Toki Pona - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Constructed language

A planned or constructed language—known colloquially as a conlang—is a language whose phonology, grammar, and/or vocabulary has been consciously devised by an individual or group, instead of having evolved naturally...

, first published online in mid-2001. It was designed by translator and linguist Sonja Elen Kisa of Toronto

Toronto

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

.

Toki Pona is a minimal language. Like a pidgin

Pidgin

A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the...

, it focuses on simple concepts and elements that are relatively universal among cultures. Kisa designed Toki Pona to express maximal meaning with minimal complexity. The language has 14 phoneme

Phoneme

In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....

s and 123 root words. It is not designed as an international auxiliary language

International auxiliary language

An international auxiliary language or interlanguage is a language meant for communication between people from different nations who do not share a common native language...

but is instead inspired by Taoist

Taoism

Taoism refers to a philosophical or religious tradition in which the basic concept is to establish harmony with the Tao , which is the mechanism of everything that exists...

philosophy, among other things.

The language is designed to shape the thought processes of its users, in the style of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis

Linguistic relativity

The principle of linguistic relativity holds that the structure of a language affects the ways in which its speakers are able to conceptualize their world, i.e. their world view...

in Zen-like fashion. This goal, together with Toki Pona's deliberately restricted vocabulary, has led some to feel that the language, whose name literally means "simple language", "good language", or "goodspeak", resembles George Orwell

George Orwell

Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...

's fictional language

Fictional language

Fictional languages are by far the largest group of artistic languages. Fictional languages are intended to be the languages of a fictional world and are often designed with the intent of giving more depth and an appearance of plausibility to the fictional worlds with which they are associated, and...

Newspeak

Newspeak is a fictional language in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the novel, it refers to the deliberately impoverished language promoted by the state. Orwell included an essay about it in the form of an appendix in which the basic principles of the language are explained...

Authorship

Sonja Elen Kisa is a translator (English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

and Esperanto

Esperanto

is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...

) and linguist

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

living in Toronto

Toronto

, Ontario

Ontario

Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

. In addition to designing Toki Pona, Kisa has translated parts of the Tao Te Ching

Tao Te Ching

The Tao Te Ching, Dao De Jing, or Daodejing , also simply referred to as the Laozi, whose authorship has been attributed to Laozi, is a Chinese classic text...

into English and Esperanto.

Writing system

Kisa officially uses letters of the Latin alphabet

Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...

to represent the language, with the values they represent in the IPA: p, t, k, s, m, n, l, j, w, a, e, i, o, and u. (That is, j sounds like English y, and the vowels are like Spanish.)

Capital letters are only used for personal and place names (see below), not for the first word of a sentence. That is, they mark foreign words, never the 123 Toki Pona roots.

A few enthusiasts have adapted other scripts for use in Toki Pona: Korean hangul, tengwar, a set of logograms taken from Unicode, and an original abugida.

Inventory

Toki Pona has nine consonant

Consonant

In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...

s (/p, t, k, s, m, n, l, j, w/) and five vowel

Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...

s (/a, e, i, o, u/). The first syllable of a word is stressed. There are no diphthong

Diphthong

A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...

s, long vowels, consonant cluster

Consonant cluster

In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word splits....

s, or tone

Tone (linguistics)

Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...

Consonants	Labial Labial consonant Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals...	Coronal Coronal consonant Coronal consonants are consonants articulated with the flexible front part of the tongue. Only the coronal consonants can be divided into apical , laminal , domed , or subapical , as well as a few rarer orientations, because only the front of the tongue has such...	Dorsal Dorsal consonant Dorsal consonants are articulated with the mid body of the tongue . They contrast with coronal consonants articulated with the flexible front of the tongue, and radical consonants articulated with the root of the tongue.-Function:...
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...	m	n
Plosive	p	t	k
Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...		s
Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...	w	l	j

Distribution

The statistic vowel spread is fairly typical cross-linguistically. Counting each root once, 32% of vowels are /a/, 25% /i/, /e/ and /o/ a bit over 15% each, and 10% are /u/. 20% of roots are vowel initial. The usage frequency in a 10kB sample of texts was slightly more skewed: 34% /a/, 30% /i/, 15% each /e/ and /o/, and 6% /u/.

