Toki Pona

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Toki Pona is a constructed language which first published online in mid-2001. It was designed by Canadian translator and linguist Sonja Elen Kisa (b. 1978), of Toronto.

Toki Pona is a minimal language. Like a pidgin, 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 phonemes and 118 words. It is not designed as an international auxiliary language but is instead inspired by Taoist philosophy, among other things.

The language is designed to shape the thought processes of its users, in the style of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. This goal, together with Toki Pona's deliberately restricted vocabulary, have led some to feel that the language, whose name literally means "simple language", "good language", or "goodspeak", resembles George Orwell's fictional language Newspeak.

Contents

Phonology

Toki Pona is phonetically minimal. Its system resembles that of Japanese but lacks distinctive voicing, geminate consonants, long vowels, and clusters of palatal consonants. (This is not how the syllables are presented in the official lessons, but it shows the parallels to better-known CV(n) languages.) It also lacks diphthongs. 

  a   e   i   o   u    Toki Pona 'u' may be rounded or unrounded.
 ka  ke  ki  ko  ku    Obstruents (stops and fricatives)
 sa  se  si  so  su      may be pronounced voiced or unvoiced.
 ta  te      to  tu    'ti' has fallen into 'si'.
 na  ne  ni  no  nu
 pa  pe  pi  po  pu
 ma  me  mi  mo  mu
 ja  je      jo  ju    'j' == IPA [j] (En <y>). 'ji' has fallen into 'i'.
 la  le  li  lo  lu
 wa  we  wi            'wu' and 'wo' have fallen into 'u' and 'o'.
         n             syllable-final

Within a word, syllable-final n cannot precede a nasal consonant (n or m), and a syllable without an initial consonant can only appear as the first syllable of a word. Sandhi effects change the pronunciation of np (but not its spelling) to [mp] or [mb].

Generally, words are accented on the first syllable.

Note that 'ju', though valid, is not in the official wordlist.

Syntax

Some basic features of Toki Pona's syntax are: The word li usually separates the subject from the predicate; e precedes the direct object; direct object phrases precede prepositional phrases in the predicate; la separates complex adverbs from the main sentence. These features plus a few others are expressed below in Extended Backus-Naur form: 

          <sentence> ::= [<sentence-adverb> "la"] <subject> "li" <predicate>
   <sentence-adverb> ::= <noun-phrase> 
           <subject> ::= <noun-phrase> | <compound-subject>
         <predicate> ::= <verb-phrase> | <compound-predicate>
  <compound-subject> ::= <subject>   "en" <subject>
<compound-predicate> ::= <predicate> "li" <predicate>
       <noun-phrase> ::= <noun> <adjective>* 
       <verb-phrase> ::= <verb> <adverb>* <direct-object>*
     <direct-object> ::= "e" <noun-phrase>

Toki Pona uses Subject Verb Object typology.

Pronouns

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

Note that the above words do not specify number. Thus, ona can mean both "he" and "they." In practice, Toki Pona speakers use the phrase mi mute to mean "we." Although much less common, ona mute means "they." However, the phrase sina mute for a pluralized "you" is strongly discouraged.

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

Nouns

With such a small vocabulary, Toki Pona relies heavily on compounds to make more complex meanings. A typical example is combining jan (person) with utala (fight) to make jan utala (soldier, warrior).

Toki Pona does not use proper nouns; instead, it uses proper adjectives, which are the language's only open class. For example, names of people and places are modifiers of the common root for "person" and "place", e.g. ma Kanata (lit. "Canada country") or jan Lisa (lit. "Lisa person").

Adjectives

Phrases 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 and Arabic and contrasts with the typical English structure.

Order of operations is completely opposite to that of Lojban. In Toki Pona, "N A1 A2" (where N represents a noun and A1 and A2 represent modifiers) is parsed as ((N A1) A2), that is, an A1 N that is A2. 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. E.g., jan pona lukin = ((jan pona) lukin), a seeing friend (jan pona = "friend", literally "good person"); jan pi pona lukin = (jan (pona lukin)) = "good-looking person".

Demonstratives, numerals, and possessive pronouns follow other modifiers.

Verbs

Some verbs, such as tawa = "to go", which in English govern prepositions, do not take e before their direct objects.

Vocabulary

The 118-word vocabulary is designed around the principles of living a simple life without the complications of modern civilization. The words generally come from English, Tok Pisin, Finnish, Georgian, Dutch, Acadian French, Esperanto, Croatian, Chinese (Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese).

Some words have archaic synonyms because they were changed to avoid a potentially confusing minimal pair. For instance, ona ("he, she, it") used to be iki but was changed because iki is too similar to ike ("bad").

See also Common phrases in constructed languages.

Colors

Toki Pona has only five root words for colors: pimeja (black), walo (white), loje (red), jelo (yellow), and laso (blue). This simplified conceptualization of colors tends to exclude a number of colors that are commonly expressed in Western languages. For example, like several natural languages, Toki Pona lacks any word that labels green as a colour distinct from both blue and yellow. However, speakers sometimes may combine these five words to make more specific descriptions of certain colors.

Numbers

Toki Pona has root words for one (wan), two (tu), and many (mute<i>). In addition, <i lang="x-tokipona">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.

An early description of the language uses luka (literally "hand") to signify "five." Kisa has deprecated this feature in the latest official description of Toki Pona. However, some Toki Pona speakers still use this structure, and Pije describes it in his unofficial lessons for the language [1]. For more examples of this structure, see [2], which uses luka luka luka wan to mean "sixteen."

Literature

Toki Pona's official literature consists of proverbs, some poetry, and a basic phrase book. Aside from the official literature, a number of Toki Ponans have created their own websites with texts, comics, translated video games, and even a couple of songs.

There are currently 10-20 proficient speakers and several hundred enthusiasts.

Sample texts

mama pi mi mute (The Lord's Prayer)
Translation by Pije

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 ma en ken en pona li pi sina. Amen.

ma tomo Pape (The Tower of Babel story)
Translation by Pije

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.

See also

External links

de:Toki Pona et:Toki pona es:Toki pona eo:Tokipono fr:Toki pona ko:도기 보나 id:Bahasa Toki Pona he:טוקיפונית la:Lingua Tociponica lt:Tokipona jbo:tokiponas nl:Toki Pona ja:トキポナ no:Toki pona nn:Toki pona pl:Toki pona ru:Токипона fi:Toki pona tt:Toki Pona zh:人工皮钦语

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