A few small corrections: At 7:58, this is a strange example since the first sama is being used as a predicate and a preposition, so the Toki Pona sentence would mean something more like "This drawing is like me, in a way that's like you." To say that the drawing is both like me and like you more clearly, "li" should be repeated here: "sitelen ni li sama mi li sama sina." A better example sentence might be "jan li pana e moku tawa mi tawa sina": someone gives food to me and you. (tan lipamanka) At 8:54, I call this an interjection, but it's not really the best term to use here since I defined interjections at the start of the video, and the community doesn't really use the word interjection in this way. Something like vocative or vocative phrase would describe it better. (tan lipamanka) At 17:28, the Greek transliteration is slightly incorrect. In "γαν", makes a /ɣ/ sound, and in "μοκυ," makes an /i/ sound. Greek also marks stress, so the sentence should look something like "γιαν λι πάνα ε μόκου τάγουα σίνα." It's also been pointed out that the Cyrillic script is a bit odd and would be more natural with iotated я for the "ja" in "jan." (tan akesi Kilo tan sitelen ko)
For me personally, using "й" and not "я" in the Cyrillic script feels just fine as it sounds the same, but is closer to the latin script (3 letters in both). What's more important - "е" should probably be "э" and it does affect the sounds significantly
@@АлександрХазанчук I have learned about the word "йога" since my last comment. I would think it'd be spelt "ёга" but nope. So I see what you mean about it looking natural. I assume that applies to "ë"->"йo" too?
I wanted to start my dive into toki pona and this as my first contact was absolutely wonderful. Dense, but wonderful. Loved how you used colored parts for the different portions of sentences, I'll definitely keep parsing toki pona sentences like that in the future - it's so great! toki sina li pona a!
Why is that? Are you saying that jan Misali's guide isn't very good, and that you should use other resources (like this video)? Or am I misunderstanding?
@@baksoBoy jan Misali's older lessons are flawed (and the new ones are incomplete), and this video teaches everything that jan Misali's videos aim to teach faster.
sina pona a! sitelen tawa ni li pona e sona mi pi toki pona. tenpo suli la mi alasa sona e nasin pi nimi pini. (nimi pini li nimi "lon" li nimi "tawa" li nimi ante sama.) tenpo pini la mi sona ala. sitelen ni la mi sona lili. :) English translation in case my toki pona isn't very readable: Thanks! This improved my toki pona. I've been trying to wrap my head around prepositions for a while, and this video helped. :)
Correction at 8:00: Because the prepositional phrase is the predicate, just repeating the preposition does not create a conjunction. It should be "sitelen ni li sama mi li sama sina." In "sitelen ni li sama mi sama sina," "sama sina" applies to the rest of sentence.
I thought I was intermediate level after learning all the words and watching the jan Misali series, but I'm surprised by how much I learned here, great video
i love this video its so precise and useful. i would recommend this to anyone learning toki pona. ik i already commented but this video deserves more recognition so im interacting.🤞
This video is solid. I'm just beginning to learn Toki Pona, and this is a great reference to me. ni li sitelen tawa e pona. Mi tawa lon nasin e toki pona. Ni li lipu pona e mi.
a playlist would definitely have been a good alternative to the way this is laid out if you want to jump to a specific section, this video has chapters so you can find information about anything
@@iloTani Oh no, I mean that youtube didn't allow this video to be placed into playlists at the time of commenting and that I'd like to be able to put it in one so I can find it more easily later. Looks like this issue has now been fixed!
this is a bit too long for my tastes. can you please condense it into 60 seconds, put the video into a portrait orientation, and add minecraft parkour gameplay in the background?
Great video, well structured, very clearly explained! Thanks! I try to use this opportunity to ask a question about toki pona. The basic word order of toki pona is subject-predicate-object. Prepositional adverbials may be put after that, e.g. "mi lape" -> "mi lape lon tomo" (I sleep in the house), right? But the adverbials are actually kind of the context, so I am able to use "la" as well: "lon tomo la mi lape", am I right or is this sentence somehow ungrammatical? Do these two sentences mean the same or they differ?
You're exactly right! You can put prepositions before la. mi moku kepeken ilo. - I eat using utensils. kepeken ilo la mi moku. - In the context of using utensils, I eat. Everything before la is already marked as context, so a lot of the time if you move a preposition before la, you can also omit the preposition word: lon tomo la mi lape. - In the context of being in the building, I sleep. tomo la mi lape. - In the context of the building, I sleep. ni li pona tawa mi. - This is good to me. tawa mi la, ni li pona. - In the context of towards me, this is good. mi la, ni li pona. - In the context of me, this is good. These have nearly identical meanings!
what’s going on at 9:55? it says „nimi sina li seme“. i thought li don’t go after sina. could you explain if that is supposed to be there or not? thanks
li is only omitted when the subject is *exactly* mi or sina and there's nothing else going on in this sentence, the subject is "nimi sina" - sina is a modifier for the word nimi and not the entire subject the same thing happens if you modify mi, as in "mi mute li pali" - we (many) are working and if you use 'en' to join multiple subjects, as in "mi en sina li pali" - you and i are working
11:35 I don't quite get the distinction here. Lape "modifies" wile: wile what? - wile lape. Sona what? Sona toki. Just like any other word: moku what? - moku telo. Pre-predicates seem like a category that doesn't change how I parse the sentence... Edit: with the "kama pona" example I got an idea. Basically, all these would be "more logical" if they needed a "e". "sina kama pona" = you arrive well, "sina kama e pona" = you become good. But for minimalism reasons, as these words are very often used in this sense, they are called "pre-predicates" and given a superpower to be used without "e", in exchange for some extra ambiguity...
