1. Uasi
A Guide for English Speakers
An Introduction
Uasi is a constructed language created for English speakers. The purpose of Uasi is
divided into various parts: 1) to be able to speak to other Uasi speakers as a “secret code” so that
others cannot understand or decode your conversations; 2) to learn a second language with the
least amount of effort, memorization, and time possible; 3) to provide a form of mental
stimulation that occurs only when one is challenging their brain in new ways; and finally, what I
tend to think is the most important feature, 4) to have fun with friends and family.
The most powerful element about Uasi is the fact that the Uasi dictionary is already
inside you. Each and every vocabulary word is in your reach without having to meticulously
memorize countless dictionary entries. What is required from you is to translate from English to
Uasi mentally in your head, in accordance with the rules of the language. All of the rules can be
learned in a single day. What will remain is simply to practice the language in order to increase
speed and fluency.
Uasi is an artificial language which is founded upon using information, for the most part,
from the English language. However, it also incorporates rules from the romance and Asian
languages. All of the vocabulary of the language is created simply by converting English words
into Uasi. Sentence structure, on the other hand, incorporates some aspects from other languages.
There are some concepts of Uasi that may be tricky to grasp at first. It is true that Uasi could
have been engineered to be simpler, but that would also signify that Uasi would be more easily
understood by non-Uasi speakers, voiding one of its main purposes. Therefore, Uasi is made as
simple as possible while still maintaining the quality of non-comprehension among native
English speakers; made any simpler and that quality would be lost.
The rules of Uasi vary. Nevertheless, each rule has a reason behind it. Some rules are
obvious. Others have irregular and odd patterns to them, which are easy to learn, yet more
difficult to perfect. But as you go on, you will become familiar with the rules and understand
why it has been engineered as so.
As it has been previously mentioned before, with a little concentration and effort, the
rules of Uasi can be learned in a single day. However, speaking fluently and effortless with
minimal errors will come only with time. The biggest factor is how much time you invest in
practicing. Someone who eats, sleeps and breathes Uasi may master the language in a few short
2. months. At any rate, even with minimal practice, you should be saying simple Uasi phrases in
less than a week.
Uasi 101: Main Rules
The most significant rule of Uasi is the vowel shift. If you master this rule, you master 90%
of Uasi. To form an Uasi vocabulary word, the vowels in the English word you are translating
from are shifted one place.
“a” becomes “e”
“e” becomes “i”
“i” becomes “o”
“o” becomes “u”
and “u” rolls back over to become “a”
The vowel shift is essentially a circular transition of vowels moving one place in a
clockwise motion. The image below serves to demonstrate how a beginner Uasi speaker mentally
pictures the vowel shift in order to translate words. An advanced Uasi speaker does not need to
picture the image; the shifting of vowels becomes second nature to him. Furthermore, an
advanced Uasi speaker has the Uasi words memorized – not by tediously sitting, staring and
trying to memorize words from a piece of paper, but rather by simply speaking the language the
words become memorized through a fun and effortless way; thus eliminating having to mentally
translate them. This is also why advanced Uasi speakers can speak without pauses, because they
do not have to stop and translate the words before they express them.
For example, the English word “nut” would be transformed to the Uasi word “nat”. It is
important to note that if translating from English to Uasi, the vowels shift to the clockwise. In
3. contrast, going from Uasi to English requires that the vowels shift counterclockwise. A
demonstration of this is translating the Uasi word “pong pung” to the English word “ping pong”.
Related to the vowel shift is the rule that all vowels are pronounced like the Spanish
vowels, not the English ones. These are generally easy for English speakers to grasp.
“a” is pronounced like in the English word “father”.
“e” is pronounced like to the word “met”.
“i” is pronounced like in the word “feet”.
“o” is pronounced as in the word “bone”.
“u” is pronounced as in the word “boot”.
This rule is a fixed rule, meaning the vowels always sound this way; no exceptions. In
English, the same vowels may take on different sounds in different contexts, like “pet” and
“Pete”. But in Uasi, each vowel has only one sound and they will never change.
