thiku miona lue silero — from The Little Prince

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Le Petit Prince is the most-translated book outside scripture, and language-builders have a particular affection for it: the fox's secret may be the most-rendered sentence in constructed languages. These are Phi's excerpts: three short passages from Katherine Woods's 1943 translation, each transmuted with notes. The book remains in copyright, so the units carry no source-citation lines and the English appears only in these short quoted excerpts.

One transmutation happens before the first line: the title. A prince is rank, and Phi refused the vocabulary of rank; it cannot say what the boy is called, only what he is: thiku miona lue silero, the small person from the stars. He was never really a prince anyway: a child alone on a small world, tending it. The language sees through the title, which is what it does.

The request

"If you please—draw me a sheep!"

pi no wei mia ta mophira kire.
POL IMP DAT 1SG one sheep shape.
(Please, shape me a sheep.)

Notes: the book's most famous request. The sheep is mophira, the wool-bearer, the same flock the Schleicher fable shears. Drawing is kire, to shape: what the narrator does with a pencil, the verb does with anything. The politeness stack pi no is the canonical gentle imperative, and Woods's "If you please" is its anchor in the source: the small person is insistent, but never rude.

The secret

"And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

ha mia kupela nai. ru mueli kupela.
PROX 1SG secret be. INTS plain secret.
(Here is my secret. A very plain secret.)

miona li roe korua po theali nila.
person RESTR INS heart POT fitting see.
(Only with the heart can one see rightly.)

lo mirae rena noetha nai po ma nila.
PL eye REL essential be POT NEG see.
(The eyes cannot see what is essential.)

Notes: Woods calls it "a very simple secret," and the secret's own plainness gets the intensifier: ru mueli kupela, a nominal fragment standing beside the announcement the way her appositive does. "Rightly" is theali, the fitting, seeing aligned with what is really there, and the sentence's hinge is a matched pair of modals: with the heart one po theali nila, can see rightly, while the eyes po ma nila, cannot see it. The restrictive particle li earns its keep between them, standing before roe korua to fence the seeing to that one instrument: only with the heart. The essential is held in a headless relative, rena noetha nai, a thing the grammar can point at even though the eyes cannot.

The responsibility

"You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed."

theula thimu. thia wei rena thia to nolami thonai kelu.
UNIV time. 2SG DAT REL 2SG PST bond responsible become.
(Forever: you become responsible for what you have bonded with.)

Notes: the deepest transmutation is the quiet one. The fox explains that to tame means to create ties. Phi does not need to borrow the French word's history of mastering animals, because the fox's own definition already exists in the lexicon: nolami, to bond, a verb whose canonical example is we bond with each other and which cannot be done to someone, only with them. Taming, in Phi, was never domestication; it was always the tie. The time-phrase stands first as its own fragment (theula thimu, all time), the way the journal dates its permanent truths, and thonai kelu closes the sentence the way responsibility arrives: as something you become.

What the transmutation changed

Gap log: prince → refused as rank; the title describes instead: thiku miona lue silero, the small person from the stars; draw → kire (shape); a very simple secret → ru mueli kupela, the intensifier on plainness; see rightly → theali (fitting), seeing aligned with what is really there, under the ability modal po; tame → nolami (bond: the fox's own definition, already in the dictionary); everything else (secret, heart, eye, essential, responsible, forever) the lexicon already held. New words coined: none. The text keeps good company on the shelf beside the Declaration of Human Rights: the rights of all people, and the duties of one heart.