Part 8: Common errors
Naming errors divide the same way: some break grammar, and the validator or any listener catches them; some are grammatical, fluent, and false, and only you will ever catch those. Both kinds below, the second labeled precisely: not wrong, but claiming something else.
Error 1: confusing a role with a name
If melu means friend in the call, use the role without ne:
kona melu. VOC friend. (Friend —)
If someone actually bears the content word melu as a name, ne selects that proper reading:
kona ne melu. VOC NAME melu. (melu —)
The surface difference is grammatical; whether melu is truly the bearer's name is pragmatic. The validator has no registry of bearers and must accept any content word in a name atom. ne marks proper designation, not personhood and not promotion in rank.
Error 2: the honorific before ne
Wrong:
kona sa ne sulae.
Right:
kona ne sa sulae. VOC NAME HON.RESPECT sulae. (Honored sulae —)
The chain announces in order: that a name is coming, then how you stand to its bearer, then the bearer. Established conversational speech may drop ne once the honorific carries the name expectation: kona sa sulae is licensed there; sa ne sulae is just a chain with its links crossed. Portable Phi keeps the full chain.
Error 3: translating the name
Wrong, in two directions:
A gloss line reading NAME seed under ne thinoe, or English narration saying Seed told them to plant: the name dragged back into meaning. And the reverse: reading the North Wind's sulae wetha as sulae's cloth, meaning dragged up into personhood that no ne ever announced.
A name is carried, not translated, and the traffic control runs one way: ne present, a person crosses into the gloss and the narration as themselves; ne absent in careful text, the word is only ever a word. Formal writing's unfailing announcements are precisely what keep a lexicon full of adjectives safe to name people with.
Error 4: the unearned ni, the armored sa
Grammatical, but claiming something else:
kona ni keruko. pi wa thia mia naphe. VOC HON.INTIM keruko. POL Q 2SG 1SG help. (Dear keruko — could you help me?)
Spoken to a man you met this afternoon, the grammar holds and the claim does not: ni announces an intimacy that is not there, and the favor-asking pi right beside it shows the motive. The mirror error spends sa on a peer to hold them at arm's length. The honorifics have one law (honesty), and no validator patrols it. When in doubt, remember what plain ne costs: nothing, ever.
Error 5: the bare name abroad
Grammatical, but claiming something else:
siora kau silawo so shua. siora ALL village FUT come.
In an established conversation, this may be clear. In a message to someone outside that discourse, the reader receives joy rather than the intended person. Formal and portable Phi re-announces at every mention because announcement makes the sentence self-contained. Productive unlisted forms have the additional problem of looking like unknown words, so machine-validated text always keeps ne.
Error 6: the rescued capital
Wrong: Ne siora shua. And Siora arrives in the narration beside it.
No capitals in core, productive-name, or guest material, in any mode or position: not sentence-start in romanized Phi, not Phi-form names in gloss lines, not Phi-form names visiting English narration. Exact payload may retain source case only between patha and patho. The validator holds that boundary.
Error 7: policing another's register
The last error has no example sentence, because it is not said in Phi: it is said about Phi, by someone demanding sa from a junior or bristling at a bare name from an equal. There is no upward in this system and no downward; an honorific is the speaker's own truthful report or it is nothing. The moment one is owed rather than announced, the whole instrument goes out of tune: every sa in the room stops meaning respect and starts meaning fear, which is the precise thing this language was built to refuse. Registers are read, never enforced. If someone's address surprises you, you have learned where you stand in their eyes, which is more than most languages ever tell anyone.
The audit habit
Errors 4 through 7 share the signature of every deep error in Phi: the grammar may hold while reference or relationship slips. The open-door audit (Part 7) asks narrower questions: is the intended bearer recoverable, is an omission actually supported by shared discourse, and does an honorific report the speaker's relationship rather than enforce rank?