Uasi 200: Irregular Words
Although most Uasi vocabulary words are known to you simply through mental
translation, there are words that do not follow the vowel shift (irregular words). There are some
words, that if they were to have their vowels shifted, they would still sound strikingly similar to
their original English forms, and therefore detectable by a non-Uasi speaker. So in order to make
them unintelligible to native English speakers, they have to be made irregular and must be
memorized. There are 11 irregular words in Uasi that must be memorized and many of them end
in “a”. From English to Uasi:
1. Me ma
2. She sha
3. He ha
4. We wa
5. Be ba
6. Do da
7. To ta
8. A/an ikaku
9. The osi
10. What ako
11. And upa
You may be thinking that there are still some other words that, if translated to Uasi, are
still easily detectable by English speakers, and so why are they not irregular too? The answer to
4. that question is that if every word that is easily detectable by English speakers were made into an
irregular Uasi word, the list of irregular words would be too large to memorize. And so, the Uasi
creators decided that what is important is to make only the most used words irregular. Other
words that do not appear in speech very often are not necessary to make irregular, and would
only be an additional burden to people trying to learn Uasi.
In Uasi, every vowel must be pronounced, including when there are multiple vowels next
to each other. For example, the word “gruap” (the English word “group”) is pronounced like
“gru-ap” (remember to use the Spanish vowel sounds and not the English ones). Note that in that
example, the dash is not used to emphasize a pause between the “u” and the “a”, only to show
that they are both strongly and separately pronounced.
There exists an irregular rule that requires translating certain English/Uasi words
differently. This happens when there are two identical vowels next to each other. When two
identical vowels are next to each other, the vowels shift over two places, not one. The reason
behind this rule is because many words with twin vowels, when translated into Uasi, would
sound, once again, very similar to their English counterparts. Try it for yourself with words like
“good” and “see”. This rule makes it that “good” would translate into “gaad” and “see” would
translate into “soo”.
Uasi 300: Verbs and Abbreviations
A crucial point about verbs in Uasi is that verbs are always conjugated into the present
tense. You may be wondering, “Then how can I say past and future tense sentences?” Good
question! The tense of the verb is indicated by a distinct sound made from the mouth that directly
follows after the verb. (In written cases the distinct sound is substituted for an abbreviation that
is always a capital letter which is attached to the end of a verb). These abbreviations are as
follows:
S = suction snap (signifies the letter “y”) Sound made my sucking air between either
cheek to pull tongue – building up pressure – and then releasing tongue to make a
snapping sound.
T = tongue click (signifies plurality) Sound made by raising tongue to the roof of the
mouth, then, while maintaining the tongue on the roof, pulling your tongue downward to
create a buildup of pressure, then release, to bring the tongue downward with a heavy
force which creates a click sound.
L = lip pop (signifies past tense) [remember it by air going “backward”] Close mouth.
Suck air backwards from lips. Quickly open mouth to make popping sound.
5.
P = “ploop” (signifies future tense) [remember it by air going “foreward”] Close mouth.
Air then must be blown out of mouth, escaping the lips, making a ploop sound from
quickly flapping lips and the friction of air escaping tightly closed lips.
G = gulp sound (signifies conditional tense) The Adam ’s apple must be used to fake a
gulping sound, bringing it downward.
? = chest slap (signifies a question) When Uasi is spoken verbally, a slap with the hand to
the chest at the end of a sentence signifies a question. When written, a simple question
mark substitutes the chest slap.
Here are some examples of verb usage to give you an idea of how it works:
“I went to the store” = “O guL ta osi sturi” (note that “went” is not translated into “wint”. It is
translated from the present tense “go” and then an abbreviation is added to its end).
“We will walk to the park” = “Wa welkP ta osi perk” (notice the word “will” is not present in the
Uasi translation. This is because “welkP” now signifies “will walk”).
“He would watch those movies” = “Ha wetchG thusi muvoiT”
“Maybe she will eat some cookies” = MeSbi sha ietP sumi caakoiT (Here is a rundown of the
sentence: The abbreviation S in “maybe” is the suction snap that is always substituted for the
letter “y”. “ietP” = will eat. And remember that the subject is always present in Uasi sentences. It
is not like Spanish where the subject can be absent. It is more like French where the subject must
remain. In this sentence, “sha” is the subject. “Cookies” is translated with letters “a” and not “u”
because it has twin vowels “o” and thus the rule dictates the vowels are shifted two places and
not one. And to assign plurality, the T attached to “cookie” does just that.
