Profanity

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Profanity is the use of offensive or obscene words for a variety of purposes, often to express strong emotions, as a grammatical intensifier, or to express informality. While Toki Pona does not have any defined profanity, many words in Toki Pona are sometimes translated to other languages as profanity.

Insults

Insults, or to speak in a way that causes disrespect of abuse, often makes use of profanity. Insults often happen by portraying something unfairly, voicing aggression or intent to harm towards them, breaking their trust, making accusations, lying, talking over them, or being dismissive. There is no go-to insult in Toki Pona, although a multitude of insulting phrases can be created.

Exclamations

Quick exclamations to let off steam are made up on the spot, fitting the situation. Common examples include:

• ike — used when something generally bad happens
• jaki — used when something displeasant happens
• pakala — used when something doesn't go as planned or breaks
• a — used as a general reaction to anything
• mu — used to voice an unwordable response out of frustration
• kala — for when your hovercraft is filled with too many eels^{[citation needed…]}This claim needs references to reliable sources:

  Personal inexperience with both hovercrafts and anguilliformes

  (Feb 2024)

Emphasis

Instead of adding words associated with negative qualities, the word a covers most cases of emphasis. In specific cases, mute, wawa, suli, and sometimes also namako and kin get used.

Code-switching

Toki Pona makes no significant distinction between an informal and formal register, so idiomatic swearing would not be used for code-switching.

In the Official Toki Pona series

There have been some mentions of profanity in the Official Toki Pona series, particularly for the translations in Toki Pona Dictionary.

jaki

In Toki Pona Dictionary, jaki is translated as "crap" with a frequency score of three (41–60% of participants), and as "shit" and "bullshit" with a frequency of 2 (21–40% of participants)

pakala

In Toki Pona Dictionary, pakala is translated as "damn", "goddamn", and "heck" with a frequency score of four (61–80% of participants), as "fuck" and "fucking" with a frequency of 3 (41–60% of participants), and as "crap" with a frequency of 2 (21–40%).

unpa

In Toki Pona Dictionary, unpa is translated as "fucking" with a frequency of 3 (41–60% of participants), and "fuck" with a frequency of 2 (21-40%). However, this also covers the literal, non-taboo sense of "fuck" to mean "sex"; using unpa as a profane exclamation is widely considered a calque.

References

English Wikipedia has an article on
profanity.