Of the syllable-initial consonants, /l/ is the most common, at 20% total; /k, s, p/ are over 10%, then the nasals /m, n/ (not counting final N), with the least common, at little more than 5% each, being /t, w, j/.

The high frequency of /l/ and low frequency of /t/ are somewhat unusual among the world's languages. The fact that /l/ occurs in the grammatical particles la, li, ala suggests that its percentage would be even higher in texts; the text-based stats cited above did not specifically consider initial consonants, but indicate that /l/ was about 25%, while /t/ doubled its frequency to just over 10% (/k/, /t/, /m/, /s/, /p/, respectively, ranged over 12% to 9% each, with /n/ unknown, and the semivowels /j/ and /w/ again coming in last at 7% each).

Syllable structure

All syllables are of the form (C)V(N), that is, optional consonant + vowel + optional final nasal, or V, CV, VN, CVN. As in most languages, CV is the most common syllable type, at 75% (counting each root once). V and CVN syllables are each around 10%, while only 5 words have VN syllables (for 2% of syllables). In both the dictionary and in texts, the ratio of consonants to vowels is almost exactly one-to-one.

Most roots (70%) are disyllabic; about 20% are monosyllables and 10% trisyllables. This is a common distribution, and similar to Polynesian.

Phonotactics

The following sequences are not allowed: */ji, wu, wo, ti/, nor may a final nasal occur before /m/ or /n/ in the same root. Syllables that aren't word-initial must have an initial consonant, though in roots like ijo (from Esperanto io) and suwi (ultimately from English sweet), that might be considered an orthographic convention, with the effect that glottal stop only marks word boundaries. (The sequences /ij/ and /uw/ are no more easily distinguished from simple /i/ and /u/ than the banned */ji/ and */wu/ are.)

Allophony

The nasal at the end of a syllable can be pronounced as any nasal consonant, though it is normally assimilated to the following consonant. That is, it typically occurs as an [n] before /t/ or /s/, as an [m] before /p/, as an [ŋ] before /k/, and as an [ɲ] before /j/.

Because of its small phoneme inventory, Toki Pona allows for quite a lot of allophonic variation. For example, /p t k/ may be pronounced [b d ɡ] as well as [p t k], /s/ as [z] or [ʃ] as well as [s], /l/ as [ɾ] as well as [l], and vowels may be either long or short.
Both its sound inventory and phonotactics

Phonotactics

Phonotactics is a branch of phonology that deals with restrictions in a language on the permissible combinations of phonemes...

(patterns of possible sound combinations) are found in the majority of human languages and are therefore readily accessible. For example, */ji, wu, wo/ are also impossible in Korean, which is convenient when writing Toki Pona in hangul

Hangul

Hangul,Pronounced or ; Korean: 한글 Hangeul/Han'gŭl or 조선글 Chosŏn'gŭl/Joseongeul the Korean alphabet, is the native alphabet of the Korean language. It is a separate script from Hanja, the logographic Chinese characters which are also sometimes used to write Korean...

, which would have no way of writing such syllables (see below).

Syntax

Some basic features of Toki Pona's subject–verb–object syntax are: The word li separates the subject from the predicate;
e precedes the direct object;
direct object phrases precede prepositional phrases in the predicate;
la separates complex adverbs or subclauses from the main sentence.

The language is simple enough that its syntax can be expressed in ten rules

Phrase structure rules

Phrase-structure rules are a way to describe a given language's syntax. They are used to break down a natural language sentence into its constituent parts namely phrasal categories and lexical categories...

:
[brackets] enclose optional elements, and *asterisks mark elements which may be repeated.

Syntactic rules

1. A sentence may be

(a) an interjection

(b) of the form [sub-clause] [vocative] subject predicate

(The interjection may be a, ala, ike, jaki, mu, o, pakala, pona, or toki.)

