or any of several Esperanto grammars online. The WP article lists the principal suffixes and gives illustrative derivations, such as disatomi "to split by atomic fission" (not that we'd need that word!).

IMO, an Esperanto-typo solution would be the best way to expand vocab without Paul having to be directly involved in every word. He could just say once in a while that X isn't the proper use of an affix, or would have some other meaning.

Prrton

#4
Quote from: tigermind on March 04, 2010, 04:03:27 PM

And now for something completely different:  Please, for the love of Eywa, somebody translate for the Turkish folks.  I only know about ten words in Turkish, but i know the language has some really beautiful and profound use of metaphors in its word etymology, so i would love to see some Turkish influence in the furthering of Na'vi.

Oel fpole' meupxareti mesmukur.  ;) Säfpìl ngeyä lu txantsan nìlaw. Irayo!

Quote from: roger on March 04, 2010, 04:37:49 PM

But I have a feeling Paul wants to stay away from Esperanto and Klingon, as he doesn't want to copy those languages.

If we want to suggest some things from Esperanto so that Paul can avoid direct contact, check the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_vocabulary article on Wikipedia, or any of several Esperanto grammars online. The WP article lists the principal suffixes and gives illustrative derivations, such as disatomi "to split by atomic fission" (not that we'd need that word!).

IMO, an Esperanto-typo solution would be the best way to expand vocab without Paul having to be directly involved in every word. He could just say once in a while that X isn't the proper use of an affix, or would have some other meaning.

I'm not suggesting any Zamenhoffian/Okrandian direct ripoffs. But, Na'vi already has some parallels to both (that also have parallels in purely organic languages).

What you're suggesting is EXACTLY what I'm talking about.

Imagine a root (prefix as an example) for "simple tool" (something that is the equivalent of a hammer or chisel or flint knapper I'll use *tsyì-) put that on yom >>> *tsyìyom (I see a spork). Doesn't matter if the Na'vi have this or not. If we held one up and then licked it and called it «tsyìyom», they'd get it immediately. Add to the following and what do you get:

'em
'engeng
'ok
'upxare
aungia
fkarut
fkxake
fmawn
fmetok
ftia
ftxey
hahaw
hawnu

That's enough of that.

What did everyone see?

A pot or pan or spatula or set of kitchen cooking chopsticks (料理用お箸)?
a tube with yellow liquid and a bubble in it?
a flash card?
a piece of paper? an envelope? a stamp?
a tarot card?
a vegetable peeler?
a back scratcher?
a newspaper?
a SAT or GRE?
a cheat sheet?  ;)
a dial/switch/radio button/pop-up/check box?
a plastic strip with adhesive on one side that clamps onto the exterior of a human nose?
a generic root for any weapon used for self defense (stick in «-äp-» first... all you need is + le-«'aw'u» and good to go.

AND, we can work these out amongst ourselves. It's an expansion ENGINE. If K. Pawl blesses something «tsyì-» like and has never heard tsyìfkarut before put you hold one up in front of him, he'll get it immediately.

Now, let's pump up the volume. Root prefix for a slightly more complex tool, made of multiple parts that have to fit together, something bordering on a "device" (The ikran saddles might be a good starting place).

Now what do you see?

a hotplate or a microwave oven?
a one of these?
a flash card app on your iPhone?
your favorite IM client?
your favorite astrology site on the web?
a Cuisinart®?
something they used on you at the Korean spa?
the Good Morning America website?
blood pressure machine?
Rosetta Stone software?
a CPAP?
kevlar body armor?

Now how about "over the counter/pick by the roadside 'drug-'"

I'll be starting a list for these things shortly. If they are based on what we can can infer from Pandora and the Na'vi culture or learn anew from Cameron, then it seems fair game to me that we use them for our 'Rrta purposes without messing with Pandora or the Na'vi at all (and without having to be a tremendous burden on K. Pawl for something like a Cuisinart®). For me, the test is, can you point to it or hold it up in front of K. Pawl or a Na'vi; say the name; show how it works (if it's that complex) and then have your listener just instinctively "get it."

If K. Pawl doesn't like it. He'll do something else and that'll be just fine, but I think it's worth mentioning/suggesting.

