Guide to Minification

How do you write foreign names in Mini?

Outside of the official 1,000 words of Mini, the proper names of people, places, and objects are purposively not standardized, but you can use these simple guidelines to help:

1. Use Mini orthography as much as possible for words that can be expressed in it (Amerika, Kanada). Transliterated words do not need to follow the same syllable formation rule (C?Vn?) or stress pattern as normal Mini words. (It’s /a ‘me ri ka/, not /a me ‘ri ka/.)

For sounds that don’t exist in Mini, feel free to use whatever conventions exist in the language you are borrowing from (e.g. sh for /ʃ/, h for /h/, y for /j/).

America    => Amerika
Shanghai   => Shanghai
Luxembourg => Luksemburg
Yalta      => Yalta

2. Calque it! If a proper name contains a word with a direct (or near-direct) translation to Mini, feel free to translate that term:

New York       => Nu York
Great Britain  => Mega Britan
Basque Country => Bask Paisa
United States  => Lan de-i Uno
Iceland        => Ise-Lan
Pakistan       => Paki-Lan
Montenegro     => Monte-Kali

3. If a proper name has an orthography or phonology unfriendly to Mini, but has a historic Latinate name, use that for transliteration:

中国 Zhōngguó (China) => Sīnae    => Sina
Deutschland          => Germania => Germania

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