Sample texts

01 Dialogues

Morning greeting

A: kona ni moli. kia. wa thia towe nai.
   VOC HON.INTIM moli. hello. Q 2SG well be.
   (Dear moli. Hello. Are you well?)

B: mia towe nai. nemo. wa thia towe nai.
   1SG well be. grateful. Q 2SG well be.
   (I am well. Grateful. Are you well?)

A: mia towe nai. su thia philo welao nai.
   1SG well be. OPT 2SG day good be.
   (I am well. May your day be good.)

Notice: the honorific ni marks an established intimate bond; nemo stands alone as a one-word answer of gratitude; the possessor-first thia philo makes "your day."

Asking for help

A: pi wa thia mia po naphe.
   POL Q 2SG 1SG POT help.
   (Could you help me?)

B: mia so naphe. weno.
   1SG FUT help. when.
   (I will help. When?)

A: nosa sola howai.
   now DISJ evening.
   (Now or this evening.)

B: howai welao nai. mia kau thia so shua.
   evening good be. 1SG ALL 2SG FUT come.
   (Evening is good. I will come to you.)

Notice: context licenses the one-word question weno; sola builds the either/or; potential po makes the opening a request about ability rather than an assumption.

Consolation

A: kona melu. mia nuhe phaelo. mia phao to lumeo.
   VOC friend. 1SG sadness feel. 1SG parent PST die.
   (Friend — I feel sadness. My parent died.)

B: mia wei thia phamo. mia ha nai.
   1SG DAT 2SG console. 1SG PROX be.
   (I console you. I am here.)

A: nemo. thia shewo melu nai.
   grateful. 2SG true friend be.
   (Thank you. You are a true friend.)

B: su shea wei thia shua.
   OPT peace DAT 2SG come.
   (May peace come to you.)

Notice: lumeo (die) is named plainly and nuhe is spoken without euphemism. The optative voices a wish for peace without promising an outcome.

02 A philosophical passage

Chapter 22 gives Bashō's frog haiku two Phi renderings. The close rendering keeps the frog, jump, and sound:

The deliberate transmutation changes the animal into an unnamed creature, the jump into an arrival, and the sound into a voice:

03 The texts shelf

The Metta Sutta's final verse predicts that the practitioner will never return to a birth parent's belly. The Solarpunk Manifesto follows five opening paragraphs and 22 propositions. Where the lexicon has no exact political or aesthetic term, each source label sits beside an analytic Phi description. Two familiar fables appear twice. Aesop's close translation protects the old moral, while its transmutation watches the Traveler flee the winning Sun. Schleicher's close translation leaves the master claim visible; its transmutation withholds the title and names the coercion and exploitation beneath it. Article 1 receives the same paired reading at the scale of two sentences. Babel carries it across nine verses: punishment and forced dispersal stand beside the earth sowing languages. The Heart Sutra puts Müller's solitary completed crossing beside Phi's communal wish to go. On Children lets Gibran draw his bow before Phi turns the arrow into seed.

The five Tao chapters bring the comparison into a workshop. One version describes the wheel and follows a tree cutter to the broad trunk; the other stays with an empty vessel until a great wind arrives.

A translation keeps the source's claims and distinctions, along with its images and force, while letting Phi grammar do its own work. A transmutation may recast the source in Phi's own terms. Its citations and gap log make the distance visible. An original takes Phi as its source; the English is a close reading rather than a prior text waiting to be rendered. All three methods can compose a missing term or coin a word. What changes is the work each owes to a source, or to the propositions it makes on its own.

