Yíng-sha is a constructed language built around one big idea: the sound of a word is a clue to its meaning. Learn a small system of patterns, and you can predict a huge amount of the vocabulary instead of memorizing it word-by-word.
This page is the full reference — every rule and every root from the official spec and lexicon documents — reorganized so a new learner can actually follow it in order, with honest notes wherever the system has a quirk or an exception worth knowing about.
Looking for the previous edition (v5.2 — tonal emphasis, no focus particles)? View the historical version →
Start Here
Every root word in Yíng-sha is built the same way, like a recipe with four ingredients. Learn the recipe once, and you can guess at hundreds of words you've never seen.
The first sound (consonant) picks the topic — like "P" for rocks and earth, or "SH" for words and language.
The vowel picks the job it does in a sentence — a thing, an action, a quality, an idea, or a group.
Stretching the vowel longer turns up the intensity — a bigger, more extreme version of the idea.
An optional nose-sound ending (-n, -ng, -m) narrows the word down to something more specific.
Words snap together like Lego. The consonant sets the topic; the vowel sets the meaning-type (thing, action, quality, idea, or group).
No silent letters, no irregular verb charts to memorize, no grammatical gender. One noun form, one verb form — the grammar rules apply the same way every time.
Tense, aspect, and mood are separate, optional pieces you add on. You can say exactly whether something is ongoing, finished, habitual, or just starting.
Tone, stress rules, casual speech shortcuts, and a few words that just don't fit the pattern keep it from feeling like a robot wrote it.
Part 1
17 consonants, 10 vowels, and a two-level tone system. Every syllable is built the same simple way.
p t k ' m n ng f s sh h ts l r w y x
Note: ' is a glottal stop — the little catch in your throat in the middle of "uh-oh". Sixteen of these consonants each head a topic domain (below); x is the exception — it's grammar-only, reserved for the focus particle system, and doesn't head a domain of its own.
a aa e ee i ii o oo u uu
Five short vowels, and the same five held twice as long (written doubled). Length is meaningful — pa (stone) and paa (mountain) are different words.
Every root follows the same simple template — there's nothing to memorize case by case:
Only nasal sounds are allowed at the end of a syllable — the same restriction you'll find in real languages like Mandarin or Japanese, which is part of why Yíng-sha is easy to pronounce smoothly. Word stress always falls on the first syllable of a word.
Yíng-sha uses two tones. High tone is marked with an acute accent (á, é, í, ó, ú); low tone is left unmarked. That's a deliberate shortcut — since every syllable is one or the other, marking only one of them keeps the spelling clean.
Tone isn't just decoration — it's doing several different jobs across the language, and it helps to know all of them up front instead of discovering them one at a time:
As of v6.0, tone no longer marks emphasis — a word that's already high-toned for one of the reasons above had no room left to also carry emphasis. That job now belongs to a dedicated particle system: see Focus Particles.
Part 2
This is the heart of Yíng-sha. Four dials — consonant, vowel, length, and ending — combine to build almost every root word in the Word Bank.
The first sound of a root sorts it into one of 16 topic areas, running from the physical world to people to abstract ideas:
Inside a topic domain, the vowel decides what kind of word you get. This pattern is the most reliable part of the whole system — it holds true in all 16 domains:
Because this holds true everywhere, you can spot a word's part of speech on sight: any root ending in -e is a verb, any -i is an adjective, no matter which of the 16 domains it's in.
Holding the vowel twice as long stretches the meaning to something bigger, older, or more extreme — the short form is the everyday version, the long form is the "extra" version.
Adding -n, -ng, or -m narrows a root toward a more specific meaning. Here's the general tendency for each:
Tends toward points, limits, and containers.
pan = cave, hollow
Tends toward broad, elevated, or dynamic things.
paang = diamond
Tends toward raw, internal, or specialized things.
paam = unrefined ore
Most -n words really do cluster around "point/limit/container," and most -ng words really do lean "broad/dynamic." But the Word Bank was built root-by-root over time, so you will run into exceptions — for example toom ("pyramid," a very deliberately-shaped structure) sits in the -m "raw/unrefined" slot even though a pyramid is neither raw nor unrefined. Treat the coda meanings as a strong hint that narrows down what a new root probably means, and use the Word Bank to check the real answer.
