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.

Pronouns	sing.	dual	trial	plural (4+)	generic
Exclusive	óe	móe	pxóe	ayóe	fko
Inclusive	—	oéng	pxóeng	ayoéng, awngá
2nd person	ngá	mengá	pxengá	ayngá
3rd person animate	pó	mefó	pxefó	ayfó, 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:

Zéne	fko	n‹iv›úme	nì-txán
must	one	learn‹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":

Formal	sing.	dual	trial	plural
Exclusive	óhe	móhe	pxóhe	ayóhe
Inclusive	—	óhe ngengásì	móhe ngengásì, óhe mengengásì	(various combinations)
2nd person	ngengá	mengengá	pxengengá	ayngengá

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-ìl	nga-ti	kam‹ei›e
I-erg	you-acc	See‹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 ^xoengìl.

Although not all forms are attested, it appears that otherwise the inflections are the same as those on nouns.

	intr	erg	short acc	long acc	gen	short dat	long dat	top
Exclusive	oe	oel	?	oeti	oeyä	oer	oeru	oeri
Inclusive	oeng	oengal	oengat	oengati	oengeyä?	awngar	awngaru	?
2nd person	nga	ngal	ngat	ngati	ngeyä	ngar	ngaru	ngari
3rd animate	po	pol	pot	?	peyä	por	poru	fìʼuri
3rd inanimate	tsaw	tsal	tsat	tsati	tseyä	tsar	tsaru	tsari

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".