2. A sub-clause may be

(a) [taso] sentence la

(b) [taso] noun phrase la

("If/during sub-clause, then main-clause")

3. A [vocative] is of the form

[noun phrase] o

4. A subject is of the form

(a) mi or sina

(b) other noun phrase li

(mi mute and sina mute require li to form a predicate.)

5. A predicate may be

(a) simple noun phrase [prepositional phrase]*, or

(b) verb phrase [prepositional phrase], or

(The conjunction may be anu (or) or li (and). The latter is merely subject li predicate 1 li predicate 2 etc., with the first li dropping out if the subject is mi or sina)

6. A noun phrase may be

(a) noun [modifier]*, or

(b) simple noun phrase pi (of) noun plus modifier* (if there is a modifier which only applies to the 2nd noun), or

(The conjunction may be anu (or) or en (and). A 'simple' noun phrase is one which does not have a conjunction.)

7. A prepositional phrase is of the form

preposition noun phrase

8. A verb phrase may be

(a) verbal

(b) modal verbal

(d) modal_x ala modal_x plus verbal (both modals are the same)

(The modal may be kama (coming/future tense), ken (can), or wile (wants to).)

9 A verbal may be

(a) verb [modifier]* (this is an intransitive verb)

(b) verb [modifier]* plus a direct object* (this is a transitive verb)

(Some roots may only function as transitive or intransitive verbs.)

10. A direct object is of the form

e simple noun phrase

Some roots are used for grammatical functions (such as those that take part in the rules above), while others have lexical meanings. The lexical roots do not fall into well defined parts of speech; rather, they may generally be used as nouns, verbs, or modifiers, depending on context or their position in a phrase. For example, ona li moku may mean "they ate" or "it is food".

Pronouns

Toki Pona has the basic pronouns mi (first person), sina (second person), and ona (third person).

The above words do not specify number or gender. Thus, ona can mean "he", "she", "it", or "they". In practice, Toki Pona speakers use the phrase mi mute to mean "we". Although less common, ona mute means "they" and sina mute means "you" (plural).

Whenever the subject of a sentence is either of the unmodified pronouns mi or sina, then li is not used to separate the subject and predicate.

Nouns

With such a small root-word vocabulary, Toki Pona relies heavily on noun phrases (compound nouns), where a noun is modified by a following root, to make more complex meanings.
A typical example is combining jan (person) with utala (fight) to make jan utala (soldier, warrior). [See 'modifiers' next.]

Nouns do not decline according to number. jan can mean "person", "people", or "the human race" depending on context.

Toki Pona does not use isolated proper nouns; instead, they must modify a preceding noun. (For this reason they are called "proper adjectives"; they are functionally the same as compound nouns.) For example, names of people and places are used as modifiers of the common roots for "person" and "place", e.g. ma Kanata (lit. "Canada country") or jan Lisa (lit. "Lisa person").

Modifiers

Phrase

In everyday speech, a phrase may refer to any group of words. In linguistics, a phrase is a group of words which form a constituent and so function as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence. A phrase is lower on the grammatical hierarchy than a clause....

s in Toki Pona are head-initial; modifiers always come after the word that they modify. This trait resembles the typical arrangement of adjectives in Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

and Arabic

Arabic language

Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...

and contrasts with the typical English structure. Thus a kasi kule, literally "plant of color", always means a kind of plant, the colorful kind (most likely a flower). A kasi kule poki, literally "plant of color of container" can only be the kind of "plant of color" that comes in a container, i.e. a potted flower.

In the other direction, the English expression "plant pot" refers to a kind of container, so it must be rendered into toki pona with the word meaning "container" at the beginning, i.e. poki kasi (literally "pot of plant"). A "flower pot" would be poki pi kasi kule (literally "pot of flower").

Order of operations differs from that in Lojban

Lojban

See also discussed by Arthur Protin, Bob LeChevalier, Carl Burke, Doug Landauer, Guy Steele, Jack Waugh, Jeff Prothero, Jim Carter, and Robert Chassell, as well as , the concepts which "average English speakers won't recognize" because most of them "have no exact English counterpart".Like most...

