sitelen Kililisa

sitelen Kililisa is a tokiponized name for the Cyrillic alphabet, particularly as used to write Toki Pona. According to the 2022 Toki Pona census, it is the fourth most commonly used writing system for Toki Pona, after sitelen Lasina, sitelen pona, and sitelen sitelen.

Name

sitelen Kililisa is a tokiponization of Russian кириллица (kirillica), Bulgarian кирилица (kirilica), Ukrainian кирилиця (kyrylycja), Belarusian кірыліца (kirylica). A less common name is sitelen Silili, which is likely a tokiponization of English Cyrillic.

Serbo-Croatian ћирилица / ćirilica and Polish cyrylica may be tokiponized as sitelen Sililisa. This tokiponization is not in active use, and is only listed here for completeness.

Alphabet

Consonants

sitelen Lasina	sitelen Kililisa
m	м
n	н
p	п
t	т
k	к
s	с
w	в or ў; (see below)
l	л
j	j, й, or via iotated vowels; (see below)

Vowels

Without iotated vowels

sitelen Lasina	sitelen Kililisa
a	a
e	е or э; (see below)
i	и or і; (see below)
o	о
u	у

Iotated vowels

With iotated vowels

sitelen Lasina	sitelen Kililisa
a	a
e	э or е; (see below)
i	и or і; (see below)
o	о
u	у
ja	я
je	е or є; (see below)
jo	ё
ju	ю

Variation

Like the Latin alphabet, the Cyrillic alphabet shows significant variation in its use in orthographies of different languages. Unlike sitelen Lasina, which has remained unchanged since the early days of Toki Pona, sitelen Kililisa lacks standardization, with different users drawing on influence from different Cyrillic scripts. As such, sitelen Kililisa refers to a family of related writing systems, rather than any particular standard.

w

All Slavic languages (except Polish) lack a phonemic /w v/ distinction, and most lack a [w] sound, which presents a problem for sitelen Kililisa. Two letters are commonly used to represent Toki Pona /w/: Вв and Ўў.

The letter Вв is present in all Cyrillic orthographies for Slavic languages, and is used to represent /v/, with the exception of Ukrainian /ʋ ~ w/, and Serbo-Croatian /ʋ/. The phoneme /v/ in Slavic languages is largely derived from PIE *w.

The letter Ўў is only present in the Belarusian orthography, where it is used for /v/ in coda position, where it is pronounced as [w]. It is largely derived from Proto-Slavic *l in coda position, which was vocalized in Belarusian, Ukrainian, and Serbo-Croatian.

Examples of /w/

Method	Example
sitelen Lasina	o tawa waso
В в	о тава васо
Ў ў	о таўа ўасо

j

Though /j/ is present in all Slavic languages, all Cyrillic Slavic orthographies (except Vuk's Cyrillic) use iotated vowel letters to represent it. Some Toki Pona speakers embrace the complexity of iotation, while others choose to avoid it.

Examples of /j/

Method	Example	Notes
sitelen Lasina	jan Sonja li jo e ijo jelo
Context-independent ј	јан Сонја ли јо е ијо јело	Most similar to Vuk's Cyrillic
Context-independent й	йан Сонйа ли йо е ийо йело
Iotated vowels	ян Соня ли ё э иё ело	Most similar to Russian Cyrillic

nj

When iotated vowels are used, /nj/ becomes a special case. Speakers of East Slavic languages have a /nʲ/ phoneme and may erroneously read the sequence of <н> + iotated vowel as [nʲ]. Though a minor issue, this has caused some users of sitelen Kililisa to employ disambiguation strategies:

Examples of /njV/ in iotated vowel orthographies

Method	Example	Notes
sitelen Lasina	jan Sonja
No separation	ян Соня	Cyrillic users unfamiliar with Toki Pona may assume [sɔnʲa]
Soft sign separation	ян Сонья	Most similar to Russian Cyrillic
Hard sign separation	ян Сонъя	Most similar to non-Slavic Cyrillic alphabets used in Russia, e.g. Udmurt

e, je, i

Cyrillic scripts differ in their representation of non-open front vowels:

Examples of /e je i/

Script	/e/	/je/	/i/	Example of derived sitelen Kililisa
Russian	э	е	и	о ело э ми
Belarusian	э	е	i	о ело э мі
Ukrainian	е	є	і	о єло е мі
Bulgarian	е	N/A	и	о ело е ми
Serbian	е	је	и	о јело е ми
Interslavic	е	је	и	о јело е ми

See also

• Writing systems