Elongation

Toki Pona words may be elongated graphically by repeating a letter, or phonetically by lengthening a vowel or geminating a consonant (processes that are not phonemic in Toki Pona). Like in other languages, words are usually only written out elongated in informal and humorous situations. Onomatopoeia like a, mu, and n most often have elongated forms, and other interjections are likely to undergo elongation as well.

Elongation is usually done for emphasis (equivalent to following the word with a), or to indicate the prosody of a specific utterance of a word.

Some tools, such as the database for ilo Muni, are programmed to convert elongated forms by removing consecutive duplicate letters.

sitelen pona

Sheet music for "kijetesantakalu sewi". The lyrics, written in sitelen pona (and nasin sitelen kalama), use an extremely elongated kijetesantakalu glyph over a multi-bar melisma.

In sitelen pona, certain elongated forms are written as extended glyphs (connecting to a low horizontal line). Other creative visual elongations are possible depending on the glyph.

a(　　) {　　}kijetesantakalu li

linja

aaa, kiiijetesantaaakalu li liiinja.

Oooh, the feeerrrrets are noooodly.

Joke words

The subject of this section is just for fun. It might not be meant or appropriate for serious use.

Some joke animal words have been created purely to challenge font designers to implement unique elongations: tasun (tasuntasun; taaasun: taaasuntaaasun; lit.literal translation 'dachshund') and silapa (silapasilapa; si/i/ilapa:

silapa1
silapa2
silapa3

silapa1
silapa2
silapa3

; lit.literal translation 'giraffe'). They are not widely used otherwise.

See also

• Reduplication, often proposed as a nonstandard intensifier
• Stress, which may be realized as vowel length