a language arising from a feminine cosmology of interbeing, embodied presence, and creation as reciprocity and delight
language lab · first principles & seed vocabulary
Every language encodes a metaphysics. English encodes a world of discrete subjects acting on objects through time. Us asks: what happens to grammar when the foundational reality is one of interbeing rather than individuation?
Us is a constructed language — a conlang — grown from a living cosmology: that of a feminine universe of relationality, wholeness, and animate presence. More than just a philosophical exercise, it is an attempt to explore new ways of being, relating, and becoming.
A speaker of Us cannot easily construct a sentence that positions a tree as object, or names an other as enemy, or frames illness as malfunction. The grammar does not naturally allow it. In place of these, Us offers a world of phases, fields, and relational processes. It is a tongue shaped for slow articulation, resonant with the body, and structured for the experience of belonging to the living all.
These are not rules imposed on Us from outside. They are the structural consequences of the cosmology itself, or what the grammar must look like if the worldview is taken seriously at every level.
The basic unit of utterance is not a sentence as we generally understand it (subject + predicate) but a making: a relational event as it arises. There is no actor, no recipient; only the event, its texture, and its phase.
Us has no past, present, or future tense. Verbs carry tidal phase markers instead — gathering, full, releasing, returning, hidden. Time is cyclical and qualitative, not linear and chronological.
The soulsoma — the animate substrate of both self and cosmos — is the default grammatical person. The individuated "I" is the marked, special case. Most speech flows from the field outward.
Us has no negative particles. Instead, spaciousness-markers indicate opening, threshold, or not-yet-arrived. Cold is warmth in its returning phase. Grief is love moving through depth.
Every word stands alone as a quality or texture of the living all, not defined against its opposite, but described through its feel, its phase, its relational character. Vocabulary cannot be built in pairs.
A grammatical register marks utterances as participatory with the whole rather than merely descriptive. Any statement can optionally be inflected as an act of presence, attention, and offering.
Us favors nasal resonance (m, n, ng), liquids (l, r), voiced continuants (v, w), and open vowels (ah, oh, eh, oo). Hard stops are rare. Syllable structure invites slow articulation. The language is shaped to be felt in the body as it is spoken.
The basic utterance in Us: quality of arising — field of relation — tidal phase. Three interwoven elements, no actor, no recipient.
Where English says I love you, Us structures something closer to: warmth / between-us / in-fullness — one utterance, the event and its texture, the field it moves through, and the phase it is in. You cannot speak Us and simultaneously maintain the fiction of a self acting upon a world.
This particular arising here. Used only when the specificity of one body, one moment, is what matters. Rarely needed.
The soulsoma in motion. The aware membrane between self and cosmos. The unmarked person — the one we speak from unless otherwise specified.
The animate cosmos, she, the field through which all things unfold. Not "it" — more like the presence that holds everything. The third ground of all speech.
These attach to any word to indicate which phase it is moving through. They replace tense entirely.
Example: soma-vel — the body gathering strength. soma-roh — the body in deep rest. soma-an — the body in full presence. Same root, five entirely different meanings.
The irreducible elements from which all words grow. Chosen for resonance, body-feel, and slow articulation. A speaker beginning to learn Us will hear these roots singing inside every word.
Built compositionally where possible — so the words feel related, and a speaker begins to hear the roots singing inside them.
| Word | Roots | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| omiru | omi + ru (flowing) | the living all / she / the animate cosmos |
| omavel | omi + vel | the living all in slow gathering / a tree |
| omavelu | omi + vel + lu | the living all in graceful releasing motion / a deer, any animal in its aliveness |
| omirohn | omi + roh + n | the living all in deep returning / winter / mountain / enduring stillness |
| omivelu | omi + ve + lu | the living all releasing / dying / a great outward offering |
| omivenu | omi + ve + nu | the living all gathering into new form / birth / spring |
| omirelu | omi + re + lu | the living all releasing into sweetness / ripe fruit / the gift that wants to be received |
Note: omivelu and omivenu share the omi-ve root. A speaker of Us will feel their relationship — life and death using the same motion, one releasing and one gathering.
