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From sona pona, the Toki Pona wiki
Latest comment: 6 months ago by SnpoSuwan in topic On etymology

On etymology[edit | edit source]

Both as a wandering Tokiponist and native Turkish speaker, I'd like to provide some notes on this.

Why not "jansima"?[edit | edit source]

Seeing as it's from "yansıtmak" and originally pronounced /jansɯtmɑk/ (? not good at IPA), I couldn't imagine a reason to this other than potential ambiguity with "jan Sima". At the same time, though, there are already a few words like this in pu + ku suli ("kala Ma", "pali Sa" [?], "sin Pin" [?!], "ala Sa" [?!?], "ko Kosila" [?!?!]).

Assuming that's the case, this is a minor issue. It's really not worth it to drop an entire phoneme in this word for a problem already present in some respect (however large it may be).

...or (maybe) better yet, "jansuma"?[edit | edit source]

This is more subjective, but as a Turkish native, I would say /u/ is closer to "ı" /ɯ/ than /i/ is. To be fair, "jansima" is fine, but for some reason "jansuma" sounds more "right". But I can't ascertain if you can trust my judgement :P.


I'm not saying the word should be retroactively corrected, only that these should be discussed on the article.

NatMeow (talk) 14:27, 4 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

I'm unsure whethee this should be discussed on the wiki article. we don't have any information besides 'this person decide to borrow the eord like that and it stuck'. jan Juwan (talk) 16:15, 7 April 2024 (UTC)Reply