One part of the pattern is fully regular, though: -n only ever attaches to a short vowel (a long vowel plus -n is not a shape the language uses), while -ng and -m each pair with both a short and a long vowel per meaning-type — which is exactly why those two endings tend to carry two related roots per slot (e.g. ping/piing) where -n only ever carries one.
Pick a topic, a meaning-type, and an ending, and see what syllable you get — and whether the Word Bank actually has a root there yet.
Part 3
"I," "you," "we," and "they" aren't random sounds — they're built from the same person/group domains as the rest of the vocabulary.
| Person | Singular | Plural | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st ("I" / "we") | mi | mu (excl.) / mú (incl.) | See clusivity below |
| 2nd ("you") | ni | nú | "you all" |
| 3rd ("he/she/it/they") | ngi | ngu | no gender distinction |
Yíng-sha makes a distinction English doesn't: whether "we" includes the person you're talking to.
This distinction is real and common in the world's languages (for example, in many Austronesian and Dravidian languages) — it isn't a Yíng-sha invention, just a category English happens to skip.
Each pronoun reuses the "quality" (-i) slot of a person-related domain: mi "I" comes from the M- self/body domain, ni "you" from the N- other-person domain, and ngi "he/she/it" from the NG- group/collective domain. That's a tidy bit of design — but it comes with a trade-off, below.
Because pronouns were built from the same domain slots as ordinary words, each one is spelled exactly like an unrelated adjective:
In practice this rarely causes confusion, because they show up in different jobs in a sentence: a pronoun sits in the subject or object slot (where a noun goes), while the adjective sits right after a noun (Rule 4). Mi pa can only mean "my stone" (pronoun + noun), never "physical stone," because an adjective would need to come after pa, not before it.
Part 4
Learn these twelve rules and you can build almost any sentence. Full detail on each one follows below.
Subject, then verb, then object — always in that order.
Mi li ta. (I go [to the] house.)
No "a" or "the," no grammatical gender, no case endings. One form covers every job a noun can do.
Masses: use the built-in -u collective root, e.g. pu = rocks.
Countables: repeat the word, e.g. pa-pa = several (specific) stones.
No agreement to worry about.
pa pi = stone hard (a hard stone).
Just place the owner before the thing owned — no apostrophe-s needed.
mi pa = my stone (literally "I stone").
no goes right before whatever it negates.
Mi no li. = I don't go.
A bare verb is timeless/present. Add a time word if you need to be precise: me = now, mo = then, mu = soon.
me (ongoing), sa (finished), wo (habitual), se (just starting).
Yes/no: add ke at the end. Wh-words (te/to/tu) stay right where the answer would go. Yes = yíng, No = no.
hu = "than," wo = "-est" (superlative), na = "as...as" (equative).
te introduces "who/that/which." The head noun is always treated as the subject — if it's really the object, you add a pronoun to hold its place (ngi).
ha = because, he = if/when, hi = although, fo = so that.
No articles ("a"/"the"), no gender, no case marking. A noun by itself is already singular and complete: pa can mean "stone," "a stone," or "the stone" — context tells you which.
Masses / general categories: use the domain's built-in collective root (the -u slot).
pu = rocks/stone (as a general mass)
Specific countable multiples: repeat the word.
pa-pa = several particular stones · ta-ta = several particular houses
Always follow the noun, never change form.
pa pi = stone hard → hard stone
ta ti = house orderly → organized house
Come before the noun they own, with no extra marking at all.
mi pa = my stone
ngi ta = his/her house
mu pa-won = our cave
A small five-way set of "pointing" words, placed before the noun (see the full set in Function Words):
ti pa = this stone · ta ta = that house
Notice ta is doing double duty as both "that" and the T-domain root for "house" — ta ta ("that house") is a real sentence where the same syllable appears twice with two different jobs, back to back. Word order (demonstrative before noun) is what keeps it clear.
An auxiliary (helper) verb goes right before the main verb. Nothing ever changes form.
