Part 6: Calculating aloud

Phi does arithmetic in sentences (operands first, operation verb last, result as its own clause) with five verbs the manual introduces in ch12: sholei (gather), leiro (release), welura (spread), phanoi (portion), kelai (equals). This part drills the sentence shapes until calculation feels like what it is here: narration of quantities, at speaking pace, checkable by ear.

The four operations, spoken

wi ta shao sholei. ta shao wi kelai.
two one three-group gather. one three-group two equals.
(Two and three gather. Five becomes. — 2 + 3 = 5)

ta phoi ta shao leiro. wi shao kelai.
one nine-group one three-group release. two three-group equals.
(From nine, three releases. Six becomes. — 9 − 3 = 6)

ta shao wi welura. wi shao kelai.
one three-group two spread. two three-group equals.
(Three spreads by two. Six becomes. — 3 × 2 = 6)

ta phoi ta shao phanoi. ta shao kelai.
one nine-group one three-group portion. one three-group equals.
(Nine portions among three. Three becomes. — 9 ÷ 3 = 3)

Read the third one again slowly (ta shao wi welura) and notice the parsing discipline it demands: three (one word-shape, from Part 1) then two then the verb. If you read ta shao wi as five and stalled, the operands' boundary escaped you; in speech, rhythm and pause hold the boundary, and in careful writing the operands simply are read greedily as complete ternary numerals in sequence: three, then two. Arithmetic is where the hear-it-whole drill pays its rent.

With real things: the classifier agreement

The manual's rule: when operands are real, both carry the same classifier (you cannot gather two people with three trees) and the result carries it too:

wi lipha powea ta shao lipha powea sholei. ta shao wi lipha powea kelai.
two LIFE.CLF egg one three-group LIFE.CLF egg gather. one three-group two LIFE.CLF egg equals.
(Two eggs and three eggs gather. Five eggs become.)

Long? Yes, deliberately. Counting eggs into the bowl aloud is exactly this long in every language; Phi merely declines to offer a shorter written form than the spoken truth. For bare mathematics, drop the classifiers and the nouns, and the sentences compress to the pure forms above.

Portion, the household verb

Of the five, phanoi earns special drilling because dividing among is the household's daily arithmetic:

ta phoi wi lipha powea ta shao himo miona phanoi.
one nine-group two LIFE.CLF egg one three-group HUM.CLF person portion.
(Eleven eggs portion among three people.)

And there the sentence honestly stalls (eleven does not portion evenly among three) which is the drill's real lesson: phanoi among people invites the follow-up Phi actually cares about. wi powea therilu. (Two eggs rest.) The remainder is not an error term; it is tomorrow's breakfast, and the language treats it as a fact with a future rather than a defect of division.

Drill: narrate the sums

Say each as full Phi sentences, then check against the key (Part 9).

1. 4 + 3 = 7
2. 8 − 2 = 6
3. 3 × 3 = 9
4. 18 ÷ 2 = 9
5. Six bowls and two bowls gather; how many bowls become?
6. Nine guests portion among three tables. (What follows kelai?)