Historical usage
During its development in the early 2000s, Toki Pona had major differences from its current, standard form. Various words and features changed and were added and removed. While a lot of information has been lost, since most of the activity at that time was on the unarchived IRC chatroom, there is still enough publicly accessible information to reconstruct early forms of Toki Pona.
Phonology
The phonology has remained unchanged from its initial form. In July 2002, Toki Pona Forums user Viktoro proposed reducing Toki Pona to a three-vowel system; jan Sonja had considered the idea and ultimately rejected it.[1]
Grammar
The most notable grammatical differences are the use of en for almost every definition of English "and", and the use of pi to mean "of". In current use, en only separates multiple subjects, and pi rebrackets a following multiword phrase as a modifier. anu was historically used as a question marker, without being accompanied by seme as is currently standard; see anu § History.
en
Originally, en separated multiple modifiers that all applied to a single noun.[2]
sona pona li sona sewi ala iki li sona mute en alesona pona li sona sewi ala. iki li sona mute en ale.
True intelligence is not to know elite things, but rather to know many things about everything.[3]
ma ale li jo e toki wan en samama ale li jo e toki wan en sama.
And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.[4]
It also served to separate the subjects of a sentence, but was originally restricted to a separating subjects that were only one word.[2]
supa en ilo li nasa en sinsupa en ilo li nasa en sin.
The table and the machine are strange and new.[2]
wile en tawa jo li nasa e lawa janwile en tawa jo li nasa e lawa jan.
Racing and hunting madden our minds.[4]
There was no clear way to divide between subjects,[5] so to accommodate subjects with multiple words Sonja proposed extending en to mark subjects by going before them.[6]
en utala en utala ala li wile lonen utala en utala ala li wile lon.
Both war and peace need to exist.[7]
In early works, before late 2002, it was used more freely to separate multiple objects and prepositional phrases.
jan sewi [jan awen wawa epiku] li tu e suno en pimeja.jan sewi Jawe li tu e suno en pimeja.
God divided the light from the darkness.[4]
jan o pali e wile sina en lon sewi kon en lon majan o pali e wile sina en lon sewi kon en lon ma.
Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.[4]
However, a reform proposed in October 2002 restricted en to dividing between the subjects of a sentence and no longer dividing modifiers.[5] This reform was accepted unanimously by the online community by 1 November 2002 and became standard usage thereafter.[8]
li pi
The previous usage of pi to mean "of" could also be used with the predicate marker to mean "made of".[citation needed]
tomo ni li pi kiwen*tomo ni li pi kiwen.
This house is made out of stone.
pi X en Y
This construction was (and sometimes still is) used to mean "of X and Y" or to list two adjectives. It is mostly replaced with just listing the adjectives now, although sometimes[citation needed…] that is ambiguous.
len pi(loje en laso)*len pi loje en laso
a red-and-blue shirt
Lexicon
Many words currently falsely considered nimisin, are, in fact, not nimisin. Those include apeja, sutopatikuna, pata etc.
Some words (pu, esun, mani, pan, kiwen, ona) didn’t exist yet, though the two latter ones were added relatively early on. The word meaning “all” was spelled with i more often, this is a result of jan Pije’s course teaching it as such. Lastly, the words open & pini were used as preverbs a lot.
References
- ↑ vixcafe. (9 July 2002). "New lessons coming soon! / Trivocalic - Toki Pona Forums". Toki Pona Forums. Retrieved 19 November 2023.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Sonja Lang. (1 July 2024). "Original lesson 5". jan Pije's site.
- ↑ Sonja Lang. (1 September 2002). "Toki Pona Proverbs". tokipona.org.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Sonja Lang. (3 September 2002). "Religious Texts". tokipona.org.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 jan Sonja. (27 October 2002). "the words "en", "kin" and "kan"". Toki Pona Forums. Retrieved 2 December 2023.
- ↑ Justin B. Rye and Sonja Lang. (1 July 2002). "Correspondence". forums.tokipona.org.
- ↑ Sonja Lang. (1 July 2002). "Chat logs". tokipona.nykta.org.
- ↑ tokipona@yahoogroups.com. (1 November 2002). "Poll results for tokipona". Toki Pona Forums. Retrieved 10 October 2023.