Mi pí li. = I want go. (I want to go)
Mi pé fa ta. = I try make house. (I try to build a house)
Mi no pí li. = I not want go. (I don't want to go)
A bare verb is timeless. Add a time-word only when it matters:
| me | now (present) |
| mo | then (past) |
| mu | soon (future) |
Mi li mo. = I went.
Aspect tells you the shape of an action in time — whether it's ongoing, done, habitual, or just starting:
| me | ongoing — "I go now" = I am going |
| sa | finished — "I go exists" = I have gone |
| wo | habitual — "I go all" = I always go |
| se | just starting — "I go becomes" = I start to go |
Mi wó li. = I must go. · Ngi wé mem. = He/she should sleep. · Mi wá li. = I may go.
Conditional — he (if) + clause, then main clause
He mi pí, mi li. = If I want, I go.
Imperative — bare verb, no subject
Li! = Go! · Ké pa ngi! = Give him/her the stone!
Prohibitive — no + imperative
No li! = Do not go!
Hortative — 'ú (please) + verb
'Ú li! = Please go!
Potential — 'í (maybe) + verb
Mi 'í li. = I might go.
Add the particle ke to the very end of the sentence — nothing else changes.
Mi li ke? = Am I going?
Ngi fa ta ke? = Is he/she at the house?
Mi no li ke? = Don't I go?
No word order to undo — just answer:
| yíng | yes (true/real) |
| ye | yes (casual) |
| no | no (not) |
| yong | no (false) |
Yíng-sha doesn't move the question word to the front the way English does — it just sits exactly where the answer would go. te/to/tu ("what/who/which") combine with other function words to build "where," "when," "why," and "how":
| Sentence | Literally | Means |
|---|---|---|
| Mi li te? | I go what? | What am I doing? |
| Ngi si to? | He/she is who? | Who is he/she? |
| Mi li fi tu? | I go to which? | Which one am I going to? |
| Mi li fa te? | I go at what? | Where am I going? |
| Mi li me te? | I go now what? | When am I going? |
| Mi li ha te? | I go because what? | Why am I going? |
| Mi li fu te? | I go by-means-of what? | How am I going? |
English uses the single word "is" for three different jobs ("She is a doctor," "The book is on the table," "There is a book"). Yíng-sha keeps these three jobs strictly separate, so it always says exactly which one you mean.
"X is Y" — what something is
Mi si né. = I am a person.
Ta si ta. = That is a house.
"X is at Y" — where something is
Mi si fa ta. = I am in the house.
Pa si fa paa. = The stone is on the mountain.
Uses si + the preposition fa (at/in). Never use sa for location — that's a different word, below.
"There is X" — that something exists at all
Sa pa. = There is a stone.
Sa no pa. = There is no stone.
Strictly existential — can't be used for identity or location.
"X has Y"
Mi ki pa. = I have a stone.
Ngi ki no pa. = He/she has no stone.
Compare this verb ki (have) to the possessor word order rule from §3 (mi pa = my stone) — Yíng-sha has both a grammatical possessor slot and a full verb for "to have," for when you want to assert ownership as the main point of the sentence rather than just describe whose stone it is.
"more ... than"
Pa pi hu ta. = The stone is harder than the house.
"most / -est"
Pa pi hu wo. = The stone is the hardest.
"as ... as"
Pa pi na ta pi. = The stone is as hard as the house.
| Word | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| na | and | Mi na ni li. (You and I go.) |
| ne | or | Mi ne ni li. (You or I go.) |
| ni | but | Mi pí, ni mi no li. (I want to, but I don't go.) |
| nu | with (comitative) | Mi li nu ni. (I go with you.) |
Notice na also appears above as the equative marker "as...as," and ni is also the 2nd-person pronoun "you" — a handful of these very short grammar words carry more than one job. Position in the sentence is what keeps them apart: a conjunction sits between two things being joined, while ni-the-pronoun sits in a subject or object slot.
