User:Erimeyz/Beginners' Guide: Lesson Six - Verb Tenses
Note: This beginner's guide is a work in progress. There is still a lot to be done before it gets released. Feedback from everyone is welcome, including from beginners and experienced Na'vi learners. Please add your comments on the Beginners' Guide talk page, or post to one of the Beginners' Guide threads on the Learn Na'vi forum (such as the Letters and Sounds thread), or send a forum PM to Erimeyz.
[Introductory text goes here, maybe]
All This Has Happened Before
Consider the following sentences:
- Neytiri hahaw. Neytiri sleeps.
- Neytiri hamahaw. Neytiri slept.
- Swirä tul. The creature runs.
- Swirä tamul. The creature ran.
- Tsu'teyìl swirät taron. Tsu'tey hunts the creature.
- Tsu'teyìl swirät tamaron. Tsu'tey hunted the creature.
The second sentence in each pair is in the past tense. More precisely, it's the verb that's in the past tense: slept, ran, hunted. To put a verb in the past tense, Na'vi does something unusual: it uses infixes, which just means that it adds something in the middle of the verb instead of at the beginning or end. The infix here is <am>. (Note: infixes are sometimes written with angle brackets like these <> around them, just to make it clear that they are infixes and not suffixes like -it or prefixes like ay-.)
We'll explain exactly where in the middle of the verb <am> goes, but for now just look at some examples:
- eyk lead
- ameyk led
- rol sing
- ramol sang
- zong save
- zamong saved
- yur wash
- yamur washed
- lonu release
- lamonu released
- kurakx drive out
- kamurakx drove out
- pähem arrive
- pamähem arrived
- teswotìng grant
- teswamotìng granted
- kllkulat dig up
- kllkamulat dug up
Here's the rule: for verbs with one syllable, the past tense infix <am> is inserted immediately in front of the vowel in that syllable; for verbs with two or more syllables it is inserted immediately in front of the vowel in the second-to-last syllable.
Read that rule again, carefully, then go back through the list of verbs above and see how it applies to each one.
Got it? Good! On to the future!
All This Will Happen Again
Consider the following sentences:
- Neytiri hahaw. Neytiri sleeps.
- Neytiri hamahaw. Neytiri slept.
- Neytiri hayahaw. Neytiri will sleep.
- Swirä tul. The creature runs.
- Swirä tamul. The creature ran.
- Swirä tayul. The creature will run.
- Tsu'teyìl swirät taron. Tsu'tey hunts the creature.
- Tsu'teyìl swirät tamaron. Tsu'tey hunted the creature.
- Tsu'teyìl swirät tayaron. Tsu'tey will hunt the creature.
You can probably guess this next part. To put a verb into the future tense Na'vi uses the infix <ay> in exactly the same way as the past tense infix <am> is used. Read through the following examples and see for yourself:
- eyk lead
- ameyk led
- ayeyk will lead
- rol sing
- ramol sang
- rayol will sing
- lonu release
- lamonu released
- layonu will release
- pähem arrive
- pamähem arrived
- payähem will arrive
- kllkulat dig up
- kllkamulat dug up
- kllkayulat will dig up
So now you know how to talk about the present (no infixes), the past (<am>), and the future (<ay>). That pretty much covers it, right? Well, almost.
All This Is Just Now About To Happen
While English has three tenses (past, present, and future), Na'vi has five, count 'em, five tenses: past, present, future, recent past, and immediate future. They look like this:
- Tsu'teyìl swirät tamaron. Tsu'tey hunted the creature.
- Tsu'teyìl swirät tìmaron. Tsu'tey just now hunted the creature.
- Tsu'teyìl swirät taron. Tsu'tey hunts the creature.
- Tsu'teyìl swirät tìyaron. Tsu'tey is about to hunt the creature.
- Tsu'teyìl swirät tayaron. Tsu'tey will hunt the creature.
The near-term tense infixes <ìm> and <ìy> are inserted into verbs in the same way as their general-term counterparts <am> and <ay>:
- ameyk led
- ìmeyk just led
- eyk lead
- ìyeyk about to lead
- ayeyk will lead
- lamonu released
- lìmonu just released
- lonu release
- lìyonu about to release
- layonu will release
- kllkamulat dug up
- kllkìmulat just dug up
- kllkulat dig up
- kllkìyulat about to dig up
- kllkayulat will dig up
How recent is recent? How soon is about to? There's no specific rule - it depends on the perspective of the speaker and the context of the conversation. <am> and <ay> are not necessarily in the distant past or future, they just aren't in the immediate past or future. Similary, <ìm> and <ìy> could be some distance ahead or behind, just not as far as something else the speaker could have chosen to talk about but didn't.
All This Is, Was, and Will Be
By the way, when a word is modified to change its grammatical function, linguists call that inflection. Examples of inflection include changing taron hunt into tamaron hunted, or changing the noun swirä creature into the direct object swirät creature. Note that in English hunt is inflected into the past tense hunted, but creature is not inflected when it becomes the direct object.
The verb lu to be is inflected just like all the other Na'vi verbs you've learned so far:
- lamu was, were
- lìmu just was, just were
- lu is, am, are
- lìyu about to be
- layu will be
And one final note: Na'vi verbs are inflected for tense (as you've learned), but they are not inflected for number. We'll go over this in more detail later, after you learn about plural nouns. But for now just bear in mind that "I hunt", "he hunts", and "they hunt" all use the same uninflected verb taron, and "I am", "he is", and "they are" all use the same uninflected verb lu.
In English, Please
There are actually several different ways to translate a simple Na'vi sentence into English:
- Tsu'teyìl swirät taron.
- Tsu'tey hunts the creature.
- Tsu'tey is hunting the creature.
- Tsu'teyìl swirät tamaron.
- Tsu'tey hunted the creature.
- Tsu'tey was hunting the creature.
- Tsu'tey had hunted the creature.
- Tsu'tey had been hunting the creature.
- Tsu'tey used to be hunting the creature.
- Tsu'teyìl swirät tayaron.
- Tsu'tey will hunt the creature.
- Tsu'tey will be hunting the creature.
- Tsu'tey is going to hunt the creature.
- Tsu'tey is going to be hunting the creature.
In English these types of sentences go by such various names as future perfect, pluperfect progressive, and so forth. In Na'vi there's just past, present, and future (plus recent past and immediate future). Any of the English variations of the basic tenses can be used as valid translations of the corresponding Na'vi tense. In many cases, however, there may be one best or most appropriate translation; as usual, you can tell what's most appropriate by the context of the conversation. Things will get a little more complicated when we talk about aspect in Na'vi, but you don't need to worry about that for now.
Practice Sentences
Vocabulary
[Put these in a box off to the side, next to Practice Sentences]
[List of all words encountered so far, with words new in this lesson in italics]
[Group by part of speech. Include sections for noun modifiers and verb modifiers.]