Hi

Phonology
The latin transliteration of Hi uses an alphabet of 16 letters: A K E H I L PL M N O P R S T U QU. All letters are generally pronounced the same way regardless of their placement. The letter "I" tends to form diphtongs if it follows another vowel; other vowels tend to be pronounced separately from each other. "H" is never silent. "QU" is pronounced as "kw". The rest of the letters are pronounced the way you would expect them to be.

Hi uses the folowing original script (click the thumbnail on the right to view). Note that the white space in some letters is the integral part of these letterforms. The spaces between words tend to be 2-3 times as large as the gaps inside the letters.

Basic Grammar
Hi has a very simple and regular grammar. It is guided by several basic principles that make it quite different from other languages.

Root tuples and root chains
The basic unit of a Hi sentence is two root-words linked together. The link between the roots expresses their relationship.

For example: Let us make several observations here:

- when the first root ends with the same vowel as the first vowel of the link, this vowel is not repeated

- a two-root combination can express one notion that in other langauges is usually expressed with a separate word

- it is written as one word. As you will see, however, Hi words sometimes grow to be quite long. For readability, long words may be broken into several parts when written down. A word broken into tow parts is indicated by adding an apostrophe to the second part. In such cases, the second part also gets the link. For example, teoplun would be broken as te 'oplun, although this word is obviously not long enough to justify the breaking.

A Hi sentence consists of several two-root phrases placed one after another. One important case is when the first root of the following two-root phrase is the same as the last root of the preceding one. In this case, this root is not repeated, and the two phrases are joined together in a root-chain.

For example,

Putting root chains together
Syntactic relationships between Hi root-chains are created by repeating the same root-word in different chains. Such repetition indicates that these root-chains point at the same thing. For example: (the repeating roots that link different root chains together are highlighted in the structure column)

Sentence structure
The basic word order in Hi is SVO -- subjects precede verbs and objects follow them. However, Hi does not have any set sentence structure. In fact, a Hi sentence is nothing more than a sequence of root chains. It is quite common to speak in very long "run-away" sentences that would gradually change the subject and seamlessly move from one thought to another.

Links
Below is the list of all links found in Hi.

Here are some examples:

You will see more examples of link usage throughout this text.

Root polymorphism
1. As you saw in the previous section, one root-word can change its roles depending on which links connect it to other roots. In fact, most of Hi words have different meanings in each of these roles: Noun, Adjective/Intransitive Verb, Transitive Verb, or Adverb. Many roots also have a special meaning when they used with -in, or with -o, etc. For example:

Of course not all roots have the full range of meanings, but it's hard to find a root that does not have at least a few. Some of the meanings are highly idiomatic (e.g. the noun meaning of to: "to wait" is "time") and have to be learned by heart. Most of the time, however, the meaning of any word in this or that role is self-evident.

2. What is also common is having the same word in different roles when it is used in different root-tuples. The "aggregated" meaning can then be an abstract notion (adjective-noun), proposition, or a gerund (verb-noun). Here are some examples:

Morphology
As you have already seen in the examples, Hi very often uses a root chain (or several root chains) for something that in other languages is commonly expressed with a single word.

When a root chain is used in this way, its meaning may be highly idiomatic, and it has to be learned by heart. E.g. sumin means "milk", and not "white water", although su is "water" and min is "white". One can also say sumin suohon -- "white water from animals".

Oftentimes there are several ways to say the same thing, varying in length and detail. E.g.

Such examples are abundant in the language. When confusion is likely, the longer version would be used whereas it is shortened when the exact meaning can be derived from context.

It is also very common to use the long version of a word the first time you use it and then switch to a shorter one in subsequent uses. E.g. you can refer to a pen as simply ruruta or even rur "stick" if it is obvious from context what stick you refer to.

I would like to stress, however, that one cannot just make up a Hi phrase describing an object and expect that it would match the way Hi speakers say it. If the idiom is not a part of the Hi vocabulary it may not be understood or it may be understood in a wrong way. The idioms need to be learned. Fortunately, the synthetic way in which they are formed facilitates the learning process a great deal.

