Book words

Toki Pona has several words, hereon the book 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 nonstandard and will not be understood by most speakers.

If you are a learner, this information will not help you speak the language. It is recommended to familiarize yourself with the standard style, and to be informed and selective about which nonstandard styles you adopt.

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^{[citation needed…]}This claim needs references to reliable sources:
Primary source
(Apr 2024) coins similar meanings such as "accepted" and "descriptivist" for ku, and "fictional" and "applied" for su.

Criticism

Despite the high usage of the word pu as of the 2023 Linku survey, some Tokiponists have criticized the book words.

One essay^{[citation needed…]}This claim needs references to reliable sources:
whose? Is this jan Olipija's blog?
(Apr 2024) calls 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".

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."