Uasi 400: Advanced Rules
The syntax present in Uasi is slightly different than that of the English language. In Uasi,
gerunds do not exist. This means that sentences like, “I am sitting on the chair” is translated into
“O sot un osi cheor” (“I sit on the chair”). In addition to that, the words “do/don’t/do not” are
absent in Uasi in certain contexts. These contexts are when a sentence is translated with a
negative value. Here are some provided examples:
“I don’t want to sleep” “O nu went ta sloop” (Literally: “I no want to sleep”)
“I do not swim as good as you” “O nu swom es gaad es Sua”
However, “I do my homework” is translated as “O da mS humiwurk” (Notice the difference
between those types of “do”)
6. When making an Uasi word plural, a T is added to the end of the word. In English, the
singular word “chicken” becomes the plural word “chickens”. In Uasi, the word “chicken”
becomes “chockin” and “chickens” becomes “chockinT”. Simple enough, right? Well, if the
English word has an irregular plural form, the Uasi word conserves the regular singular form of
the word and then adds a T to it. Below are some examples to clarify:
In English: foot feet.
In Uasi: faat faatT (not “foot”)
In English: woman women
In Uasi: wumen wumenT (not “wumin”)
Uasi always tries to preserve the original sounds from the English words (unless a vowel
sound overrides it). This is done so because it will make it easier for you to infer what another
Uasi speaker has said. Nevertheless, there are times when keeping the English sound will be
incompatible with the Uasi language, and the original sound must be changed. There are some
examples provided to give you an idea:
Large lergi (the “j” sound from “ge” is preserved in “gi”)
Knife knofi (the silent “k” is preserved. But the “i” at the end of the word is pronounced in
Uasi, even though it appears silent in English; this is a vowel override)
Phone phuni (“ph” sound remains like the “f” sound in both examples. The “i” is pronounced)
Few fiv (In English “few” is pronounced like “fyew”. But in Uasi, fiv is pronounced like
“feev”. So the “y” sound in “few” is lost because the vowel overrode it).
Cough cuagh (the “f” sound remains unchanged. However, the “u” and “a” are strongly
pronounced in the Uasi word)
Through thruagh (the silent “gh” sound remains unchanged)
Comb cumb (the silent “b” remains silent)
Sure sari (the “sh” sound is lost due to the vowel override)
Strategy stretigS (the “j” sound is preserved and the suction snap follows it)
Too many words exist to provide an example for each. Many follow the rules above. If you are
familiar with rules above, how the language works in general and if you use your common sense,
you will be able to translate any English word into Uasi.
7. Although the spelling of Uasi’s vowels change compared to the English words due to the
vowel shift, for the most part, Uasi tries to maintain the same spelling of the consonants as its
English counterparts. But like most rules, there is an exception. There are some Uasi words that
if their consonants were kept the same as the consonants in English, an incompatible or difficult
pronunciation of the word would occur. That is why there are three instances when consonant
spelling must differ from English:
1. When a word ends in “w”.
2. When a word contains the group of letters “tion”.
3. When a word contains the pair of letters “ca”.
Words that end in “w” pose a complication for Uasi. Try pronouncing the words
“knuw”(know), “diw”(dew), “jew”(jaw), “nuw”(now), etc. The sound of the “w” in combination
with the preceding vowel is often hard to pronounce or differentiate. So the Uasi creators have
decided that when a word ends in “w”, the “w” will be substituted with a “v”. This makes it
easier to pronounce and differentiate.
Know knuv
Dew div
Now nuv (Note that “nuv” and “knuv” sound the same. Context clues will discern them)
Words that have “tion” in them make the translation to Uasi very difficult and sloppy.
The word “nation” would translate to “netoun”. This word is not only hard to pronounce, but
may confuse Uasi speakers upon reading or hearing it. And on top of that, the “sh” sound in
“nation” is unclear if it is preserved or not because of the confusing spelling. This is why
anytime the group of letters “tion” is translated into Uasi, they become “shun”. This helps make
it easier to pronounce and detect. Example:
Nation neshun
Lastly, when the pair of letters “ca” are translated into Uasi, they become “ce”. However,
this changes the sound, because “ca” has a hard “k” sound, while “ce” appears to have an “s”
sound. In order to preserve the hard “k” sound, “ca” become “ke”.
