Toki Pona: The Language of Good

Copies of the book scattered on a table.

Toki Pona: The Language of Good, known in Toki Pona as lipu pu or (less formally) pu, is the foundational resource of modern Toki Pona. It was written by Sonja Lang to describe her way of speaking the language at the time and finalize her work on Toki Pona. It was originally published in English in 2014.

Contents

Toki Pona: The Language of Good presents Toki Pona's philosophy and is mostly dedicated to lessons and exercises, with texts and dictionaries afterward. Its main dictionary section is released to the public domain.

The set of Toki Pona words used in lipu pu is called nimi pu. They include 120 main words, with 1 pronunciation variant, and 3 words presented as "synonyms".

The book also features two writing systems created for the language: sitelen pona (which it fully describes) and sitelen sitelen.

The Toki Pona Dictionary has since amended pu's material with the section "Notes on lipu pu".

pu

See also ku, Reserved words.

pu
Pronunciation	/pu/
Usage	2023: Core (96% ↗︎ )2022: Core (94%)
Book and era	nimi pu
Part of speech	Content word
Codepoint	󱥕 U+F1955

The word pu is defined as "interacting with the official Toki Pona book". This generally refers to words and ways of speaking that are featured in Toki Pona: The Language of Good..

Semantic space

This text is interacting with Toki Pona: The Language of Good, so by some definitions, it is pu.

pu is sometimes used as a reference frame. For example, tenpo pu can refer to "the era of Toki Pona: The Language of Good", starting with its publication. Earth can be called mun pu nanpa wan, "the first celestial body to interact with Toki Pona: The Language of Good".

Extensions

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.

Due to the wording of its definition, pu is sometimes extended to unintuitive interactions. For a practical example, a surface upon which a copy of Toki Pona: The Language of Good is resting would be supa pu, even though it is not engaging with the text content of the book. A similar common joke is that the book should not be called pu in general, but a stack of copies is pu, since each copy is "interacting" with another.

Rarely, pu is extended to mean "official", to refer to other authoritative documents such as a constitution, or to describe conventional and standard language as opposed to slang.

pu

In the "Official Toki Pona Dictionary" section, the book Toki Pona: The Language of Good defines pu as:

ADJECTIVE  interacting with the official Toki Pona book

ku

For Toki Pona Dictionary, respondents in ma pona pi toki pona translated these English words as pu:

interact with Toki Pona: The Language of Good⁵81–100% of respondents, officially²21–40% of respondents

sitelen pona

Title page version

The sitelen pona glyph for pu represents a simplified drawing of the book's cover, or alternatively, the book radical (lipu) with the combined glyph for toki pona inside.

Editions

The English edition of Toki Pona: The Language of Good has been released as a paperback and as a Amazon Kindle e-book. The book has also been translated to several other languages.

Language editions of lipu pu

Year	Language	Title	Contains ku material?	Product listing
2014	English	Toki Pona: The Language of Good	No	0978292308
2016	French	Toki Pona: la langue du bien	No	0978292359
2021	German	Toki Pona: Die Sprache des Guten	Yes	B09MJ8JPV6
2022	Esperanto	Tokipono: La lingvo de bono	Yes	9464376090

See also

• Toki Pona Dictionary

External links

• Official website