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Quick start

Tonesu has a small fixed foundation and consistent rules. This page maps three entry paths depending on what you want to do first.

Start here if you want to know why the language works the way it does before memorising anything.

  1. Sounds — six vowels, eighteen consonants, one letter per sound. The tier system (CV / CVC / CVCC) tells you what kind of word you're looking at from its shape alone.
  2. Primitives — the 34 root meanings. Everything in the language is assembled from these. Spend time here; understanding the roots makes all derived words legible on first encounter.
  3. Building words — how roots combine, how suffixes work, how the juncture marker ' affects parse.
  4. Grammar — four core particles (la-, lo-, lu-, ne), word order, negation, epistemic framing.

Path 2 — Jump into sentences

Start here if you learn better from examples than from rules.

  1. Corpus — attested Tonesu sentences with glosses and notes.
  2. Worked examples — longer passage analyses.
  3. Circle back to Grammar when a construction isn't clear.

Path 3 — Explore the word list

Start here if you want to survey what vocabulary exists and how it was built.

  1. Registry — Alphabetical — all 155 registered compounds.
  2. Registry — By domain — words organised by semantic area.
  3. Registry — English index — look up a concept and find its Tonesu equivalent.

Key facts to carry in

  • Every word shape signals its tier: CV = primitive root · CV-CV... = compound · CVC = digit/colour/shortform · CVCC = a physical or mathematical constant.
  • Modifier precedes head. to-li = scholar; to modifies li. Always right-branching.
  • The ' juncture mark controls grouping inside a compound. Everything to the left of ' locks as a unit before combining with what follows: A-B'C-D = {A-B} modifies {C-D}. Without ', the default is right-branching: A-B-C = A modifies {B-C}.
  • The primitive set is closed: no new CV roots. New vocabulary is always compounded.