Uan

The fifth text, and the first that is not prose. The stories tell, the third text argues, the fourth is two people talking. This one is meant to be said aloud, which turns out to be the thing the language is least ready for.

Written at 300 roots, with no grammar beyond Lesson 23.

Din lai. Sol upar.
Rat lai. Bulan upar.
Din lai tena.

Mi anda in tarik.
Yu anda in tarik.
Kita anda in uan tarik.

Mi lihat sol.
Yu lihat sol.
Kita lihat uan sol.

Mi punya kalima.
Yu punya kalima.
Kita punya uan lingua.

Mi ama dunia.
Yu ama dunia.
Kita ama dunia una.

Line by line

Metre — readable only since September 3, 2026

This poem was written while stress was still undecided, and it said so: being said aloud was “the thing the language is least ready for”. Stress was settled today — the second-to-last syllable of every word, a vowel pair counting as one — so the poem can now be scanned. It was, and it holds two things nobody could have seen before.

The paired lines match to the syllable. Nothing enforced it; the poem was built on parallel words, not counted beats.

Each third line is longer than the pair it closes — 8, 6, 7, 8 — so every verse widens at the end.

The last line is the only regular one in the poem.

Ki-ta  a-ma  du-nia  u-na
 X .    X .   X  .    X .

Four beats, every other syllable, with no syllable left over: a line of four trochees. Every other line in the poem is irregular — Din lai. Sol upar. is four beats in five syllables, XXXX. — and the closing line, the one that says we love the world together, is the one that falls into step.

That was luck, not craft. It could not have been craft, because when the line was written there was no rule that could tell anyone where its beats were.

What the design gives a poem for free

Parallelism is exact. Mi ama · yu ama · kita ama — three subjects, one verb, not a letter different. English cannot do this: I love, you love, she loves. Nor can Spanish, Arabic, Russian or Hindi, all of which bend the verb to its subject. Amadunia’s promise that no word ever changes shape turns out to be a poetic resource and not only a learner’s convenience, and this is the first text to use it on purpose.

Rhyme is cheap. Half the three hundred roots end in a vowel and 23% end in -a alone; -ar and -an close another 8% between them. A rhyme is always available.

That is worth saying plainly rather than boasting about: a rhyme that costs nothing is worth little. In a language where nearly a quarter of all words end in the same sound, rhyming is not a craft. The line read a quarter until September 6, 2026 — five lines under the 23% it was rounding, and the second page found this week where a fraction with no figure beside it overstated the figure four lines above it. If Amadunia ever grows a poetry, its music will have to come from rhythm and repetition, not from endings.

What the language could not do

1. There is no rhythm, because stress has never been decided. phonology.md records that as open, and until now it was an abstraction. Read the first line aloud twice, stressing DIN lai and then din LAI: both are correct Amadunia, and they are different poems. Two readers cannot agree on the metre of a single line. This is the gap that matters most for anything meant to be spoken, and a poem is where it stops being theoretical.

2. No word for “change”. The first stanza is about a day turning into a night and back, and the language cannot name what is happening. Already recorded, and felt harder here.

3. Fragments once more. Din lai. Sol upar. are full sentences, but a poem wants to break a line where it likes, and nothing says whether it may.

Roots used

21 of 300 — the fewest of any text here, which is the point. A poem should be sayable by someone three lessons in.