Car ker (if it were “cer”, it would sound like “sair”).
There are other words that if translated into Uasi, their spelling and pronunciation may
confuse or create a difficulty for the speaker and/or listener. However, changing the consonant
spelling every time this problem occurred would be far too confusing and far too much work to
justify wanting to learn and speak Uasi, especially because a focal feature of Uasi is to enjoy
8. learning and speaking it. Therefore, spelling is changed only with the aspects of the language
that appear most frequently.
Uasi 500: Perfecting the Language
Congratulations if you’ve made it this far in the manual and you have understood and
thoroughly digested the rules thus far in the Uasi language. The remainder of this section is for
those intellectuals who want to learn every aspect of the language in order to perfect their Uasi
skills and speak without having doubts like, “am I saying this correctly in Uasi?” Well
unfortunately I’m here to tell you that sometimes there may not be a truly correct way. English is
a language with a heritage of diverse words that originated from many different languages, and
therefore Uasi may not always have a perfect or a 100% agreed upon translation.
That being said, that does not mean that Uasi cannot be used as a fun way to
communicate between each other. Uasi is able to convey just about any idea that the English
language is able to. The only difference is that Uasi’s linguistics has not been thoroughly
scrutinized. This means that every area of incompatibility with the English language has not yet
been found, pointed out, or fixed.
Here I would just like to show just a few areas where Uasi research has still not been
entirely successful in fixing every flaw of the language. I’ll share what our ideas are about how
to work through the flaws, or how to deal with things that cannot be tweaked to work perfectly
how we would like.
English letter combinations that do not translate well into Uasi or sound too similar to English
words:
“ea”
“or”
“er”
“at”
“ai”
“io”
(Note: there may be others)
Words that have the letter pair “ea” in them usually sound similar in English and Uasi.
For example, the word “eat” translates to “iet”. There is no clear way to alter this. It is also
unclear if this is even a big problem for the language or not. Some people would say it is fine as
is. Others may disagree.
Words that have the pair of letters “or” are difficult to pronounce in Uasi. Attempt saying
the words “wurld” (world) or “fur” (for) in Uasi. The best idea as of now how to fix this problem
9. is to add a subtle pause in between the “u” and the “r” in the Uasi word. The dash in the
following example is only used to illustrate the subtle pause: “wu-rld”, “wu-rk”, “fu-r”. An
advanced Uasi speaker remembers to add the subtle pause in order to articulate the words with
the most clarity.
The letter pair “er” also sounds similar to the Uasi translation “ir” and it is difficult to pronounce
in some contexts.
“At” is very similar to Uasi translation “et”
The letter pair “ai” like in “chair” is slightly clumsy to pronounce when translated to Uasi.
The letter pair “io” as in “champion” is very difficult and awkward to pronounce as well.
Champion chempoun. The best way to solve this would be like in the examples of “or” letter
pairs where a subtle pause is added: “chempo-un”.
*Remember that we want to limit how many irregular rules there exist in the language in order to
help people learn Uasi with the most simplicity possible. So to add rules for all the above
examples would overcomplicate the language.
Proper nouns are not recommended to translate from English to Uasi, because that can
make things very confusing. However, if you want an official Uasi name, then disregard the last
sentence.
Using the past participle also is not recommended in Uasi. This means that it is better to
say “I saw it” (O sooL ot) than to say “I have seen it” (O hevi soon ot) which uses the past
participle. However, there are times when the past participle cannot be avoided using. For
example, “the store is closed” (osi sturi os clusid).
The Uasi abbreviations are always capitalized. This can create a problem if you want to
write in all capital letters. We suggest not doing that when writing in Uasi. Also, the beginning
letters of sentences start with a capital letter. So if an Uasi a word starts with a “y” (which is the
suction snap in Uasi), it can be confusing. Context clues must be used to infer what is being said.
An example:
“Yesterday was fun” “SistirdeS osL fan” (Is the first capital “s” simply a capital “s” or is it a
suction snap?)
Now you see just a few challenges that confront Uasi. Some may be able to be fixed,
some may be forever present. Either way, it does not stop you from learning the language for
recreational purposes and having fun speaking with your loved ones. I wish you all the best in
your Uasi endeavors and may one day Uasi spread worldwide. Good luck and enjoy.