Part 4 · grammar — Chapter 14 · verbs time

The turning of a life

The words of time gave you the day, the calendar, and the cycle. This section gives you the one cycle every speaker is inside: living, aging, dying, and grieving, in a language that has decided to be honest about all four.

The li- family

Life keeps one sound: lima (alive), liona (live), lioru (life). The adjective states, the verb acts, the noun names the whole.

mia mua womu liona.
1SG LOC home live.
(I live at home.)

The arc

Age is a built three-step: limu (young), seroli (mature), serao (old), and none of the three is an insult. Ripening is becoming:

lurekoi seroli kelu.
fruit mature become.
(The fruit matures.)

The same arc turns for people, and its late stations are honored roles: wheo (elder) and phewo (sage, wisdom rather than knowledge, the goal of a lifetime's practice). Things that outlast lives are tholua (ancient), and lives that follow lives are noruwa (generation), from the words of time.

Entering and leaving

The arc is bounded by two verbs, and both license their event nouns by rule: thowia (born, a birth), lumeo (die, a death).

lopia to thowia.
child PST born.
(The child was born.)

shia to lumeo.
3SG PST die.
(She died.)

lumeo is the word, and it is the only word Phi will ever have for this. Where English says passed away, departed, lost, Phi says what happened, because a language built for honesty does not grow a fog bank around the one certainty. The dead one is rena to lumeo, the one who died. And death the noun can stand as a subject like any other:

lumeo wei theula lioru shua.
die DAT UNIV life come.
(Death comes to all life.)

Plain naming is not coldness. The gentleness is in the grammar, and the next two sections are where it lives.

Grief

Grief uses the feeling pattern from the words of the body: sensations are felt, not been. nuhe (sadness) and holume (loss) go with phaelo; nuhemi (grieve) marks the one grieved for with wei; nuhewa (weep) is the body's part, and the registry's mirae phialu (eye-water) is its oldest kenning.

mia wei melu nuhemi.
1SG DAT friend grieve.
(I grieve for a friend.)

The intimate honorific deepens it: mia wei ni melu nuhemi, I grieve for a dear friend, the grammar of address carrying the closeness the sentence mourns.

lo mia holume phowe.
PL 1SG loss share.
(We share the loss.)

That second sentence is the community's whole theory of mourning in three words: the loss is a thing, and it can be shared.

Remembering

halemu (remember) and sahu (forget) do the keeping and the releasing, and remembering someone is a plain transitive sentence:

mia thia halemu.
1SG 2SG remember.
(I remember you.)

For what remains, Phi offers two carved words and imposes neither: phiora (spirit) is what animates, norea (soul) is what identifies. Speakers bring their own understanding of whether and how these outlast lumeo; the language holds the words open.

The ceremony

Phi has thorea (ceremony) and will never have more rite words than that. No funeral, no wedding-rite, no baptism: naming a rite standardizes it, and Phi's speakers come from every tradition. A ceremony is described instead, lumeo thorea (a death ceremony), and its content belongs to whoever holds it:

sila wei shia thorea kealo.
community DAT 3SG ceremony create.
(The community makes a ceremony for them.)

What the ceremony contains, the language does not say. That silence is not a gap; it is the door every tradition walks through carrying its own light.

The optative closes the circle. The same su that opens the Metta Sutta's wishes holds what cannot be fixed: su thia shea phaelo. May you feel peace. It is the sentence Phi offers when nothing can be done, and it is enough.