PS: Please, someone start thinking about clarifiers like:

flat
thin (but not completely flat)
round-ish/hemispherical
cylindrical (I saw tons of bamboo-like plants in the movie)
clearly having/containing internal volume (I am dubious they have anything as cube-like as our 6-sided 'box')
rope-like (flexible and long)
something wrapper-like (cf: lew) or that compartmentalizes
stick-like
carved/shaped by hands and tools
rough/scratchy
warm to the touch
cool to the touch
generically flexible to the touch/pliable
fuzzy to the touch
gel-like (think of all the different forest elements from the film)
viscous
smelly
fragrant
hard to hear (virtually silent; an ioang you're tracking that's gotten way ahead of you)
clearly audible
booming/very loud

Keep in mind that even though these things/concepts might exist separately as stand-alone adjectives, nouns, verbs, they could also be combing roots that are smaller and cleverly designed (phonologically) to fit together in an optimized fashion with whatever they might bump up against to the left or right.

These would be primarily features of sensation/descriptors that we share with the Na'vi (5 right? Presumably they have 6 to 7 based on how tsaheylu works and whether or not Mo'at can actually parse Jake's avatar genome via her tongue).

Tam. Set yol nìhawng.


Erimeyz

I wondered when this post would be coming. :)  The agenda makes itself plain at last: to create Na'vi words that will not merely expand the language proper, but also conveniently enable the aliens to name their demonic things.

  - Eri


(I was considering making a similar post myself, but of course you did it sooner and better.)


Erimeyz

Also, I charge you to create a new top-level thread to collect ideas for such useful thing-roots and thing-modifiers.  It needs a good place to be, and this thread is not it.

  - Eri

Prrton

#7
Quote from: Erimeyz on March 04, 2010, 07:11:54 PM
Also, I charge you to create a new top-level thread to collect ideas for such useful thing-roots and thing-modifiers.  It needs a good place to be, and this thread is not it.

 - Eri


OK. I'll move it late tonight or tomorrow. Can't do it now.

If we can't talk about our daily lives without over-relying on localized borrowings we'll never have one Na'vi language that we can all speak fluently with each other regardless of our native cultures. We'd end up in 6 months with 20 dialects. Bleh! There cannot be 47 different words for "cat" and 53 different words for "dog" and those ioang don't exist on Pandora, so we have to get creative. K. P. is on board with this (with his option in tact to reject it if it comes through contrary to the heart of Na'vi) and is maybe even more opposed to heavily English-influenced Na'vi than I am. Doesn't matter if that's grammar or 3,957 loan words. Let's help!

wm.annis

As much as I adore classifier languages (diné bizaad ayóo shił yá'át'ééh, and Toki Pona pulls it off by stealth), it seems a bit late in the game to convert Na'vi to a classifier language. 

That said, and related to eltu lefngap, the Navajo also picked béésh "metal" as the base for some technological vocab —

béésh ná'iiláhí (metal + ná'iilá- "it gathers unspecified things" + -í "the one"): "magnet"
béésh hataałi (metal + hataał "it sings" + -í): "phonograph"

(Yet another in my growing collection of Navajo grammar books arrived today, so if I seem obsessed at the moment...)

tsrräfkxätu

#9
Quote from: Prrton on March 04, 2010, 06:56:40 PM
[...] Tam. Set yol nìhawng.

OK, maybe it's just me, but I really don't think this is the right direction to go at all. Instead of having all these super-roots, that will flood our Earth-Na'vi with little uniform words that fit the little uniform things we surround ourselves with every day in every language, why can't we just let the innate creativity of Na'vi thrive? What's the big deal if you call a microwave oven a "turnplate heater" and I call it the "noisy foodcooker?" Like you said, I tell, I show, you understand. It's not like we'll ever have to build one in Na'vi. I sure hope not.

Also, you may think you're creating words, but you are really arbitrarily telling me what I should imagine when I say "tsyìhahaw", which I assure you, isn't a thing I don't even know the word for in my mother tongue.

Personally, I think it's a mistake to regard Na'vi like any other "civilized" language where everything can be academically named, categorized, and turned into a neat Wikipedia entry. Why create another language like that? I could just go and learn C++, you know.

Unlike pretty much any other conlang, Na'vi has a culture. It may be a little idealistic, even simplistic, but it is a unique culture nonetheless, and it has proven to be strong enough to bring together an avid following from all walks of life and from all over the world. If you try transforming it into a 21st century urban language, you'll instantly kill that culture. The word cell phone isn't going to help Tuscarora survive.

