Phonotactics

Toki Pona's phonotactics, that is the rules for putting sounds together, are well defined. Unlike its phonology, knowing the phonotactics is not needed to speak the language orally, since the main set of words already adheres to them. It is most useful for creating names and nimi sin. An asterisk marks a sequence that is not allowed phonotactically.

Rules

In the lesson "Proper Names", pu lists the phonotactic rules of Toki Pona in the following order:

1. (C)V(n) syllable structure: "Each syllable consists of a consonant plus a vowel, plus an optional n."
2. Null onset is word-initial only: "The first syllable of a word does not need to begin with a consonant."
   As a corollary, every syllable after the first does need to begin with a consonant, thus is CV(n). There are no adjacent vowels or diphthongs. The sequence ana is syllabified as a‧na (2 morae), not an‧a (3 morae).
3. No *ti: "The syllables [*]ti and [*]tin become si and sin."
   This rule concerns palatalization.
4. No *wo or *wu: "The consonant w cannot appear before o or u."
5. No *ji: "The consonant j cannot appear before i."
   These two rules cover the same thing. *wo, *wu, and *ji are disallowed because the semivowel in the onset, w or j, can be hard to distinguish from the vowel. The syllables would sound too close to o, u, and i, respectively.

At least one other rule is often noted:

• No adjacent nasals.
  In sequences like *anna and *anma, the first syllable's coda -n would assimilate to the second syllable's onset nasal: respectively ana and ama.

Coda nasal

The coda nasal or moraic nasal is an archiphoneme, that is an underspecificied phoneme, written as /N/ and realized as [m ~ n ~ ɲ ~ ŋ] depending on context. It undergoes assimilation, that is it gets more similar to the following consonant, in words such as anpa, which may be pronounced as [ˈampa]; enko (an obscure nimi sin), which may be pronounced as [ˈeŋko]; and linja, which may be pronounced as ['liɲja].

Palatalization

The syllable *ti is disallowed because of palatalization, a common sound change that has occurred in many languages. An English example is the suffix "-tion", as in "motion". The previous phonemes /ti/ have been palatalized to /ʃ/, so it sounds like "-sion" as in "mission". For the same reason, *ti is changed to si.

As the phoneme /k/ can also be palatalized, many languages merge [ki ti si]. There are no minimal pairs between ki and si in the 120 nimi pu and among all commonly used words, except for the word kin which can be mistaken for sin.

wuwojiti

wuwojiti
Pronunciation	/ˈwu.wo.ji.ti//j/ sounds like English Y, as in "fjord" or "hallelujah".
Usage	2023: Obscure44-category system, Uncommon66-category system (22% ↗︎ ) Most speakers don't use this word.2022: Rare (13%)
Book and era	No book (post-pu)
Part of speech	Content word

wuwojiti is a mnemonic word for the disallowed syllables in Toki Pona phonotactics: *wu, *wo, *ji, *ti, and their equivalents with coda nasal. Some uncommon nimi sin flout this rule, often as a joke.

Disallowed syllable	Alternatives
*wu(n)	u(n)	wa(n)
*wo(n)	o(n)
*ji(n)	i(n)	je(n)
*ti(n)	si(n)	te(n)

Syllables

The following chart shows all 92 syllables under Toki Pona phonotactics.

∅	Null coda	a	e	i	o	u	Coda nasal	an	en	in	on	un
j		ja	je	–	jo	ju		jan	jen	–	jon	jun
k		ka	ke	ki	ko	ku		kan	ken	kin	kon	kun
l		la	le	li	lo	lu		lan	len	lin	lon	lun
m		ma	me	mi	mo	mu		man	men	min	mon	mun
n		na	ne	ni	no	nu		nan	nen	nin	non	nun
p		pa	pe	pi	po	pu		pan	pen	pin	pon	pun
s		sa	se	si	so	su		san	sen	sin	son	sun
t		ta	te	–	to	tu		tan	ten	–	ton	tun
w		wa	we	wi	–			wan	wen	win	–

Number of possible words

The number of phonotactically allowed words, up to n syllables, is given by the following equation:

$92\cdot \sum _{\sigma =1}^{n}72^{\left(\sigma -1\right)}$

That is:

Syllables	Range	Count	Running total
1	a–win	92
2	aja–winwin	6 624	6 716
3	ajaja–winwinwin	476 928	483 644
n	–	$92\cdot 72^{\left(n-1\right)}$	$92\cdot \sum _{\sigma =1}^{n}72^{\left(\sigma -1\right)}$

See also

• Phonotactic matches