.
In Toki Pona, "N A1 A2" (where N represents a noun and A1 and A2 represent modifiers) is always understood as ((N A1) A2), that is, an A1 N that is A2: E.g., jan pona lukin = ((jan pona) lukin), a friend watching (jan pona, "friend," literally "good person").

This can be changed with the particle pi, "of", which groups the following adjectives into a kind of compound adjective that applies to the head noun, which leads to jan pi pona lukin = (jan (pona lukin)), "good-looking person."

Demonstratives, numerals, and possessive pronouns follow other modifiers.

Verbs

There is a zero copula

Zero copula

Zero copula is a linguistic phenomenon whereby the subject is joined to the predicate without overt marking of this relationship...

.

Toki Pona does not inflect verbs according to person, tense, mood, or voice. Person is inferred from the subject of the verb; time is inferred from context or a temporal adverb in the sentence. The closest thing to passivity in Toki Pona is a structure such as "(result) of (subject) is because of (agent)." Alternatively, one could phrase a passive sentence as an active one with the agent subject being unknown.

Some prepositions can be used as a subclass of main verbs.
For example, tawa means "to" as a preposition or "to go" or "to go to" as a verb; lon means "in" or "at" as a preposition or "exist, be in/at" as a verb; kepeken means "with" (in the sense of the instrumental case

Instrumental case

The instrumental case is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action...

) as a preposition or "to use" as a verb.
lon and tawa (but not kepeken) omit the direct object marker e before their objects: mi tawa tomo mi "I'm going to my house".

Vocabulary

The 120-root vocabulary is designed around the principles of living a simple life without the complications of modern civilization.

Because of the small number of roots in Toki Pona, words from other languages are often translated using a collocation

Collocation

In corpus linguistics, collocation defines a sequence of words or terms that co-occur more often than would be expected by chance. In phraseology, collocation is a sub-type of phraseme. An example of a phraseological collocation is the expression strong tea...

of two or more roots, e.g. "to teach" by pana e sona, which literally means "to give knowledge". Although Toki Pona is generally said to have only 118 or 120 "words", this is inaccurate, as there are many compound words and set phrases which, as idiomatic expressions, constitute independent lexical entries or lexemes and therefore must be memorized independently.

On the word list on the official website there are 123 roots including those not present in the vocabulary.

Colors

Toki Pona has five root words for colors: pimeja (black), walo (white), loje (red), jelo (yellow), and laso (blue). Each word represents multiple shades: laso refers to colors as light as cornflower blue

Cornflower blue

Cornflower blue, a shade of azure, is a shade of light blue with relatively little green compared to blue. This color was one of the favorites of the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, the other being yellow....

or as dark as navy blue

Navy blue

Navy blue is a very dark shade of the color blue which almost appears as black. Navy blue got its name from the dark blue worn by officers in the British Royal Navy since 1748 and subsequently adopted by other navies around the world....

, even extending into shades of blue-green

Blue-green

Blue-green is a color that is a representation of the color that is between blue and green on a typical traditional old-fashioned RYB color wheel.Blue-green is belongs to the cyan family of colors....

such as cyan

Cyan

Cyan from , transliterated: kýanos, meaning "dark blue substance") may be used as the name of any of a number of colors in the blue/green range of the spectrum. In reference to the visible spectrum cyan is used to refer to the color obtained by mixing equal amounts of green and blue light or the...

Although the simplified conceptualization of colors tends to exclude a number of colors that are commonly expressed in Western languages, speakers sometimes may combine these five words to make more specific descriptions of certain colors. For instance, "purple" may be represented by combining laso and loje. The phrase laso loje means "a reddish shade of blue" and loje laso means "a bluish shade of red".

Numbers

Toki Pona has root words for one (wan), two (tu), and many (mute). In addition, ala can mean zero, although its more literal meaning is "no" or "none."

Toki Ponans express larger numbers additively by using phrases such as tu wan for three, tu tu for four, and so on. This feature was added to make it impractical to communicate large numbers.