The meaning changes when you add "e"! The word after a pre-verb has two important properties that distinguish it from if "e" were used -- it acts as a syntactic verb rather than a noun, and it can take an object of its own. In "mi wile moku", "moku" is specifically a verb: "I want to eat". in "mi wile e moku", "moku" is in the position of the direct object, and it's syntactically a noun: "I want food". This matters if you want to add an object to the verb "moku"! "mi moku e telo" means "i drink water", so then "mi wile moku e telo" means "i want to drink water". Both "wile" and "moku" are verbs. "wile" is the pre-verb to the verb "moku", and the object of the verb "moku" is "telo". If you don't interpret "wile" as a pre-verb in that sentence, the statement means something like "I want water in a way related to food/eating". This still *could* mean the same thing, but it's a lot less specific and has many other interpretations. The meanings of most of the pre-predicate words also differ from their meanings as normal verbs. When you use "kama" with "e", as in "sina kama e pona", it means "you come-ify goodness", something like "you summon goodness" and "you make goodness arrive". You're applying the idea of "kama" to "pona". "sona" as a pre-predicate specifically means "to know *how to*". With "sona" as a pre-predicate, "mi sona toki" specifically means "I know how to speak". You can add an object to "toki" -- "mi sona toki e waso" means "I know how to talk about birds". On the other hand, "mi sona e toki" is more general, with "toki" as a syntactic noun: “I understand communication”
sitelen ni li pona mute! tenpo ale la mi olin e ni: jan li pali e sitelen tawa sin pi toki pona. mi wile la jan mute li kama sona e toki pona tan sitelen ni. epiku!
this video is very good! i've always loved it when people make new toki pona videos. i hope more people learn how to speak toki pona from this video. epic!
First of all I just wanna say I really really love this video. I think it would work great as a refresher or reference material for someone who's already learned all the grammar but just hasn't studied in a while, or if you remember a construction exists but forgot exactly how to make it and just wanted to check with something. Just one question though, you describe both the vocative and optative usages of o, is there a reason you didn't explicitly include its usage to form commands as the imperative form (or did I just miss it)? I find that using "o" for commands is pretty distinct from just saying it's a wish, even if they both use the same grammatical form. I could understand if it's a statement about the implied politeness of toki pona speech, but lipu linku distinguishes imperative from optative in the definition, and most other times I see definitions given for "o" they don't even bother describing it as for wishes, just commands and interjections. Other than that comment, I just wanna say again that this video is really, *really* good, and I'm definitely gonna start linking it to friends as another resource if they ask about the language.
You're right, I definitely could've spent more time on 'o'. The example that I gave for the imperative was "o lon" with the subject omitted, but I didn't call it an imperative in the video. It definitely is imperative though! The reason I hesitate to call the imperative solely a command in particular is as you said-Toki Pona is typically analyzed as polite by default, so in the right context, "o pana e ni tawa mi" could mean something like "Give me that." or "Could you please pass me that?" 'o' without a preceding subject can be used for commands, requests, and wishes that the speaker has for the listener to do. I personally don't find the ideas that distinct, so I thought it'd be the simplest to introduce 'o' as first replacing 'li' to express a wish and keeping the idea that the sentence is a wish when the subject is the implied listener, avoiding this particular nuance. The imperative and optative are definitely different though - in my experience, "o ni" and "sina o ni" don't mean the same thing to most speakers.
I'm learning toki pona on mylittlewordland (formerly community courses on memrise), and I'm making my own sentences to practice. One of my sentences is a question, and I'm wondering which of the two constructions, 'X ala X' or 'anu seme', would serve better for this question. Or if it doesn't matter. sina ken ala ken moku e ko suwi? or: sina ken moku e ko suwi anu seme? Can you eat sugar? (as in, is it safe to eat sugar? Is the sweet powder edible?) I also wonder, since I'm trying to use the impersonal you, if 'sina' is the proper translation for that, or if sina can only be used to address the person you are speaking to, and not a hypothetical person, in toki pona.
great question! i’d say that both of your question constructions work- it’s like the difference between “can i eat sugar?” and “i cant eat sugar, right?” in english. as for using “sina,” you’re right in the observation that it’s not really used to refer to a hypothetical person rather than the audience. i might replace it with “jan li ken ala ken moku e ko suwi” or “mi ken ala ken moku e ko suwi” depending on the situation
Understanding the first two sentences effortlessly (while a bit drunk) feels awesome. And btw you should have used lon instead of kepeken there (it's not like you're 'using' the "small amount of time", right? edit: this was an excellent, concise and to-the-point video. It got a lot of nuance right. I love it!
mi pilin pona tan toki sina! From my understanding, kepeken is a more general "by means of" rather than specifically "using," so I'd say kepeken is fine there - I'm giving this knowledge through tenpo lili. But yeah, lon works just as well!
