Toki Pona | ||
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Symbol: |
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Created by: | Sonja Elen Kisa | 2001 |
Setting and usage: | testing principles of minimalism, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and pidgins | |
Total speakers: | at least three fluent,[1] at least several dozen with internet chat ability | |
Category (purpose): | constructed language, combining elements of the subgenres personal language, international auxiliary language and philosophical language | |
Category (sources): | a posteriori language, with elements of English, Tok Pisin, Finnish, Georgian, Dutch, Acadian French, Esperanto, Croatian, Chinese | |
Language codes | ||
ISO 639-1: | None | |
ISO 639-2: | art | |
ISO 639-3: | – | |
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. |
Toki Pona is a constructed language first published online in mid-2001. It was designed by translator and linguist Sonja Elen Kisa of Toronto.[1][2]
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 120 root words. It is not designed as an international auxiliary language but is instead inspired by Taoist philosophy, among other things.[3]
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, has led some to feel that the language, whose name literally means "simple language", "good language", or "goodspeak", resembles George Orwell's fictional language Newspeak.[4]
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Sonja Elen Kisa is a professional translator[5] (English, French and Esperanto) and linguist living in Toronto, Ontario, Canada[6]. In addition to designing Toki Pona, Kisa has translated parts of the Tao Te Ching into English and Esperanto[7]. She maintains her homepage at www.kisa.ca.
Kisa officially used letters of the Latin alphabet to represent the language,[8] 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 120 Toki Pona roots.[9]
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.
Toki Pona has nine consonants (/p, t, k, s, m, n, l, j, w/) and five vowels (/a, e, i, o, u/). The first syllable of a word is stressed;[10] an initial vowel may be optionally proceeded by a glottal stop.[11] There are no diphthongs or long vowels, no consonant clusters, and no tone.
Consonants | Labial | Coronal | Dorsal |
---|---|---|---|
Nasal | m | n | |
Plosive | p | t | k |
Fricative | s | ||
Approximant | w | l | j |
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/.[12]
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).
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.
The following sequences are not allowed: */ji, wu, wo, ti/, nor may a final nasal occur before /m/ or /n/ in the same root.[10] Syllables that aren't word-initial must have an initial consonant,[9] 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.)
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.[9] Both its sound inventory and phonotactics (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, which would have no way of writing such syllables (see below).
Some basic features of Toki Pona's Subject Verb Object syntax are: The word li separates the subject from the predicate;[13] e precedes the direct object;[14] direct object phrases precede prepositional phrases in the predicate;[15] la separates complex adverbs or subclauses from the main sentence.[16]
The language is simple enough that its syntax can be expressed in ten rules and two exceptions:[17]
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".
Toki Pona has the basic pronouns mi (first person), sina (second person), and ona (third person).[18]
Note that 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 pronouns mi or sina, then li is not used to separate the subject and predicate.[13]
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.[19][2] A typical example is combining jan (person, pronounced "yan") with utala (fight) to make jan utala (soldier, warrior). [See 'modifiers' next.]
Nouns do not decline according to number.[13] 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.)[4] 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").
Phrases in Toki Pona are head-initial; modifiers always come after the word that they modify.[19] This trait resembles the typical arrangement of adjectives in Spanish and Arabic and contrasts with the typical English structure. Thus kasi kule poki (kasi kule, "flower," poki, "container, vessel") means "potted plant" rather than "flower pot". kasi kule ("flower") itself literally means "colorful plant".
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: 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."[20]
Demonstratives, numerals, and possessive pronouns follow other modifiers.[19]
There is a zero copula.[13]
Toki Pona does not inflect verbs according to person, tense, mood, or voice.[13] Person is inferred from the subject of the verb; time is inferred from context or a temporal adverb in the sentence. There is no true passive voice in Toki Pona; 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) 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".[15]
The 120-root vocabulary[21] is designed around the principles of living a simple life without the complications of modern civilization.[22]
Because of the small number of roots in Toki Pona, words from other languages are often translated using two or more roots, e.g. "to teach" by pana e sona, which literally means "to give knowledge".[23] Although Toki Pona is generally said to have only 118 or 120 "words", this is in fact 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.
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 words as light as cornflower blue or as dark as navy blue, even extending into shades of blue-green such as cyan.
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".[24]
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."[18]
Toki Ponans express larger numbers additively by using phrases such as tu wan for three, tu tu for four, and so on.[25] This feature was added to make it impractical to communicate large numbers.[4]
An early description of the language uses luka (literally "hand") to signify "five."[25] 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"[26]. For an example of this structure, see this posting, which uses luka luka luka wan to mean "sixteen."
Two words have archaic synonyms: 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).[4] Similarly, ali was added as an alternative to ale (all) to avoid confusion with ala (no, not) among people who reduce 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).
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.).
Toki Pona roots generally come from English, Tok Pisin, Finnish, Georgian, Dutch, Acadian French, Esperanto, Croatian, and Chinese (Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese).[27]
Many of these derivations are transparent. For example, oko (eye) is identical to Croatian oko and similar to other cognates such as Italian occhio and English ocular; likewise, toki (speech, language) is similar to Tok Pisin tok and its English source talk, while pona (good, positive), from Esperanto bona, reflects generic Romance 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 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, Tongan (an English borrowing), Akan, and an unknown language (perhaps Swahili); four phonesthetic roots (one from Japanese, one made up, and two which are found in English); and one other made-up root (the grammatical particle e).
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)
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'), 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')
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. Engish palisade), poka (bòka, genitive of bòka 'side, flank'), sijelo (tìjelo 'body, flesh'), utala (ùdarati 'beat'; cf. udara ('strike'?)), uta (ústa 'mouth')
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 amuze', 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)
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 'be willing')
11 (two shared): anpa (en bas 'down'; cf. English on base), kule (couleur 'color'), 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 'of water'; cf. English gardyloo), waso (oiseau 'bird'; cf. obsolete English enoisel)
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)
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')
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 pan 'bread'), seme (什么 shénme 'what?'), sin (新 xīn 'new'), sinpin (前边 qiánbian 'front')
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')
4: a (A!, ah!, etc. in all the above), o (English O!, Esperanto ho!, French ô!, etc.; also the Georgian vocative case 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')
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')
2: e, unpa (phonesthetic)
5: nasa (said to be from Tok Pisin nasau), and the obsolete roots kapa (protuberance), iki (a pronoun), leko (block, stairs), kan (with)
Kisa has published proverbs, some poetry, and a basic phrase book in Toki Pona.[8] A few other Toki Ponans have created their own websites with texts, comics, translated video games, and even a couple of songs.[28][29][30]
Kisa has said that at least three people speak Toki Pona fluently[1] 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 dozens of people are proficient in reading and writing. During International Congress of Esperanto Youth held in Sarajevo, August 2007, there was a special session of Toki Pona speakers with 12 participants.
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.
wan taso (Alone)
dark teenage poetry
ijo li moku e mi.
mi wile pakala.
pimeja li tawa insa kon mi.
jan ala li ken sona e pilin ike mi.
toki musi o, sina jan pona mi wan taso.
telo pimeja ni li telo loje mi, li ale mi.
tenpo ale la pimeja li lon.
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