Toki Pona (rendered as toki pona, literally "good language", "simple language" or "the language of good";  ; ) is a philosophical artistic constructed language (or philosophical artlang) known for its small vocabulary, simplicity and ease of acquisition.
It was created by Canadian linguist and translator Sonja Lang for the purpose of simplifying thoughts and communication and was first published online in 2001 as a draft, and in a more complete form in the book Toki Pona: The Language of Good in 2014.Lang (2014:134).
In July 2021, Lang released a supplementary dictionary, based on community usage, called the Toki Pona Dictionary.
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.
The underlying feature of Toki Pona is minimalism.
It focuses on simple, near-universal concepts, making use of very little to express the most.
The language is isolating with 14 phonemes and has around 120 to 137 "essential" root words, as well as a number of less-used words (see Vocabulary).
Its words are easy to pronounce across languages, but it was not created to be an international auxiliary language.
Inspired by Taoist philosophy, the language is designed to help users concentrate on basic things and to promote positive thinking, in accordance with the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.
Despite the small vocabulary, speakers are able to understand and communicate with each other, mainly relying on context and combinations of words to express more specific meanings.
Etymology
The name of the language is constituted by  (language), derived from Tok Pisin , which itself comes from English "talk"; and  (good/simple), from Esperanto  (good), from Latin .
The name toki pona therefore means both "good language" and "simple language" emphasising that the language encourages speakers to find joy in simplicity.
Purpose
Sonja Lang ( Sonja Elen Kisa) started developing Toki Pona as a way of simplifying her thoughts during depression.
One of the language's main goals is a focus on minimalism.
It is designed to express maximal meaning with minimal complexity.
Like a pidgin, it focuses on simple concepts and elements that are near-universal among cultures.
It has a minimal vocabulary and 14 phonemes devised to be easy to pronounce for speakers of various language backgrounds.
Inspired by Taoist philosophy, another goal of Toki Pona is to help its speakers focus on the essentials by reducing complex concepts into basic elements and remove complexity from the thought process.
From these simple notions, more complex ideas can be created by simple combining.
This allows the users to see the fundamental nature and effect of the ideas expressed.
In accordance with the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, which states that a language changes the way its speakers think and behave, Toki Pona tries to induce positive thinking.
Another aim of the language is for the speakers to become aware of the present moment and pay more attention to the surroundings and the words people use.
According to its author, it is meant to be "fun and cute".
Although it was not intended as an international auxiliary language, people from all around the world use it for communication.
History
An early version of the language was published online in 2001 by Sonja Lang, and it quickly gained popularity.
Early activity took place in a Yahoo!
group.
Members of the group discussed the language with one another in English, Toki Pona, and Esperanto, proposed changes, and talked about the resources on the tokipona.org site.
At its peak member count, the group had a little over 500 members.
Messages in the group were archived in the Toki Pona forum using phpBB.
Lang later released her first book on the language, Toki Pona: The Language of Good, in 2014 which features 120 words plus 3 synonyms and provides a completed form of the language based on how Lang used the language at the time.
In 2016, the book was also published in French.
In 2008 an application for an ISO 639-3 code was rejected, with a statement that the language was too young.
Another request was rejected in 2018 as the language "does not appear to be used in a variety of domains nor for communication within a community which includes all ages".
Toki Pona was the subject of some scientific works, and it has also been used for artificial intelligence and software tools, as well as a therapeutic method for eliminating negative thinking by having patients keep track of their thoughts in the language.
In 2010 it was chosen for the first version of the vocabulary for the ROILA project.
The purpose of the study was to investigate the use of an artificial language on the accuracy of machine speech recognition, and it was revealed that the modified vocabulary of Toki Pona significantly outperformed English.
In 2021, Lang released her second book, Toki Pona Dictionary, a comprehensive two-way Toki Pona–English dictionary including more than 11,000 entries detailing the use of the language as she gathered from polls conducted in the ma pona pi toki pona Discord server over a few months.
The book presents the original 120 words plus 16  (major dictionary words) as gathered from at least over 40% of respondents.
It also contains words given by 40% or less of respondents called  (minor dictionary words).
Phonology and phonotactics
Inventory
Toki Pona has nine consonants () and five vowels (), shown here with the International Phonetic Alphabet symbols.
Stress falls on the initial syllable of a word, and it is marked by an increase in loudness, length, and pitch.Lang (2014:16).
There are no diphthongs, contrasting vowel length, consonant clusters (except those starting with the nasal coda), or tones.