The complete texts live in texts/. Each short work has one file; a longer book has its own directory, where the chapters and their shared source stay together. Translations and transmutations place source wording beneath their Phi, glosses, and back-translations where publication permits it. Original work uses three-line blocks because Phi is the source, then records its propositions and lexical pressure separately. Ten are the manual's touchstones.

lothea thole (The Practice of Love) is a translation of the Karaniya Metta Sutta: ten verses of loving-kindness carried almost entirely by the optative su. Its refrain is the language in one line:

sileta kenua wireo moenu lo sherewa (Claims of a Solar-Energy Future Culture) translates A Solarpunk Manifesto across all five opening paragraphs, 22 propositions, and both nested lists. Political labels such as post-capitalism and decolonialism, identity categories, and named aesthetic references stay exact in the licensed English source; the Phi lines state the relations the current lexicon can defend. The long analytic phrases show both reach and strain in a text written squarely for solarpunk readers.

theama weno kawhera kelu (When Care Becomes Coercion) is the shelf's first original Phi work. Two friends sit with a hot room, a refusal to leave, and a danger neither can dismiss. Their dialogue separates evidence from entailment, persuasion from coercion, and care from authority. Conditional consent settles what the friends may do this afternoon; the harder case, when no prior answer can speak, still waits.

nitho howeli nela sileta (The North Wind and the Sun) pairs a close translation with a transmutation of Aesop's familiar linguistic benchmark. The translation uses past-tense scene chains and direct removal in a relative clause; base sharemi (persuade) lets Aesop's moral stay whole. The transmutation has no scoreboard: moli nela phena haolu welao lureko thola, gentleness and kind speech bring good fruit; keloa haolu nela kawhera pholeni thola, rough speech and coercion bring departure. A comparison after both renderings follows the change through Phi's five pillars.

mophira nela lo kalora (The Sheep and the Horses) begins from a controlled English translation of Schleicher's 1868 German. The close rendering preserves the constricted heart, the horses' knowledge, the master claim, and both descriptions of the sheep's flight. The transmutation names coercion and exploitation, then declines to rank the unlike burdens:

tupeka (burden) and phesari (flee) belong to base vocabulary. The close translation reaches into Commons for phenori (ownership); the transmutation uses shared Work and Commons pilora (exploit) where the sharper analysis earns the specialist word.

theula miona (All People) pairs a close translation and transmutation of Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The translation uses sherelo for a normative right that remains sayable under denial and sharino for conscience as moral self-appraisal. It also retains the source's passive endowment and sibling spirit. The transmutation answers with equal recognized entitlements and the capacity to think; the heart's knowing replaces conscience, and kind reciprocal action replaces sibling spirit. Its comparison asks what changes when an abstract declaration is made answerable to conduct.

ta haluma (One Language) pairs a close translation and transmutation of Genesis 11:1-9. The translation leaves LORD in the source line and describes the actor through karami, authority. It preserves the planned loss of understanding and has authority send people out along different paths. The transmutation lets muila, the earth, scatter people like seed with thiwera, then calls every language a garden. The comparison shows why one seed-shaped word belongs to the second telling but would prejudice the first.

nulo sano korua (The Heart of Wisdom) pairs a close translation and transmutation of Müller's smaller Heart Sutra. The translation counts five gatherings, restores the source's four knowledge and ignorance terms, and gives the mantra one addressed traveler who has reached another kerime, shore. Tradition-specific names are not adapted. The transmutation uses mu across the body and path, releases the walker from thought-shapes, then opens the mantra into a wish that gathers everyone.

keiro (The Way) pairs complete close translations of five chapters from Legge's Tao Te Ching with transmutations drawn from them. Chapter 11's wheel turns around an open center and support rod. Chapter 17 separates authority holders from the guides of the transmutation. In chapter 76, reliance on force fails and a tree cutter chooses the broad trunk. Phi has no axle or generic easy and difficult roots, so material descriptions and source citations keep those losses visible. The transmutation lets water take nothing, leaves the wheel behind, and sends wind against the hard tree. The comparison asks what a language of peace may change after translation has shown what the source said.

phewo phelui (The Sage's Words) contains transmutations of Gibran's teachings on love, children, and giving. On Children also has a close translation. It describes the bow through cord and flexible wood, then lets the cited English supply the archery terms Phi does not need as roots. In the transmutation, a tree and a seed carried by wind take the place of aimed release. Their comparison shows what accuracy requires of Phi and what Phi chooses when it tells the passage for itself.

The rest of the shelf: