Lesson 13 - Adjectives, Or "Fast, Slow, Nice, Good..."

[Walas00]

Adjective - a word describing an attribute of an object, for example, a slow cat - a cat that is slow.

Adding adjectives to a sentence is quite easy. We need to discuss some cases thou.

ADJ
"The river is long"
This is a typical usage of an adjective. In this case we want to say that "something is something".

kilvanri ngim lu
kilvan-ri ngim lu
"river"-Topic "long" "to.be (is)"
The river is long

We use the verb "lu" (to be/is) to mark that something is something.

ATTR-Attributive
"The long river"
In this case we want to refer to "a something something", to an object with an attribute. Noticed the difference? "The long river" - "The river is long".
Pretty much in this case we're lacking another part of a sentence. So it's best to use ADJ case (The river is long) when you want to dedicate the whole sentence for describing an object. ATTR (The long river) is good when you want to say something more about an object with attributes.

Here we can do this in many ways, with an a prefix/suffix.

kilvan angim
kilvan a-ngim
"river" ATTR-"long"
A long river

ngima kilvan
ngim-a kilvan
"long"-ATTR "river"
A long river

Noticed something? "a" is between the adjective (attribute) and a noun (object). "adjective-a noun", and "noun a-adjective". So the "a" must we connected with an adjective, but on the side closer to the noun it's describing.

Using le- (if you have other informations about this, please, share)
-le prefix is used to make a noun an adjective (make the object act like an attribute). "Poland, language" -> "Polish language".

li'fya leNa'vi
li'fya le-Na'vi
"language" ADJ-"The People"
Na'vi language

Emotions
Let's say you'd like to say that you feel something. You shouldn't use an Adjective method here.

Oe 'efu nitram
I "feel" "happy"

Verb 'efu (feel) needs to be used here.


Lot's of new stuff eh?
object a-attribute
attribute-a object
object le-object (an object-ish object)

New words:
kilvan - river
ngim - long
'efu - to feel
nitram - happy
li'fya - language
Na'vi - The People
Resources: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Na'vi/Adjectives

Quick-link To Lesson 14- http://www.tree-of-souls.com/navi_la...this_that.html