The texts

Phi's literature so far. Each is a transmutation — not a translation word for word, but the idea rebuilt from Phi's own concepts, with notes recording every adaptation the language asked for.

lothea thole — The Practice of Love

The first text ever written in Phi: the Metta Sutta, the loving-kindness meditation, rebuilt from the language's own concepts. Where the language's heart is.

nitho howeli nela sorae — The North Wind and the Sun

Phi's first story: the fable told in a thousand languages to show what each sounds like. The primer's capstone sends its readers here.

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

The most-translated document in history, in the language that needed no new words to say it — and no gendered ones to exclude with.

ta haoluma — the Babel text

The conlang community's handshake, done the Phi way: the scattering as sowing, every language a garden — and the first time Phi names its own kind.

naweri — the Ring Verse, refused

The one entry on this shelf that is not a translation: what a language without domination vocabulary cannot say — and the hearth-poem that comes out when it tries.

mophira nela lo kalora — Schleicher's fable

The historical linguists' test-text since 1868. Phi's telling keeps the sting and withholds one word: the master, who can only be described as the one who takes.

thiku miona lue silero — from The Little Prince

Three excerpts, zero new words — and two transmutations that see through the original: the prince who was never a rank, and the taming that was always a bond.

wuloe wetha tupiwa — The Velveteen Rabbit

The longest transmutation: a full story in eight scenes, two coins, and the discovery that Real was the habitual aspect all along.

phewo phelui — from The Prophet

Gibran's counsel on love, children, and giving — the archer become the tree and the wind, the reward become a gift, and not one new word needed across three whole teachings.

keiro — from the Tao Te Ching

Five chapters of the oldest possible houseguest: water, the use of what is not there (mu's homecoming), the guide no one notices, the great that begins small, and the soft that outlasts the hard — with every transmutation move named, as a working guide for doing this by hand.

nulo sano korua — the Heart Sutra

The emptiness teaching, carried entire by three of the language's own designs: whemoa's quality noun for śūnyatā, the zero litany over the body's inventory, and the Metta Sutta's optative engine wishing everyone to the far shore.

nophi lue mawha lokue — News from Nowhere, ch. 1 (in progress)

The opening chapter of a much longer transmutation still underway: William Morris's socialist utopia, whose gift economy already matches a ruling Phi settled on its own. Eleven new words, among them nurako (railway) and welamu (elm), for images worth keeping rather than compressing away.

nophi lue mawha lokue — News from Nowhere, ch. 2 (in progress)

The utopia's first morning: the Thames clear enough for salmon, a bridge standing on stone rainbows, and the book's first attempt to pay for a service, made in a language that cannot say it. The waterman takes his Phi name here: ne kulo, the Guide.


More transmutations are coming; the shelf is built to grow.

all texts