toki pona - Lemmy
lemmy.ml
Toki Pona is a philosophical artistic constructed language known for its small vocabulary. It was created by Canadian linguist and translator Sonja Lang for the purpose of simplifying thoughts and communication. It was first published online in 2001 as a draft, and later in complete form in the book Toki Pona: The Language of Good in 2014. A small community of speakers developed in the early 2000s. While activity mostly takes place online in chat rooms, on social media, and in other groups, there were a few organized in-person meetings during the 2000s and 2010s.

I saw some post were some people said they know how to speak Toki Pona so I decided to create a community!

    • SFloss (they/them)
      4·
      4 years ago

      Geez Dessalines how many languages do you know? This has got to be like the fifth or sixth.

      • DessalinesMA
        61·
        4 years ago

        haha I’m a language noob, just english, like 50% spanish, 90% toki pona, and learning chinese but at the very beginning stages…

        You’re probably thinking of @nutomic@lemmy.ml, he speaks english, german, and is very close to fluency in spanish that I know of.

        • nutomicMA
          6·
          4 years ago

          My Spanish is still pretty bad when it comes to talking and listening, cause covid doesn’t give me much opportunity to practice :(

          • ghost_laptopOP
            3·
            4 years ago

            Do you speak German fluently? Maybe I could teach you Spanish and you German.

            • nutomicMA
              6·
              4 years ago

              Yes its my mother tongue. But I dont think I would be good at teaching it, cause I couldnt explain any of the grammar or such.

              • ghost_laptopOP
                3·
                4 years ago

                Oh, that is bad. I thought the same about Spanish until I started teaching it, my recommendation if you ever are interested is to find a textbook and start going over a few lessons before the class

                • nutomicMA
                  3·
                  4 years ago

                  I’m fine with it, thats how it works for most people in their native language after all. And I dont want to be a language teacher, neither do I like grammar at all.

        • ghost_laptopOP
          4·
          4 years ago

          I am a native Spanish speaker, I am very confident with English (I think I’m a B2) and I’ve been learning German (A2) and Italian (A1) for two years now. Now om Toki Pona, I would like to go for Latin once I am more familiar with German and Italian.

          Excuse me, I like bragging, lol.

          • Adda
            2·
            4 years ago

            Latin is incredibly interesting and eye-opening to study and learn. I would also add Antic mythology and history to the pack and you will be surprised just how many aspects of the mundane day are affected by Latin and/or Antic wisdom or society. Ancient Greek is great to expand your knowledge of certain terms and terminology in general too.

          • DessalinesMA
            2·
            4 years ago

            I haven’t started the characters yet, but I love so many things about the language.

    • SnowCode
      3·
      4 years ago

      How long does it takes to learn Toki Pona? I try but it takes me 10 minutes to write 1 sentence. (Btw, I tried to write this in toki pona but I couldn’t)

      • The &
        4·
        4 years ago

        For the most part, learning toki pona is all about talking it and writing in it. Without other people I couldn’t have learnt it. This is mostly because the meanings of words are very community-mapped.

        mute la, sina ken kama sona e toki pona kepeken nasin ni: sina toki e ona li sitelen e ona. kulupu li lon ala lon poka mi la, mi ken ala sona e ona. ni li lon tan ni: nimi li ante lon kulupu ante.

      • janPiteJanseke
        3·
        4 years ago

        Speaking , writing and than reading , listening are indeed not self-evident … Toki Pona has only some 123 words and almost all are polysemic (having different meanings) and plus have different usages (noun, verb, adjective, adverb) … learning the root words is the surest start and can help to get used to circumlocutions as ‘moving house’ “tomo tawa” for ‘car’ … “waso nasa” (stupid bird) for ‘duck’ … “telo nasa” (crazy water) for alcohol [bear/wine/whiskey/cognac/… whatever the context has on disposal ; a bit more difficult if the context is richer on these beverages, but indicating ‘loje’ on top of it when it is red wine you want, can already help you out of most of the potential troubles]

      • DessalinesMA
        2·
        4 years ago

        Not too long (maybe a month) its like anything, repetition will make you a lot faster, the anki decks above would help with that.

        sina ken kama sona e toki pona kepeken tenpo suli seme? (you can learn toki pona using how long time?)

        mi wile sitelen e ona la, ona li wile tenpo suli. (when I try to write it, it needs a long time)

    • ghost_laptopOP
      2·
      4 years ago

      mi kama sona e toki pona tan luke tu tenpo suno. mi ike kepeken toki pona

      I tried to say that I’ve been learning Toki Pona for seven days now and that I’m still bad.

      • DessalinesMA
        2·
        4 years ago

        pona a! ni li open pona (Great, that’s a good start)

        mi ike kepeken toki pona

        More correct would be “mi kepeken ike e toki pona” (I speak toki pona badly), cause adverbs go after the verb.

        The best learning materials I can suggest, if you haven’t already done them, to get going really fast, are :

        • lipu pi kama sona pi jan lentan (and the flashcards I made for their lessons above)
        • ma pi toki pona audio lessons that are on youtube, where jan kala speaks it fluently and fast.
        • ghost_laptopOP
          3·
          4 years ago

          Your deck is really awesome, I’m going to start using it once I get a bit more familiarized with the one I’m working on. I can suggest you another resource, ClozeMaster although it is proprietary and not so good with privacy but a marvelous tool.

          I am also watchin 12 days with toki pona of jan Misali. I’ ll take a look at the other videos. Thanks!

      • janPiteJanseke
        2·
        4 years ago

        pakala lili … ‘tan tenpo suno luka tu’ … little typo … numbers go after the nouns they qualify

      • janPiteJanseke
        1·
        4 years ago

        Numerals are considered adjective and goes just like colors and normal adjectives after the headword (noun) … thus ‘tan tenpo suno luka tu’ is ‘for seven days now’