#zalu

Some of you might find Zalu's initial question a bit odd, because after all, Neynari is still blue, just a much lighter blue than your standard forest Na'vi.

Well, the reason is that Na'vi groups colors differently than English does! KP's official chart from his Na'viteri post on the matter is this:

Though this one from Karyu Neytiri may also be useful:

A lot of learners ask how to say things like "light blue" or "dark red" etc. The thing is, the idea of a very "light blue" just doesn't really exist in the Na'vi language: once the shade gets pale enough, a color ceases to be considered "ean" (or tun/rim/'om) and instead becomes "neyn", no matter the hue.

So while an English speaker would look at Zalu and Neynari and say that they're both just two shades of the same color—blue—a Na'vi speaker would look at them and say they belong to two fundamentally separate color categories: Zalu is ean, Neynari is neyn. (on the flip side, an English speaker would say that Zalu's skin and eyes are two fundamentally separate colors: blue and green, while a Na'vi speaker would say they're just two shades of ean!)

...yes, the similarity of this word to Neynari's name is not coincidence. I first created this OC extremely early in my Na'vi language journey, and her original name was actually Neyntìsti ("lightcolor-anger")...I'd been aiming for "Light Fury" (yes, as in the dragon). Later, as I improved with the language, I realized how bizarre it would be for parents to name their kid something like "lightcolor-anger", so I decided to change her name...buuuuut went ahead and let myself keep the "neyn" part, since, yeah, the leucism thing is a rather notable aspect of her physical appearance 😅

As to whether Seylana and Vontxu purposefully chose this name because it had the word "neyn" in it, or whether that origin should be only a behind-the-scenes fun fact while in-universe the similarity is just a funny coincidence, I am undecided for now...

cough anyways.

One more quick language note: for Neynari's last line I'd originally written set po salew hu Eywa ("she proceeds with Eywa now"), which is the wording used in things like the "hunter's prayer". I ultimately decided to change salew to kelku si because it mirrored Zalu's question from earlier in the comic ("does she live with the Aranahe?" "no, she lives with Eywa").