A relative clause follows the noun it describes and starts with te. Yíng-sha has one firm rule underneath this: the noun being described always acts as the subject of the description clause. That works perfectly when it really is the subject:
né te li ta → "the person who goes to the house"
(person · REL · goes · house — the person is doing the going, so this reads naturally)
Sometimes the noun being described isn't the one doing the action — it's the one the action happens to. Think of it like leaving a placeholder in the sentence: since the grammar insists the described noun must "be" the subject, you leave a little stand-in pronoun (ngi) back where the noun's real job was, pointing back to it.
pa te mi ken ngi → "the stone that I hit"
(stone · REL · I · hit · it — "it" [ngi] stands in for "stone" in the spot where the stone is actually being hit)
Mi shé né te li ta.
= I speak to the person who goes to the house.
Mi fa pa te mi ken ngi.
= I am at the stone that I hit.
| ha | because | Mi li ha mi pí. |
| he | if / when | He mi pí, mi li. |
| hi | although | Hi mi no pí, mi li. |
| fo | so that / purpose | Mi li fo fa ta. |
tsoo-wa = 11 (10+1)
we-tsoo = 20 (2×10)
we-tsoo-wa = 21 (2×10+1)
ya = 1st
ye = 2nd
tsé-ya = 3rd
wa-wa = once
we-we = twice
To name something the 589 roots don't already cover, snap two roots together. The first word describes; the second word is the main thing being named.
In a hyphenated compound, the primary high tone lands on the head — the second (main) word — not the first:
pa-wón (cave) — not pá-won
This mirrors a real pattern in natural-language compound stress, where the "core" word of a compound tends to carry the main accent.
Put ho before whatever you want to announce as the topic, and move it to the front — like starting a sentence with "As for..." in English.
Ho paa, mi shé. = About the mountain, I speak.
Focus and emphasis used to be handled by moving words to the front of the sentence, or by adding a high tone. As of v6.0, both jobs have been replaced by a dedicated particle system that leaves word order and tone alone entirely.
See §12 Pragmatic Focus Particles below.
Put 'u ("please") before a request. A special set of social formulas use a glottal stop + long vowel + high tone, so they're instantly recognizable as etiquette words rather than ordinary vocabulary (also covered in Sounds):
'Ú please
A closed family of five in-place particles, built on a new consonant, x, that mark focus and emphasis without moving words around or leaning on tone. Each particle sits directly before whatever it highlights.
Earlier editions marked emphasis with a high tone and marked focus by moving a word to the front of the sentence. Both ran into the same wall: a word that's already high-toned for another reason (a modal, a number 3–10, a greeting word...) had no tone left to spare for emphasis, and focus-fronting had no defined way to interact with topic-fronting (ho, §11). The x- particles fix both at once, on a consonant that was sitting unused. Topic-marking with ho is untouched by this change.
| Particle | Name | Function |
|---|---|---|
| xa | Noun Focus (Identificational) | Highlights an absolute identity — "this exact item and no other" |
| xe | Dynamic Focus (Veridical) | Emphasizes an action genuinely happened — "I did indeed do this" |
| xi | Contrastive Focus | Corrects a misconception — "this one, not that one" |
| xo | Scope / Restrictive Focus | Limits the statement — "only this / merely this" |
| xu | Collective / Exhaustive Focus | Emphasizes total inclusion — "this entire group, all of it" |
Placement rule: put the particle directly before whatever it's focusing — a subject, a verb, an object, an adjective, even the object of a preposition. There's no single fixed "focus slot" the way there is for no (§6); the particle just sits next to its target.
Like the English cleft "it is X that..."
Xa mi li ta. = It is I who goes to the house.
Mi fa xa ta. = I am at the house specifically.
Like a stressed English auxiliary: "I did go"
Mi xe li ta. = I did go to the house.
Mi xe sa li. = I did indeed finish going.
When it meets an aspect marker, xe comes first — see the stacking note below.
"X, not Y" — correcting an assumption
Mi li xi ta, no paa. = I'm going to the house, not the mountain.
Pa xi pi. = The hard stone (not the soft one).
"Only" / "merely" / "just"
Mi li xo ta. = I'm going only to the house.
Mi si xo we-tsoo-wa. = I'm only 21.
Note the copula si stays — focus doesn't let you drop it (§6).
Usually goes right at the front of the clause, before the subject
Xu mu li ta. = Every single one of us is going to the house.
Since no can go on either side of a focus particle, its position changes the meaning:
Wide negation — no first
Mi no xe li ta.
