# Na'vi/Pronouns

Naʼvi pronouns include personal pronouns, used for persons and other animate nouns, and demonstrative pronouns, used for inanimate nouns and to distinguish "this" from "that".

## Personal pronouns

Naʼvi personal pronouns encode clusivity. That is, there are different words for "we" depending on whether the speaker is including the person spoken to or not. There are also special forms for "the two of us" (oeng "you & me", moe "s/he & me"), "the three of us", etc. Pronouns do not inflect for gender; although it's possible to distinguish "he" from "she", the distinction is optional.
    Pronounssing.dualtrialplural (4+)generic Exclusive óemóepxóeayóefko Inclusive —oéngpxóengayoéng, awngá 2nd person ngámengápxengáayngá 3rd person animate pómefópxefóayfó, fó 3rd person inanimate (use demonstratives)
Fo is the "short plural" form of po; ayfo is the explicit plural. Ayoeng (pronounced aywéng) and awnga are both contractions of the historical plural *ay-oe-nga.
"One" as a pronoun is fko:
    Zénefkon‹iv›úmenì-txán mustonelearn‹sjv›adv-much
    "There is much to learn" (lit. "One must learn much")
Po can mean he, she, or it, but only if animate; for inanimate and abstract nouns, a demonstrative pronoun such as tsa (or tsaʼu, tsaw) "that" must be used. "He" and "she" can optionally be differentiated as poan and poe; this may be done to distinguish two referents in the same context, as normally both are translated simply as po. It is not known if the other pronouns can also do this.
The formal forms of "I" and "you" are óhe and ngengá, which likewise take the me- and ay- prefixes. The inclusive forms are derived from these with sì "and":
    Formalsing.dualtrialplural Exclusive óhemóhepxóheayóhe Inclusive —óhe ngengásìmóhe ngengásì, óhe mengengásì(various combinations) 2nd person ngengámengengápxengengáayngengá
Generally when formal pronouns are used, the verb is inflected for formality as well.

## Demonstrative pronouns

For demonstrative pronouns and their compounds, such as fìʼu "this", tsaʼu ~ tsaw "that", and saʼu ~ saw "those", see the chapter on questions. Of the simple pronouns, *tsa can be used as an independent pronoun "that, it (inanimate)", but it does not occur in the intransitive case, and may be restricted in the grammatical roles it plays. Note that when demonstrative pronouns modify a noun, they may do so directly as "pre-nouns", in which case they indicate relative location: tsatute "that person", fìtute "this person".

## Case

Pronouns inflect for case as nouns do:
    Oél ngáti kámeie
    Oe-ìlnga-tikam‹ei›e I-ergyou-accSee‹approb›
    "I (am glad to) See you" (a greeting)
There are some changes in pronouns when case endings are added. The final vowel becomes e before the genitive -yä : oéyä "my", ayoéyä "our", ngéyä "thy", ayngéyä "your", péyä "her/his", féyä "their", awngeyä "our" (inclusive plural), ohengeyä "our" (formal inclusive dual; note that the sì is lost with inflection), etc.
The exclusive pronouns based on oe are generally contracted to /ˈwɛ/ when inflected for case, though they may remain /ˈo.ɛ/ with careful enunciation. The inclusive pronouns based on oeng revert to their historical form *oe-nga when inflected, so that the ergative is oéngal, not $^x$oengìl.
Although not all forms are attested, it appears that otherwise the inflections are the same as those on nouns.
    intrergshort acclong accgenshort datlong dattop Exclusive oeoel ?oetioeyäoeroeruoeri Inclusive oengoengaloengatoengatioengeyä?awngarawngaru ? 2nd person ngangalngatngatingeyängarngarungari 3rd animate popolpot ?peyäporporufìʼuri 3rd inanimate tsawtsaltsattsatitseyätsartsarutsari
Of the two forms of the inclusive plural, ayoeng and awnga, the latter is shorter when inflected: ergative ayoengal /ai̯.ˈwɛ.ŋal/ vs. awngal /au̯.ˈŋal/.
Pronouns also take adpositions, as in oehu, ngahu, pohu "with me, you, him/her", tsane "to it". Tsaw has the irregular form sat after the (non-leniting) preposition ftu: ftu sat "(away) from that".

## Notes

* ↑ These aren't actually dual, trial, and plural pronouns, but rather combinations of two pronouns, ohe and ngenga, either of which may be in any of the four numbers, for sixteen possible permutations from ohe ngengasì for just two people to ayohe ayngengasì for at least eight (the 4+ of us and the 4+ of you).
* ↑ The "See" is capitalized in the script, as kame means to see into & understand a person, not simply "to see", which is tseʼa. "How to Speak Na'vi", UGO Movie Blog, 2009 Dec 14
* ↑ Assumed from the formal plural form ayohengeyä. The alternate informal plural is awngeyä.
* ↑ Tsa'u inflects as a regular noun. Its shortened form tsaw, however, drops the w when inflected.
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