An early description of the language uses luka (literally "hand") to signify "five." Although Kisa has deprecated this feature in the latest official description of Toki Pona, its use is still common; from January to July 2006, it was used 10 times more often on the tokipona mailing list as a number than in its original sense of "hand." For example, using this structure luka luka luka wan would mean "sixteen."

Obsolete roots
Two words have archaic synonym
Synonym
Synonyms are different words with almost identical or similar meanings. Words that are synonyms are said to be synonymous, and the state of being a synonym is called synonymy. The word comes from Ancient Greek syn and onoma . The words car and automobile are synonyms...

s: nena replaced kapa (protuberance) early in the language's development for unknown reasons. Later, the pronoun ona replaced iki (he, she, it, they), which was sometimes confused with ike (bad). Similarly,
ali was added as an alternative to ale (all) to avoid confusion with ala (no, not) among people who reduce
Vowel reduction
In phonetics, vowel reduction is any of various changes in the acoustic quality of vowels, which are related to changes in stress, sonority, duration, loudness, articulation, or position in the word , and which are perceived as "weakening"...

unstressed vowels, though both forms are still used.

Words that have been simply removed from the lexicon, without being replaced, include leko (block, stairs), kan (with), and pata (sibling, cousin).

New roots
Besides ali, nena, and ona, which replaced existing roots, two roots were added to the original 118: pan for cereals (grain, bread, pasta, rice, etc.) and esun for places of commerce (market, shop, etc.).

Provenance

Toki Pona roots generally come from English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, Tok Pisin
Tok Pisin
Tok Pisin is a creole spoken throughout Papua New Guinea. It is an official language of Papua New Guinea and the most widely used language in that country...

, Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...

, Georgian
Georgian language
Georgian is the native language of the Georgians and the official language of Georgia, a country in the Caucasus.Georgian is the primary language of about 4 million people in Georgia itself, and of another 500,000 abroad...

, Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...

, Acadian French
Acadian French
Acadian French , is a regionalized dialect of Canadian French. It is spoken by the francophone population of the Canadian province of New Brunswick, by small minorities in areas in the Gaspé region of eastern Quebec, by small groups of francophones in Prince Edward Island, in several tiny pockets...

, Esperanto
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...

, Croatian
Croatian language
Croatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...

, and Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...

(Mandarin and Cantonese).

Many of these derivations are transparent. For example, oko (eye) is identical to Croatian oko and similar to other cognates such as Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

occhio and English ocular; likewise, toki (speech, language) is similar to Tok Pisin
Tok Pisin
Tok Pisin is a creole spoken throughout Papua New Guinea. It is an official language of Papua New Guinea and the most widely used language in that country...

tok and its English source talk, while pona (good, positive), from Esperanto bona, reflects generic Romance
Romance languages
The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...

bon, buona, etc. However, the changes in pronunciation required by the simple phonetic system make the origins of other words more difficult to see. The word lape (to sleep, to rest), for example, comes from Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...

slapen and is cognate with English sleep; kepeken (to use) is somewhat distorted from Dutch gebruiken, and akesi from hagedis (lizard) is scarcely recognizable. [Because *ti is not possible in Toki Pona, Dutch di comes through as si.]

Although only 14 roots (12%) are listed as derived from English, a large number of the Tok Pisin, Esperanto, and other roots are transparently cognate with English, raising the English-friendly portion of the vocabulary to about 30%. The portions of the lexicon from other languages are 15% Tok Pisin, 14% Finnish, 14% Esperanto, 12% Croatian, 10% Acadian, 9% Dutch, 8% Georgian, 5% Mandarin, 3% Cantonese; one root each from Welsh
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...

, Tongan
Tongan language
Tongan is an Austronesian language spoken in Tonga. It has around 200,000 speakers and is a national language of Tonga. It is a VSO language.-Related languages:...

(an English borrowing), Akan
Twi
Asante, or Ashanti, is one of three literary dialects of the Akan language of southern Ghana, and the prestige dialect of that language. It is spoken in and around Kumasi, the capital of the former Ashanti Empire and current subnational Asante Kingdom within Ghana.Along with the Akuapem dialect,...