This could work! This sentence is grammatically correct and would be understood by most speakers. A literal translation would be something like“my body feels badness.” Another common way to express this idea is “sijelo mi li pilin ike.” Instead of ike being a thing that you are feeling, it’s an adverb describing the state of your feeling, as in “my body feels badly.”
jan Tani o. toki en sitelen sina li pona li pana e sona pona ale lon tenpo lili. sina kule pona a e nimi la lukin li wile ala kepeken wawa lon lawa mi. kin pakala suli li lon ala la mi pilin pona tan pali sina.
@@SteveMeiers That would be really difficult, as toki pona is more vague than most other languages. Not to mention, that basically all words with adjectives aren't in any lexicon, so you may mean -inspiration- "sona sin" and that could translate to -new thought-. Also I doubt that anyone would reveal that they are working on a google translate language to the public that easily.
"tomo mi" does mean "my house," but be careful! Although "pi" can often be translated as "of", all it does is regroup words. In "tomo telo nasa," both "telo" and "nasa" are specifically modifying "tomo", and in "tomo pi telo nasa," "nasa" first modifies "telo," and the whole phrase "telo nasa" modifies "tomo." This is similar in structure to what "of" does in English, so it's easy to translate as "building of unusual liquid," rather than "unusual-liquid building," but all "pi" is doing here is changing how the words are modified, not introducing "of." That means that "tomo pi mi" is ungrammatical since "pi" isn't regrouping anything. If you want to specify specifically that you built a house, a simple method is to introduce an explanatory sentence before or afterwards. To say, "Look at this house I built," you might say "o lukin e tomo ni! mi pali e ona." "Look at this house! I built it." If context was already established, a phrase like "tomo pi pali mi" might also work to refer to the house, meaning something like "house associated with my work."
I translated this as “give strong knowledge” so I’m gonna assume they meant “Thanks for sharing this wisdom(about Toki pona)” did I get it mostly right??
@@vexxus3425 You got the sentiment right! You're right about the individual words. The translation would get closer to "strong knowledgegiving", so the strength is more about the quality of how it got taught rather than the knowledge that got taught (you'd need "pi" if wawa is supposed to modify "wawa")
I feel like arguing and trying to trade insults in this language would be really funny. Youd have to be really creative to come up with something other than "you bad"
Definitely! An interesting example lipamanka has said in the past: you're cooking, and a friend asks you "moku ni li tawa soweli anu seme?" - "this food is for an animal or what?"
@@12noviembre it's okay! I'll try my best to break this down: "wawa a" - strong! / powerful! i often use this as an interjection like english's "wow!" or "cool!" "sina kama pona" - you become good here, I'm using kama as a pre-predicate rather than a verb meaning "arrive" "tan sitelen" - because of the depiction -> because of the video you used 'sitelen tawa' to refer to a video, but a 'sitelen tawa' is just a specific *type* of 'sitelen', one that happens to be 'tawa'! because you've already brought up a 'sitelen tawa', 'sitelen' in my sentence is likely to be referring to that same 'sitelen', which is the video so "sina kama pona tan sitelen la," means something like "in the context of you becoming good from the video..." so in full: "in the context of you becoming good from the video, I am good emotionally" -> "because you improved from my video, I feel good" interpreting more complex sentences like this will come more natural to you as you practice!
jan Tani o! ni li pona mute a! mi sona e toki pona la, mi pilin e ni: sitelen tawa sina li ike ala a! ona li pona mute tawa jan la, jan li ken lukin e ni li kama sona e toki pona lon tempo lili a! pali sina li epiku!
this is very good! i know toki pona, and in my opinion, I don't think your video is bad! i find it awesome that people can see this and learn toki pona in a short time! your work is epic!
@@SquooshyShark1000 At the last part you mentioned, the sentence is grammatical! jan li ken lukin e ni li kama sona e toki pona lon tenpo lili a! The words after both "li"s are predicates for the subject "jan," so another way to think of it is jan li ken lukin e ni AND (jan) li kama sona e toki pona lon tenpo lili "People can see this and come to understand Toki Pona in a short time!"
pona mute a! sitelen tawa ni li pona mute a! mi wile e ni: sina pali e sitelen tawa sin. mi wile e ni: sina pana e sona sin lon sitelen tawa sin. sina ken toki lon nasin toki. mi wile e ni: tenpo suno sina li pona mute.
to everyone in the comments, there is no possible way to learn toki pona in a day or even a week. it's actually impossible unless you have some outside force.
i absolutely agree- i’d say even a mild level of conversational proficiency can only come after a month of learning and practice, and i never intended or believed that my video would bring someone to that level the reason i made this video is (1) to provide a reference for people to review or get an alternative perspective on the grammar, (2) provide an accurate cursory overview of all of the grammar in a video format, (3) to help introduce people to the language, and (4) because i thought it’d be fun to create
The biggest downside with Toki Pona is that everyone does a stereotypical "aboriginal" voice when speaking it. Not what Sonya Lang intended, considering most words are borrowed/modified from European languages.
