The thirtieth text, and the fourth rung on the reading ladder: only the roots the lessons have taught by Lesson 12, and no rule beyond that lesson.
The ladder ran 06, 08, 10 and then nothing until 13. This page was written for the two lessons in that gap, and for what Lesson 12 is actually about: an adjective straight after the verb describes the verb. Katab hao is write well, and katab hao is the whole point of the page.
Twelve lessons in there is no aur, no no before a predicate, no ini or itu, no preposition, no verb chain and no comparison. What there is that the earlier rungs did not have: the command, the copula, and the adverb.
Anak mi keci. Mano ta keci.
Otur sini. Ambil mano mi.
Kan mano mi. Mi katab.
Katab keci. Katab hao.
Anak mi katab hayai.
Mi sema: "Katab hao."
Ta katab hao.
Ta katab nama mama.
Ta katab nama papa.
Ta katab nama ta.
Ta kara sasa. Ta kara hayai.
Ta kara hao.
Anak mi es rafiki mi.
Ta saufa katab hao.
Line by line
| Amadunia | English |
|---|---|
| Anak mi keci. Mano ta keci. | My child is small. Her hand is small. |
| Otur sini. Ambil mano mi. | Sit here. Take my hand. |
| Kan mano mi. Mi katab. | Look at my hand. I write. |
| Katab keci. Katab hao. | Write small. Write well. |
| Anak mi katab hayai. | My child writes fast. |
| Mi sema: “Katab hao.” | I say: “Write well.” |
| Ta katab hao. | She writes well. |
| Ta katab nama mama. | She writes mother’s name. |
| Ta katab nama papa. | She writes father’s name. |
| Ta katab nama ta. | She writes her name. |
| Ta kara sasa. Ta kara hayai. | She reads now. She reads fast. |
| Ta kara hao. | She reads well. |
| Anak mi es rafiki mi. | My child is my friend. |
| Ta saufa katab hao. | She will write well. |
The one rule this page is for
An adjective after the verb describes the verb; an adjective after a noun describes the noun. Nothing is added and nothing changes shape, so the same two words mean two things depending on which side of the verb they fall:
| Anak mi katab hayai. | My child writes fast. |
| Anak hayai katab. | The fast child writes. |
Both are on this page’s own terms — the second is not written above, because the child in it is not a fast child. That is the whole of Lesson 12, and a text is where a rule stops being a table.
The command is what makes it a lesson rather than a description. Five of the nineteen sentences are commands, and zero of those are negative — Otur sini, Ambil mano mi, Kan mano mi, Katab keci, Katab hao. That is what teaching a child to hold a pen sounds like in any language, minus the half of it that says don’t.
Gaps
There is nothing to write on and nothing to read. kertas, paper, arrives in Lesson 24 and libro, book, in Lesson 21, so a page about learning to write has no pen, no paper and no book in it. The child writes and reads, and the objects of both verbs are missing from the language a learner has at this point. The reading ladder says what is readable; it does not say what is writable, and this is the difference.
And Ta katab nama ta cannot say whose name it is. nama ta is “her name”, and nothing marks whether that is her own name or somebody else’s — a reflexive is an open question and none was invented here. The line is meant as her own, and the page cannot say so.
Nothing can be joined and nothing denied. aur and predicate no are both Lesson 14, which is why Katab keci and Katab hao stand as two orders where a parent would say one. The same gap text 29 recorded at Lesson 08 is still open four lessons later, and it is the longest-running gap on the low rungs.
And a child cannot want to do anything. The first line of this page read
Ta mau katab, she wants to write, until check.py refused it:
two verbs in a row is a verb chain and
the chain is Lesson 17. mau takes a noun at this
rung — text 29 says Mi mau ca five lessons earlier —
so wanting a thing is sayable and wanting to do a thing is not. The line is
Mano ta keci now, her hand is small, which is a fact about the child rather
than a wish of hers.
Roots used
21 of 300.