Block Structure

sitelen Kuwi is a block-based system (similar to Korean) with each block containing up to three pieces:

• two semantic halves, and
• one grammatical marker (i.e. a particle).

li00

The top half of the block functions as the head and the bottom half as a modifier. For example, "soweli lili" can be written like this:

sowelilili

In toki pona, when a phrase (head + modifiers) contains more than two words, only the first word acts as the head. The same applies to having more than one block in sitelen Kuwi. Only the top half of the first block acts as the head. For example, here's how you would write "soweli lili suwi mute":

sowelililisuwimute

If a phrase contains only one head and no modifiers, we use the special "empty" glyph - which carries neither a semantic meaning nor pronunciation. This means that the sentence "soweli li lili" would look like this:

soweli- li_lili-

Instead of adding the “empty” glyph, the writer can also choose to stretch the primary noun or verb to take up the whole block space. This means that you can write the sentence "soweli li wile ala e kili" in two main different ways:

soweli- liwileala ekili-

animal liwileala eplant

This method is reserved for handwritten sitelen leko, as the font does not support any standardised version of these stretched glyphs. This means there is plenty of room for creativity when deciding how to stretch. Feel free to add to or change the glyphs in this form as long as it is recognisable.