Toki Ma was recently revamped and renamed to Kokanu to (to my understanding) avoid conflicts of interest with Toki Pona and have a vocabulary more suitable for an international auxiliary language. I’ve worked with them a little before and I think the project is great. I definitely wouldn’t call either language “better” than the other - Kokanu was made with the specific goal to be a culturally neutral yet minimal IAL, whereas Toki Pona was first and foremost a personal and philosophical artistic language, even if it could fill the role of an IAL too.
@@somemagellanic Yes. Improved because often times I see people who criticism Esperanto as an auxlang propose Toki Pona (essentially a toy language) as an alternative. Toki Pona cannot be an auxlang. Toki Ma would be much better (though still too tiny in my opinion). Perhaps this Kokanu I just heard about will be even better than Toki Ma.
really, the only way to judge a conlang is by how well it does what it was designed to do. toki pona and esperanto were made for different reasons, their goals just happen to overlap in some ways (and if you ask me, toki pona fulfills its goals better than esperanto its own)
Was 18 minutes simply the fastest time you could recite your script? Can I suggest you show any future videos to a newcomer and then ask them what they understood. If the answer is nothing (as in this case) then I'd suggest a new approach.
If 18 minutes is the pour rate, and the absorption rate is 1 year, then what is the typical learning curve and did the speed help? I felt it went a little fast too. It's a great resource, but I'm definitely using the speed control to slow it down a bit on my next pass.
"wouldn't it be more comfortable to speak the language i already know instead of learning a new one" not trying to strawman or anything. i see your point, but you're looking at a very specific case. in fact, i have found that toki pona often uses less characters than english.
A few small corrections:
At 7:58, this is a strange example since the first sama is being used as a predicate and a preposition, so the Toki Pona sentence would mean something more like "This drawing is like me, in a way that's like you." To say that the drawing is both like me and like you more clearly, "li" should be repeated here: "sitelen ni li sama mi li sama sina."
A better example sentence might be "jan li pana e moku tawa mi tawa sina": someone gives food to me and you.
(tan lipamanka)
At 8:54, I call this an interjection, but it's not really the best term to use here since I defined interjections at the start of the video, and the community doesn't really use the word interjection in this way. Something like vocative or vocative phrase would describe it better.
(tan lipamanka)
At 17:28, the Greek transliteration is slightly incorrect. In "γαν", makes a /ɣ/ sound, and in "μοκυ," makes an /i/ sound. Greek also marks stress, so the sentence should look something like "γιαν λι πάνα ε μόκου τάγουα σίνα."
It's also been pointed out that the Cyrillic script is a bit odd and would be more natural with iotated я for the "ja" in "jan."
(tan akesi Kilo tan sitelen ko)
"Ян ли пана э моку тава Сина"
For me personally, using "й" and not "я" in the Cyrillic script feels just fine as it sounds the same, but is closer to the latin script (3 letters in both). What's more important - "е" should probably be "э" and it does affect the sounds significantly
@@АлександрХазанчук I have learned about the word "йога" since my last comment. I would think it'd be spelt "ёга" but nope. So I see what you mean about it looking natural. I assume that applies to "ë"->"йo" too?
Ci sarà una versione corretta di questo video? Intendo, con tutte le correzioni che hai inserito
I've tried watching soo many different videos about toki pona, but never understood it. Until i found yours 😃
I wanted to start my dive into toki pona and this as my first contact was absolutely wonderful. Dense, but wonderful. Loved how you used colored parts for the different portions of sentences, I'll definitely keep parsing toki pona sentences like that in the future - it's so great!
toki sina li pona a!
"tomo telo nasa refers to a tomo telo which is nasa"
i love language
James, while John had had "had had", had had "had"; "had had" had had a better effect on the teacher.
@@salvit6024 I absolutely hate this. Why is English like this? 😭
I will be sending this to anyone who brings up jan MIsali's 12 days of toki pona
LETS GOOOO
Why is that? Are you saying that jan Misali's guide isn't very good, and that you should use other resources (like this video)? Or am I misunderstanding?
@@baksoBoy jan Misali's older lessons are flawed (and the new ones are incomplete), and this video teaches everything that jan Misali's videos aim to teach faster.
@@lipamanka Ooh I see now! Thanks!
sina pona a!
sitelen tawa ni li pona e sona mi pi toki pona.
tenpo suli la mi alasa sona e nasin pi nimi pini. (nimi pini li nimi "lon" li nimi "tawa" li nimi ante sama.)
tenpo pini la mi sona ala. sitelen ni la mi sona lili. :)
English translation in case my toki pona isn't very readable:
Thanks!
This improved my toki pona.
I've been trying to wrap my head around prepositions for a while, and this video helped. :)
toki sina li pona!
sitelen nanpa wan - 1st sitelen
sitelen pi nanpa wan - sitelen of the number 1
each and every words are nice and pleasing to hear , great work jan Tani
If you watch this video at 2x speed, you'll become fluent in toki pona in less than 10 minutes. 😄
jan Polijan a!
mi olin e sitelen tawa sina ^^
@@lubiekrascfilmy6270 mu!
@@lubiekrascfilmy6270looks similar to Filipino in my perspective
@@Hayatttiiihonestly i think tagalog has way more consonants lol
@@lubiekrascfilmy6270
[to jan Polijan] very!