, and an uncertain language (apparently Swahili
Swahili language
Swahili or Kiswahili is a Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Mozambique Channel coastline from northern Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoro Islands. It is also spoken by ethnic minority groups in Somalia...

); four phonesthetic
Sound symbolism
Sound symbolism or phonosemantics is a branch of linguistics and refers to the idea that vocal sounds have meaning. In particular, sound symbolism is the idea that phonemes carry meaning in and of themselves.-Origin:...

roots (two which are found in English, one from Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

, and one which was made up); and one other made-up root (the grammatical particle e).

Tok Pisin
All but one of these derive ultimately from English.

18: insa (insait, from Eng. inside), kama (kamap, Eng. come up), ken (ken, Eng. can), lili (liklik 'small'), lon (long 'at', from Eng. along), lukin (lukim, Eng. look 'em), meli (meri 'woman', from Eng. Mary), nanpa (namba, Eng. number), open (open, Eng. open), pakala (bagarap, Eng. bugger up), pi (bilong 'of', from Eng. belong), pilin (pilim, Eng. feel 'em), pini (pinis, Eng. finish), poki (bokis, Eng. box), suwi (swit, Eng. sweet), taso (tasol 'only, but', from Eng. that's all), toki (tok, Eng. talk)

Also obsolete pata (brata, from Eng. brother)

Finnish
17 (one shared): ike (ilkeä 'bad'), kala (kala 'fish'), kasi (kasvi 'plant'), kin (-kin 'even, any'), kiwen (kiven, accusative/genitive of kivi 'stone'), linja (linja 'line'; cf. English 'linear'), lipu (lippu 'banner, ticket, flag'), ma (maa 'land'), mije (miehen, accusative/genitive of mies 'man'), nena (nenä 'nose'), nimi (nimi 'name'), pimeja (pimeä 'dark'), sama (sama 'same'; also Esperanto sama), sina (sinä 'thou'), suli (suuri 'big'), wawa (vahva 'strong'), walo (valo 'light' (not dark), valko- 'white' (in compound words), valkoinen 'white')

Croatian
The body-part words come from Croatian.

14: kalama (galáma 'fuss, noise'; cf. English clamour), lawa (glava 'head'), luka (rúka 'arm, hand'), lupa (rupa 'hole'), nasin (náčin 'manner'), noka (nòga 'leg'), oko (òko 'eye'; cf. English ocular), olin (volim 'I love'; cf. English volition), ona (ona 'she'), palisa (pàlica 'stick'; cf. English palisade), poka (bòka, genitive of bòk 'side, flank'), sijelo (tìjelo 'body, flesh'), utala (ùdarati 'beat'; cf. udara ('strike'?)), uta (ústa 'mouth')

Esperanto
Most of these come from English or Romance.

13 (one shared): ilo (ilo 'tool', from English/Romance suffix -il, -ile), ijo (io 'thing'), la (la 'the', from French/Italian la), li (li 'he', from French lui, Italian egli), musi (amuzi 'to amuse', French amuser), mute (multe 'many'; cf. English multitude), pali (fari 'to do, to make'; cf. Italian fare), pona (bona 'good'; cf. English bona fide), sama (sama 'same', also Finnish sama), selo (ŝelo 'skin, peel', from English shell), suno (suno 'sun', from English sun), tenpo (tempo 'time', from Italian (& English) tempo), tomo (domo 'house'; cf. English domestic, domicile)

Dutch
Most of these are cognate with their English translations.

11: akesi (hagedis 'lizard'), ale/ali (al, alle 'all'), ante (ander 'other'), awen (houden 'hold'), en (en 'and'), kepeken (gebruiken, bruiken 'use'; cf. English 'brook', as in "could brook no equal"), lape (slapen 'sleep'), loje (rooie, rood 'red'), sitelen (schilderen 'picture, paint, portray'; cf. Eng. dial. sheld 'particolored'), weka (weg 'way, path, away'), wile (willen 'want')

Acadian French
11 (two shared): anpa (en bas 'down'; cf. English on base), kule (couleur 'colour'), kute (écouter 'listen'; cf. English 'scout, auscultate'), lete (fret/frette 'cold'; French froid), len (linge 'linens'), monsi (mon tchu/tchul 'my ass'; French mon cul), moli (mourir 'die'; cf. English mortal), pini (finis 'finished'; also Tok Pisin pinis), pipi (bibitte), supa (English/French surface 'surface'), telo (de l'eau 'some water'; cf. English gardyloo), waso (oiseau 'bird'; cf. obsolete English enoisel)

English
These roots were taken directly from English. Their semantics, however, may differ substantially. For example, tawa comes from "toward", but can mean "to go to".