Both its sound inventory and phonotactics are compatible with the majority of human languages, and are therefore readily accessible.
Consonants
Vowels
Distribution
The statistical vowel spread is fairly typical when compared with other languages.
Counting each root once, 32% of vowels are , 25% are , with  and  a bit over 15% each, and 10% are .
The usage frequency in a 10kB sample of texts was slightly more skewed: 34% , 30% , 15% each  and , and 6% .
Of the syllable-initial consonants,  is the most common, at 20% total;  are over 10%, then the nasals  (not counting final N), with the least common, at little more than 5% each, being .
The high frequency of  and low frequency of  is somewhat unusual among the world's languages.
Syllable structure
Syllables are of the form (C)V(N), i.e. optional consonant + vowel + optional final nasal, or V, CV, VN, CVN.
The consonant is obligatory in syllables that are not word-initial.
As in most languages, CV is the most common syllable type, at 75% (counting each root once).
V and CVN syllables are each around 10%, while only 5 words have VN syllables (for 2% of syllables).
Most roots (70%) are disyllabic; about 20% are monosyllables and 10% trisyllables.
This is a common distribution, and similar to Polynesian.
Phonotactics
The following sequences are not allowed: *, nor may a syllable's final nasal occur before  or  in the same root.
Proper nouns are usually converted into Toki Pona proper adjectives using a set of guidelines.
The native, or even colloquial, pronunciation is used as the basis for the subsequent sound conversion.
Thus, England or English become Inli and John becomes San.
Allophony
The nasal at the end of a syllable can be pronounced as any nasal stop, though it is normally assimilated to the following consonant.
That is, it typically occurs as an  before ,  or , as an  before  or , as an  before , and as an  before .
Because of its small phoneme inventory, Toki Pona allows for extensive allophonic variation.
For example,  may be pronounced  as well as ,  as  or  as well as ,  as  as well as , and vowels may be either long or short.
Writing systems
alt=Table, 10 items high my 12 items wide, containing hand drawn characters, each with a word using latin characters under it.
|thumb|435x435px|Toki Pona hieroglyphs from Toki Pona: The Language of Good by Sonja Lang 14 Latin letters, a e i j k l m n o p s t u w, are used to write the language.
They have the same values as in the International Phonetic Alphabet: j sounds like English y (as in many Germanic and Slavic languages) and the vowels are like those of Spanish, Modern Greek, or Modern Hebrew.
Capital initials are used to mark proper adjectives, while Toki Pona roots are always written with lowercase letters, even when they start a sentence.
thumb|Modified symbols in  Besides the Latin alphabet, which is the most common way of writing the language, many alternative writing systems have been developed for and adapted to Toki Pona.
Most successful and widespread are two logographic writing systems,  and .
Both were included in the book Toki Pona: The Language of Good.
sitelen pona
The  writing system was devised as an alternative writing system by Lang herself, and first published in her book Toki Pona: The Language of Good in 2014.
In it each word is represented by its own symbol.
It has been described as "a hieroglyphic-like script that makes use of squiggles and other childlike shapes" .
Proper names are written inside a cartouche-like symbol using a series of symbols, where each symbol represents the first letter of its word.
Symbols representing a single adjective may be written inside or above the symbol for the preceding word that they modify.
The symbol of the language 20px is written in , with the symbol 20px () written inside the symbol 20px ().
As of 2021  is widely used in the Toki Pona community.
In a 2021 census of about 800 people in the Toki Pona community, 61% of respondents reported knowing , and 43% reported using it.
Among the roughly 90 people who responded to the survey in Toki Pona (who are more likely to be advanced or fluent speakers), 81% reported knowing the writing system, 59% reported using it, and 28% claimed it was a preferred writing system to them.
In August 2021  was proposed for inclusion on the Under-ConScript Unicode Registry for allocation in the U+F1900..U+F1AFF location.
sitelen sitelen
alt=sitelen sitelen dictionary|thumb|The word symbols and punctuation of  The  writing system, also known as , was created by Jonathan Gabel.
This more elaborate non-linear system uses two separate methods to form words: logograms representing words and an alphasyllabary for writing the syllables (especially for proper names).
The complexity of the glyphs along with their artful designs are chosen to help people who use this writing system to slow down and explore how not only the language but also the method of communication can influence their thinking.
takes visual inspiration from US west-coast comix artists such as Jim Woodring and US east-coast graffiti artists such as Kenny Scharf, and uses logographic principals present in other writing systems including Egyptian hieroglyphs, Chinese characters, Maya script, Miꞌkmaw hieroglyphic writing, Dongba symbols, as well as early Pagan and Christian signs and symbols.
