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What are Adpositions?
Adpositions are little word which are combined with nouns or pronouns to decribe them. Most of them describe the tense or the location of the noun, but not all of them. Some examples:

Oe tswayon fa eana ikran I fly with the blue ikran (with the help of the ikran)
Ngari hu eywa salew tirea Your spirit goes with eywa
Oeng tsun yivom fìkemmaw After this work we can eat
Tul ne kelutral awnga! We run to the Hometree


In these examples you were able to see some examples of the rules of adpositions, but we’ll go through them here!



(Ta EanaUnil)

Where to place the adpositions and rules of the positions?
There are two ways to place them, either in front of them with a space or directly behind them, but then connected to the noun. If you place the adposition in front of the noun there are some things you need to take care of. There are adpositions that cause lenition to the word behind it, but only if they are placed in front of a noun, if they are stuck on the end of a noun, they won’t cause lenition! Adpositions that cause lenition are marked with a + behind them in the dict. If you place the adposition in front of the noun there also is another rule, which is that an adjective goes between the adposition and the noun. Also if you use a adposition that causes lenition here, they cause lenition on the following adjective.Like this:

adp. adj. n. adj. sawla tsamsiyu atxur
adj. n.adp. adj tsawla tsamsiyu atxur

Classes of adpositions
There are two main classes of adpostions and adpositions without classes.
These classes are temporal adpostions temp and locative adpostions loc. You can see that in the dict.
Adpostions must only be used in the case of there class, there are only two exceptions, which will be later in this lesson.

Adpositions on nouns in plural
If you want to use a adposition, which causes lenition, on a noun in plural you have two use two rules. Either you again put the adposition on the end of the noun, than you don’t have to write the ay prefix in front of the noun but just lenite it. But if you write it in front of the noun you’ve got a problem.
Oe wem kutu could mean “I fight against the enemy” or “I fight against the enemys” if that rule wouldn’t be. To solve that problem there is the rule that you have to write the ay in front of the noun if you use a adposition on it that causes lenition. So the example sentence would become: Oe wem aykutu to show that it mean “I fight against the enemys”.

Two exceptions of classes
For the adpositions ka and ro there is an exception if they are used with the -o suffix.
Booth are locative adpositions but can in this case be used temporal if the adposition describes a noun of time like trr, krr, ha’ngir, kintrr, sl.
The combination of ka and a noun ending with the -o suffix means over the time of / the entire.
The combination of ro and a noun ending with the -o suffix means one / once.

Lì’fyari leNa’vi ka trro nolume oe I learned Na’vi for the entire day!
Lì’fyari leNa’vi ro srro nolume oe I was studying Na’vi one day.

List of Adpositions

Adposition Lenition Class Translation
äo loc below, under
eo loc before, in front of
fa with, by means of
few loc across, aiming for the opposite side of
fkip loc up among
Fpi for the sake of, for the benefit of
ftu loc from (direction)
ftumfa loc out of, from inside
ftuopa loc from behind
hu with (accompaniment), (together) with
io loc above, over
ìlä loc by, via, following, according to (someone)
ka loc across, covering thoroughly
kam temp ago
kay temp from now (future event)
kip loc among
kxamlä loc through, via the middle of
krrka temp during
lisre temp by, before, up to but not after
lok loc approach, arrive (at a place)
luke without
maw temp after (temporal)
loc in, on
mìkam loc between
mungwrr except
na like, as
ne loc to, towards (direction)
nemfa loc into, inside
nuä loc beyond
pxaw loc around
pxel like, as
pximaw temp right after
pxisre temp right before
raw down to
ro loc at (locative)
rofa loc beside, alongside
sìn loc on, onto
sko (s.t. / s.o.) as (s.t. / s.o. else), in the role of
sre temp before (time)
ta loc, temp from (locative),
since (temporal with word of time)
tafkip loc from up among
talun because of
teri about, concerning
uo loc behind
vay temp, loc up to
against, opposing
yoa in exchange for


Exercise 1:
Please translate the following sentences.

  1. Oe tul ne kelutral
  2. Neytiril Tsu’teyhu taron yerikit
  3. Eytukan olo’eyktansko plltxe
  4. You run through the forest
  5. She flies with her ikran
  6. Because of this reason I’ll do it!