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lesson 5: Modifiers
| ike |
jaki |
lawa |
len |
lili |
mute |
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nasa |
seli |
sewi |
tomo |
utala |
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compound nouns
If you feel you are starting to understand how to stack
your glyph blocks, adding modifiers shouldn't be too hard.
Let's look at jan Pije's example, building up to "this
good soldier"
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jan |
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jan
utala |
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jan
utala pona |
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jan
utala pona ni |
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This compound noun block is equally at home as the subject,
or direct object: |
jan
utala pona ni li lawa. |
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mi
lawa e jan utala pona ni. |
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In chapter two we talked about tucking glyphs behind others.
Look how well this works for the combination jan
utala in the examples above. |
short blocks: lili and mute
Lili and mute
are wider and shorter than some of the more square glyphs.
As modifiers this can work to your advantage, as they don't
take up too much space: |
jan
lili |
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tomo
mute |
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jan
nasa mute |
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thin blocks: ni
Remember in lesson 1 we said syllalble glyphs can be used
instead of glyph blocks? As a glyph block, ni
is pretty square, but as a syllable it is tall and thin. This
can be useful when ni is used
as a modifier:
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len
ni |
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ilo
seli ni |
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telo
nasa ni |
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stretching and squishing blocks
Maybe you have started to notice, glyph blocks have a little
bit of give to them. They can stretch or squish in order to
maintain a square shape in a multi-block structure. If you
understand how to tuck one glyph behind another, to stretch
or squish glyphs, and use short and thin blocks, you will
see just how many different arrangements there are for compound
blocks. Here are seven different ways to arrange ma
ike jaki ni. Which one you would want to choose would
depend on the how well it fits in the rest of the sentence: |
ma
ike jaki ni |
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ma
ike jaki ni |
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ma
ike jaki ni |
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ma
ike jaki ni |
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ma
ike jaki ni |
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ma
ike jaki ni |
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ma
ike jaki ni |
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