10 (two shared): jelo (yellow), jaki (yucky), mani (money), mu (moo!), mun (moon), pilin (feeling; also Tok Pisin pilim), sike (circle), supa (English/French surface), tawa (towards), tu (two), wan (one)

Georgian
8: ala (არა ara 'no, not'), anu (ანუ anu 'or'), kili (ხილი xili 'fruit'), seli (ცხელი tsxeli 'hot'), sewi (ზევით zevit 'up'), sona (ცოდნა tsodna 'to know'), soweli (ცხოველი tsxoveli 'animal'), tan (დან dan 'from')

Mandarin
6 (one shared): jo (有 yǒu 'to have'), kon (空气 kōngqì 'air'), pan 'grain, cereal product' (饭 fàn 'rice'; also Cantonese 飯 faahn; cf. Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

pan 'bread'), seme (什么 shénme 'what?'), sin (新 xīn 'new'), sinpin (前边 qiánbian 'front')

Cantonese
4 (one shared): jan (人 yàhn 'person'), ko (膏 gòu 'fat, ointment'), ni (呢 nì 'this'), pan 'grain, cereal product' (飯 faahn 'rice'; also Mandarin 饭 fàn; cf. Spanish pan 'bread')

Multiple languages
4: a (A!, ah!, etc. in all the above), o (English O!, Esperanto ho!, French ô!, etc.; also the Georgian vocative case
Vocative case
The vocative case is the case used for a noun identifying the person being addressed and/or occasionally the determiners of that noun. A vocative expression is an expression of direct address, wherein the identity of the party being spoken to is set forth expressly within a sentence...

suffix -ო -o), mi (English me, Tok Pisin mi, Esperanto mi, Dutch mij, Croatian me ~ mi), mama (Georgian მამა mama 'father'; most of the other languages above mama, maman, etc. 'mother')

Other languages
5: esun 'store' (Akan, from edwamu [edʒum] 'at market', from dwa [dʒwa] 'market'), kulupu (Tongan kulupu, from English group), laso (Welsh glas 'sky, blue-green'), moku 'eat' (Japanese phonesthetic モグモグ(食べる) mogu mogu (taberu) 'munch'), pana 'give' (Swahili pana 'to give to each other')

Unknown
5: nasa, and the obsolete roots kapa (protuberance), iki (a pronoun), leko (block, stairs), and kan (with).

Literature
Kisa has published proverb
Proverb
A proverb is a simple and concrete saying popularly known and repeated, which expresses a truth, based on common sense or the practical experience of humanity. They are often metaphorical. A proverb that describes a basic rule of conduct may also be known as a maxim...

s, some poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

, and a basic phrase book
Phrase book
A phrase book is a collection of ready-made phrases, usually for a foreign language along with a translation, indexed and often in the form of questions and answers.- Structure :...

in Toki Pona. A few other Toki Ponans have created their own websites with texts, comics, translated video games, and even a couple of songs.

Community
Kisa is reported to have said that at least 100 people speak Toki Pona fluently and estimates that a few hundred have a basic knowledge of the language. Traffic on the Toki Pona mailing list and other online communities suggests that several hundred people have dabbled in it. During International Congress of Esperanto Youth held in Sarajevo, August 2006, there was a special session of Toki Pona speakers with 12 participants.

Sample texts

mama pi mi mute (The Lord's Prayer
Lord's Prayer
The Lord's Prayer is a central prayer in Christianity. In the New Testament of the Christian Bible, it appears in two forms: in the Gospel of Matthew as part of the discourse on ostentation in the Sermon on the Mount, and in the Gospel of Luke, which records Jesus being approached by "one of his...