I love images towards me ^^
Correction at 8:00: Because the prepositional phrase is the predicate, just repeating the preposition does not create a conjunction. It should be "sitelen ni li sama mi li sama sina." In "sitelen ni li sama mi sama sina," "sama sina" applies to the rest of sentence.
yep- that’s in the pinned corrections comment :3
@@dnaiel ah my bad, I read 7:58 as 7:38 i think
I thought I was intermediate level after learning all the words and watching the jan Misali series, but I'm surprised by how much I learned here, great video
i love this video its so precise and useful. i would recommend this to anyone learning toki pona. ik i already commented but this video deserves more recognition so im interacting.🤞
I finally understand "pi". Thanks!
I know pi means of
This video is solid. I'm just beginning to learn Toki Pona, and this is a great reference to me.
ni li sitelen tawa e pona. Mi tawa lon nasin e toki pona. Ni li lipu pona e mi.
why can't this be put in a playlist, would be great to be able to relisten this more easily
a playlist would definitely have been a good alternative to the way this is laid out
if you want to jump to a specific section, this video has chapters so you can find information about anything
@@iloTani Oh no, I mean that youtube didn't allow this video to be placed into playlists at the time of commenting and that I'd like to be able to put it in one so I can find it more easily later. Looks like this issue has now been fixed!
@@jfinngamesgotcha!
Good stuff! I have struggled with “pi” before and this video helped me understand better.
this is a bit too long for my tastes. can you please condense it into 60 seconds, put the video into a portrait orientation, and add minecraft parkour gameplay in the background?
sina musi xD
sitelen tawa sama ni li lon la mi pona :)
Subway surfers too
Or a shiny car going down a ramp will help
I’d prefer some family guy content in the top left
caught me red handed going into the comments after three mins, lol
3:58 unusually wet building 🤩
I want to learn this, but my brain just goes numb when I start listening to the explanation of this simple language......
yea
Just start by learning the words... there are only about 130. you'll figure grammar out as you go along.
this video was really helpful ngl
fr poorvs5285
Very nice, will be showing this to my friend that i am forcing to learn toki pona against his will
please make the toki pona factorio video for next april fools day i was really sad that you canceled it earlier this year :[
@@TheLetterB123 Don't worry, I'm cooking something in the background :)
banger post dan
I am going to start learning the language as of today and once im fluent enough, Ill begin recommending it to my friends, this is so cool!
i am very fluent
(mi sona toki pona mute)
@@Fensmiler i misread this as english "mute" and thought you meant you couldn't speak toki pona, lol
It's kinda crazy it's possible to compress the whole language in one not too long video 😅
wonderful video! :D
This is very good, well done.
sitelen wawa a!
Great video, well structured, very clearly explained! Thanks!
I try to use this opportunity to ask a question about toki pona. The basic word order of toki pona is subject-predicate-object. Prepositional adverbials may be put after that, e.g. "mi lape" -> "mi lape lon tomo" (I sleep in the house), right? But the adverbials are actually kind of the context, so I am able to use "la" as well: "lon tomo la mi lape", am I right or is this sentence somehow ungrammatical? Do these two sentences mean the same or they differ?
You're exactly right! You can put prepositions before la.
mi moku kepeken ilo. - I eat using utensils.
kepeken ilo la mi moku. - In the context of using utensils, I eat.
Everything before la is already marked as context, so a lot of the time if you move a preposition before la, you can also omit the preposition word:
lon tomo la mi lape. - In the context of being in the building, I sleep.
tomo la mi lape. - In the context of the building, I sleep.
ni li pona tawa mi. - This is good to me.
tawa mi la, ni li pona. - In the context of towards me, this is good.
mi la, ni li pona. - In the context of me, this is good.
These have nearly identical meanings!
this video is very satisfying, :3
what’s going on at 9:55? it says „nimi sina li seme“. i thought li don’t go after sina. could you explain if that is supposed to be there or not? thanks
li is only omitted when the subject is *exactly* mi or sina and there's nothing else going on
in this sentence, the subject is "nimi sina" - sina is a modifier for the word nimi and not the entire subject
the same thing happens if you modify mi, as in "mi mute li pali" - we (many) are working
and if you use 'en' to join multiple subjects, as in "mi en sina li pali" - you and i are working
11:35 I don't quite get the distinction here. Lape "modifies" wile: wile what? - wile lape. Sona what? Sona toki. Just like any other word: moku what? - moku telo. Pre-predicates seem like a category that doesn't change how I parse the sentence...
Edit: with the "kama pona" example I got an idea. Basically, all these would be "more logical" if they needed a "e". "sina kama pona" = you arrive well, "sina kama e pona" = you become good. But for minimalism reasons, as these words are very often used in this sense, they are called "pre-predicates" and given a superpower to be used without "e", in exchange for some extra ambiguity...
The meaning changes when you add "e"! The word after a pre-verb has two important properties that distinguish it from if "e" were used -- it acts as a syntactic verb rather than a noun, and it can take an object of its own.
In "mi wile moku", "moku" is specifically a verb: "I want to eat". in "mi wile e moku", "moku" is in the position of the direct object, and it's syntactically a noun: "I want food".