I agree that it's a nice game you thought up, but I don't see it's purpose, or more precisely, I don't like it.

No disrespect or offense meant of course, just my opinion.
párolt zöldség — muntxa fkxen  

Erimeyz

I started a new thread for discussion of the merits of this idea.

In this thread, I'll offer a few ideas for basic words:

simple tool
complex device (okay, those were Prrton's ideas...)
food, drink, something you ingest (hmm, Prrton suggested that too, sort of)
medicine, healing substance
weather
viscous liquid, gel, paste, ooze, sap
woven object
shaped object (cut, carved, knapped, molded)
found object (as found in its raw state in nature, i.e. a rock or a piece of deadwood)
thrown object
worn object (clothing, decoration)
dangerous object
opening, hole, passageway
obstacle, barrier

... just a few.  Let's see where this all goes.

  - Eri

roger

Quote from: wm.annis on March 04, 2010, 08:38:02 PM
béésh ná'iiláhí (metal + ná'iilá- "it gathers unspecified things" + -í "the one"): "magnet"
béésh hataałi (metal + hataał "it sings" + -í): "phonograph"

fgap arusol? rolfgap?

Na'rìghawnu

#12
I'm thinking the problem over and over at the moment. From what we know, K. Pawl did look on Esperanto-concepts too in developing the language, but refrained from implementing it too much into Na'vi. So I suppose, he wouldn't want to adopt many elements of Esperanto, but on the other hand, it's true, that this would make things much easier for us, especially in regard of not having a need to ask Frommer to bless every single word. And, as roger said, it's true, that an half-way experienced Esperantist automatically forms (and understands!) words he never heared before.

But I very well recognize tsrräfkxätu's thoughts and worries. I agree: Na'vi isn't just one of the countless artificial languages, which all - more or less - are intended to be usable in every-day conversation. I also believe, that the special atmosphere of this beautiful, but nevertheless strange alien world and culture, is the most attracting aspect of the whole thing. I won't go so far as to say, that using Na'vi in every-day conversion is something like a blasphemy, but in my eyes Na'vi shouldn't be deprived of it's special touch too much.

It's really tricky ...

For concepts, which could be loaned or adopted from Esperanto, I specially think, whether someting like the -eg- and -et- infixes could be useful, and - of course - something like mal-.

-eg-   indicates a big quantity, so adding it, one can avoid adjectives like "big" etc. over and over, e. g.
         libro (book) > librego (huge tome; WälzerD)
         eraro (mistake) > erarego (big mistake)

-et-   indicating a small quantity: libreto, erareto

mal-   turning a word into it's opposite, e. g.
         bona (good) > malbona (bad)
         varma (warm) > malvarma (cold)
In another thread it was pointed out, that just negating an adjective doesn't really turns it into it's opposite. So "not-hot" is not "cold", it's just not hot (therefore maybe lukewarm), and "not-bright" is not automatically "dark" (of course "not right" is "wrong", but this is a clear case of dichotomy).


Prrton

Quote from: tsrräfkxätu on March 04, 2010, 09:11:22 PM
Quote from: Prrton on March 04, 2010, 06:56:40 PM
[...] Tam. Set yol nìhawng.

OK, maybe it's just me, but I really don't think this is the right direction to go at all. Instead of having all these super-roots, that will flood our Earth-Na'vi with little uniform words that fit the little uniform things we surround ourselves with every day in every language, why can't we just leave the innate creativity of Na'vi thrive? What's the big deal if you call a microwave oven a "rotating heater" and I call it the "noisy foodcooker?" Like you said, I tell, I show, you understand. It's not like we'll ever have to build one in Na'vi. I sure hope not.

Also, you may think you're creating words, but you are really arbitrarily telling me what I should imagine when I say "tsyìhahaw", which I assure you, wasn't a thing I don't even know the word for in my mother tongue.

Personally, I think it's a mistake to regard Na'vi like any other "civilized" language where everything can be academically named, categorized, and turned into a neat Wikipedia article. Why create another language like that? I could just go and learn C++, you know.

Unlike pretty much any other conlang, Na'vi has a culture. It may be a little idealistic, even simplistic, but it is a unique culture nonetheless and it has proven to be strong enough to bring together an avid following from all walks of life and from all over the world. If you try transforming it into a 21st century urban language, you'll instantly kill that culture. It's not like Tuscarora needed a word for cell phone.

