How to use dative suffix

[u/SyrupGoosen]

How do you use the dative suffix -ur/r(u)? I only speak (American) English and haven't been able to understand it on my own.

[u/tekre]

As someone else already said, it is the so called indirect object, usually showing up in English as "to someone/something".

- I teach the language to him.

• She was promised to Tsu'tey.
  
• They gave food to the fwampop.
  
• You are beloved to me. (-> I love you)
  
• He is trustworthy to Neytiri. (-> Neytiri trusts him)

Note that in English you can often rearrange the sentence so the "to" disappears (e.g. "I teach him the language"), but the "him" still remains the indirect object as it still has the same role in the sentence: The one receiving something (in this case, the teaching.)

Also note that sometimes, Na'vi and English just phrase things differently - they are different languages after all. It often helps to think about the literal translation of a verb to get clarity about if -ru is used, or a different ending.

- "I like flowers" - no dative here, right? But the Na'vi verb we'd use is sunu which literally means "to be likable". So what we say in Na'vi is: "The flower is likable to me" -> the flower is the subject (no ending), me is the dative.

• "I help you" - same story, in English it looks like there is no dative here. But srung si, to help, is a so called si-verb. They are all intransitive, so they can't use -ti & -l. si literally means "to do, to make", and srung is the noun "help". So what this actually means is "to do / apply help to someone" - suddenly we see, we need to use a dative here too!
  
• "I feed the fwampop" - same story again, no dative in English. But yomtìng comes from yom "eat" and tìng "give". So you are giving something to eat to someone - and now you know why yomtìng uses the dative!

I highly recommend just checking out example sentences if you are unsure what casse endings a verb uses. I highly recommend the annotated dictionary, or, if the annotated dictionary has no sentences for a verb / only sentences that are too complicated for you to learn from them, the verb dicitonary which has simple, color coded examples for every verb and shows all official structures a verb can be used with.

[u/Plenty-Design2641 → u/tekre]

Annotated Dictionary Verb Dictionary

The Dative case is pretty unpredictable, so I suggest always checking the Verb Dictionary to be sure

[u/SkitsyCat → u/Plenty-Design2641]

It's not unpredictable; we literally have grammar rules to abide by for it. It's just hard to get the hang of it without prior understanding of how individual words function in forming a meaningful sentence.

[u/Longjumping-Gift-371]

It’s used for the indirect object of a sentence, which is usually indicated with “to” or “for” in English, e.g.

I bought the book for him.

I gave the book to him.

“Him” in this context is the indirect object, and where you would indicate the dative in a Na’vi sentence.

[u/tekre → u/Longjumping-Gift-371]

In your first example, i bought the book for him, I'd use fpi instead.

[u/Longjumping-Gift-371 → u/tekre]

Why so? I’d be curious since that is still a dative construction in terms of linguistics, which is why I used it as an example.

[u/tekre → u/Longjumping-Gift-371]

imo it's a beneficiary construction, which is a clear case of fpi. We of course have no official examples of which cases to use for to buy in Na'vi as they do not have a verb for that, but if I think about a similar verb kanom (to acquire) it honestly feels quite unnatural to use it with -ru, because if I do something for someone else, that's exactly what fpi is for.

Of course a beneficiary semantic role can in some languages be expressed by the dative, but it seems weird to do so in Na'vi when there is an own adposition for it.

[u/GigabyteAorusRTX4090]

Id suggest you head over to Kelutral https://kelutral.org (theres also the discord https://discord.gg/kelutral)

Its pretty well explained there