Surat por mama

The seventh text, and the first that is written to someone. The stories tell, the third argues, the fourth is two people talking, the fifth is meant to be said aloud. A letter is none of those: one person, absent, addressing another person, absent, about a third place. It is the form that leans hardest on tense and on the second person, and it turned out to be the form the language is furthest from being able to finish.

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

Salam mama,

Mi in madina baru sasa. Dom mi keci aur safi.
Es pencere kabir in kamra mi.
Mi lihat asman dari pencere.

Insan-insan hao sini. Mi punya du rafiki baru.
Ta-ta studi in skola una mi.

Mi ingat dom kita. Mi ingat ca yu. Mi ingat golos papa.
Mi sedih porke yu-yu baid.

Mi suda anda por madina kemarin.
Mi suda lihat ponte cang aur pahar kabir.
Madina ini sundar. Aur ta no es dom mi.

Mi saufa lai dom. Mi espera din itu.
Mi hao sini. No es korku.

Anak yu

Line by line

What the text found

The three tenses carry the whole letter. Mi suda anda yesterday, Mi lihat now, Mi saufa lai to come — three particles, no verb changing shape once. A letter in English needs walked, walk, will walk, saw, see, will see; this one needs suda, nothing, and saufa, and they never touch the verb.

Negation does the work of a whole sentence twice. Aur ta no es dom mi — and it is not my home — is the turn the letter is built around, and No es korku, there is no fear, is the reassurance it ends on. The existential es and the negator no were settled separately and combine without a rule being added for the combination.

Gaps

Four things this letter wanted and could not have. None was invented.

A letter cannot be signed. (Love as a noun is on the list.) With love has no form: ama is the verb to love, and there is no noun for love. One root does one job, so the verb cannot be borrowed as a noun the way English borrows it — that is the rule working as designed, and the cost is that the most common closing in the world’s correspondence cannot be written. The letter signs Anak yu, your child, which is a fact rather than a feeling.

It cannot say “I miss you”. The nearest the language reaches is Mi sedih porke yu-yu baid, I am sad because you are far, which is a paraphrase of the cause, not the feeling. This is a vocabulary gap and joins the missing word for pain that text 6 found. Both were found by writing, which is now the second time that has happened and the first time it has happened twice to the same kind of word — the ones about how a person feels.

It cannot say “before I came” or “after I arrive”. (subordination.md keeps although, before, after, until open.) A letter is made of those. although, before, after and until are all on the open list, so every sentence here had to be arranged so that no clause needed one. That is why the middle of the letter is four short sentences instead of two long ones.

It could not say “in the month I arrive” without answering a live question. Whether a plain time noun takes in was only just recorded as open, so the letter says Mi espera din itu, I wait for that day, and stays out of it.

Roots used

54 of 300.