Canon/2023

The Na'vi language canon is the complete collection of information about the Na'vi language provided by authoritative sources, namely Paul Frommer and the creators of Avatar (James Cameron and Twentieth Century Fox).

The canon comprises two things:

• words and phrases spoken or written in Na'vi
• descriptions of the linguistic elements of Na'vi such as orthography, morphology, syntax, and grammar

The Na'vi words and phrases from canonical sources are presented or linked to on the Corpus page (where copyright allows). Documentation, explanation, and analysis of Na'vi linguistics are presented on other Learn Na'vi wiki pages (Phonology, Morphology, Grammar, etc.). This page serves to document the canonical sources themselves. The majority of the examples on this page come from email correspondances with Frommer.

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This page includes information dated January 2023 - December 2023. To access past information please see:

• Canon

Genitive of Omatikaya and Metkayina

Reported by Wllìm in this Discord post - Email corresponding with Pawl, April 24, 2023.

Asked by Wllìm:

I was writing some uhm... stupid friendly jokes I imagined the Omatikaya may tell about the Metkayina, and ran into the following question: is the genitive of Metkayina Metkayinayä or Metkayinaä? According to the rules, it should be -yä, but since the clan name Omatikaya has Omatikayaä, I figured that the same pattern might also apply to other clan names ending on -a.

Paul's reply:

The genitive of Metkayina follows the standard rules: Metkayinayä.

Omatikayaä is an exception, only because the root ends in -ya. I felt that -yayä would be unstable over time, especially since these syllables are unstressed. (I would not generalize this to all words ending in -ya, however. For example, the genitive of ya 'air' is simply yayä, since the ya-part is stressed.)

In normal speech, Omatikayaä is almost certainly going to be pronounced Omatikayä. The written form should remain -aä, however, except when you're trying to reproduce the sound of actual speech and you use nonstandard spellings (the way we do in English when we write "gonna" and "dunno.")