= I did NOT go to the house. (active denial)
Focused negative state — focus first
Mi xe no li ta.
= I am indeed NOT going. (deliberate, emphasized)
Framing no between two copies of the same particle softens or hedges its meaning — a compact idiom pattern that needs no new vocabulary.
xe no xe + verb — Reluctant Predicate
Mi xe no xe li ta. = Fine, I'll go. (only because I must)
xa no xa + noun — Pseudo-Identity
Ta si xa no xa ta. = That's a "house"... if you can call it that.
xi no xi + adjective — Lukewarm Quality
Pa si xi no xi pi. = The stone is hard-ish.
xo no xo + phrase — Partial Scope (new)
Mi si xo no xo we-tsoo-wa. = I'm only sort-of 21.
xu no xu + phrase — Near-Totality (new)
Xu mu no xu li ta. = Almost all of us — but not quite everyone — are going.
The last two idioms extend the original three-particle pattern to all five particles, on the same "hedge the category" logic.
When a modal, a tense word, xe, and an aspect marker all want to sit right before the verb, use this order: (no) – modal/desire word – tense – xe – (no) – aspect – VERB. Only the xe ... sa ordering (focus before aspect) comes from a directly attested example; the rest of this template is a reasonable extension of that one data point, not independently confirmed for every combination.
Yíng-sha's ~60 grammar words (the small "closed class" that never grows) mostly follow the very same vowel pattern as the content vocabulary: -a core, -e process, -i quality, -o abstract, -u collective. Here's every one of them in one place.
| si | is (identity / location) |
| sa | exists |
| se | becomes |
| so | was |
| su | will be |
| ma | here |
| me | now |
| mo | there / then |
| mu | soon |
| li | go |
| la | at |
| le | from |
| ri | to |
| ra | path |
| re | through |
| fa | at / in |
| fe | from |
| fi | to |
| fo | for (benefactive / "intended for") |
| fu | by means of (instrumental / "made of") |
Plus nu = "with" (comitative) — grouped under Negation/Conjunction below since it shares that syllable shape.
| ki | have |
| ka | own |
| ke | belong (also: the yes/no question marker) |
| ko | property |
| ku | possession |
| pi | want |
| pa | need |
| pe | desire |
| po | wish |
| pu | craving |
| no | not |
| na | and |
| ne | or |
| ni | but |
| nu | with |
| ha | because |
| he | if |
| hi | although |
| ho | about |
| hu | than |
| wa | one / some |
| we | two / both |
| wi | few |
| wo | all |
| wu | many |
| ya | first |
| ye | second |
| yi | third |
| yo | fourth |
| yu | fifth |
| 'a | ah |
| 'e | eh |
| 'i | oh |
| 'o | uh |
| 'u | um |
| Wó | must / obligation |
| Wé | should / advisable |
| Wá | may / permission |
| Wí | probably / likely |
| Wú | really / truly |
You've probably noticed the pattern by now: most of these grammar words are spelled exactly like an unrelated root in the Word Bank. It's not just a coincidence in a couple of spots — it runs through almost the whole closed class. A few examples out of many:
This is the single biggest known rough edge in Yíng-sha's design — the grammar system and the 16-domain content system were built independently and happen to share the same small pool of possible syllables, so overlaps were bound to happen. It does not make real sentences hard to understand in practice, because content words and grammar words never compete for the same slot in a sentence: a grammar word like fa always sits in a fixed spot (right before a noun phrase, as a preposition), while a content word like fa ("make") always sits in the main verb slot. If you keep asking "what job is this word doing in this sentence?" rather than "what does this syllable mean on its own?", the ambiguity disappears. It's the same skill English speakers already use to separate "I'll book a flight" from "read a book."
The formal grammar above is perfectly regular, but real, fast, everyday speech wears the edges down a little — the same way English "going to" becomes "gonna." These shortcuts are fine in conversation but should be avoided in formal writing.
no and na often reduce to n' before a vowel or in quick speech.
Mi no li. → Mi n' li.
Mi na ni. → Mi n' ni.
li (go) can reduce to l' before a vowel, in rapid verb chains.
Li fa ta. → L' fa ta.