As of 2021 only a minority of the Toki Pona community actively uses .
In a 2021 census of about 800 people in the Toki Pona community, 31% of respondents reported knowing it, and 11% reported using it.
Grammar
Toki Pona's word order is subject–verb–object.
The word  introduces predicates,  introduces direct objects, prepositional phrases follow the objects, and  phrases come before the subject to add additional context.
Some roots are grammatical particles, while others have lexical meanings.
The lexical roots do not fall into well defined parts of speech; rather, they may be used generally as nouns, verbs, modifiers, or interjections depending on context or their position in a phrase.
For example,  may mean "they ate" or "it is food".
Sentence structures
A sentence may be an interjection, statement, wish/command, or question.
For example, interjections such as , , , , , , , , , etc. can stand alone as a sentence.
Statements follow the normal structure of subject-predicate with an optional  phrase at the beginning.
The word  always precedes the predicate unless the subject is a  or .
The direct object marker  comes before direct objects.
More  and  markers can present new predicates or direct objects.
Vocative phrases come before the main sentence and are marked with  at the end of the phrase, after the addressee.
In commands, the word  comes before a verb to express a second person command.
It can also replace , or come after the subjects  or , to express wishes.
There are two ways to form yes-no questions in Toki Pona.
The first method is to use the "verb  verb" construction in which  comes in between a duplicated verb, auxiliary verb, or other predicators.
Another way to form a yes-no question is to put  () at the end of a sentence.
Questions cannot be made by just putting a question mark at the end of a sentence.
Non-polar questions are formed by replacing the unknown information with the interrogative word .
Pronouns
Toki Pona has basic pronouns:  (first person),  (second person), and  (third person).
The pronouns do not specify number or gender.
Therefore,  can mean "he", "she", "it", or "they".
Whenever the subject of a sentence is either of the unmodified pronouns  or , then  is not used to separate the subject and predicate.
Nouns
With such a small root-word vocabulary, Toki Pona relies heavily on noun phrases, where a noun is modified by a following root, to make more complex meanings.
A typical example is combining  (person) with  (fight) to make  (soldier, warrior).
Nouns do not decline according to number.
can mean "person", "people", "humanity", or "somebody", depending on context.
Toki Pona does not use isolated proper nouns; instead, they must modify a preceding noun.
For this reason, they may be called "proper adjectives" or simply “proper words” instead of “proper nouns”.
For example, names of people and places are used as modifiers of the common roots for "person" and "place", e.g.  () or  ().
Modifiers
Phrases in Toki Pona are head-initial; modifiers always come after the word that they modify.
Therefore, , , can be a "fighting animal", whereas , , can mean "animal war".
When a second modifier is added to a phrase, for example , it modifies all that comes before it, so (() )  can be "friend watching", rather than ( ()), which can be "person good-looking".
The particle  is placed after the head and before the modifiers, to group the modifiers into another phrase that functions as a unit to modify the head, so  can be (  ()), "good-looking person".
In this case,  modifies  and  as a whole modifies .
Demonstratives, numerals, and possessive pronouns come after the head like other modifiers.
Verbs
Toki Pona does not inflect verbs according to person, tense, mood, or voice, as the language features no inflection whatsoever.
Person is indicated by the subject of the verb; time is indicated through context or by a temporal adverb in the sentence.
Prepositions are used in the predicate in place of a regular verb.
Vocabulary
Toki Pona has around 120 to 137 root words depending on the speaker.
Each is polysemous and covers a range of similar concepts, so  not only means "big" or "long", but also "important".
Their use relies heavily on context.
To express more complex thoughts, the roots can be combined.
For example,  can mean "friend", although it translates to , and , , would be understood to mean "alcohol" or "alcoholic beverage" depending on the context.
The verb "to teach" can be expressed by , .
Essentially identical concepts can be described by different words as the choice relies on the speaker's perception and experience.
Colors
Toki Pona has five root words for colors:  (black),  (white),  (red),  (yellow), and  (grue).
Although the simplified conceptualization of colors tends to exclude a number of colors that are commonly expressed in Western languages, speakers sometimes may combine these five words to make more specific descriptions of certain colors.
For instance, "purple" may be represented by combining  and .
The phrase  means "a reddish shade of blue" and  means "a bluish shade of red".
