Difference between revisions of "User:Erimeyz/Beginners' Guide"

From Learn Na'vi Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search
(→‎Sketch Outline: clean up done stuff)
Line 20: Line 20:
 
* [[User:Erimeyz/Beginners' Guide/Letters and Sounds|Letters and Sounds]]
 
* [[User:Erimeyz/Beginners' Guide/Letters and Sounds|Letters and Sounds]]
 
** Justification - why learning good pronunciation is important - it's a spoken language, and it's exotic and beautiful-sounding (by design!)
 
** Justification - why learning good pronunciation is important - it's a spoken language, and it's exotic and beautiful-sounding (by design!)
** Quick overview of the orthography - point out the funny stuff but don't explain in detail
 
** Easy vowels
 
** Diphthongs
 
** Easy consonants
 
** Funny consonants - ng and ts, glides (contrast w/ diphthongs)
 
** Sidebar: stress
 
** ''First example words''
 
** Hard consonants 1 - r, rr, ll
 
** Hard consonants 2 - glottal stop and ejectives
 
** Consonant clusters
 
** ''Second example words''
 
** ''Useful words, simple phrases - '''hey, look, you're speaking Na'vi now!'''''
 
** Throughout all of the above:
 
*** ''No IPA, don't even mention it (that comes later when discussing dictionaries)''
 
*** ''No discussion of phonotactics
 
*** ''Be precise - get them to make their final voiceless stops unreleased, careful with final ì, etc.''
 
*** ''Even while being precise, be simple, concise, and friendly''
 
*** ''Crib from the best explanations I can find in the forums etc.''
 
*** ''Include links to the Ftiafpi audio clips''
 
*** ''Include links to the best audio and video explanations I can find''
 
 
* [[User:Erimeyz/Beginners' Guide/More Letters and Sounds|More Letters and Sounds]]
 
* [[User:Erimeyz/Beginners' Guide/More Letters and Sounds|More Letters and Sounds]]
* [[User:Erimeyz/Beginners' Guide/Useful Na'vi Phrases|Useful Na'vi Phrases]]
+
* [[User:Erimeyz/Beginners' Guide/Useful Na'vi Phrases|Useful Na'vi Phrases]] - '''''hey, look, you're speaking Na'vi now!'''''
 
* How to improve your pronunciation
 
* How to improve your pronunciation
 
* Sidebar: stress
 
* Sidebar: stress

Revision as of 01:39, 25 January 2010

This is a placeholder where I will work on my Beginner's Guide.

Comments and suggestions welcome, please put them on the talk page.

Sketch Outline

Most of these will become separate pages.

  • Welcome and introduction
  • About the language
    • Background, history, publication
    • Why learn it?
    • Canon, corpus, analysis, speculation
    • Limitations - small vocab, pieces, missing, etc
    • What we can do with what we have - hold conversations, talk about hunting, etc.
    • What the future holds
    • Keep it simple, interesting, and short - include pointers to details elsewhere
  • Na'vi in a nutshell
    • One-page overview of the language - orthography, phonology, grammar, etc.
    • Not enough detail to learn from
    • Just enough to whet the appetite and provide a basis for learning the details
  • Letters and Sounds
    • Justification - why learning good pronunciation is important - it's a spoken language, and it's exotic and beautiful-sounding (by design!)
  • More Letters and Sounds
  • Useful Na'vi Phrases - hey, look, you're speaking Na'vi now!
  • How to improve your pronunciation
  • Sidebar: stress
  • Basic grammar
    • Free word order, subjects and objects, case suffixes
    • Simple transitive sentences - ergative and accusative, allomorphs
    • Simple intransitive sentences
    • Example sentences, drill using same vocab with different cases and in different word order - hey, look, you're thinking in Na'vi now!
    • Verb tenses, infixes - past, future
    • Sentence drill w/ tenses
    • Verb tenses - near past, near future
    • To be
    • Number prefixes, lenition
    • Sentence drill w/ tenses, number, and lenition
    • Sidebar: more about stress
    • Gender
    • Dative
    • Sentence drill
    • Adjectives
    • Genitive
    • Affect
    • Sentence drill
  • Intermediate grammar
    • Pronouns
    • Topical
    • Sentence drill
    • Adpositions - a few
    • Sentence drill
    • Adpositions - more
    • Sentence drill
    • Aspect
    • Sentence drill
    • Questions
    • Demonstratives
    • Sentence drill
    • Particles
    • Sentence drill
  • Now what?
    • Study guides, dictionaries, vocab drills
    • Reading and writing
    • Community involvement
    • Pointers to advanced topics

Each major chunk of the grammar (i.e. between the sentence drills) introduces new vocabulary - never very much at once, though.