toki pona ASCII syllabary

From sona pona, the Toki Pona wiki
j l bn e Oq Tw sn
jan li pana e moku tawa sina

The toki pona ASCII syllabary by jan Misali, or sitelen Aki (from the name ASCII)[citation needed…], is a writing system that assigns each phonotactically allowed syllable in Toki Pona to a single ASCII character. It is designed so that many particles and short and common content words become recognizable initials, or become or integrate meaningful symbols. As a result, speakers unfamiliar with the system may still be able to read it to a limited extent as though it were an abjad.

History[edit | edit source]

Version differences
Syllable 2017 2019
lan : '
ju /[a] ,
jen , "
  1. Same as nu

jan Misali posted an early version of the syllabary on 13 October 2017.[1] It is nearly identical to the final version, but three of the characters for non-nimi-pu syllables would later be changed, including a duplicate character.

The earliest archive of the final version is from 29 April 2019.[2] This version deallocated the colon (:) and allocated the quotation mark (").

Syllables[edit | edit source]

Highlighted cells correspond to syllables that do not occur in any nimi pu (but that can appear in names, and some of which would later appear in nimi ku). This affected the allocation of the characters, with many non-alphanumeric symbols being given to these syllables.

Null coda Coda nasal
-i -u -e -o -a -in -un -en -on -an
∅- i 0 e o a ! U & 7 A
m- m u ? O M 8 3 9 @ `
n- N / ^ * n ( ) - _ #
p- P f B p b % + F = 6
t- 2 E t T d x D X
k- k q G H K Q { g h }
s- s z Z S c C 4 [ \ ]
w- W V w | v 1
l- l 5 r ~ L I ; $ R '
j- , y J Y < " > j

Punctuation[edit | edit source]

Only three printable ASCII characters are not defined in the syllable chart, and are, de facto, virtually always used as punctuation in the same way as in sitelen Lasina.

The ASCII space ( ) is used to separate words. The period (.) and the colon (:) are generally used as sentence separators. Any other punctuation would be lost due to conflicting with syllable characters or being out of the ASCII range.

Similarly, due to the significant letter case and the use of all ASCII brackets, there is no clear way to specify proper names with this system. See § Name marking for proposals.

Usage[edit | edit source]

The syllabary can be used to compress text, with each character being reducible to 7 bits. Word lengths range from unchanged (for one-letter words) to a third as long, such as C% for sinpin. A major limiting factor for the compression ratio is the need to separate words.

Misali also suggests using the syllabary as an input method for other writing systems.

The syllabary is rarely used as a writing system for general conversation.

ASCII map[edit | edit source]

This table shows the correspondence between ASCII codepoints and their encoded syllables. It can be used to find the hexadecimal encoding of a given syllable.

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
2x SP in jen nan len pin en lan nin nun no pun ju nen . nu
3x u wan tu mun sun lu pan on min men : lun jun pon jon me
4x mon an pe sin ton te pen ke ko lin jo ka la ma ni mo
5x pi kin lon so ta un we wi tan ja se sen son san ne non
6x man a pa sa tun e pu ken kon i jan ki li mi na o
7x po ku le si to mu wen wa ten je su kun win kan lo DEL

Extensions[edit | edit source]

Name marking[edit | edit source]

Some proper names conflict with common (non-proper) words, differing only in case in sitelen Lasina. This distinction cannot be written in the base syllabary: different cases of letters represent completely different syllables, and almost all available punctuation marks also represent syllables.

In order to write names unambiguously, it has been suggested to use the colon (:) for name marking instead of as a secondary sentence separator.[3]

There are multiple variations on the relative placement of the colon. jan Misali can variously be written as j :mcl (before), j :mcl: (cartouche-style),[3] and j:mcl (no space).

As initially proposed, this style leaves the period as the only sentence separator, even after sentence-linking ni[3] (which is already a valid style in sitelen Lasina). However, some speakers still use the colon as a sentence separator by leaving a space at each side ( : ).[4]

Quotation[edit | edit source]

Some speakers use the non-ASCII curly quotes (‘ ’) or guillemets (‹ ›) for quotation, as well as to escape ASCII characters to refer to them literally instead of interpreting them as syllables.

Paired colons (: :) may also be used for quotation. Users of this style may mark names with a single colon before, to avoid ambiguity between names and quotations.[4]

Marginal syllables[edit | edit source]

In 2023, jan Suko proposed extensions to the system to represent marginal and phonotactically unallowed syllables, namely:[5]

  • Syllabic nasal n (), perhaps also as in nja
  • Syllables of the mnemonic wuwojiti (üöïë)
  • Their equivalents with -n (ÜÖÏË)

Separately proposed in 2024 by kiwen soko loje is:

These extensions are not ASCII characters (since all of the printable ones are used in the base system), which is fitting as these syllables are nonstandard in Toki Pona.

Null coda Coda nasal -n
-i -u -o -in -un -on
∅- i 0 o ! U 7
t- ë 2 t Ë d D
w- w ü ö | Ü Ö
j- ï , J Ï < >
y- ¥

See also[edit | edit source]

External links[edit | edit source]

References[edit | edit source]

  1. jan Misali [@hbmmaster]. (13 October 2017). Message in #conlangs. "CongIang" Community. Discord. Retrieved 22 February 2024. "ascii toki pona syllabary". Image (archived).
  2. jan Misali. (29 April 2019). Archive of "seximal offtopic: toki pona ASCII syllabary". Wayback Machine. Internet Archive. Retrieved 22 February 2024.
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 kulupu Menasewi. (11 January 2024). Message in the #sitelen Aki pi jan Misali · sE$ ak P j mcl thread in #toki-suli. ma pona pi toki pona. Discord. Retrieved 15 January 2024.
  4. 4.0 4.1 jan Suko [@zhukant]. (13 August 2024). Message in the #sitelen Aki pi jan Misali · sE$ :ak P j :mcl thread in #toki-suli. ma pona pi toki pona. Discord. Retrieved 20 October 2024.
  5. jan Suko [@zhukant]. (27 September 2023). Message in the #sitelen Aki pi jan Misali · sE$ :ak P j :mcl thread in #toki-suli. ma pona pi toki pona. Discord. Retrieved 20 October 2024.