Part 6: The spoken capital

Phi has no capital letters: not for sentences, not for names, in any mode of writing. The canon ruling (Letters) rests on one principle: romanization is only one way of writing Phi, a peer among peers with the Tengwar mode and the glyph mode, and a mark may carry meaning only if every mode can carry it. Case exists only in Latin script; therefore nothing in Phi may mean anything by it. What capitals do for names, ne does aloud, and aloud is the point, because every mode has a voice even when it has no case.

This chapter is the writer's checklist: four surfaces where an English-trained hand will reach for a capital, and what Phi does instead on each.

Romanized Phi

All lowercase, always: at sentence starts, in titles, in names. ne sulae shua. never grows a capital, whatever position it holds on the page. The validator enforces this, so the discipline costs nothing but the itch.

Gloss lines

A name glosses as itself: the gloss line under ne thinoe reads NAME thinoe, never NAME seed. A name is carried, not translated: the bearer crosses into the gloss line, the meaning does not. (The uppercase in NAME belongs to the particle's label, like PST or VOC; labels are spelled by the lexicon, and they are the only tall letters a gloss line ever has.)

English narration

When English hosts a Phi name (in a translation line, a note, a story about the household) the name stays lowercase: sulae arrives with siora. English is hosting the name, not naturalizing it; the word belongs to Phi, where no case exists to inherit. This one is not enforced by any validator. It is yours to keep.

Tengwar

Switch the texts shelf to tengwar and look at any line: nothing is taller than anything else, and nothing ever was. The mode never had a case to lose, which is exactly the situation the ruling protects. A name written in tengwar looks like the word it is; the only thing that marks the person is the small sign of ne standing before them, same as the voice does. The reader of that mode does not see the capital. They hear it, the way a listener always has.

Why the language holds this line

Phi's punctuation ruling and its letters ruling are the same thought twice: a silent mark is justified only where no word is visible to do its work. The question mark fell to wa, the quotation marks to shola … sholo, the comma of address to kona, and the capital letter of a name fell to ne, the one that was audible all along. Only the period survives, because sentence-end genuinely has no word. A name does.

Drill: lower the flags

Each item has been damaged by an English-trained hand. Repair what needs repairing.

1. Narration: Sulae carries a gift.
2. The gloss line under ne thinoe seniku.: NAME seed smile.
3. A romanized line opening a paragraph: Ne keruko shua.
4. A line of the tengwar mode, checked letter by letter for a stray capital.

Answers: 1. sulae carries a gift. 2. NAME thinoe smile.: the person crosses into the gloss, the seed stays home. 3. ne keruko shua.: paragraph position earns nothing. 4. nothing to repair, and there never will be; that mode is the reason the rule exists.