nasin sitelen kalama

nasin sitelen kalama refers to a method of writing names in sitelen pona that doesn't rely solely on spelling out names letter by letter. It was created by waso (nameless) of kulupu kasi as a response to similar, but unmarked systems, which she felt were too unreadable.

Description

"jan Kulumin Sinpin"

• This writing system goes with the pu system, where symbols read by their first letter. You can mix these systems!
• A mora is like a syllable, but ends at the vowel because -n is a mora! na n pa
• Each dot (·) completes the next mora. [anpa] → [anpa · ] → [anpa · · ]
• Colons (:) add the whole word. [kepeken] → [kepeken · ] → [kepeken · · ] → [kepeken · · · ] → [kepeken : ]
• Everything is equally spaced, dots and colons too!

What is a mora?

In mora-timed languages, there are groups of sounds called morae (plural of “mora”) that are each the same duration. For example, in Japanese, morae can be V, CV, CyV, N (a nasal sound), or Q (a lengthening of the next consonant), and all of these get pronounced with the same duration. Most fluent toki pona speakers pronounce toki pona this way, where V, CV, and N are morae, meaning that “kon” is pronounced about twice as long as “ko,” and “pan” and “pana” are the same length.

History

Attempts at syllabic spellings before the system

Over time, some sitelen pona users began to write their names in more experimental ways. Based on the existing pu way of representing a name by writing a sitelen pona character for each letter in the name inside of a cartouche, these ways veered off into usually using less characters to form the sounds of the name. Among these were:

• Preferring a glyph to be used syllabically: jan [sitelen sona] → jan Siso, nimi [insa pan telo] → nimi Inpante
• Impossible sequences of sounds adding sounds based on what the next sound in the sitelen pona character would be: jan [sitelen sona ale] → jan Ssa → jan Sisa, telo [uta anpa] → telo Ua → telo Uja, nimi [insa pan ale] → nimi Ipa
• Using different forms to the cartouches to signify a name that is spelled like a word: kasi {seli} → kasi Seli, nimi {insa pan telo} → nimi Insa Pan Telo (or nimi Insapantelo)
• Characters get combined to form syllables: soweli [kili-awen wile-esun] → soweli Kawe

None of these were solidified and virtually all of them were met with confusion by others for a number of reasons. For example, forming cartouches differently is just something that happens in handwriting and isn't really enough to mark the cartouche as having a different system; unmarked systems are largely backwards-incompatible with pu spelling and it's not clear if [insa pan ale] spells out Ipa or Inpana or Insapanale or anything in-between; unexpectedly encountering another system stops reading flow and requires nice knowledge; no one can agree on using the same system

Creation of nasin sitelen kalama

[tbd]

Adoption

In an informal emoji reactions poll on the Discord server ma pona pi toki pona, 77.4% of those who can read sitelen pona and 81.5% of those who write in sitelen pona can read nasin sitelen kalama. 54.8% of sp readers and 61.1% of sp writers use it.

Criticism

• small dots are too easy to mistake for "lili"
• people use it as if it were the new default system, but it's only meant to formalise a way for the people who would otherwise use much worse systems, not to replace or officially expand the sitelen pona cartouches