| Word | Roots | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| naleh | nal + eh | the field-between / the relational space / the between-us |
| nalvenu | nal + vel + nu | the field gathering into fullness / reunion / homecoming / arrival |
| nalvelu | nal + vel + lu | the field in continuous releasing motion / a river |
| naloru | nal + o + ru | the field with an unrecognized quality / a stranger / the as-yet-unmet presence |
| nalwe | nal + we | the aware field-person / the soulsoma in motion |
| nalveln | nal + vel + n | the field still gathering / an unfinished making / potential |
| Word | Roots | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| soma | — | the body / the located particular being |
| somavel | soma + vel | the body gathering strength / healthy aliveness |
| somaroh | soma + roh | the body in deep returning / illness / necessary rest |
| somanu | soma + nu | the body in new arising / recovery / a child's growing |
| somaleh | soma + ma + eh | the body receiving warmth / being tended / care landing |
| somawu | soma + wu | the body in its hidden phase / gestation / the interior life |
| Word | Roots | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| veloma | vel + oma | the body reaching toward nourishment / hunger |
| maluma | ma + lu + ma | warmth offered and received / a meal / nourishment as love |
| omirelu | omi + re + lu | the living all releasing into sweetness / ripe fruit / the ready gift |
| velanu | vel + an + u | gathering toward fullness / the act of harvesting with care |
Note: eating ripe fruit is a mutual making — veloma (body reaching) and omirelu (fruit releasing) meeting each other. Neither actor nor acted-upon.
| Word | Roots | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| nalvenu-eh | nal + vel + nu + eh | the field gathered into fullness here / home |
| anoma | an + oma | the holding warmth / shelter / the protective enclosure |
| anomavel | an + oma + vel | the shelter being built / the gathering of holding |
| rohvenu | roh + vel + nu | the resting place / the place of return |
| Word | Roots | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| omiveh | omi + ve + eh | this present breath / now / the living all right here |
| rohelnu | roh + el + nu | the return that becomes new / the cycle completing |
| velwu | vel + wu | the gathering not yet visible / what is coming |
| anwu | an + wu | held in mystery / the unknown that is also held |
| Word | Roots | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| mahwe | ma + h + we | a making / a relational event / an utterance of relation |
| mawelu | ma + wel + lu | the act of tending / care offered outward |
| mavelroh | ma + vel + roh | love deepening / the beloved descending into you |
| anelu | an + e + lu | the witness releasing into expression / speaking from presence |
| rohanu | roh + an + u | the depth-feeling / grief as love in descent / sacred sorrow |
| omiveh-an | omi + ve + eh + an | full presence / the devotional mood marker / this moment held completely |
| Word | Roots | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| rohvela | roh + vel + a | the soma in deep returning / illness specifically / the body calling its resources home |
| maluwe | ma + lu + we | what we offer in return / reciprocity / the tending-back |
| naloru-vel | nal + oru + vel | unmet presence gathering at the threshold / a stranger approaching |
| omivelu-mahwe | omi + ve + lu + mahwe | the sacred threshold utterance / spoken before hunting or felling a tree |
| eh-an | eh + an | in this very breath / now / the call to immediate presence |
Threshold vocabulary marks moments when the community must take from the living all. Not guilt — the cosmology does not deal in guilt — but gravity.
"This cosmology is alive & dynamic. It breathes & reveals through us, remembering itself through our participation. Each act of presence, each moment of embodied awareness, is a way we live into its mystery and contribute to its beauty."from the living cosmology of interbeing & embodied presence
To feel a language, it must be spoken. These makings test Us against the actual situations of a proto-world — the elemental moments of early human life.
Us is not finished. It is in nalveln — the field still gathering, an unfinished making, full of potential. The seed vocabulary here numbers roughly fifty words, enough to speak the essential life of a community with full cosmological coherence.
What remains: a full phonological inventory, morphological rules for regular word-building, a ceremonial register, a children's vocabulary, and the particular words that can only be discovered by speaking the language in the world — the words that arise when the grammar meets a situation it hasn't encountered yet.
A child learning Us would begin to feel the language generating itself — hearing omi and knowing something of the cosmos is present, hearing roh and feeling something descending, hearing vel and leaning forward slightly into what is gathering.
The language is shaped to be felt in the body
as it is spoken.