Applying language change to Toki Pona. A video description of the tpka concept, and my implementation of it. This video was part of suno pi toki pona 2021.
This would be great for a toki pona novel where the characters end up far in the future for some reason and try talking to the people from that generation. In the other direction, what does "proto-toki-pona" sound like?
toki pona is so obviously a constructed language that imagining a naturalistic history for it is pretty difficult/borderline impossible. Like, realistically, under what circumstances would a natural language become 137 words? That said, we do have a couple features which *could* be described as referencing proto toki pona? One explanation for wuwojiti is not simply that those syllables don't occur, but explicitly that wu becomes u, wo becomes o, ji becomes i, ti becomes si. This could be taken to mean that in the past, toki pona had those syllables, but then they underwent sound change and merged as described above. Another bit is li. li's etymology is the Esperanto third person pronoun, and in pu li is only used in sentences with the third person. e.g., "mi moku li lape", which is pretty accepted today, is only phrased as "mi moku. mi lape". Maybe it could be said that li was the third person pronoun in proto-tp, but eventually took on a more syntactic role (marking the predicate), with ona taking its place in the pronominal system, and the mi/sina rule as a remnant pointing at its historic usage.
@@kala_asi A plane crashes on an island. Among the survivors there's someone from hong kong, Tanzania, Ghana, Quebec, Finland, Croatia, Japan, the Netherlands, Wales, and at least one of them speaks Esperanto. They survive for a generation before being discovered by a boat from Papua New Guinea, which establishes trade with the self-sufficient tribe... ~la~ What would toki pona sound like before its tok pisin influence... mi musi! sina lawa pona e kulupu ni. tan pona li kama tan pali sina!
@@kala_asi It could've developed as a more natural constructed language, like Damin in northern Australia which is a constructed language used for ceremonial purposes, which would mean it was constructed, but in a context of naturalistic use (such as ritual use) and toki pona would, then, be one of the earliest stage of the language.
the problem with reconstructing a conlang, specifically one like toki pona, is that when youre reconstructing natlangs, you do it by comparing related languages that all descended from one proto language, and with toki pona, there are no related languages. maybe by looking at the etymology of each toki pona word you could make something though!
This definitely needs to lose unstressed vowels between consonants to decrease the copious amont of syllables. Also, I thought some days ago about eveolving toki pona like it was a protolang (even if I only know it exist), and then yt showed me this video
the thing about agglutination is that by enabling this feature you immediately birth an infinite number of new words. You don't have to coin any of them source: someone who speaks an agglutinative language
5:26 At first, the way I was thinking these two concepts would be differentiated in spoken speech was through stress, since in toki pona stress is only present in the first syllable, making it possible to tell the difference from "sóweliko" and "sóweli kó" (here I'm using ´ as a stress marker for clarity sake). Edit: I literally had to watch for 5 more seconds and I would've basically seen you go over this lol
10:05 First syllable reduplication + negation + verb = Direct question. That's definitely a Cantonese feature (?) Love it! Makes sense to be personally cuz I speak Cantonese. Generally love the evolution so far. Even though I personally would have prefered to keep the stress on first syllable in order to keep the Toki Pona / Finnish / feel and rustic aesthetics. Random stresses at the penultimate syllable feels too much like a latin language.
honestly i feel like this project would've been more interesting had you allowed it to flourish in a truly natural way. you troubled yourself with staying close to the source material, but in practicality, if this language was moving onwards as a primary form of communication, it would have to increase things like wordcount. toki pona itself is a cool experiment, but it is not a good language for communication.
