Katxí, Navi learner here^^
I'm trying to learn Na'vi but I'm having a really hard time figuring out the grammar of the language do you think you could explain it a bit?
Kaltxì! Sorry it took me a hot minute to get to this, I knew it would take a long time to type up which was a tad intimidating ^^;
So uhhh needless to say I can't really teach you the entirety of the grammar in one post like this, but I can go over a few basic things to help get you started. :)
A common place to begin are the closely-related concepts of free word order, case endings, and transitivity!
Sooooo in English, word order is very important. "cat eats fish" and "fish eats cat" mean completely different things, and "eats fish cat" hardly makes sense at all. Na'vi, however, features limited free word order--words can go (almost) anywhere in a sentence without changing the meaning.
But if words can go anywhere in a sentence, how do you make sense of it? How do you know whether the fish or the cat is doing the eating? That's where case endings come in!
Case endings are suffixes that mark a noun's role in a sentence. Na'vi has five case endings, but we'll start with two: -l and -t.
Simple sentences like "cat eats fish" can be broken down into three parts:
1.) the verb, or the action of the sentence
2.) the subject, which is doing the action
3.) the direct object, which is having the action done to it
In Na'vi, the subject is marked the the L ending (-l for nouns that end in vowels, -ìl for consonants), and the direct object is marked with the T ending (-t for vowels, -it for consonants, or optionally -ti for any noun).
So let's return to our sentence and say that the cat (palulukantsyìp) is the one eating (yom) the fish (payoang).
What is the action of the sentence? Eat!
What is doing the eating? Cat! Palulukantsyìp takes the -l ending.
What is being eaten? Fish! Payoang takes the -t ending.
So, palulukantsyìpìl payoangit yom the cat eats the fish
or...
palulukantsyìpìl yom payoangit
payoangit palulukantsyìpìl yom
payoangit yom palulukantsyìpìl
yom palulukantsyìp payoangit
yom payoangit palulukantsyìpìl
All six of these orders are 100% valid and mean exactly the same thing!
If we want to switch the meaning so the fish is doing the eating, instead of using a particular order, we just switch the case endings:
palulukantsyìpit payoangìl yom the fish eats the cat
Pretty straightforward! Let's throw in a third case ending: the R ending (-r or -ru for vowels, -ur for consonants), which marks the indirect object.
Consider the sentence I give you a gift.
What is the action? Give!
What is doing the giving? I! oe takes the -l ending
What is being given? Gift! stxeli takes the -t ending
So far so good...but wait, we are forgetting a noun! If "I" is the subject and "gift" is the direct object, then what is "you"? As you've probably guessed, it's the indirect object! It can often be translated as "to [noun]".
Oel ngaru stxelit tìng I give you a gift (I give a gift to you)
Now that we're familiar with -l, -t, and -r, let's shake it up a bit:
A common mistake I see with beginners is to always use the -l ending on the subject of a sentence. However, some sentences don't need it. The -l (and, with it, the -t) only show up with subject/direct object pairs.
That said, not all verbs can take direct objects. The ability for a verb to take a direct object is called transitivity. A transitive verb can take a direct object. An intransitive verb cannot.
In many cases the transitivity of a verb is fairly intuitive. For example, eat, like we used before, is transitive--you can "eat something". However, you cannot "sleep something". "I eat an apple" makes sense. "I sleep an apple" does not. Therefore, sleep is intransitive--it cannot take a direct object.
Because there is no direct object to distinguish from the subject, the subject of an intransitive verb does not need to be marked.
oel hahaw → oe hahaw I sleep
*quick note that transitive verbs are allowed to take a direct object, but are not required to--when there is no direct object, the -l ending is not used, even if the verb is listed as transitive in the dictionary. So, "I eat an apple" would be oel äpllti yom, but "I eat" by itself would simply be oe yom, without the -l.]
However, some verbs that look like they should be transitive are actually intransitive (the only way to know for sure is to check a dictionary). A particularly infamous example is the verb nume ("to learn")--I'm pretty sure just about every learner (including myself!) has made the mistake of trying to say oel nume lì'fyat leNa'vi ("I learn the Na'vi language") at some point or other!
There are a handful of ways to work around verbs that look like they should be transitive but aren't. Which one to use depends on the sentence. We'll cover two of them here:
The first is to use the R ending. Often, the word that appears to be the direct object of an intransitive verb is actually the indirect object, and therefore receives the -R ending.
Consider the sentence Mother cleans the house.
House (kelku) appears to be the direct object here. It is the thing being cleaned, right? However, the verb for "clean", laro si, is intransitive, so it cannot take a direct object. Remember when I said that indirect objects can often be translated as "to [noun]"? This is where that can come in handy:
Sa'nok kelkur laro si Mother cleans the house ("Mother does a clean to the house")
(*note that the subject, sa'nok, is unmarked--remember that -l and -t only show up with subject/direct object pairs, which can only occur with transitive verbs)
The second workaround requires introducing another case ending: the topical (-ri for vowels, -ìri for consonants). This case ending is considered a bit more "advanced" since English doesn't really have a solid equivalent, so don't worry if it's a little confusing right now, but if you've studied certain other languages such as Japanese before you may be familiar with the idea.
The topical case ending introduces a noun as the "topic" of a sentence, which the rest of the sentence proceeds to make a comment about. It is often translated as "concerning [noun]..." or "as for [noun]..." or "regarding [noun]..."
Li'fyari lu sìltsan fwa tskxekeng si pxìm! It's good to practice language often! ("Concerning language, it's good to practice often!")
Using this ending is the correct way to say every new learner's favorite sentence mentioned earlier:
Lì'fyari leNa'vi oe nume! I'm learning Na'vi! ("Regarding the Na'vi language, I learn!")
*quick note--remember how at the very beginning of the post I said that Na'vi has limited free word order? Well, here's one of the limits: when using the topical, it is always expected to come at the beginning of a sentence/clause (in the forest dialect, at least--putting the topical at the end of a sentence is considered acceptable in the reef dialect but don't worry about that right now lol)
Well, that covers four of the five case endings in Na'vi. Might as well mention the last one: the possessive (I believe the fancy linguist term is genitive), which is -yä for words that end in vowels (except u and o because reasons), and -ä for everything else.
As you've probably guessed, this case ending describes possession. It can be translated as [thing] of [owner] and/or [owner]'s [thing]. The ending attaches to the owner.
Meysiyä syuve "Meysi's food" or "food of Meysi"
(because of free word order, syuve Meysiyä also works! However, while it doesn't matter which side you put the owner on, you will want to make sure the two nouns are next to each other in the sentence. This is another example of the free word order being limited.)
Sa'nokä tìyawn "[a] mother's love" or "[the] love of [a] mother"
Pukä hapxì "part of [a] book"
Oeyä tsmukan "my brother" or "brother of mine"
aaaaaand that's all of the case endings! Originally I thought about going into a bit about infixes/verb conjugation too since that's also a pretty fundamental part of the grammar but this post it getting crazy long as-is; another time perhaps.
Hopefully that gives you an ok jumping-off point; if you need anything clarified or want to know about a different particular bit of grammar, feel free to ask!
