The Knights who forgot to say "ni!"

[Invent Yourself <xod@sixgirls.org>]

Everything we have said about ka also goes for ni!


 le ni mi prami
 The amount I love

Oh really??

 le ni ce'u prami
 The amount of loving

 le ni prami ce'u
 The amount of being loved


It seems the designers planned two ways to use ka and ni.

 le ka mi prami
 my lovingness (phantom ce'u in prami1, none anywhere else)

 le ke ce'u prami
 lovingness

A later generation with a hardline attitude revolted against the first
form. The sumti co-placed with a ce'u got moved to a controversial 2nd
place (be), or the phrase gets rewritten explictly (pe):

 le ka mi prami --> le kamprami be mi = le kamprami pe mi

However we run into trouble with ni, because it already has a 2nd place!
Therefore it must be

 le nilprami pe mi
 The amount I love


Excuse me if this completely obvious to most of you.



-----
"It is not enough that an article is new and useful. The Constitution
never sanctioned the patenting of gadgets. [...] It was never the object
of those laws to grant a monopoly for every trifling device, every
shadow of a shade of an idea, which would naturally and spontaneously
occur to any skilled mechanic or operator in the ordinary progress of
manufactures."   --  Supreme Court Justice Douglas, 1950