I agree that it's a nice game you thought up, but I don't see it's purpose, or more precisely, I don't like it.

No disrespect or offense meant of course, just my opinion.

Absolutely no offense is taken. Your opinion is completely valid and is held by many people.

Please allow me to explain my main reasoning for WANTING a Na'vi word for cat and dog, though, composed of morphemes that would be meaningful to the Na'vi if they were real.

At the core of my motivation is another motivation to become a fluent speaker of the language. If I could go to Pandora and do it in 6 units of time equivalent to 'Rrta months, then I would. But I can't. Pandora is just 2.75 'Rrta hours long. I can't live in the hometree and point at whatever domesticated or wild animal happens to seem most comparable to a "cat" and say we have something like that on 'Rrta. So, I will have to become fluent in San Francisco where whatever those wonderful imaginary animals would be are replaced by my two cats, and computers, and work that involves lots of concepts that the Na'vi would have a LOT of trouble understanding and, which according to Jake, they have no use for. And he's right.

I don't want them to have to learn English to understand what I MIGHT be able to talk with them about if they were real. I would like to have an impressive arsenal of morphemes that come from THEIR realm of experience that are immediately recognizable to them that I combine in ways that are relevant to my daily experiences. If I need to talk about carrying a "box" full of garbage to the sngeltseng and they don't have a concept of cubic form or even square, then I need to be able to describe my "alien container" as closely as possible to the concepts that they know and understand. It's easier to ask K. Pawl for a word for "box", but I've seen nothing so far to lead me to believe that they'd have one to have named. And while kunsìp and puk and pätsì are physical things that they might have experienced and learned in Grace's school (and during the destruction of their communal home), dog, elevator, dental floss, etc. didn't make it into the canon. And back to "box." If it ends up not being a handy word of manageable length, then it'll likely end up defaulting to the lowest common denominator paksì. Not kaha, powat, karton, tosì, kofer, kastì, hako, ngolong, kasi, peti, kaseta, santuku, kwatre, or poska... just paksì. Unfair. Boring. Opaque to the Na'vi. If I have to have all the morphemes/words to explain to them what a box is, I'd rather that just BE the word, and for those morphemes to help with other words too.

And, I'm not just making up the tendency for everything to degenerate/fall back on English. I speak a language and have lived in a culture VERY different from the one into which I was born in the South of the United States. In post-war (WWII) Japan the primary foreign language is English. And, there is a HUGE tendency since the 50's~60's to just take everything from English (that used to be Chinese, but one has to go back several 100 years to find that age). I know from personal, daily experience that when I and others like me don't know the Japanese (maybe originally Chinese) word for something, we just pronounce the English with Japanese phonology (via katakana). Lovely, formalized, insidious katakana. It is a crutch and it brings with it culture. They go hand in hand. Don't get me wrong. I love Roppongi Hills and Tokyo Midtown. One just a convenient underground air-conditioned stroll to the other... But I'd rather be at Giōji or Ise Jingū.

This approach is FOR ME (selfishly, I admit) a way to simultaneously become fluent (by speaking Na'vi in the full context of 'Rrta... daily practice) without infecting the Na'vi language with English.

And, if Pawl doesn't like this. He'll reject it. If the broad international speaker base doesn't like it. It will be rejected. And we'll have katakana leNa'vi and I'll use it. Whatever it takes to become fluent, I'll do...

But, I'd also like to suggest that people who don't want to talk about microwaves and dental floss and their pets in Na'vi, can simply discuss direhorses until the __________s come home. Native and near-native speakers of English will be able to fill in that blank easily. Others likely won't. That's unfair (to me).

Most respectfully,

  'Ivong Na'vi


Prrton

Quote from: wm.annis on March 04, 2010, 08:38:02 PM
As much as I adore classifier languages (diné bizaad ayóo shił yá'át'ééh, and Toki Pona pulls it off by stealth), it seems a bit late in the game to convert Na'vi to a classifier language. 

That said, and related to eltu lefngap, the Navajo also picked béésh "metal" as the base for some technological vocab —

béésh ná'iiláhí (metal + ná'iilá- "it gathers unspecified things" + -í "the one"): "magnet"
béésh hataałi (metal + hataał "it sings" + -í): "phonograph"

(Yet another in my growing collection of Navajo grammar books arrived today, so if I seem obsessed at the moment...)

