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Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)

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Re: Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)

#41

Post by anselmio »

It's weird to see so many words that I already "know" from the Tokipona language just because I'm Finnish and lived a few years in Poland. The words in Tokipona have of course a "wider scope" in their meaning, but here's a few I spotted scrolling through a Tokipona dictionary [1]:

"Kala" is a fish both in Finnish and Tokipona, "nena" is a nose in Tokipona which is "nenä" in Finnish, "sina" (you) is "sinä" in Finnish, "nimi" (name) is the same in both languages, "noka" (leg) is "noga" in Polish, "ona" (she) is the same in Polish. There's more that I'm easily able to remember like "linja" (line in Finnish) which has a similar meaning in Tokipona, not to mention numbers like "wan" and "tu" and words like "mama" (mom) and "mani" (money) etc.

[1] http://tokipona.net/tp/janpije/dictionary.php

Re: Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)

#42

Post by RobertRoberts »

_abattoir wrote: post #39
RobertRoberts wrote: post #36

What about an English version of Toki Pona? (maybe Eng-Toki Pona?) Why? Because English is very common already, and it seems an easy way to not only have usable words in two languages (English and Eng-Toki Pona) but also it would be useful to actually learn. (foreigners could _actually_ use this for real) This is the biggest hurdle I have with made up languages, they have very little actual utility value. As an after…

Most of Toki Pona sounds like English anyway: wan: one tu: two meli: female, from Tok Pisin mewi, from "Mary" (as in, the Virgin) lukin: looking ale: all en: and ike: icky jaki: yucky insa: inside jelo: yellow kalama: clamor kama: come ken: can kule: color lape: sleepy lawa: law linja: line lili: little lupa: loop mani: money mu: moo musi: amusing/music nanpa: number nimi: name open: open pilin: feeling sama: same se…

I know, I've studied it. But I gave up because no one else cared to learn it with me.

Re: Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)

#43

Post by jan_Inkepa »

anselmio wrote: post #41

It's weird to see so many words that I already "know" from the Tokipona language just because I'm Finnish and lived a few years in Poland. The words in Tokipona have of course a "wider scope" in their meaning, but here's a few I spotted scrolling through a Tokipona dictionary [1]: "Kala" is a fish both in Finnish and Tokipona, "nena" is a nose in Tokipona which is "nenä" in Finnish, "sina" (you) is "sinä" in Finnish,…

There’s a compiled etymology list here, for those interested.

http://ucteam.ru/toki-pona/

Re: Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)

#44

Post by elliotec »

xena wrote: post #35
elliotec wrote: post #10

Check out this tokenizer for it as well: https://github.com/Xe/x/blob/master/web/tokiponatokens/toki_...

I used this for recompiling a subset of toki pona to a subset of prolog: https://github.com/Xe/x/tree/master/cmd/la-baujmi . This is something I wish I had more time/effort to develop out more.

Your blog has been a really exciting corner of the internet for me the past couple months. Thank you, big fan, keep doin what you're doin.

Re: Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)

#45

Post by jan_Inkepa »

aasasd wrote: post #31
jan_Inkepa wrote: post #14

Here are some (IMO) silly/potentially interesting tech projects in the Toki Pona world: --- ilo nanpa - a calculator using the Toki Pona number system https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgWCLg4H_4U --- linja pona - a font for the Sitelen Pona hieroglyphic system with fancy character combination logic (goes way beyond the limits of my rudimentary font knowledge) - the text is all entered in latin but the font automatical…

> goes way beyond the limits of my rudimentary font knowledge - the text is all entered in latin but the font automatically converts toe Sitelen Pona It most likely utilizes ligatures—like when you write ‘ff’ or ‘fi’, the letters are joined into a custom glyph (in proper software and context), so this font does the same for custom longer sequences. This is popular lately with programming fonts and such.

Yip, it uses ligatures, but it also has a system where you can say put a box around text by using the underscore character w/ square braces ("[_mi_pilin]" has the "mi" and "pilin" characters with a cartouche around them, like on the second line of the linked page below), and also I think does dynamic compounding of characters (see the current complete character list here - https://davidar.github.io/linja-pona/nimi - I haven’t asked the author how they did it, but my guess is that there’s something fun/dynamic going on).

Re: Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)

#46

Post by xena »

lidHanteyk wrote: post #40
xena wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sed esperanto estas la lingvo kiu inspiris Ingsoc de Newspeak. Esperanto ne havas vorton por "bad"; esperanto havas malbona, aux "ungood". Simile maljuna por "old" ("not-young") kaj malgranda por "small" ("not-big").

Sure; the Ranto [0] explains why this is a poor way to build a language. [0] http://jbr.me.uk/ranto/index.html

Sed facila. Nenio malhelpas vin uzi vortoj sxati "vieila" (de la ina formo de la franca por maljuna) por "maljuna", sed multoj parolantoj de esperanto eble komprenos.

Lojbano probable havas sistemo por vortoj tiel. Vortoj havas multojn lokojn en la "loko strukturo" de la vorto. La vorto por iri estas {klama}, difinita kiel:

{x1 venas/iras al celita loko x2 el deirpunkto x3 tra vojo x4 per rimedo/veturilo x5}

{lo klama} estas la viro de iri

{lo se klama} estas la celita loko

{lo te klama} estas la deirpunkto

{lo ve klama} estas la vojo de vojagxi

{lo xe klama} estas la ilo de iri aux la veturilo

Multoj lokojn por substantivoj signifas tion {klama} estas kvin vortojn!