)

Translation by Pije/Jopi

mama pi mi mute o, sina lon sewi kon.

nimi sina li sewi.

ma sina o kama.

jan o pali e wile sina lon sewi kon en lon ma.

o pana e moku pi tenpo suno ni tawa mi mute.

o weka e pali ike mi. sama la mi weka e pali ike pi jan ante.

o lawa ala e mi tawa ike.

o lawa e mi tan ike.

tenpo ali la sina jo e ma e wawa e pona.

Amen.

ma tomo Pape (The Tower of Babel
Tower of Babel
The Tower of Babel , according to the Book of Genesis, was an enormous tower built in the plain of Shinar .According to the biblical account, a united humanity of the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating from the east, came to the land of Shinar, where...

story)

Translation by jan Siwen (Stephen Pope)

jan ali li kepeken e toki sama.

jan li kama tan nasin pi kama suno li kama tawa ma Sinale li awen lon ni.

jan li toki e ni: "o kama! mi mute o pali e kiwen. o seli e ona."

jan mute li toki e ni: "o kama! mi mute o pali e tomo mute e tomo palisa suli. sewi pi tomo palisa li lon sewi kon. nimi pi mi mute o kama suli! mi wile ala e ni: mi mute li lon ma ante mute."

jan sewi Jawe li kama anpa li lukin e ma tomo e tomo palisa.

jan sewi Jawe li toki e ni: "jan li lon ma wan li kepeken e toki sama li pali e tomo palisa. tenpo ni la ona li ken pali e ijo ike mute. mi wile tawa anpa li wile pakala e toki pi jan mute ni. mi wile e ni: jan li sona ala e toki pi jan ante."

jan sewi Jawe li kama e ni: jan li lon ma mute li ken ala pali e tomo.

nimi pi ma tomo ni li Pape tan ni: jan sewi Jawe li pakala e toki pi jan ali. jan sewi Jawe li tawa e jan tawa ma mute tan ma tomo Pape.

wan taso (Alone)

dark teenage poetry

ijo li moku e mi. (Something is eating me.)

mi wile pakala. (I want to hurt.)

pimeja li tawa insa kon mi. (Darkness goes inside of me.)

jan ala li ken sona e pilin ike mi. (Nobody can know my pain.)

toki musi o, sina jan pona mi wan taso. (Poetry, you are my one and only friend.)

telo pimeja ni li telo loje mi, li ale mi. (This ink is my blood, is my all.)

tenpo ale la pimeja li lon. (Darkness always exists.)

See also

Alphabet of human thought
Alphabet of human thought
The alphabet of human thought is a concept originally proposed by Gottfried Leibniz that provides a universal way to represent and analyze ideas and relationships, no matter how complicated, by breaking down their component pieces...

Hyponymy

Natural semantic metalanguage
Natural semantic metalanguage
The Natural semantic metalanguage is a linguistic theory and a practical, meaning-based approach to linguistic analysis. The theory is based on the conception of Polish professor Andrzej Bogusławski...

Philosophical language
Philosophical language
A philosophical language is any constructed language that is constructed from first principles, like a logical language, but may entail a strong claim of absolute perfection or transcendent or even mystical truth rather than satisfaction of pragmatic goals...

Pirahã language
Pirahã language
Pirahã is a language spoken by the Pirahã. The Pirahã are an indigenous people of Amazonas, Brazil, living along the Maici River, a tributary of the Amazon....

External links

tokipona.org, the official site

Sonja Elen Kisa's website

a Nadder! translations of some classic literature as well as some original works.

lipu pi jan Pije with lessons, texts, translated video games, comics, and other works.

lipu pi jan Jakopo with pangrams, phoneme frequency analysis, lessons in Esperanto, and links to isolate sites.

Corey's site has a few translations and discusses alternate writing systems for Toki Pona.

Wikipesija is an online encyclopedia written in Toki Pona, which was once part of the Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...

project.

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.