Numbers
Toki Pona has root words for one (), two (), and many ().
In addition,  can mean "zero", although its meaning is , and  "all" can express an infinite or immense amount.
The simplest number system uses these five roots to express any amount necessary.
For numbers larger than two, speakers would use  which means "many".
A more complex system expresses larger numbers additively by using phrases such as  for three,  for four, and so on.
This feature purposely makes it impractical to communicate large numbers.
An alternate system for larger numbers, described in Lang's book, uses  () to signify "five",  () to signify "twenty" and  () to signify "hundred".
For example, using this structure  would mean "102" and  would signify "78".
Roots history
thumb|right|Body parts in Toki Pona Some words have obsolete synonyms.
For example,  replaced  (protuberance) early in the language's development for unknown reasons.
Later, the pronoun  replaced  (he, she, it, they), which was sometimes confused with  (bad).
Similarly,  was added as an alternative to  (all) to avoid confusion with  (no, not) among people who reduce unstressed vowels, though both forms are still used.
Originally,  meant "eye" and  was used as a verb "see".
In the book, the meanings were later merged into ,  being the alternative.
Words that have been simply removed from the lexicon include  (block, stairs),  (monster, fear),  (old),  (to cut), and  (sibling).
These words are now considered outdated because they were not included in the official book.
Besides  and , which replaced existing roots, a few roots were added to the original 118:  (grain, bread, pasta, rice),  (market, shop, trade),  (hunt, gather), and  (extra, additional, spice), another word for  (new).
Provenance
thumb|Origin of the Toki Pona roots by language.
Obsolete roots are not included|333x333px
Most Toki Pona roots come from English, Tok Pisin, Finnish, Georgian, Dutch, Acadian French, Esperanto, Croatian, with a few from Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese).
Many of these derivations are transparent.
For example,  (speech, language) is similar to Tok Pisin  and its English source "talk", while  (good, positive), from Esperanto , reflects generic Romance bon, buona, English "bonus", etc.
However, the changes in pronunciation required by the simple phonetic system often make the origins of other words more difficult to see.
The word  (to sleep, to rest), for example, comes from Dutch  and is cognate with English "sleep";  (to use) is somewhat distorted from Dutch , and  from  (lizard) is scarcely recognizable.
[Because *ti is an illegal syllable in Toki Pona, Dutch di becomes si.]
Although only 14 roots (12%) are listed as derived from English, a large number of the Tok Pisin, Esperanto, and other roots are transparently cognate with English, raising the English-friendly portion of the vocabulary to about 30%.
The portions of the lexicon from other languages are 15% Tok Pisin, 14% Finnish, 14% Esperanto, 12% Croatian, 10% Acadian French, 9% Dutch, 8% Georgian, 5% Mandarin, 3% Cantonese; one root each from Welsh, Tongan (an English borrowing), Akan, and an uncertain language (apparently Swahili); four phonesthetic roots (two which are found in English, one from Japanese, and one which was made up); and one other made-up root (the grammatical particle ).
alt=|thumb|220x220px|Hand shapes of Signed Toki Pona and Luka Pona Signed Toki Pona and Luka Pona
Signed Toki Pona, or , is a manually coded form of Toki Pona.
Each word and letter has its own sign, which is distinguished by the hand shape, location of the hand on the body, palm or finger orientation, and the usage of one or both hands.
Most signs are performed with the right hand at the required location.
A few signs, however, are performed with both hands in a symmetrical way.
To form a sentence, each of the signs is performed using the grammar and word order of Toki Pona.
A more naturalistic constructed sign language called luka pona also exists, and is more widely used in the Toki Pona community than toki pona luka.
It is a separate language with its own grammar, but has a vocabulary that generally parallels Toki Pona.
luka pona's signs have increased iconicity as compared to toki pona luka, and many signs are loan-words from natural sign languages.
Its grammar is subject-object-verb, and, like natural sign languages, it makes use of classifier constructions and signing space.
In Toki Pona Dictionary, Sonja Lang recommends learning luka pona instead of toki pona luka.Lang (2021:11).
Community
The language is fairly well known among Esperantists, who often offer courses and conversation groups at their meetings.
In 2007, Lang reportedly said that at least 100 people speak Toki Pona fluently and estimated that a few hundred have a basic knowledge of the language.
One-hour courses of Toki Pona were taught on various occasions by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during their Independent Activities Period.
The language is used mainly online on social media, in forums, and other groups.
Users of the language are spread out across multiple platforms.