I think toki pona actually works great as a communication tool in many contexts. A group of friends of mine and I converse **exclusively** in toki pona. We have never reached a point in a conversation where everything comes to a halt just because we don't have enough words in the language or due to how it's structured. It's entirely functional and you can actually talk about a lot of things. Over time, we have even shed our reliance in English as a crutch for situations in which we couldn't communicate well. A constant topic that can be very nuanced is everyday struggles or feelings. If we focus on the wordcount we might think at first glance: "oh no, it's just 2 words for feelings, how can we express how we feel? It does not have a word for angry, disappointed, joyful, motivated, etc". That's where the beauty of toki pona lies. You don't refer to things using pre-established words. Instead you talk around and about the feeling. You describe it and what it means to you. You gotta KNOW what the thing means to you, and explore it in your head and/or your speech. For me, being angry in one context can be a pilin ike pi wile utala (an unpleasant feeling of wanting to fight). In another context it might be a pilin nasa pi wile weka (an odd feeling in which I want to leave (a maddening situation)). In this way, you can talk about so many things. A particularly good example by jan Telakoman where he provides an interesting talk about non Euclidean geometry using nothing but toki pona. I get where the "tp is bad for communication" idea comes from, but it just isn't true at all in my experience. You just gotta adjust to a different way of communicating... If anything, talking about feelings and everyday struggles in this way about things makes me feel more empathy for others, because feelings are communicated as vivid descriptions of an experience, and not as words in a dictionary.
What of the writing system? Wouldn't the logographic system simplify and adopt the rebus principle? The glyphs could become modified as well to represent voicing and whatnot. There could be digraphs as well.
@@egon3705 the language "evolution" did not go deep enough to make that necessary, speakers would probably read sitelen pona and make sense of it anyway
Indonesia Language don't have plural form ( Explicit plural form made by reduplication){ Reduplication means repetition of words }[ example :(house=rumah) (houses=rumah-rumah)] This good feature
English 🇬🇧 Language= Indonesian 🇮🇩 Language 1 one =satu 2 two =dua 3 three =tiga 4 four =empat 5 five= lima 6 six =enam 7 seven =tujuh 8 eight= delapan 9 nine =sembilan 10 ten =sepuluh Side = segi triangle = segi tiga quadrangle = segi empat Pentagon = segi lima hexagon. = Segi enam heptagon. = Segi tujuh octagonal. = Segi delapan pentagon. = Segi sembilan
![[TH] Esports World Cup : Point Rush Stage](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/eLU-jnYp3Zs/mqdefault.jpg)
This would be great for a toki pona novel where the characters end up far in the future for some reason and try talking to the people from that generation.
In the other direction, what does "proto-toki-pona" sound like?
toki pona is so obviously a constructed language that imagining a naturalistic history for it is pretty difficult/borderline impossible. Like, realistically, under what circumstances would a natural language become 137 words?
That said, we do have a couple features which *could* be described as referencing proto toki pona?
One explanation for wuwojiti is not simply that those syllables don't occur, but explicitly that wu becomes u, wo becomes o, ji becomes i, ti becomes si. This could be taken to mean that in the past, toki pona had those syllables, but then they underwent sound change and merged as described above.
Another bit is li. li's etymology is the Esperanto third person pronoun, and in pu li is only used in sentences with the third person. e.g., "mi moku li lape", which is pretty accepted today, is only phrased as "mi moku. mi lape". Maybe it could be said that li was the third person pronoun in proto-tp, but eventually took on a more syntactic role (marking the predicate), with ona taking its place in the pronominal system, and the mi/sina rule as a remnant pointing at its historic usage.
@@kala_asi A plane crashes on an island. Among the survivors there's someone from hong kong, Tanzania, Ghana, Quebec, Finland, Croatia, Japan, the Netherlands, Wales, and at least one of them speaks Esperanto. They survive for a generation before being discovered by a boat from Papua New Guinea, which establishes trade with the self-sufficient tribe...
~la~
What would toki pona sound like before its tok pisin influence...
mi musi!
sina lawa pona e kulupu ni. tan pona li kama tan pali sina!
