Reduplication

The subject of this article 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.

Reduplication is repeating a word exactly or almost exactly to form a new word or phrase. In English, it occurs in words like "bye-bye" and "zigzag", in contrastive focus reduplication, and with "schm-".

Reduplication has often been suggested for Toki Pona, generally as an intensifier (for example, suwi suwi for "really cute"). However, it is not widely used, with a, mute, and suli being used for emphasis instead. It is occasionally not clear whether a repeated modifier is being used as an intensifier or as simply an ordinary word.

len ona li pimeja pimeja　

len ona li pimeja pimeja.

Their clothes were blackest black/black-on-black/very black (literally, "black black")

Other times, simply interpreting the second word as an ordinary modifier is adequate to understand the sentence.

jan ilo mute mute li pali lon ona!

jan ilo mute mute li pali lon ona!

Many many programmers worked on it!

A potential ambiguity of this feature would be the phrase lili lili. This is reported as being used by 1-10% of respondents in ku to mean "minimum." Under current standard grammar, it means "a little small". If read as reduplicated, it would also mean "very small", becoming an auto-antonym.