Negative and Plural prefixes
Negation is expressed in Hi by adding the prefix s- to the word. With nouns, s- is often translated as "no" or "not a". For example:

To indicate the plural form of a noun, one uses the prefix ''e-. ''However, it is not used consistently and is often dropped when the meaning is clear. In particular, the plural form is not used when the same object is mentioned repeatedly.

Handling indirect objects
One of the distinctive features of Hi is the way it expresses indirect objects of verbs. In fact, there are no indirect obejcts, prepositions or cases in Hi! Phrases that would require an indirect object in other languages are expressed in Hi by using a combination of verbs and adverbs.

Indeed, when we use a preposition in English, it is easy to reconstruct the implied verb. For example, by "This is for you" you usually mean "This is for you to take", but when I say "I am reading for my daughter" I mean "I am reading for my daughter to listen" and when I open a door for a lady, it's not for her to have or listen; I open it for her to go through.

Hi does away with such ambiguities. You explicitly say murtiaka tinqua tuquaka: "This is for you" (literally "I brought this so you'd have it"), and muhiata hinton meruton merumet meromu: "I am reading for my daughter" (literally "I read so that my daugher would listen") and so forth.

The collection of adverbs worth special mention are the adverbs for spatial and temporal relations. E.g. the word ni means "the inside" as a noun or "being inside" as an adverb, allowing to you to say, for example, emuplunini 'olanoseore "we play in the garden" (literally "we play inside, inside of the garden"). The words nir "outside", ple "on", "above", pler "under", so "in front", sor "behind", pli "start", plir "end", to "time"/"at that time" and a few others have the same pattern of use. Here are a few more examples,

Numerals
Below is the list of Hi numerals from 1 to 16. When lookig at it, keep in mind that, for example, while quu means "two", -uquu means "double". and so forth. After studying this table you should be able to easily understand how numerals are constructed. When put into genitive, the same words indicate ordinal numbers. -oquu also means "the other" and is often used in this sense.

Conjunctions
Hi has only few conjunctions, the most frequently used of them being

Conjunctions are placed by themselves between root chains. E can also be used inside chains in some steady locutions, e.g. tosunesut: "day and night" (instead of tosun e tosut).

Roots
Hi root words tends to come in pairs of roots with opposite meaning. Roots in the same pair differ in the ending consinant, with -n interchanging with -t and -r with no consonant. For example, if pen means "to push" or "press", then pet naturally means "to pull"; if ple means "high", then pler means "low", and so forth.

Roots ending with -s do not form such pairs

Example text
The North Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger, when a traveler came along wrapped in a warm cloak.

They agreed that the one who first succeeded in making the traveler take his cloak off should be considered stronger than the other.

Then the North Wind blew as hard as he could, but the more he blew the more closely did the traveler fold his cloak around him;

''and at last the North Wind gave up the attempt. Then the Sun shined out warmly, and immediately the traveler took off his cloak.''

And so the North Wind was obliged to confess that the Sun was the stronger of the two.

Kopinuplu e tenosun ekurhiquet hitroiplo kuro kuho hitotinkar menuti menomisuquo menuquaheuplur heuquo quainiroran.

Ekurhisam hitsiakupainher paiplir menuheraheuplur menomis siniopla sitroiplo quuroiplor.

Kopinuplu kourmiako miroisamaro kokiro oi kourmiroiplo menurpeniroiplo menomis penaheuplur peninhearanomen

e kourtirirniopla tiritoplir tiraleinpa'. 'Tenursuniplur sunitoukar tenosun e menurheraheuplur menomis heritouquo.

E kourquinhirsa kopinuplu hitroiplo tenuro tenosun kouroiplor

Contact
I would love to hear opinions and suggestions regarding Hi. You can contact me at

Thanks,

Andrei Burago (adagio_burner)