17 · loamira

You have been able to give since chapter six. This chapter gives you the noun for what changes hands, loamira (the gift, wearing the verb loa inside it), and the verb Phi may love best: phowe, to share. Nothing new in the grammar at all; only the household's economy of kindness, at full strength:

I

ne sulae shua. ne siora we shua.
sulae loamira kolua.
sulae wei phao loamira loa.
phao loamira howela. phao nemo nai.

sulae arrives carrying a gift and gives it. Look at the word: loa sits whole inside loamira, the giving inside the given thing, the way wapi flies inside the wing. The parent receives it and is grateful, which in Phi is a way of being, said with nai like calm or goodness.

II

loamira tomi nai.
thiku tomi. welao tomi.
phao: mea. mea ne sulae.
tomi mua wonepa nai. wheo tomi nila.

The gift is a pot (small, good). It joins the household the way gifts do here: admired first, used forever after.

III

phao nuora pilewa. lo mia nuora phowe.
lopia wei siora sulopa loa.
wheo wei sulae napuro loa.
theula miona nuola. we lohau nuola.
misheko rihe. misheko we shua.

Sharing is giving with everyone inside it: the meal goes around, child serving guest, elder serving friend, everyone eating, the dog also, obviously. And then the day's true miracle, twice marked: the cat rises, and the cat also comes. Food is the one summons the cat honors.

IV

sulae: mea. lo mia nemo nai.
phao: lo mia we nemo nai.
shero shua. ne sulae pao. ne siora pao.
lopia wei siora thiku loamira loa. — peloru.

Thanks are traded like the gifts were: we are grateful; we also are grateful. And at the gate, the child hands the visiting child a small gift of their own (a flower, of course), because that is what the garden is for, and because chapter six taught exactly this: things worth more at each handing.

Count what changed hands in this chapter: a pot, a meal, thanks, and a flower, and not a coin anywhere, here or in the whole language. Phi's market was exchange and its friendship is gifts; the grammar for both is just wei and an open hand.

The machinery, when you want it: giving-sentences live in the manual's chapter 21; the gift entry itself is worth reading in the lexicon.