lo
| Pronunciation | /lo/ 🔊 |
|---|---|
| Usage | 2023: Not notable (1% ↗︎ ) Most speakers don't understand this word.2022: Obscure (0%)
|
| Book and era | No book (post-pu) |
| Part of speech | Particle |
lo (or lu) is a marginal particle that marks a preposition.
Etymology[edit | edit source]
The word lu is derived from alu, an obscure context marker. It was coined by Theepicosity, kala pona Tonyu, and akesi kon Nalasuni in 2020.[1][2]
Following the publication of Toki Pona Dictionary in 2021, jan Pensa proposed changing lu to lo to avoid it clashing with the word reserved by Sonja Lang.[3][4]
Function[edit | edit source]
lo or lu can be placed in front of a preposition. This can be used for experimental prepositions, or to disambiguate common prepositions.
mi pali e ijo ni lo utala sinami pali e ijo ni lo utala sina.
I make this object in opposition to you.
mi pana e ijo mi tawa sina lo esun ijo sinami pana e ijo mi tawa sina lo esun ijo sina.
I give this thing to you in exchange for your thing.
mi pana e tomo lo tawa sinami pana e tomo lo tawa sina.
I give you a house.
together with ja[edit | edit source]
The experimental preverb-marking particle ja was also designed to work in combination with lu or lo to allow for unambiguous modification of prepositions.[5]
mi pali e ni lo kepeken wawa ja luka mi.
I made this by using my hands with a lot of force.
soko li lo ante mute ja leko.
Mushrooms are very different from squares.
sitelen pona[edit | edit source]
A proposed sitelen pona glyph for lo (lo) depicts a leftwards arrow from a vertical bar, similar to a reversed maplet arrow (↤).
See also[edit | edit source]
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ Theepicosity [@theepicosity]. (2 October 2020). [Message posted in the
#sona-musichannel in the ma pona pi toki pona Discord server]. Discord. Retrieved 12 March 2024. Summarized conversation:akesi kon Nalasuni: (pilin mi la please do not actually everything preps, it makes sentence parsing very uncomfortably difficult to me)
- I would much rather have a prep-marker particle
Theepicosity: sona musi: lon is actually the prep marker particle
- mi pali lon utala sina = i work against you
- or maybe thats better suited for la
- utala sina la mi pali
- yeah
- i could see that
kala pona Tonyu: oo
- omg the prep marker is alu
- everything's solved now everyone go home
Theepicosity: if you really wanted to use alu you could shorten it to just lu
- and lu = prep marker
kala pona Tonyu: oooo LU
akesi kon Nalasuni: mi sitelen e lipu lu utala sina?
Theepicosity: yeee
kala pona Tonyu: i like lu
- ↑ Theepicosity [@theepicosity]. (2 October 2020). [Message posted in the
#jakichannel in the ma pona pi toki pona Discord server]. Discord. Retrieved 12 March 2024.another musi concept word, that everyone seems to want really badly:
Prepositional Particle - lu
lu comes directly before a preposition to indicate the start of a prepositional phrase
lu is not required when the word after is in the prepositional class. (e.g. tawa, kepeken, lon, sama, en tan) This is so that sentences which are pre-lu remain the same.
usually, only the first word after the lu is used as a preposition, but this depends on how much you like modifying preps.Examples:
mi pali e ijo ni lu utala sina.
I make this object in opposition to you.
mi pana e ijo mi tawa sina lu esun ijo sina.
I give this thing to you in exchange for your thing.
- ↑ jan Pensa [@jpensa]. (27 September 2021). [Message posted in the
#sona-musichannel in the ma pona pi toki pona Discord server]. Discord. Retrieved 12 March 2024. "yeah, I've been thinking lately that, even though lu is pre-ku and it existed before Sonja reserving the word, if lu wants to be future-proof it might be better to change it to "lo" or something. maybe even have it be an ale/ali situation :P". - ↑ jan Pensa [@jpensa]. (5 October 2021). [Message posted in the
#jakichannel in the ma pona pi toki pona Discord server]. Discord. Retrieved 12 March 2024.lo – ~post-ku~ Prepositional particle that marks that the next word is a preposition.
← post-ku variant of lu, to avoid collision with the word reserved by Sonja (see
... lu)Allows for non-pu prepositions. lo is not required when the word after is in the prepositional class (e.g. tawa, kepeken, lon, sama, tan), but it can be used to disambiguate (e.g. mi pana e tomo lo tawa sina)
Examples:mi pali e ijo ni lo utala sina.
I make this object in opposition to you.
mi pana e ijo mi tawa sina lo esun ijo sina.
I give this thing to you in exchange for your thing.
Usually, only the first word after lo is used as a preposition. You can use lo with ja to make modified or compound prepositions (see
... ja).See
... unambiguousfor more experimental ways to grammatically disambiguate Toki Pona. - ↑ (28 July 2021). [Message posted in the
#nimisin for marking preverbsthread in the#sona-muschannel in the ma pona pi toki pona Discord server]. Discord. Retrieved 3 February 2024.
Further reading[edit | edit source]
- "lo" on lipu Linku