A Yahoo!
group existed from about 2002 to 2009, when it moved to a forum on a phpBB site.
For a short time there was a Wikipedia written in Toki Pona (called ).
It was closed in 2005 and moved to Wikia/Fandom, and then moved from Fandom to an independent website on 23 April 2021.
The largest groups exist on Reddit and Facebook.
Two large groups exist on Facebook—one designated for conversation in Toki Pona and English, and the other for conversation in only Toki Pona.
The most subscribed group, in which members communicate in both English and Toki Pona, has over 5,000 total members as of September 2021.
The largest community on Reddit has over 7,000 members.
The largest  Discord group has over 4,500 members as of September 2021.
An online census was conducted in 2021.
Around 1000 people worldwide filled it.
Of them, 165 claimed to be advanced or fluent speakers and more than 650 reported to know Toki Pona.
As of 30 November 2021, the language has been added to the popular video game Minecraft.
Literature
thumb|Logo of the first registered zine in Toki Pona There are a few published books and many other works in Toki Pona.
Most of the published works are language-learning books for beginners like akesi seli lili and meli olin moli.
Many other works are translations of original literature in other languages.
Starting in 2020, a group has been working on and publishing a zine in toki pona called lipu tenpo (lit. book of time), and it is officially registered as a zine in the United Kingdom.
Sample texts
thumb|379x379px|A contract in the  writing system (2012)|alt=Legal contract in the sitelen sitelen writing system
mama pi mi mute (The Lord's Prayer, translated by Bryant J. Knight, 2005)
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.
jan Meli o (Ave Maria, translated by Tobias Merkle, 2020)
jan Meli o, kon sewi li suli insa sina.
wan sewi li poka sina.
lon meli la, wan sewi li pona e sina.
kili pona pi insa sina li sewi Jesu.
jan Meli sewi o!
mama pi jan sewi o!
tenpo ni la, tenpo pi moli mi mute la, o toki tawa wan sewi tan mi mute jan ike.
awen.
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rightsjan ali li kama lon nasin ni: ona li ken tawa li ken pali.
jan ali li kama lon sama.
jan ali li jo e ken pi pilin suli.
jan ali li ken pali e wile pona ona.
jan ali li jo e ken pi sona pona e ken pi pali pona.
jan ali li wile pali nasin ni: ona li jan pona pi ante.
ma tomo Pape (The Tower of Babel story, translated by Bryant J. Knight, 2005)
jan ali li kepeken e toki sama.
jan li kama tan nasin pi kama suno li kama tawa ma Sinale li awen lon ni.
jan li toki e ni: "o kama!
mi mute o pali e kiwen. o seli e ona".
jan mute li toki e ni: "o kama!
mi mute o pali e tomo mute e tomo palisa suli.
sewi pi tomo palisa li lon sewi kon.
nimi pi mi mute o kama suli!
mi wile ala e ni: mi mute li lon ma ante mute".
jan sewi Jawe li kama anpa li lukin e ma tomo e tomo palisa.
jan sewi Jawe li toki e ni: "jan li lon ma wan li kepeken e toki sama li pali e tomo palisa.
tenpo ni la ona li ken pali e ijo ike mute.
mi wile tawa anpa li wile pakala e toki pi jan mute ni.
mi wile e ni: jan li sona ala e toki pi jan ante".
jan sewi Jawe li kama e ni: jan li lon ma mute li ken ala pali e tomo.
nimi pi ma tomo ni li Pape tan ni: jan sewi Jawe li pakala e toki pi jan ali.
jan sewi Jawe li tawa e jan tawa ma mute tan ma tomo Pape.
wan taso (2003)
ijo li moku e mi.
mi wile pakala.
pimeja li tawa insa kon mi.
jan ala li ken sona e pilin ike mi.
toki musi o, sina jan pona mi wan taso.
telo pimeja ni li telo loje mi, li ale mi.
tenpo ale la pimeja li lon.
Alone (translation of wan taso)
I am devoured.
I must destroy.
Darkness fills my soul.
No one can understand my suffering.
O poetry!
My only friend.
This ink is my blood, is my life.
And Darkness shall reign forevermore.
See also
Alphabet of human thought
Hyponymy and hypernymy
Philosophical language
Pirahã language
Notes
References
Publications
This book was translated as:
External links
– The creator's website.
Toki Pona Dictionary
toki pona in 76 Illustrated Lessons
Toki Pona Wiki
Where is Toki Pona used?
– A page with many links to Toki Pona related websites.
