jan't

jan't is a style of speech that avoids the word jan, meaning "human being, person".

Motivations

Many tokiponists use a headnoun other than jan, and some do not identify with jan altogether. This suggests that the concept of jan could be incomplete. The specifics of human nature and personhood are also controversial in general.

A related possible motivation is to make dehumanization unfeasible in Toki Pona.

Strategies

Head dropping

jan can sometimes be dropped when used as the head of a noun phrase. For example, jan mute may be reduced to mute, and jan ale o to ale o.

ijo

Some speakers replace jan with ijo. While English words like "thing" and "object" are chiefly inanimate, users of this strategy argue that the same does not apply to the Toki Pona word ijo. A better translation of this usage is "being".

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