16
votes
Do toki pona speakers, in practice, permit compounding more than three words?
In general, we don't want to make descriptions so long and complicated as to be difficult to follow. That is more important than exact word count, in my experience (as an admin of the "toki pona taso" ...
- 566
11
votes
Accepted
How does one express "want to want" in toki pona?
mi wile ala e ni: mi wile e ijo nasa.
I want not <obj>-this I want <obj>-thing crazy
The same principle as in "I do not want to drink water."
mi wile ala e ni: mi ...
- 126
10
votes
Accepted
How to say right and left in Toki Pona?
One popular proposal that comes up in a lot of discussions on this topic is to base it on the direction of the official writing system (i.e. Latin characters). Thus "poki open" for left, and "poki ...
- 566
9
votes
Should I use “double o” in Toki Pona?
The book by jan Pije and jan Lope says:
We've learned how to address people and how to make commands; now let's put these two concepts together. Suppose you want to address someone and tell them to ...
- 190
8
votes
Should I use “double o” in Toki Pona?
Although one of the "o"s is usually dropped, you don't have to, especially if it adds a certain emphasis to something or has some poetic value in a song etc, or maybe if you're calling someone first, ...
- 81
7
votes
What is the word “li” in Toki pona, grammatically?
Calling li a particle or predicate marker is correct and not misleading. A Toki Pona clause can have more than one predicate. li never marks a non-predicate. It also appears on every predicate except ...
- 1,640
6
votes
What is the word “li” in Toki pona, grammatically?
Mapping word class jargon from one language to another is a dicy project. Lojbanists decided that they needed to invent entirely new words for word class jargon. That said...
All the toki pona ...
- 1,721
6
votes
Accepted
What is the word “li” in Toki pona, grammatically?
Li in these examples could be described as a copula - this is the name for a word whose function is to link a subject and predicate.
- 3,391
6
votes
Has any conlang ever replaced the use of a pidgin?
Basic English is minimal in that it limits the number of words in the language (though not as extremely as Toki Pona). It was intended to be an international auxiliary language (although it never ...
- 1,434
6
votes
How to say right and left in Toki Pona?
Building on the answer by thrig: one could say poka pilin (side with a heart) for the left side and poka pilin ala for the right side.
It should be rather neutral and understandable as it is based on ...
6
votes
Accepted
What things can `la` mark in Toki Pona?
The particle la in Toki Pona is used mainly for two scenarios.
The first scenario is for the If/when something, then that condition. The la particle is placed in the second half of a sentence. Some ...
- 394
6
votes
Can a toki pona vocative phrase go before an adverbial phrase?
You're right that a 'la' phrase can't be inserted in the middle of a sentence: it always precedes a sentence, providing additional context (or a conditional). This is the only way I've seen used in ...
- 161
5
votes
Sciences in toki pona
It might be sona pi ijo tawa —knowledge of moving things— or sona pi ijo ante —knowledge of things that change.
- 394
5
votes
Accepted
Is there a toki pona hieroglyphics font?
toki!
a, mi jo e sitelen tawa toki pona. nimi ona li linja pona. sina ken anpa e ona kepeken nimi tawa ni. 😉
Hi! Yes, I have a script for toki pona. Its name is linja pona. You can download it by ...
- 394
5
votes
Accepted
How to say, 'Haters gonna Hate' in Toki Pona
The consensus answer (thanks Oliver Mason) for how to translate Haters gonna hate into Toki Pona is the following:
tenpo ale la jan ike li ike
Tenpo ale la translates as at all times and captures ...
- 1,640
5
votes
Accepted
Words for Mercy in Toki Pona?
toki!
Toki Pona has a word for mercy, and it is simply olin, just like love, tenderness, warmth, etc.
For instance:
mi jo e olin tan sina
(I have mercy because of you),
or
mi jo e olin tawa sina
(...
- 394
4
votes
Do toki pona speakers, in practice, permit compounding more than three words?
Some of the coffee circumlocutions are rather long like "telo wawa pimejo seli", but in practice you can find shorter ones sufficient in the context
There is even a Reddit about the question:...
- 41
4
votes
Do toki pona speakers, in practice, permit compounding more than three words?
Yes, but when this happens, you have to consider two possibilities:
This is really a content word followed by many, many modifiers
A particle has been omitted.
For the toki pona parse I wrote, I ...
- 1,721
4
votes
Accepted
Is Toki Pona a fast language?
Based off the audio file from this website, and the audio files from this website, we can infer that Toki Pona is a "fast" language. It uses 6 - 8 syllables / second, except with punctuation, where ...
- 196
4
votes
Sciences in toki pona
sijelo is "body, physical state", so you could use sona sijelo; physicists would probably like sona ale or sona ali, "knowledge of everything" :)
- 3,973
4
votes
Sciences in toki pona
To capture all of physics, perhaps "sona pi pali ijo" or simply "sona pali" (a knowledge of action). I prefer the former, since persons may tend to think only of human action with the latter, which ...
4
votes
Is there a structured toki pona dictionary/thesaurus?
Proving a negative is always difficult, but as far as I can tell there is no obvious candidate for what you're looking for and if you made one yourself it would presumably fill an empty niche in the ...
- 1,640
3
votes
Accepted
Transliterating toki pona to hebrew
Here are a few ways to deal with the problem of marking the vowels unambiguously:
Style 1 - normal Hebrew orthography
Considering the fact that there are no length distinctions or gemination, a ...
- 1,434
3
votes
What is the word “li” in Toki pona, grammatically?
The syntactical li structure was inspired by Toki Pisin ...
and in an online Tok Pisin grammar I found :
[...] Tok Pisin has its own grammatical rules.
First of all, look at the following ...
- 31
3
votes
Is there a structured toki pona dictionary/thesaurus?
It sounds like you're after a trie.
The closest example I can think of is this glosbe site. It has a search tool, which orders matches in the way you want, but not in the structure you want.
.
The ...
- 488
3
votes
Can a toki pona vocative phrase go before an adverbial phrase?
(I'm not an active tp speaker, so this is not based on my experience of usage, but just from the official book)
You could split it into two sentences (as suggested in lesson 17 of TLoG):
mama o pali ...
- 3,973
3
votes
What is a good way for a speaker of English to get started learning Toki Pona?
I used /dev/urandom's course, which is structured as a series of 13 lessons. Each lesson introduces 10 new words, some aspect of the grammar, and concludes with a series of English-to-tp and tp-to-...
- 3,356
3
votes
What is a good way for a speaker of English to get started learning Toki Pona?
(Posting a separate answer so it can be voted up or down separately.)
If you prefer a book rather than a lesson series, there are the classic lipu pu ("Toki Pona: the Language of Good") and ...
- 3,356
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