@@janmakoje137 the Esperantist would absolutely take this opportunity to make everyone speak Esperanto hahaha
@@kala_asi It could've developed as a more natural constructed language, like Damin in northern Australia which is a constructed language used for ceremonial purposes, which would mean it was constructed, but in a context of naturalistic use (such as ritual use) and toki pona would, then, be one of the earliest stage of the language.
the problem with reconstructing a conlang, specifically one like toki pona, is that when youre reconstructing natlangs, you do it by comparing related languages that all descended from one proto language, and with toki pona, there are no related languages. maybe by looking at the etymology of each toki pona word you could make something though!
It shows the power of logograms. No matter how will the language change, they will still be more or less understood.
damn, i wish more languages use chinese characters
that would be confusing though, imagine trying to differentiate one language's gibberish text from another language's comprehensible text
@@melol69Isn't that just how orthography already works in a lot of languages today?
@@polenfrej4364as a chinese native... GOD NO PLEASE NO
1:00 i love the descend from toki pona to somewhat toki ma
and then tok pisin to english a a a a
Very intriguing! I would also be interested in doing a similar thing with sitelen pona
This definitely needs to lose unstressed vowels between consonants to decrease the copious amont of syllables.
Also, I thought some days ago about eveolving toki pona like it was a protolang (even if I only know it exist), and then yt showed me this video
the thing about agglutination is that by enabling this feature you immediately birth an infinite number of new words. You don't have to coin any of them
source: someone who speaks an agglutinative language
Wich one
Woah! Surprised at how the Tower of Babel part was still more or less intelligible to me, despite all the sound changes.
5:26
At first, the way I was thinking these two concepts would be differentiated in spoken speech was through stress, since in toki pona stress is only present in the first syllable, making it possible to tell the difference from "sóweliko" and "sóweli kó" (here I'm using ´ as a stress marker for clarity sake).
Edit: I literally had to watch for 5 more seconds and I would've basically seen you go over this lol
This actually helps me understand language change more than natural languages.
I’d love to see a continuation!
This is so so interesting
10:05 First syllable reduplication + negation + verb = Direct question. That's definitely a Cantonese feature (?) Love it! Makes sense to be personally cuz I speak Cantonese.
Generally love the evolution so far. Even though I personally would have prefered to keep the stress on first syllable in order to keep the Toki Pona / Finnish / feel and rustic aesthetics. Random stresses at the penultimate syllable feels too much like a latin language.
wow I was just thinking about this even though I dont speak toki pona. nice job!
absolutely yupekosi, love it
I wish the word for “cat” had come from “soweli telo” (because, you know, “cats are liquid”). Maybe that could be a word for “housecat”?
@@cmyk8964 maybe sowellitomo for pets in general
Wow, I love this! Keep going!!
honestly i feel like this project would've been more interesting had you allowed it to flourish in a truly natural way. you troubled yourself with staying close to the source material, but in practicality, if this language was moving onwards as a primary form of communication, it would have to increase things like wordcount. toki pona itself is a cool experiment, but it is not a good language for communication.
I did increase the word count and deviate from the tp philosophy in that way; however, i didn't have the creativity to get more than a dozen examples.
The implication is that more words have been derived offscreen.
I think toki pona actually works great as a communication tool in many contexts.
A group of friends of mine and I converse **exclusively** in toki pona. We have never reached a point in a conversation where everything comes to a halt just because we don't have enough words in the language or due to how it's structured. It's entirely functional and you can actually talk about a lot of things. Over time, we have even shed our reliance in English as a crutch for situations in which we couldn't communicate well.
A constant topic that can be very nuanced is everyday struggles or feelings. If we focus on the wordcount we might think at first glance: "oh no, it's just 2 words for feelings, how can we express how we feel? It does not have a word for angry, disappointed, joyful, motivated, etc".
That's where the beauty of toki pona lies. You don't refer to things using pre-established words. Instead you talk around and about the feeling. You describe it and what it means to you. You gotta KNOW what the thing means to you, and explore it in your head and/or your speech. For me, being angry in one context can be a pilin ike pi wile utala (an unpleasant feeling of wanting to fight). In another context it might be a pilin nasa pi wile weka (an odd feeling in which I want to leave (a maddening situation)).
