Sonja Lang - Toki Pona: The Language of Good

Peer reviewed by Christopher Huff (jon Kowisi), Matthew Chisholm (janMatejo), Joop Kiefte (jan Mimoku), Michael Everson, Aaron Chapman (jan Alono), John Clifford (jan Kipo), Matthew Martin (jan Mato), Bryant J. Knight(jan Pije), Robert Warnke (jan Lope), Sam Brenner (jan San), Kobi Kai Calev(jan Ka), Nizar Habash (jan Nisa), and Paul Swift (jan Po).

by Jonathan Gabel.

Copyright 2014 Sonja Lang (jan Sonja)

are licensed under the CreativeCommons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Sample template you can use:

The is in the publicdomain.

ISBN: 978-0-9782923-4-8 (first English Kindle edition)

in memory of
Rick Miller
(jan Wiko)

I begin with the name of the Divine.
mi open lon nimi sewi.

Youre holding the Toki Pona book!
sina pu a!

Toki Pona was my philosophicalattempt to understand the meaningof life in 120 words.
toki pona li tan seme?tenpo pini la mi wile sonae kon ale kepeken nimi lili.

Through a process of soulsearching, comparative linguisticsand playfulness, I designed a simplecommunication system to simplifymy thoughts.
mi lukin e kon mi. mikama sona e toki mute. mimusi. mi pali e nasin tokilili. ona li pona e toki insami.

I first published my micro-languageon the Web in 2001. A smallcommunity of Toki Pona fansemerged.
mi pana e toki lili mi tawajan ale lon ilo lipu lontenpo pini. kulupu lili likama. ona li olin e tokipona.

In this book, I hope to present thelanguage in its completed form.This is the way I use Toki Pona.
pu la mi wile pana e selopini pi toki pona. nasin nila mi kepeken toki pona.

Sonja
jan Sonja

Modern languages are cluttered with complex ways to express thesimplest things. What is a geologist but a person of earthknowledge? Is there any useful difference between the words big,large and huge?

Toki Pona is a language that breaks down advanced ideas to theirmost basic elements. If you are hungry, you want eat. To teach isto give knowledge. This allows us to drastically reduce thevocabulary and grammatical structures needed to say what wehave to say.

Simplify your thoughts. Less is more.

Toki Pona is semantically, lexically, and phonetically minimalist.The simplest and fewest parts are used to create the maximumeffect. The entire language uses only 120 words and 14 letters ofthe alphabet.

Each word has been carefully selected to cover a broad range ofmeanings. For example, kili means any fruit or vegetable, whichincludes turnips, kumquats and even lingonberries. A lipu is anydocument, whether a printed book, postcard or clay tablet. A jan(pronounced yan) is any human being, regardless of whether theyare Muslim or atheist, black or white, rich or poor.

In many ways, Toki Pona resembles a pidgin. When people fromdifferent cultures need to communicate, they must focus on theelements that are most universal to our human experience.

Toki Pona offers a path for semantic reduction. Just as we canrewrite a mathematical fraction like 4/8 as 1/2, we can distill our thoughts to their most fundamental units to discover what thingsreally mean. We can understand complex ideas in terms of theirsmaller parts.

An inherent idea of goodness is transparent throughout thelanguage. The expression for friend literally means good person.Happiness is feel good. Toki Pona itself means good language orsimple language.

Although the vocabulary and grammar are very simple, thelanguage does contain a few essential syntax rules to keep asentence together. For example, the particle li separates the subjectfrom the verb.

By being so general and vague, Toki Pona often lacks the ability todistinguish finer shades of meaning. For example, by groupingevery possible bird species into the single word waso, we eliminatethe need to learn hundreds of vocabulary items. However, we arealso left incapable of distinguishing between eagles and chickens.The closest translations might be strong bird (waso wawa) andstupid bird (waso nasa).

Toki Pona has a rather narrow range of functions. Although it isvery easy to meditate and communicate honest thoughts andeveryday activities in Toki Pona, it is impossible to translate achemical textbook or legal document in the language withoutsignificant losses. Such texts are products of the complex, moderncivilization we live in and are not suited for a cute, little languagelike Toki Pona.

As an artistic language with limited means of expression, Toki Ponadoes not strive to convey every single facet and nuance of humancommunication. Nevertheless, the results we can achieve with sofew elements prove to be very interesting, if not spirituallyinsightful.

If English is a thick novel, then Toki Pona is a haiku.

Training your mind to think in Toki Pona can lead to deeperinsights. If many of lifes problems are created by our excessthoughts, then Toki Pona filters out the noise and points to thecentre of things. Many of these principles were inspired by the DaoDe Jing, which teaches, Can you coax your mind from itswandering and keep to the original Oneness?

For example, what is a bad friend? The Toki Pona expression forfriend is jan pona, or literally good person. You quickly realize thata bad friend is a contradiction in itself. In another example, theword wile means both to need and to want. This helps us bringour desires in alignment with our actual needs.

Toki Pona has a strong focus on context. From the perspective of apassenger, a car might be tomo tawa (an indoor compartment thatmoves). The driver might see it as ilo tawa (machine for going). Ifyoure crossing the street and bam! a car hits you, then itmight be a kiwen tawa (hard object that moves).

The speaker and listener understand the meaning of a wordthrough its context. Toki Pona promotes mindfulness. Become fullyaware of the present moment.

Toki Pona uses only 14 letters of the alphabet.

There are five vowels, similar to those of Spanish, Japanese orEsperanto.

Toki Pona has nine consonants. The letters p t k m n s l w soundexactly as in English. The Toki Pona letter j sounds like an Englishy. For example, the word jelo sounds like yellow.

Toki Pona is a forgiving language. Because it has so few sounds,your tongue enjoys more freedom. For example, if you say dogiinstead of toki, your pronunciation would still be acceptable.

Stress falls on the first syllable of a word. Pronounce it a bit louder,longer or higher-pitched. For example, the word