So what exactly do we do all day here in the Ayola headquarters? Well, we often spend painstaking amounts of time building as many as one vocabulary word! For example, this afternoon Professor Stimets and I spent over an hour deciding on the appropriate Ayola translations for the English preposition ‘across.’ Since the commonly occurring combining form, trans- cannot function as an Ayola word on its own, we had to consult all the foreign language dictionaries to find alternative words Ayola might adopt. We found two main meanings of ‘across’: ‘from one side to the other of’ and ‘on the other side of.’ After reviewing the translations of these in several of the Indo-European languages, we selected ‘Äez’ from Slovene to make tcezu for ‘on the other side of’ and ‘across’ from English to make krosu for ‘from one side to the other of.’ Though the forms ‘trav-’ and ‘travers-’ were common in the Romance languages, they conflict with preexisting roots in Ayola which have other meanings. To avoid replicating roots and thus confusing meanings, we went with the less popular yet still distinct forms from the Slavic and Germanic categories. Here are the two forms used as prepositions in example sentences:
Â
Dya habitats tcezu la rivro.                  He lives across the river.
Dya kurits krosu la strado.                  He ran across the street.
Â
In addition, in Ayola, preposition roots may also be used verbally.
Â
La dormitoryo tcezats la rivro.              The dormitory is across the river.
La ponto krosats la rivro.                     The bridge is across (spans) the river. Â