Part 7 · reference

Sample texts

Complete, validated Phi for reading practice, from two-line exchanges to whole texts. Every word here exists in the lexicon; every construction is taught in Parts IV and V.

Dialogues

Morning greeting

A: kona ni moli. wa thia towe nai.
   VOC HON.INTIM moli. Q 2SG well be.
   (Dear moli — are you well?)

B: mia towe nai. nemo. wa thia towe nai.
   1SG well be. grateful. Q 2SG well be.
   (I am well. Grateful. Are you well?)

A: mia towe nai. su thia philo welao nai.
   1SG well be. OPT 2SG day good be.
   (I am well. May your day be good.)

Notice: the honorific ni claims intimacy honestly; nemo stands alone as a one-word answer of gratitude; the possessor-first thia philo makes "your day."

Asking for help

A: pi wa thia mia naphe.
   POL Q 2SG 1SG help.
   (Could you help me?)

B: mia so naphe. weno.
   1SG FUT help. when.
   (I will help. When?)

A: nosa sola howai.
   now DISJ evening.
   (Now or this evening.)

B: howai welao nai. mia wei thia so shua.
   evening good be. 1SG DAT 2SG FUT come.
   (Evening is good. I will come to you.)

Notice: the bare interrogative weno is a complete question once context is set; sola builds the either/or; topic-flow keeps every sentence short.

Consolation

A: kona melu. mia nuhe phaelo. mia phao to lumeo.
   VOC friend. 1SG sadness feel. 1SG parent PST die.
   (Friend — I feel sadness. My parent died.)

B: mia wei thia phamo. mia ha nai.
   1SG DAT 2SG console. 1SG PROX be.
   (I console you. I am here.)

A: nemo. thia shewo melu nai.
   grateful. 2SG true friend be.
   (Thank you. You are a true friend.)

B: su shea wei thia shua.
   OPT peace DAT 2SG come.
   (May peace come to you.)

Notice: the life-arc vocabulary at work: lumeo (die) named plainly, nuhe spoken without euphemism, and the optative does what promises cannot.

A philosophical passage

From the transmutation case studies (chapter 22), Bashō's frog haiku:

serao melothe.
nolika muo phialu kamo.
phialu haoni.

(The old pond. A creature arrives into the water. The water's voice.)

The texts shelf

The complete texts live in pamphlets/, one file per text. Each carries its Phi with glosses, back-translations, and source citations, and each ends in a gap log: the record of what was built where the lexicon had no word. Two of them are the manual's own touchstones.

lothea thole (The Practice of Love) is the Karaniya Metta Sutta, the language's first complete text: ten verses of loving-kindness carried almost entirely by the optative su. Its refrain is the language in one line:

su theula [rena lima nai] siora korua phelu.
OPT UNIV [REL alive be] joy heart hold.
(May all that lives hold a joyful heart.)

nitho howeli nela sorae (The North Wind and the Sun) is Aesop's fable, the text linguists traditionally use to display a language's sounds and structures. Its telling exercises the narrative machinery (past-tense scene chains, dialogue, a wager built on a causative inside a relative clause), and its moral keeps no scoreboard: moli nela phena haolu lurekoi thola, gentleness and kind speech bring fruit.

The rest of the shelf: