the vision
Uniting humanity through language
auma esi dona-iva a tuli
auma is given to you all
listen · 40 min
A Language Where Grammar Prevents Lying
An immersive introduction to AUMA — how evidentiality works, why honesty lives in the grammar, and what it feels like to speak a language built from first principles.
01 · why a language
Language is the operating system of thought
Every system of thought runs on a language. Before you can think a thing clearly, your language has to make that thought easy to hold. In a fractured world, a shared language is medicine — not because it erases difference, but because it gives difference a common place to meet.
Linguists call it the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: the language you speak shapes what you can easily think. The strong form — that language strictly determines thought — is debated. The weak form — that language nudges attention, memory, and habit — is well supported. AUMA takes the hypothesis as an invitation:
If language shapes thought, then build a language where clarity is the path of least resistance — where honesty is easier than deception, where connection is grammatical.
02 · the lineage
Standing on Zamenhof's shoulders
AUMA did not arrive from nowhere. It is the next turn of a 139-year-old dream: that people might meet in a language belonging to no nation, where no one holds home-field advantage over anyone else.
the homage
In 1887, L. L. Zamenhof published Esperanto— a neutral language so strangers could meet as equals. It reached roughly two million speakers, and its learners picked up later languages 30–50% faster. The political dream stalled — two world wars, then English as the world's default — but the cognitive case held. AUMA stands on Zamenhof's shoulders. The dream lives on, 139 years later.
easier to speak
AUMA is Esperanto stripped to essentials: fully phonetic, one sound per letter, and none of Esperanto's hard-to-type diacritics (ĉ ĝ ŝ ŭ). No grammatical gender, no noun cases. Word-building is regular and transparent — count 0–100 on a single pattern, build the days of the week from numbers, join au (soul) + ma (together) into auma, “souls together.” Tense is a small particle, not a conjugation. Learnable in an 84-day arc.
more advanced — and truly communal
AUMA carries evidentialityin its grammar: every claim must declare where it came from, as a syntactic requirement. Esperanto was engineered for peace; AUMA is engineered for the age of AI and for honesty — a language where grammar prevents lying. And where Esperanto was largely one man's gift, AUMA is a living canon the community grows together: fully open source — vocabulary, grammar, governance — evolving through a public, versioned process where anyone can propose a word. It travels friend to friend. It starts with two people.
03 · the deep design
A grammar where honesty is syntax
AUMA's most radical feature is evidentiality: the grammar asks a speaker to mark how they know what they claim. Not as politeness — as syntax. Four small words, met on day 54 of the journey:
nuna
“noo-nah”
I know by seeing
odi
“oh-dee”
I know by hearing
padi
“pah-dee”
I know by reasoning
intu
“een-too”
I know by intuition
For humans, this is a practice of self-honesty — you feel the difference between what you saw and what you assumed. For artificial minds, it is something stronger: a language in which every claim declares its source. An AI that speaks AUMA fluently cannot blur "I verified this" into "this sounds right." Hallucination becomes a syntax error.
Natural languages weren't designed for AI honesty. AUMA is.
04 · the proof
Radically learnable, on purpose
Every letter always sounds the same. One word order, never broken. Numbers built from eleven sounds. Word families grown from single roots with a handful of endings. The whole grammar fits on one page — and the 84-day journey walks you from your first sentence to graduation.
Research on Esperanto learners found something beautiful: a transparent constructed language doesn't just teach itself quickly — it accelerates every language you learn after it. A first language that shows you how languages work is a gift that keeps paying forward.
05 · the commons
An open-source language, owned by everyone
A language held in secret is a contradiction. AUMA's entire canon — every word, the frozen grammar, the 84-day curriculum, the graded readers, the governance rules — is open source under CC BY-SA, versioned like software, and machine-checked so it can never silently drift.
It is governed in three rings: a nearly-immutable seed core (pronouns, numbers, sacred roots), the living canon (versioned releases), and the community garden — where anyone can propose new words, and good ones are promoted through public gates. This is the dream: not a language we publish at the world, but one the world grows with us.
06 · the spread
It starts with two people
No marketing budget spreads a language. People do. Someone learns salama, says it to a friend, and the friend asks what it means. That's the whole engine. Every day, one small transmission of the language goes out into the world — a word, a pattern, a sentence — free to be shared, remixed, and taught onward.
This is a gift, not a product. No account. No paywall. No lock-in. Just a language of light, given to you all — and an invitation to give it to someone else.