No conversion necessary. Just a few extra parts. There is already precedent galore with lì('), -tu-/-su-, fya, ke/(k-), tì-, nì-, le-, 'u, 'aw-, mun-, sìl-, -am, -ay, -eyk(-), ____ si,  -tìng ______, txan, lun, yey, 'it-, -an, -e, -yu, fra-, fì-, tsa-/sa-, sä-...

Kefyak?

Na'rìghawnu


Really well written, ma Prrton! I think, I completely grasp, what you want to say. I will think more about the list of wanted morphemes you proposed ...

Quote
But, I'd also like to suggest that people who don't want to talk about microwaves and dental floss and their pets in Na'vi, can simply discuss direhorses until the __________s come home.
And ... I've to admit, that I don't have the slightes idea, what fills in the blank.

roger

a "milk yerik", maybe. which brings up milk: there are mammals on Pandora, right? shouldn't we have a word for "milk"?

And I get Prrton, too: when I was in Japan, I pretty much refused to use any word that was written in katakana. I didn't even bother to learn most of them, unless they were too opaque for me to recognize, because I was afraid of using them as a crutch. And the Navajo do just fine without borrowing words for introduced domestic animals, so it evidently can be done. But this approach will mean that we'll never be able to translate English fully into Na'vi, as there are so many biologically distinct words that we'd have to gloss them with paragraphs. And this also has its parallels on Earth: with some languages, when certain topics come up, you just switch to another language. In the fictional realm, any Na'vi who would recognize Earth's biology is going to speak a Terran language anyway. So I don't think we need to be able to say in Na'vi everything we can say in English. Just as many languages on Earth use English written in italics for technical concepts, or spoken with an English pronunciation without even attempting to assimilate it to the phonotactics of the language (and doesn't Neytiri do just this with "Jake", rather than pronouncing it "Tseyk"?), we could do the same for Na'vi. And if it starts distorting the language beyond recognition, why are we using Na'vi for that topic anyway? (I don't mean words like "box", but s.t. like monosodium glutamate.)

'eylan na'viyä

i think i would be usefull to sum up this whole discussion about loanwords, deriving words, (bad) influences and the whole lì'fya leNa'vi mì 'Rrta thing and send it to Karyu Pawl to ask him what he thinks about it.

i dont know if we should send it with the vocabulary request or by other means but i think that's something that should be cleared before some speakers tend to cluster.

Prrton

Quote from: roger on March 05, 2010, 03:44:11 AM
a "milk yerik", maybe. which brings up milk: there are mammals on Pandora, right? shouldn't we have a word for "milk"?

And I get Prrton, too: when I was in Japan, I pretty much refused to use any word that was written in katakana. I didn't even bother to learn most of them, unless they were too opaque for me to recognize, because I was afraid of using them as a crutch. And the Navajo do just fine without borrowing words for introduced domestic animals, so it evidently can be done. But this approach will mean that we'll never be able to translate English fully into Na'vi, as there are so many biologically distinct words that we'd have to gloss them with paragraphs. And this also has its parallels on Earth: with some languages, when certain topics come up, you just switch to another language. In the fictional realm, any Na'vi who would recognize Earth's biology is going to speak a Terran language anyway. So I don't think we need to be able to say in Na'vi everything we can say in English. So, just as many languages on Earth use English for technical concepts, we could do the same for Na'vi. And if it starts distorting the language, why are we using Na'vi for that topic anyway? (I don't mean words like "box", but s.t. like monosodium glutamate.)

Of course not. Specialists will always resort to whatever the lingua franca is (it just happens to no longer be FRANCA de la France anymore). If Mo'at were to visit Earth, she would have a lot of studying to do on the flight. She would learn a tremendous amount of vocabulary in English in transit via literacy and she would try to find English equivalents like electricity/気 for whatever it is that flows through the roots of the trees in her study materials. In describing her relationship with Eywa to religious leaders, she may need to learn Sanskrit (or at least the core terms and their ROUGH English equivalents) and decide after stumbling across it than neither electricity or 気 are flowing through those root of the trees and the tendrils of her queue. There simply is no translation for nawma syäfwll on 'Rrta so प्राण (prāṇa) will have to do as a substitute so that our scholars can best (if not perfectly) understand her. (PS: on this paragraph: «nawma *syäfwll» is a complete fiction. It is not a real phrase. *Syäfwll is not a real word, but just a stand-in for the concept of Ewanian/Pandoran energy for the sake of the meaning of this paragraph.)