In context (like a casual reply), 1st/2nd person pronouns can just be dropped.
Mi pí li. → Pí li.
Part 5
All roots across domains, straight from the lexicon reference. Search, or filter by topic and word-type.
No roots match that search.
A set of everyday words (animals, foods, colors, emotions, sky objects) added on top of the 16-domain grid, marked with high tone so they never collide with the grid's own roots. These are included in the search above too. One difference from the main grid: within a small family like the five colors or the four animals, the vowel is picked to keep the words distinct from each other rather than to mark thing/action/quality/idea/group — so don't rely on the vowel to guess part of speech here the way you can everywhere else.
Part 6
All 31 reference sentences (19 original + 12 new focus-particle examples), showing off different rules from this guide.
1. Mi li ta.
I go to the house.
2. Ngi fa ta ke?
Is he/she in the house? — yes/no question, §5
3. Mi no pí li, ni mi li sa.
I don't want to go, but I have gone. — negation + perfective aspect + "but," §4/§7
4. He mi pí, 'ú ké pa ngi.
If I want, please give him/her a stone. — conditional + hortative, §4
5. Mi shé ho né te ki pa-wón.
I speak about the person who has a cave. — topic marking + relative clause + compound, §8/§10/§11
6. Sa no né fa ta ke?
Is there no one in the house? — existential negation, §6
7. Mi li me fo fa ta ti.
I am going to build this house. — progressive aspect + purpose, §4/§8
8. Pa xi pi hu wo pa-pa fa paa. (revised, v6.0)
It's specifically the hardest stones — not, say, the biggest — that are on the mountain. — contrastive focus on the compared quality + superlative + reduplicated plural, §12/§3/§7
9. Hi mi no ki pa, mi pa pa.
Although I don't have a stone, I like stones. — concessive + possession, §6/§8
10. Mi xi ne ni, wa li fi ta, wa li fi paa. (revised, v6.0)
It's you or I (not both) — one goes to the house, one goes to the mountain. — contrastive focus on "or" + quantifier "one," §12/§7
11. Mi wó mem.
I must sleep. — obligation modal, §4
12. Ngi wé neng sáam.
He/she should eat rice. — advisability modal + expansion vocabulary, §4
13. Mi wá re fa paa.
I may travel to the mountain. — permission modal, §4
14. Mú li fa ta.
We (you and I) go to the house. — inclusive "we," Pronouns
15. Mu li fa ta.
We (me and others, not you) go to the house. — exclusive "we," Pronouns
16. Pa te mi ken ngi si fa ta.
The stone that I hit is at the house. — object relative clause with resumptive pronoun, §8
17. Mi n' li.
I don't go. (casual) — colloquial reduction of "no," §14
18. Mi li fu fan.
I go by means of a tool. — instrumental "fu," §13
19. Mi fa ta fo ni.
I am at the house for you. — benefactive "fo," §13
New in v6.0
20. Xa mi li ta.
It is I who goes to the house. — identificational focus on subject, §12
21. Mi xe li ta.
I did go to the house. — veridical focus on the verb, §12
22. Mi li xi ta, no paa.
I am going to the house, not the mountain. — contrastive focus on the object, §12
23. Mi si xo we-tsoo-wa.
I am only 21. — restrictive focus, copula retained, §12/§6
24. Xu mu li ta.
Every single one of us is going to the house. — exhaustive focus, clause-initial, §12
25. Mi no xe li ta.
I did not go to the house (despite what you think). — wide negation over focus, §12
26. Mi xe no li ta.
I am indeed not going to the house. — focused negative state, §12
27. Mi xe no xe li ta.
Fine, I'll go to the house. — Reluctant Predicate idiom, §12
28. Ta si xa no xa ta.
That is a "house"... if you can even call it that. — Pseudo-Identity idiom, §12
29. Pa si xi no xi pi.
The stone is hard-ish. — Lukewarm Quality idiom, §12
30. Mi si xo no xo we-tsoo-wa.
I'm only sort-of 21. — Partial Scope idiom (new), §12
31. Xu mu no xu li ta.
Almost all of us — but not quite everyone — are going to the house. — Near-Totality idiom (new), §12