Toki Pona
Toki Pona (in Toki Pona it means good language or simple language) is a constructed (made-up) language. Sonja Lang (in past time Sonja Elen Kisa), a Canadian translator and linguist, made the language.[1] It is based on simple ideas that are known to all cultures. It is not created to be an international auxiliary language (a language for communication between people speaking different languages). It is meant to test ideas about minimalism and pidgins. It is influenced by Taoist ideas. It has only 120 root words, although there is over 50,000 different possible combinations. Toki Pona relies very heavily on expressing ideas by using root words together. For example, jan pona means friend in Toki Pona (literally it means: good person).
| Toki Pona | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Pronunciation | [toki pona] |
| Created by | Sonja Lang |
| Date | 2001 |
| Setting and usage | testing principles of minimalism, the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis[1] and pidgins |
| Users | more than 3.100 (2016) |
| Purpose | constructed language, combining elements of the subgenres personal language, international auxiliary language and philosophical language |
| Sources | a posteriori language, with elements of English, Tok Pisin, Finnish, Georgian, Dutch, Acadian French, Esperanto, Croatian, Chinese |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | tok |
Normally Toki Pona uses the Latin alphabet, but many Toki Pona speakers create other systems of writing for this language. Sonja Lang has made her own writing system for Toki Pona called sitelen pona (in English it means good writing or simple writing). It is based on pictograms (small drawings based off of how things look).
Example of text
Lord's Prayer (translated by Pije/Jopi):
mama pi mi mute o, sina lon sewi kon.
nimi sina li sewi.
ma sina o kama.
jan o pali e wile sina lon sewi kon en lon ma.
o pana e moku pi tenpo suno ni tawa mi mute.
o weka e pali ike mi. sama la mi weka e pali ike pi jan ante.
o lawa ala e mi tawa ike.
o lawa e mi tan ike.
tenpo ali la sina jo e ma e wawa e pona.
Amen.
Toki Pona Media
Latin Alphabet chart for Toki Pona
sitelen pona hieroglyphs from Toki Pona: The Language of Good by Sonja Lang
Toki Pona sitelen pona examples
The word symbols and punctuation of sitelen sitelen
Many colors can be expressed by using subtractive colors
Body parts in Toki Pona. The words oko, uta, lawa, luka and noka have Slavic (Serbo-Croatian) roots.
Percentage of Toki Pona roots by language of origin. If a word is shared between two languages (as Finnish and Esperanto sama), it counts as 0.5 words for each. If shared by three or more languages, it is counted as 'international'. The exception are the Tok Pisin words, most of which are also found in English.
Hand shapes of Signed Toki Pona and Luka Pona
A contract in the sitelen sitelen writing system (2012)
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Siobhan Roberts (2007-07-09). "Canadian has people talking about lingo she created". The Globe and Mail. The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 2016-01-18.
