theula miona — Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The most-translated document in human history begins with one article, and that article is the standard sample by which the world's languages are compared. A transmutation, not a translation; the notes record every adaptation. The ground truth is the United Nations 1948 English text, in Wikisource's transcription of the official document, stored verbatim in pamphlets/sources/; the excerpt is Article 1 whole, and every unit cites the clause it stands against.

The text

theula miona ralu thowia.
UNIV person free born.
(All people are born free.)
udhr: "All human beings are born free"

theula miona kolo rolia phelu.
UNIV person equal worth hold.
(All people hold equal worth.)
udhr: "and equal in dignity and rights."

theula miona remo nela korua sano phelu.
UNIV person think COORD heart know hold.
(All people hold thought, and the heart's knowing.)
udhr: "They are endowed with reason and conscience"

theula miona phea lomea wiso na lothea.
UNIV person AS sibling RECP NEC love.
(All people, as siblings, must love one another.)
udhr: "and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."

Line by line

theula miona ralu thowia.

All human beings are born free. The adjective ralu stands before the verb in the depictive position (born free, the way one breathes quietly), and thowia needs no tense: the sentence is true at every birth, so it stays in the unmarked present, the tense of standing truths.

Notes: Phi's freedom is not isolation; the ralu entry defines it as freedom from harmful constraint, which is precisely the article's sense.

theula miona kolo rolia phelu.

…and equal in dignity and rights. Here the transmutation begins. Phi has no legal register (no word for "rights" as claims held against others), and its value-neutrality refuses to invent one casually. What the article protects, Phi states directly: worth, held equally. rolia is worth as intrinsic value, and its own lexicon entry already carried this sentence's twin: theli miona rolia phelu, each person holds worth. The dictionary was ready before the text arrived.

Notes: "dignity and rights" → kolo rolia, equal worth. The gap log's honest entry: a right, in Phi, is not a possession but a fact about worth that others are bound to see. Whether Phi ever needs a legal vocabulary is a question for another decade.

theula miona remo nela korua sano phelu.

They are endowed with reason and conscience. Reason is remo: a thought, the event-noun of thinking. Conscience is composed, not coined: korua sano, the heart's knowing, knowledge that lives in the chest rather than the head. And "endowed with" is simply phelu, hold: what you are endowed with, you hold.

Notes: korua sano follows the compound registry's pattern (heart-fire, sleep-story) but is used here as an open possessive phrase, not a registered idiom; if it recurs in future texts, it earns a registry entry.

theula miona phea lomea wiso na lothea.

…and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. The equative phea frames the relation (as siblings) before the reciprocal wiso names one another, and the verse ends on the language's strongest verb. Where English hedges with "should act in a spirit of," Phi says what the spirit is and marks it necessary: na lothea, must love.

Notes: two transmutations here. "Brotherhood" becomes lomea, sibling: Phi has no gendered person-words, so the exclusion the English has carried since 1948 simply cannot be said; the language corrects the document. And "should" becomes na, must: Phi's necessity particle marks moral bindingness, and softening it to the optative su (may they love) would wish where the article obliges.

What the text proves

Four lines, one shape: theula miona opens every verse (all people), the way the original repeats its universal subject. The anaphora is the argument: whatever is said next is said of everyone. No word in the text is new. The gaps the transmutation crossed were English's, not Phi's: a legal register the language declines, a gendered noun it never had, a hedge it replaces with necessity.

Gap log: dignity/rights → kolo rolia (equal worth, held); endowed → phelu (hold); conscience → korua sano (the heart's knowing, composed); brotherhood → lomea (sibling, ungendered); should → na (necessity, deliberately stronger than the English). New words coined: none.