This matters if you want to add an object to the verb "moku"! "mi moku e telo" means "i drink water", so then "mi wile moku e telo" means "i want to drink water". Both "wile" and "moku" are verbs. "wile" is the pre-verb to the verb "moku", and the object of the verb "moku" is "telo". If you don't interpret "wile" as a pre-verb in that sentence, the statement means something like "I want water in a way related to food/eating". This still *could* mean the same thing, but it's a lot less specific and has many other interpretations.
The meanings of most of the pre-predicate words also differ from their meanings as normal verbs. When you use "kama" with "e", as in "sina kama e pona", it means "you come-ify goodness", something like "you summon goodness" and "you make goodness arrive". You're applying the idea of "kama" to "pona".
"sona" as a pre-predicate specifically means "to know *how to*". With "sona" as a pre-predicate, "mi sona toki" specifically means "I know how to speak". You can add an object to "toki" -- "mi sona toki e waso" means "I know how to talk about birds". On the other hand, "mi sona e toki" is more general, with "toki" as a syntactic noun: “I understand communication”
sitelen ni li pona mute! tenpo ale la mi olin e ni: jan li pali e sitelen tawa sin pi toki pona. mi wile la jan mute li kama sona e toki pona tan sitelen ni. epiku!
this video is very good! i've always loved it when people make new toki pona videos. i hope more people learn how to speak toki pona from this video. epic!
mi la Tokipona li pona pona
Great video!
sona pona a! mi kepeken ni lon pana sona. sina wawa sona.
I am sending this to whoever says anything about jan Misali's 12 days series .
Greatvideo!
sina pona tan pana sona
I want to send this to my friend cuz she wants to learn Toki Pona, but she couldn't speak English
First of all I just wanna say I really really love this video. I think it would work great as a refresher or reference material for someone who's already learned all the grammar but just hasn't studied in a while, or if you remember a construction exists but forgot exactly how to make it and just wanted to check with something. Just one question though, you describe both the vocative and optative usages of o, is there a reason you didn't explicitly include its usage to form commands as the imperative form (or did I just miss it)? I find that using "o" for commands is pretty distinct from just saying it's a wish, even if they both use the same grammatical form. I could understand if it's a statement about the implied politeness of toki pona speech, but lipu linku distinguishes imperative from optative in the definition, and most other times I see definitions given for "o" they don't even bother describing it as for wishes, just commands and interjections. Other than that comment, I just wanna say again that this video is really, *really* good, and I'm definitely gonna start linking it to friends as another resource if they ask about the language.
You're right, I definitely could've spent more time on 'o'. The example that I gave for the imperative was "o lon" with the subject omitted, but I didn't call it an imperative in the video. It definitely is imperative though!
The reason I hesitate to call the imperative solely a command in particular is as you said-Toki Pona is typically analyzed as polite by default, so in the right context, "o pana e ni tawa mi" could mean something like "Give me that." or "Could you please pass me that?"
'o' without a preceding subject can be used for commands, requests, and wishes that the speaker has for the listener to do. I personally don't find the ideas that distinct, so I thought it'd be the simplest to introduce 'o' as first replacing 'li' to express a wish and keeping the idea that the sentence is a wish when the subject is the implied listener, avoiding this particular nuance. The imperative and optative are definitely different though - in my experience, "o ni" and "sina o ni" don't mean the same thing to most speakers.
How much time did it take you to write this comment?
wa! sitelen ni li pona a
12:33 there's a joke to be found here but i'm gonna leave it to someone else.
I don't know why the word Tokiponization makes me laugh so hard XD
sitelen tawa tan ilo Tani la ni li pona nanpa wan a!
why couldnt alasa and lukin both mean differt types of try. likun meaning try out and alasa meaning try to do (i.e. achieve verb)
I'm learning toki pona on mylittlewordland (formerly community courses on memrise), and I'm making my own sentences to practice. One of my sentences is a question, and I'm wondering which of the two constructions, 'X ala X' or 'anu seme', would serve better for this question. Or if it doesn't matter.
sina ken ala ken moku e ko suwi?
or:
sina ken moku e ko suwi anu seme?
Can you eat sugar? (as in, is it safe to eat sugar? Is the sweet powder edible?)
I also wonder, since I'm trying to use the impersonal you, if 'sina' is the proper translation for that, or if sina can only be used to address the person you are speaking to, and not a hypothetical person, in toki pona.
great question! i’d say that both of your question constructions work-
it’s like the difference between “can i eat sugar?” and “i cant eat sugar, right?” in english.
as for using “sina,” you’re right in the observation that it’s not really used to refer to a hypothetical person rather than the audience. i might replace it with “jan li ken ala ken moku e ko suwi” or “mi ken ala ken moku e ko suwi” depending on the situation
@@iloTani Oh, thank you for clearing up the impersonal you bit! I had been wondering about that for quite awhile!
500th subscriber!
Musi pona nadin!
pilin mi la sitelen tawa li pona mute a! o pona tawa sina!
I always get kepeken and kulupu mixed up
"kulupu" descends from English "group", from the Tok Pisin word "gurupu"! I find that knowing more about a word helps me remember it better.
