Numeyuyä Atan

Japanese scientists developed a new robots enabling a man to see through his eyes and feel what the robots is touching  while moving his arms to move the robot’s arms and hands. The scientists’s approach is very similar to the concept at the center of James Cameron’s Avatar where a man’s conscience can manipulate and feel an Avatar body located somewhere else, as if he was in the Avatar body.

Technologies to manipulate robots in such a way not new though : medical facilities can be equipped since a few years with surgical robots that allow a patient located in India to be operated by a surgeon located in England or elsewhere manipulating the robot’s action precisely by his own hands.

This is however still far from the imagined technology seen in this futuristic film. More research has to be done on a wide variety aspects such as possible movements and their precision, walking, which will probably require much more knowledge on the brain as we still do not know well enough how it works.

Original news from Agence France-Presse

The proposal emitted by Skawng Makto (formerly Taronyu), consisting of offering the Na’vi language an identifier for the language that is used to mean Na’vi, and only Na’vi, to databases, linguists and software programmers, has been rejected by SIL International.

The Review Committee of the ISO 639-3 Registration Authority has determined that the request for this new code element is premature. This part of ISO 639 includes identifiers that denote constructed (or artificial) languages that meet the following criteria:

• The language has a literature.
• The language is designed for the purpose of human communication.

At this time there is no published literature in Na’vi and it has been used only in a limited way for human communication. If Na’vi continues to develop over the coming years, both in applications and in user base, then the RA will be open to consider a new request for assignment of a code element for Na’vi.

This basically means that Na’vi cannot have an identifier before there are enough works and proofs this language can be used for human communication everyday.

Na’vi currently has several projects for reinforcing the langage ongoing such as the ReactOS translation project,

Source : sil.org

Discussion thread

After quick hiatus, Avatar Nation is back on air and ready to bring you a new season of episodes.

In this episode the team comes back together and reviews some of the highlights of the past season and discusses the latest news and speculation regarding the delay of Avatar 2′s release dates.

Avatar Nation is a podcasting project featuring audio from various Na’vi and Avatar meetups and events. Avatar Nation also conveys comunity members for interviews, and discussions. It offers also news and information about current events on it’s website hosted at avatar-nation.net.

Go to Avatar Nation episode 7

Avatar Nation discussion thread in Learn Na’vi forums

The 2011 edition of the Na’vi writing contest results have been published on Paul Frommer’s Naviteri blog, celebrating LearnNa’vi’s second year of existence. Two categories were offered to anyone who wished to attempt the contest : prose and poetry, with a word count limit of about 200-250 words.The winners are Alyara Arati, Blue Elf, Ikran Ahiyìk, and Lance R. Casey.

The overall theme of this year’s contest was:

Teri fwa fmal fìlì’fyati ayawne
“On keeping this beloved language alive”

Dr. Frommer expressed that he is “continually impressed with the quality of the Na’vi coming out of the Community” and very touched by the “communication in such elegant, creative, and moving ways” using Na’vi, the language he gave birth to.If you wonder how to say “poem” in Na’vi, Paul offers a simple answer, based on the Na’vi word ‘way’ meaning ‘song’. He gives two expressions to avoid ambiguity :

way a plltxe ->‘spoken poem’
way a rol -> ‘song’

You can read Paul Frommer’s full answer, the contest winners and their poems on his blog, Naviteri.

Discussion topic

There was an interesting article about entertainment constructed languages in the New York Times today. Although it mainly focuses on Dothraki, there is considerable mention of Na’vi. The article explains how constructed languages for fiction can be created, and why some people would be tempted in learning it.

Athhilezar? Watch Your Fantasy World Language
In game of thrones, a language to make the world feel real

Discussion topic

Skawng Makto (formerly Taronyu) has sent a request to SIL International for the Na’vi language to obtain an official ISO code. An ISO code is an identifier specific to a language in particular that allows to identify it precisely and therefore can help projects to translate using this identifier. Every widely used and well known languages, from English to Esperanto, have an ISO code registered by SIL. Na’vi would eventually have the nvi code. It can however take some time before the changes can be applied in 2012.

The change request page and the complete description of the change to the language list is available on SIL’s official website.

SIL is a non-profit organization aiming at conducting linguistic investigations and listing as many existing languages as possible, their origin and current status. The organization also aims to offer linguistic training and creates resources for linguists.

Discussion topic

Welcome to Numeyuä Atan!

This new website centralizes some information that used to be hidden in the Learn Na’vi forums as well as offer a totally new service for video conference. From now on, you should no longer need to spend time searching which important topic sums up how each project works. They can be listed and explained here, as well as offer links to the topics and pages that matter most.

Moreover, this site may also become a news site of everything that happens and is organized in the community in any active project. The aim is to offer more visibility for existing and future projects.

Feel free to make suggestions. As this site is still in alpha stage, it is susceptible to evolve. If you would like to translate parts of this website (as it is natively multi-lingual), feel free to ask me and I will see how I can sort this to make it easy to manage.

Discussion topic

Oel ngati kameie ma tsmuktu.