Book words

Toki Pona has several words relating to works in the Official Toki Pona series:

• pu, "(interacting with) Toki Pona: The Language of Good"
• ku, "(interacting with) Toki Pona Dictionary"
• su, "(interacting with) the series of story books starting with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Toki Pona edition)"
• ju, lu, nu, and u, the remaining words reserved in Toki Pona Dictionary for future projects

Usage

These words are generally used to refer to the books themselves, the eras that their respective publications introduced, and the styles of speech that they include.

Even in Toki Pona, the book words are predominantly used in meta discussions about the language. Speakers also use these words in communications in other languages, effectively as short replacements for the book titles, even outside of Toki Ponglish.

In sitelen sitelen, the book words do not have their own word glyphs and are written as syllable glyphs instead, somewhat like names.

Extensions

The subject of this section is an experimental or hypothetical style that is not understood by most speakers, or is used only in specific small communities. Learners should avoid using it.

A minority of speakers ascribe extended meanings to these words, generally either to make them more useful by expanding their semantic spaces, or in conjunction with other criticism.

For example, Toki Pona Dictionary attests uses of pu for "official(ly)" and "constitution", and pu ala for "slang", although these are all listed as below majority usage. An April 2024 proposal that began in ma pona pi toki pona coins similar meanings such as "accepted" and "descriptivist" for ku, and "fictional" and "applied" for su.

Criticism

While the word pu sees near-universal usage as of the 2023 Linku survey, some Tokiponists have criticized the book words.

In an essay, jan Olipija called the words a sign of "an internal contradiction" between Toki Pona as "the language of the community" and Toki Pona as "inextricably linked to the works of jan Sonja", and argues that they reveal prescriptivist tendencies.

Conflicts with Toki Pona's philosophy and grammar have also been perceived, from arguments about word count allocation, to the words effectively functioning as proper nouns and not standard names. However, the book words have also been defended on these fronts. Regarding the word pu in 2017, jan Misali asserted that Toki Pona is "the sort of language that would have the goal of having as few words as possible but then add an extra word as a joke."