An Introduction to Toki Pona

What is a Constructed Language?

In able to understand what toki pona is, you first need to understand what a constructed language is. A constructed language (or "conlang" for short) is a language that was intentionally created by someone, as opposed to a natural language (or "natlang"), like English, which naturally evolved over time.

Many people are familiar with constructed languages as a means of world-building in works of fiction, such as Na'vi from James Cameron's Avatar, or Klingon from the Star Trek franchise. However, not all conlangs are created for fiction.

Sometimes conlangs can be used to change the way we frame things in our mind (also known as "linguistic relativity" or "the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis"), and better understand ideas that are difficult to communicate in English.

What is Toki Pona?

Toki Pona (lit: “good language” or “simple language”) is an artistic, philosophical, constructed language created by Canadian linguist and translator, Sonja Lang, in 2001. The language was later described in depth in her books Toki Pona: The Language of Good (2014) and the Toki Pona Dictionary (2021).

The main goal of toki pona is to simplify one's thoughts and avoid needless complexity. It accomplishes this by having a very small amount of sounds (9 consonants and 5 vowels), words (120 - 137, depending on who you ask), as well as fairly simple grammar. Due to how simple it is, most toki pona speakers find it extremely easy to learn and use. Some have even reported becoming fluent in less than two weeks!

Why learn Toki Pona?

There are many reasons why people start learning toki pona. Here are some of the more common ones:

Toki Pona...

  • Is generally easy to learn and use
  • Has a very active (and friendly!) online community
  • Helps people gain philosophical insights
  • Could be a bridge between people of different languages*
  • Can be a gateway to learning more complicated natural languages

*Toki pona was not made with the intention of being an international auxiliary language. However, its simplicity makes it easy for people with almost any first language to learn, and there are many toki pona speakers out there who don’t also speak English.

How do you use Toki Pona?

When most people first hear about how small toki pona’s vocabulary is, they wonder how a language that small even functions. Surely you can’t get by with just 120ish words, right? Well, actually you can!

In able to express almost anything in toki pona, you have to first understand what that idea is in the most basic sense. What is the ocean if not a big body of water? What is a library if not a house of books? Once you have a basic idea of what something is, it's not too hard to translate it into toki pona.

Here are some examples:

  • ocean / sea → telo suli (lit: "big water")
  • library → tomo lipu (lit: "book house" or "document building")
  • blueberries → kili laso lili (lit: "small blue fruit")
  • pastry → pan suwi (lit: "sweet bread" or "sweet grain")

However, you aren’t constricted to just the way I decided to translate those things. Subjectivity and mindfulness are also important aspects of toki pona. In toki pona, what something is called is based on how the speaker personally perceives that thing, not necessarily what that thing is objectively.

This is best explained in the preface to Toki Pona: The Language of Good:

"From the perspective of a passenger, a car might be tomo tawa (an indoor compartment that moves). The driver might see it as ilo tawa (machine for going). If you’re crossing the street and - bam! - a car hits you, then it might be a kiwen tawa (hard object that moves).

The speaker and the listener understand the meaning of a word through its context. Toki Pona promotes mindfulness. Become fully of the present moment."

Where/How can I learn Toki Pona?

Lessons:

Other Resources:

With the exception of the official books, all of these are available online for free!

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