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[[File:Toki pona.svg|thumb|180px|The ''toki pona'' logo. It is retrofitted into ''[[sitelen pona]]'' as the combined glyph {{sp|toki-pona}}.]]
'''''toki pona''''' (literally "the language of good"; often titlecased in English as '''Toki Pona''') is a philosophical artistic [[wikipedia:Conlang|constructed language]] created by [[Sonja Lang]] in 2001
== Language rules ==
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Revision as of 09:23, 13 July 2023
toki pona (literally "the language of good"; often titlecased in English as Toki Pona) is a philosophical artistic constructed language created by Sonja Lang in 2001. It has a community of over 1800 speakers[1] and is mainly spoken online, where it is one of the most popular conlangs. Many creative works have been made in Toki Pona or translated into it.
Language rules
- Phonology: Letters are pronounced as in the International Phonetic Alphabet. Stress is on the start of each word.
- Most of the consonants are intuitive to English speakers. j is an i with a swash tail, pronounced like English Y as in fjord and hallelujah. Vowels are pronounced as in languages like Spanish, Japanese, and Esperanto.
- There are well-defined phonotactics, but that only matters for transliterating names.
- Multiple subjects are separated with en.
- Predicates come after all subjects. li starts each predicate, with two exceptions: If the subject is only mi ("I", "we") or only sina ("you"), li is dropped.
- The main word of the predicate can be analyzed as a verb. By this analysis, Toki Pona has dynamic and stative verbs. In the sentence mi moku, the word moku can be dynamic, "to eat", or stative, "to be food".
- Modifiers (adjectives or adverbs) come after their heads (nouns or verbs).
- In toki pona, toki ("language") is the head, and pona ("good") is the modifier. sike loje mi is literally "ball red my", and means "my red ball". This is typically the opposite of English, but there are counterexamples like "someone special", "anything new", "time immemorial", and "Alcoholics Anonymous".
- Phrasal modifiers start with pi, which groups the rest of the phrase.
- tomo telo nasa means "strange water room", perhaps "weird washroom"; tomo is modified by telo and nasa. tomo pi telo nasa means "strange-water room", perhaps "pub", because alcohol is a liquid that makes people strange; tomo is modified by telo nasa, wherein telo is modified by nasa.
- pi is a can of worms. Many speakers avoid it.
- Direct objects come after their respective verb. e starts each direct object.
- A basic sentence is ona li sona e toki pona. ona ("they") is the subject, sona ("to know") is the verb marked by li, and toki pona is the direct object marked by e.
- Prepositional phrases use no special particle.
- Proper names are modifiers and require a descriptive head.
- Sonja Lang becomes jan Sonja, "the person Sonja". Canada becomes ma Kanata, "the place Canada".
- Commands use o in place of li. If the subject is only sina, that subject can be dropped.
- Yes-or-no questions are formed with "verb ala verb", or with anu seme at the end. The main way to answer "yes" is to repeat the verb.
- Preverbs (auxiliary verbs) come before their main verb.
- Context phrases come before the main sentence. la ends each context phrase.
History
Sonja Lang started developing Toki Pona in 2001 to simplify her thoughts during periods of depression. She shared early versions of the language online and got feedback on words and features. The project initially gained popularity with Esperantists. Much of the early activity was on Yahoo! Groups and a dedicated phpBB forum.
tenpo pu
Sonja Lang published the first official Toki Pona book, Toki Pona: The Language of Good (lipu pu), in May 2014. It marked the end of her development of the language, and presented her own way of using it. The book presents Toki Pona's philosophy and is mostly dedicated to lessons, with texts and dictionaries afterward. It includes 120 main words, with 3 more presented as "synonyms". It also features two writing systems created for the language: sitelen pona and sitelen sitelen.
Toki Pona continued to grow in popularity in the following years, in part with the spread of reviews and video lessons such as jan Misali's 2015 series, 12 days of sona pi toki pona. It also started to attract scientific research judging the language's performance in various applications, both therapeutic and unrelated to its original purposes.
A French translation of lipu pu, titled Toki Pona: la langue du bien, was published in 2016.
tenpo ku
In July 2021, Sonja Lang compiled the descriptive Toki Pona Dictionary (lipu ku), providing corrections and clarifications of lipu pu and passing the torch of the language's evolution onto the community.
Later in 2021, lipu pu was translated to German as Toki Pona: Die Sprache des Guten with bonus material from lipu ku.
After rejected requests in 2008 and 2018, the ISO 639-3 Registration Authority adopted the identifier tok
for Toki Pona on January 20, 2022. The webpage was updated on the 28th.
lipu pu was translated into Esperanto as Tokipono: La lingvo de bono. The edition includes notes and words featured in lipu ku, and additional Toki Pona texts.
Community
The official Toki Pona website links to several communities:
- Discord:
- ma pona pi toki pona ⟵ important cultural centre
- ma toki pona (Toki Pona only)
- kama sona (for beginners)
- Telegram: toki pona - jan li wile pona taso
- Mastodon: toki.social
- Facebook: toki pona
- Where is Toki Pona used?