Will the precise meaning of anaptyctic epenthesis need to be translated into Na'vi? No. Sung pamit «ì» fa horen lelì'fya will suffice. AND, it's easier to understand AND pronounce!  ;)

K. Pawl is already using *Skayp* and *telefon/fon* and that's completely understandable and OK. But if there's a "device-" root and a lot of us start sticking it on plltxe and using it (and one day we get a word for "pocket" and that gets stuck on there too?... well...), then he might choose to switch too. Living language is ALIVE. "Sick" and "illin'" will run their course. I will understand them, but not utter them myself in my normal conversations. I don't refer to myself as 俺 (ore) in Japanese either. The reasons why are complex. I don't have to to be who I am (fitting as well as I possibly can into Japanese social contexts) under the umbrella of the pronomial 俺, I can use 僕 (boku) and 私 (watashi) instead. It's never been a problem. Every now and then I probably sound a bit more childish and "alien" than I should, but, it's never been a problem, so it's never needed to change.

For now those double asterisks are our katakana. I just want to see them go away and I already am stuck with パソコン (paso.con) in Japanese (people would REALLY think me strange if I used 電脳 (den.nō) instead. And Thai คณิตกรณ์ (khanitgaawn ("nominalized calculation device" (from very proper Sanskrit roots I might add)) has succumbed to คอมพิวเตอร์ (kawmphiudtuuhr) in popular usage. But as for me, I love my «eltu fngap» just as much as Lance loves his *piano*. And I don't want to let it go.

tsrräfkxätu

#19
Quote from: Prrton on March 05, 2010, 03:16:44 AM
Please allow me to explain my main reasoning for WANTING a Na'vi word for cat and dog, though, composed of morphemes that would be meaningful to the Na'vi if they were real.
Wait. You were talking about tools and devices, not animals. While household appliances can easily be named (on-the-fly even) based on their purpose, animals are a wholly different matter. Not that you're going to be able to put cat together using morphemes for tail, claw, paw and fur. :D We'll still need a word for it from Frommer. (Until then, I'd go with miaw and wupx.)

Quote from: Prrton on March 05, 2010, 03:16:44 AM
If I need to talk about carrying a "box" full of garbage to the sngeltseng and they don't have a concept of cubic form or even square, then I need to be able to describe my "alien container" as closely as possible to the concepts that they know and understand. It's easier to ask K. Pawl for a word for "box", but I've seen nothing so far to lead me to believe that they'd have one to have named. And while kunsìp and puk and pätsì are physical things that they might have experienced and learned in Grace's school (and during the destruction of their communal home), dog, elevator, dental floss, etc. didn't make it into the canon. And back to "box." If it ends up not being a handy word of manageable length, then it'll likely end up defaulting to the lowest common denominator paksì. Not kaha, powat, karton, tosì, kofer, kastì, hako, ngolong, kasi, peti, kaseta, santuku, kwatre, or poska... just paksì. Unfair. Boring. Opaque to the Na'vi.
They probably have basket. Or carry-thing. Or holder. Problem solved. ;)

Quote from: Prrton on March 05, 2010, 03:16:44 AM
And, I'm not just making up the tendency for everything to degenerate/fall back on English. I speak a language and have lived in a culture VERY different from the one into which I was born in the South of the United States. In post-war (WWII) Japan the primary foreign language is English. And, there is a HUGE tendency since the 50's~60's to just take everything from English (that used to be Chinese, but one has to go back several 100 years to find that age). [...]
Note that I'm not arguing for loanwords. I am immovably against them. I also don't see why you think anyone needs to use them. Maybe it's easier for me, coming partly from a heavily agglutinative background where távbeszélő is a perfectly acceptable word for telephone.

Quote from: Prrton on March 05, 2010, 03:16:44 AM
But, I'd also like to suggest that people who don't want to talk about microwaves and dental floss and their pets in Na'vi, can simply discuss direhorses until the __________s come home. Native and near-native speakers of English will be able to fill in that blank easily. Others likely won't. That's unfair (to me).
You could of course say pa'li, kxaw, mu, or more creatively, big-tit-grasseater, but why would you want to use such an expression at all? A borrowed idiom isn't any better than the loanwords you're trying to work around.

I'm sorry, ma oeyä Prrton ayawne, but I'm still not sold. :D
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