Sed Lojbano havas la senvoĉan veluran frikativon (/x/ en la IPA aux "kh" en araba). Estas malfacila por anglalingvanoj.

Re: Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)

#47

Post by schoen »

jan_Inkepa wrote: post #32
chrisshroba wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you give some examples of things you talk about and things that you think would be difficult to talk about given the language's limitations?

sure! Talking about daily life works pretty well (general chit chat - asking people how they’re feeling, what they’ve been doing, assuming you know something about their lives already there won’t be many ambiguities). online, I often share pictures as I go (they give points of reference). So I can say “mi pali e pan suwi” (i made sweet bread) and show a picture of a cake; my friend could say “ni li pona ala pona?” (i…

It's interesting to me that you focus on the 'high' meaning of sewi, because I've always focused on the 'religious' or 'divine' meaning. So I would hear "lawa sewi" as something like 'religious head' or 'religious leader'. Probably my first parse of "soweli pi lawa sewi" would be 'the rabbi's cat' or something, rather than a giraffe. Or I would imagine an animal whose head is similar to some concept or representation of divinity. :-)

mi wile e ni: tenpo lili la mi mute ale li ken tawa tan tomo awen pi mi mute!

Re: Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)

#48

Post by schoen »

_abattoir wrote: post #39
RobertRoberts wrote: post #36

What about an English version of Toki Pona? (maybe Eng-Toki Pona?) Why? Because English is very common already, and it seems an easy way to not only have usable words in two languages (English and Eng-Toki Pona) but also it would be useful to actually learn. (foreigners could _actually_ use this for real) This is the biggest hurdle I have with made up languages, they have very little actual utility value. As an after…

Most of Toki Pona sounds like English anyway: wan: one tu: two meli: female, from Tok Pisin mewi, from "Mary" (as in, the Virgin) lukin: looking ale: all en: and ike: icky jaki: yucky insa: inside jelo: yellow kalama: clamor kama: come ken: can kule: color lape: sleepy lawa: law linja: line lili: little lupa: loop mani: money mu: moo musi: amusing/music nanpa: number nimi: name open: open pilin: feeling sama: same se…

The only one of these that I think doesn't work is lupa, which is a hole or opening, which doesn't necessarily have that much in common with a loop. I guess they could both be circular, but lupa applies to any kind of opening, circular or not.

Re: Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)

#49

Post by xena »

elliotec wrote: post #44
xena wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used this for recompiling a subset of toki pona to a subset of prolog: https://github.com/Xe/x/tree/master/cmd/la-baujmi . This is something I wish I had more time/effort to develop out more.

Your blog has been a really exciting corner of the internet for me the past couple months. Thank you, big fan, keep doin what you're doin.

Thanks! I'm working on a blogpost analyzing the speed gains I got by porting my webassembly environment to Rust. So far it's about 50x as fast on average, but most of the gain is from using an ahead-of-time compiler instead of an interpreter.

Re: Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)

#50

Post by thaumasiotes »

yongjik wrote: post #17

I've said it before, but the problem with having only a hundred words is that they are the hardest one hundred words in any languages. To a foreign learner, easy words are hard, and hard words are easy. To someone learning English as a foreign language, "banish" is easy to understand: it has just one meaning, so once you memorize it, you can recognize it whenever it's used. "Turn out", on the other hand, has half a d…

> imagine explaining the word "the" to someone whose native language doesn't have an article

Much like "turn out", there are many different ways in which "the" might be used. But as contrasted with "a" ("explain it to someone who doesn't have articles"), it's not that bad -- "the" is used to mark noun phrases that are already present in the conversational context, and "a" is used to introduce new noun phrases into the conversational context.

More generally, "the" and "a" are markers for what is known in linguistics as "definiteness", with "the" being an unspecialized definiteness marker and "a" being a more specialized indefiniteness marker. But there are many other determiners that require or mark definiteness -- possessives like my and their are definite; demonstratives like this and that are definite; some is a fully general indefiniteness marker...

(Compare "there's some guy outside scaring customers away" with "there are some guys outside scaring customers away", then consider that a would only be permissible in the first one.)

> To a foreign learner, easy words are hard, and hard words are easy.

Yep. I've pointed out before that most people have the instinct that when a foreigner doesn't know the language well, you should talk to them the same way you'd talk to a small child. But that's completely backwards. The typical small child only knows common words and can handle any native grammar at all. A foreigner will have trouble with common words, effortlessly comprehend rare words (after looking them up), and have extreme trouble with grammar beyond the basics.

I had a Chinese tutor once who was embarrassed when a rare word came up in some reading, and assured me that this was a "really fancy word" and it didn't matter if I didn't know it. The assurance was not needed -- at the time, my vocabulary was negligible; to me there was no difference between a really fancy word and its dirt-common equivalent. It's taken a lot of work to get to the point where I can be annoyed to encounter a fancy substitute for a word I feel I should have known.

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