People
👥 People & Relationships
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12 words for the people we move through life with.
| LEKA | Meaning | Story |
|---|---|---|
| tem | community | A foundational LEKA root, present from the earliest drafts. Carries the project's whole soul: the unit that matters most is not the self but the group we belong to. Every other "we"-related word in LEKA is built from it. |
| tu | you | The universal informal "you" across Romance languages (Spanish tú, Italian tu, French tu). Short, intimate, immediate. |
| me | I / me | Italian / Spanish me, the speaker's word for themselves. We avoided Japanese me (eye) here because identity needed the simpler claim. |
| mu | we / us | An old LEKA root — also the foundation of the -mu suffix (shared / our). When the language says mu, it means us together, not just a plural self. |
| ami | friend | Spanish amigo, French ami, Italian amico — the warm Romance root for friendship. Trimmed to its essence. |
| temi | beloved / dear one | LEKA-internal: tem (community) + -i (little/dear/tender). Literally "little one of the community." Replaced an earlier proposal (kara) because that was already a real family name. |
| mata | mother | Sanskrit mata — preserved nearly intact because the ma sound for mother is one of the most universal across human languages. |
| pita | father | Sanskrit pita, the parallel to mata. Together they keep LEKA tied to the deep Indo-European root. |
| nino | child | Spanish niño, with the ñ collapsed to plain n. A small, soft word for a small, soft person. |
| sora | sibling / kin | Japanese sora literally means "sky" — but in LEKA it carries the feeling of openness and shared horizon. The poetic double meaning was kept; siel now carries "sky" so the openness here belongs to kin. |
| anya | elder / wise one | Sanskrit anya (revered, other, set apart). A name for those who hold the long memory. |
| temra-mu | chosen / extended family | LEKA-internal: temra (belonging) + -mu (our). The word that names chosen family — the people we gather, not the ones we're born to. The -mu suffix was born here and spread through the language. |
How This Category Shapes the Language
- tem is the root from which temi, temra-mu, temi-mu all grow. The whole grammar of belonging lives in this corner.
- The -mu suffix ("our") was first used in temra-mu and is now one of the seven productive suffixes. Community as grammar.
- LEKA has no word for "stranger" — by design. Per the principle use before expanding: if it isn't being said, we don't need it yet.
Status: #finalized