voiksi

Voiksi is a term used in the community of constructed languages to denote a potential mood attached to a verb. In languages that adopt it, voiksi signals that an action is possible under certain conditions rather than certain or completed. It is used mainly in grammars, glossaries, and practice texts within conlang circles and is not part of any natural language's standard grammar.

Origin and naming: The word voiksi was coined in online conlang forums in the early 2010s, blending phonetic elements reminiscent of Finnish to evoke potentiality while remaining clearly artificial. It has since circulated in fan-written grammars and wiki glossaries. There is no official authority governing its use, and implementations vary among communities.

Grammar and usage: In typical descriptions, voiksi is realized as a suffix added to a verb stem, forming a new verb form that expresses potentiality. It does not itself encode tense; tense is marked with separate particles or other forms. Some grammars pair voiksi with conditional clauses and evidential markers to indicate the speaker's assessment of the proposition's likelihood.

Examples and scope: Voiksi is primarily documented in conlang documentation and hobbyist texts. It remains limited to fictional or experimental texts and is not widely used outside those contexts. As with other conlang features, individual projects may differ in its exact realization and orthography.