Understanding the first two sentences effortlessly (while a bit drunk) feels awesome. And btw you should have used lon instead of kepeken there (it's not like you're 'using' the "small amount of time", right?
edit: this was an excellent, concise and to-the-point video. It got a lot of nuance right. I love it!
mi pilin pona tan toki sina!
From my understanding, kepeken is a more general "by means of" rather than specifically "using," so I'd say kepeken is fine there - I'm giving this knowledge through tenpo lili. But yeah, lon works just as well!
Question is it okay to assume that sijelo mi li pilin e ike mean's my body is feeling bad and did I make a grammar mistake?
This could work! This sentence is grammatically correct and would be understood by most speakers. A literal translation would be something like“my body feels badness.”
Another common way to express this idea is “sijelo mi li pilin ike.” Instead of ike being a thing that you are feeling, it’s an adverb describing the state of your feeling, as in “my body feels badly.”
Thank you very much
jan Tani o. toki en sitelen sina li pona li pana e sona pona ale lon tenpo lili.
sina kule pona a e nimi la lukin li wile ala kepeken wawa lon lawa mi.
kin pakala suli li lon ala la mi pilin pona tan pali sina.
mi pilin sama · kule nimi li pona suli · sitelen ni li wawa
I wonder what a group of kids only hearing toki pona while growing would differ from other languages.
pona a!
What is the font you use?
I’m using Inter by rsms
wawa a!
Google Translate needs Toki Pona! Is anybody on this?
@@SteveMeiers That would be really difficult, as toki pona is more vague than most other languages. Not to mention, that basically all words with adjectives aren't in any lexicon, so you may mean -inspiration- "sona sin" and that could translate to -new thought-. Also I doubt that anyone would reveal that they are working on a google translate language to the public that easily.
So, "tomo mi" means my house, would "tomo pi mi" mean a house from me, of by me? Would I need to specify that I built it?
"tomo mi" does mean "my house," but be careful! Although "pi" can often be translated as "of", all it does is regroup words. In "tomo telo nasa," both "telo" and "nasa" are specifically modifying "tomo", and in "tomo pi telo nasa," "nasa" first modifies "telo," and the whole phrase "telo nasa" modifies "tomo." This is similar in structure to what "of" does in English, so it's easy to translate as "building of unusual liquid," rather than "unusual-liquid building," but all "pi" is doing here is changing how the words are modified, not introducing "of."
That means that "tomo pi mi" is ungrammatical since "pi" isn't regrouping anything.
If you want to specify specifically that you built a house, a simple method is to introduce an explanatory sentence before or afterwards. To say, "Look at this house I built," you might say "o lukin e tomo ni! mi pali e ona." "Look at this house! I built it." If context was already established, a phrase like "tomo pi pali mi" might also work to refer to the house, meaning something like "house associated with my work."
@@iloTani mi sona e toki sina. pona a! (I hope I said that right, I'm learning while practising)
mi la sitelen ni li epiku li wawa mute a 💪💪
pana sona wawa a
I translated this as “give strong knowledge” so I’m gonna assume they meant “Thanks for sharing this wisdom(about Toki pona)” did I get it mostly right??
@@vexxus3425 You got the sentiment right! You're right about the individual words. The translation would get closer to "strong knowledgegiving", so the strength is more about the quality of how it got taught rather than the knowledge that got taught (you'd need "pi" if wawa is supposed to modify "wawa")
I feel like arguing and trying to trade insults in this language would be really funny. Youd have to be really creative to come up with something other than "you bad"
Definitely! An interesting example lipamanka has said in the past: you're cooking, and a friend asks you "moku ni li tawa soweli anu seme?" - "this food is for an animal or what?"
mi kute e sina la, mi o moku ala e telo nasa tan ni: lawa mi li kama tawa sike tan toki sona
Sina jan ke tami, lon kupulu pi toki pona?
pona! mi sona e nimi ‘la’ tan sitelen tawa lawa ni! mi sona ala e ni! :))
wawa a! sina kama pona tan sitelen la mi pona pilin
tbh i barely know what that means lol
magic! you arrive well because the writing, i feel good
there is no way i was right lol
@@12noviembre it's okay! I'll try my best to break this down:
"wawa a" - strong! / powerful!
i often use this as an interjection like english's "wow!" or "cool!"
"sina kama pona" - you become good
here, I'm using kama as a pre-predicate rather than a verb meaning "arrive"
"tan sitelen" - because of the depiction -> because of the video
you used 'sitelen tawa' to refer to a video, but a 'sitelen tawa' is just a specific *type* of 'sitelen', one that happens to be 'tawa'!
because you've already brought up a 'sitelen tawa', 'sitelen' in my sentence is likely to be referring to that same 'sitelen', which is the video
so "sina kama pona tan sitelen la," means something like "in the context of you becoming good from the video..."
so in full:
"in the context of you becoming good from the video, I am good emotionally"
-> "because you improved from my video, I feel good"
interpreting more complex sentences like this will come more natural to you as you practice!
thank you! (^_^)
toki!
mi kute e toki sina nanpa wan la pilin mi la ni li ken ala. taso sina ni pona!
sitelen tawa sina li pona mute a!
epiku ete a!
sina ike ala ike?
pona tawa lipu sona e pi toki pona. ni li pona e mi. mi awen kama sona taso mi sona suli tan lipu sona ante
Reminds a lot of Finnish
sitelen ni li wawa! mi o pana e sitelen ni tawa jan pona mi.