In this way, you can talk about so many things. A particularly good example by jan Telakoman where he provides an interesting talk about non Euclidean geometry using nothing but toki pona.
I get where the "tp is bad for communication" idea comes from, but it just isn't true at all in my experience. You just gotta adjust to a different way of communicating... If anything, talking about feelings and everyday struggles in this way about things makes me feel more empathy for others, because feelings are communicated as vivid descriptions of an experience, and not as words in a dictionary.
@@hoshikawaa Thank you so much👏🏽.
this is fascinating!
Im proud to be your 101st subscriber
nicely crafted conlanging, but I feel like you droped some of the better parts of Toki Pona
sacreligious, just how i like it
this is so cooL!
Methinks the logographs should start representing syllables, and gain diacritics upon the many sound changes.
ken
Nice work
i've done a thing like this before, but only with the phonology.
ohno i thought of this in literally december but then never bothered to do it
Given that toki pona is a language with a community AND philosophy, I wonder what this means it will become irl?
I subscribe
Good job kala Asi, er, I mean, egalaþaca Aši.
14:32 you're thinking of umlaut
Esemwan esemewan
What of the writing system? Wouldn't the logographic system simplify and adopt the rebus principle? The glyphs could become modified as well to represent voicing and whatnot. There could be digraphs as well.
The point of keeping the writing system the same was accessibility for real toki pona speakers
@@kala_asi then keep sitelen pona as a legacy writing system and make a new one that would actually be used
@@egon3705 the language "evolution" did not go deep enough to make that necessary, speakers would probably read sitelen pona and make sense of it anyway
Indonesia Language don't have plural form ( Explicit plural form made by reduplication){ Reduplication means repetition of words }[ example :(house=rumah) (houses=rumah-rumah)]
This good feature
English 🇬🇧 Language= Indonesian 🇮🇩 Language
1 one =satu
2 two =dua
3 three =tiga
4 four =empat
5 five= lima
6 six =enam
7 seven =tujuh
8 eight= delapan
9 nine =sembilan
10 ten =sepuluh
Side = segi
triangle = segi tiga
quadrangle = segi empat
Pentagon = segi lima
hexagon. = Segi enam
heptagon. = Segi tujuh
octagonal. = Segi delapan
pentagon. = Segi sembilan
I can't read sitelen pona.
Aksiliña enakisileña
holy shit man use ipa, I have no clue what's going on in the later bits of this.
ni li pona mute a tawa mi!! ni la isipin sina ale ale li pana e sona pona. pini pi sitelen tawa ni la toki li suwi wa
Why toki pona don't have word for rice ?
pan
moku pan
ko pan (debatable)
kulupu pi pan lili
you forgot the ideograms
Stress can trigger voicing
Feel free to throw examples of that at me
@@kala_asi this is quite late but verner's law in Germanic is one example :)
mi lukin ala e sitelen pona. :c
This is more like a "toki ike" xD
Sonja must be enraged
nah
I want a follow up
unfortunately, effort
@@kala_asi So, no follow up? Nooooooo
@@gtc239 i havent been into it
thanks, that was horrendous!
thanks, that was *wuwojiti
ftfy
I wonder what the toki pona lyrics to Kulupu Jan Tenpo would be like via your changes to the language. th-cam.com/video/fWHZz7ZCXqw/w-d-xo.html
Nothing particularly pleasant to listen to, thats for sure lol
what the sase?
gay
transgender
Bisexual
Asexual
dreamsexual
pansexual
Toki Ma
17 letters
AEIJKLMNOPSTUW
Added for loanwords:QX'
AEIJKLMNOPQSTUWX'
New syllables:ti,wo,qa,qe,qi,qo,qu,xa,xe,xi,xo,xu,-s
' indicates vowel stress