Sitelen ko
jan Tani o! ni li pona mute a! mi sona e toki pona la, mi pilin e ni: sitelen tawa sina li ike ala a! ona li pona mute tawa jan la, jan li ken lukin e ni li kama sona e toki pona lon tempo lili a! pali sina li epiku!
this is very good! i know toki pona, and in my opinion, I don't think your video is bad! i find it awesome that people can see this and learn toki pona in a short time! your work is epic!
@@SquooshyShark1000 At the last part you mentioned, the sentence is grammatical!
jan li ken lukin e ni li kama sona e toki pona lon tenpo lili a!
The words after both "li"s are predicates for the subject "jan," so another way to think of it is
jan li ken lukin e ni
AND
(jan) li kama sona e toki pona lon tenpo lili
"People can see this and come to understand Toki Pona in a short time!"
@@iloTani mi sona ike e kulupu nimi
misinterpreted it, my bad
My ADD brain only managed to learn mi lukin ni cuz I was trying to fend off my dog from eating my food whilst watching this😭😭
pona mute a! sitelen tawa ni li pona mute a! mi wile e ni: sina pali e sitelen tawa sin. mi wile e ni: sina pana e sona sin lon sitelen tawa sin. sina ken toki lon nasin toki. mi wile e ni: tenpo suno sina li pona mute.
a! seme la mi lukin ala e sitelen ni a · ni li pona mute
lipu tawa ni li pona mute! mi wile e pana sona ni e jan ante mute.
mi olin e kalama musi pi kalama lili insa lipu tawa ni mute.
pona mute! sina pana e sona wawa!
Found on Reddit
Ni li toki musi
Mi sona toki pona li suli
I hate the numbers in Toki Pona, It is so simple to use 1 wan 2 tu 3 kule 4 soweli 5 luka 6 pipi 7 esun 8 nasin 9 moon 0 ala
But instead we have wan, tu, and luka officially
I wish there was a language which wouldn't need any grammar rules
that language would be very confusing
😡 promo sm
Tbh, you can use this as an advantage to say something bad, and they cant translate
This should be the new Navajo for the military
to everyone in the comments, there is no possible way to learn toki pona in a day or even a week.
it's actually impossible unless you have some outside force.
by the way:
yes, I AM criticizing this video
the method that he uses to teach is proven to not work
i absolutely agree- i’d say even a mild level of conversational proficiency can only come after a month of learning and practice, and i never intended or believed that my video would bring someone to that level
the reason i made this video is (1) to provide a reference for people to review or get an alternative perspective on the grammar, (2) provide an accurate cursory overview of all of the grammar in a video format, (3) to help introduce people to the language, and (4) because i thought it’d be fun to create
The biggest downside with Toki Pona is that everyone does a stereotypical "aboriginal" voice when speaking it. Not what Sonya Lang intended, considering most words are borrowed/modified from European languages.
Now do a video on Toki Ma, the improved Toki Pona.
"improved" is a specific choice of words
Toki Ma was recently revamped and renamed to Kokanu to (to my understanding) avoid conflicts of interest with Toki Pona and have a vocabulary more suitable for an international auxiliary language. I’ve worked with them a little before and I think the project is great.
I definitely wouldn’t call either language “better” than the other - Kokanu was made with the specific goal to be a culturally neutral yet minimal IAL, whereas Toki Pona was first and foremost a personal and philosophical artistic language, even if it could fill the role of an IAL too.
@@iloTani nice, I never heard of Kokanu.
@@somemagellanic Yes. Improved because often times I see people who criticism Esperanto as an auxlang propose Toki Pona (essentially a toy language) as an alternative. Toki Pona cannot be an auxlang. Toki Ma would be much better (though still too tiny in my opinion).
Perhaps this Kokanu I just heard about will be even better than Toki Ma.
really, the only way to judge a conlang is by how well it does what it was designed to do. toki pona and esperanto were made for different reasons, their goals just happen to overlap in some ways (and if you ask me, toki pona fulfills its goals better than esperanto its own)
Each time I want to learn toki pona I remember just how lossy of a language it is
in the ways that that is true, i actually find it very freeing
Was 18 minutes simply the fastest time you could recite your script? Can I suggest you show any future videos to a newcomer and then ask them what they understood. If the answer is nothing (as in this case) then I'd suggest a new approach.
If 18 minutes is the pour rate, and the absorption rate is 1 year, then what is the typical learning curve and did the speed help?
I felt it went a little fast too. It's a great resource, but I'm definitely using the speed control to slow it down a bit on my next pass.
Excuse me, is it smart to talk like that?
Isn't it more comfortable to say "bar" instead of "tomo pi telo nasa"?
It doesn't make much sense to me.
"wouldn't it be more comfortable to speak the language i already know instead of learning a new one"
not trying to strawman or anything. i see your point, but you're looking at a very specific case. in fact, i have found that toki pona often uses less characters than english.
Nah I'm good, I will stick with English
taso... toki pona.. li *pona*... o kama sona e ona... :'(
pona a !