The Ultimate Toki Pona Dictionary Review
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 ส.ค. 2024
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25 Free Toki Pona Words and Phrases: stidium08.syst... Well, after 3 months, the review has finally arrived!
Here, I review the Toki Pona Dictionary and provide an analysis of the state of the language due to the dictionary’s release.
Patreon: patreon.com/Stidium
Music: Soul and Mind - E’s Jammy Jams
![ว้าว!ลุงบีมแบกทองมารับขวัญหลานกันยกบ้าน [cc] แดนแพทตี้ SS2 | EP.49 |](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Osihq1OAs-4/mqdefault.jpg)
4:12 Hm, no, kijetesantakalu has an index of 3 just like the other nimi ku suli (except ku, but ku isn't technically in the same list in the book itself)
5:03 kokosila and misikeke can be sourced back to jan Sonja, but that doesn't take away from the community aspect
9:53 I believe given that it's actually seximal, it'd be kijetesanta'kalu kijetesantaka'lu
11:16 well, I suppose that can be a reasonable interpretation, but ku describes the extended li method on "mi" and "sina" - just mentioning it because other things were mentioned in a tone of "this is basically how it's done now" and you somehow don't talk about this that way
Thanks for these clarifications.
1. I blame the first mistake you pointed out on my laziness when it came to fact checking which I should improve on.
2. I wasn’t aware of kokosila and misikeke originating from jan Sonja herself, so thanks for informing me of that.
3. There’s not really anything else to say about the seximal numbering system, you’re right here.
4. This is the big problem with taking months to make a video. My views on toki pona have changed since I started working on this video, just like my ability to speak in it. My manner of addressing new additions to toki pona in this video are quite biased and don’t reflect what I think now. Now, I take a much more laid-back approach. I do use li multiple times in a sentence now, and I’ve adopted other new ways of speaking the community has adopted. While I may not use some words the community uses (the most common being powe in my experience), I still take the time to understand what they mean.
Again, thanks for these clarifications and corrections, as they help me understand what to improve in the future.
(I should have reworded some of these things instead of writing it all down at midnight without putting more thought into it)
The video was good, but you said you liked comments and this is all I could think of in the moment
8:03 “It can refer to the book itself but that was not the intended meaning in pu” is case and point, as the phrase “in pu” does in fact refer to the book itself. :p
props to the fire for standing still for 15 minutes and 41 seconds, must have been very hard.
It’s a great actor, the best there is for it’s line of work
5:52 Kokosila actually comes from crocodile (although indirectly so). In Esperanto there's the word "krokodili", meaning to speak another language among Esperanto speakers, which itself comes from krokodilo (= crocodile).
I wasn’t aware of the etymology of the Esperanto word. I don’t speak Esperanto myself, but I think -i is the ending for verbs and -o is the ending for nouns. Is there any semantic or pragmatic reason why crocodiles and speaking in a different language around Esperanto speakers are related in the language? Or am I just looking into this too much and there isn’t really a reason for it? Either way, thanks for this cool bit of etymology behind the toki pona word!
@@stidium According to Wiktionary:
"The origin of the expression is unclear. Several suggestions have been made:
- From the fact that crocodiles' extremely large mouths make an apt comparison for carelessly flapping one's jaws without consideration.
- Ferrari, an Esperantist in Paris in the 1930s, would comment Kion volas tiuj krokodiloj? (What do those crocodiles want?) when noisy non-Esperantists entered the cafe where he was speaking Esperanto with friends.
- Students of Andreo Cseh. When Cseh taught Esperanto, students were only allowed to speak their native language when they were holding a wooden crocodile he always brought with him.
The latter two may be allusions to the idiom rather than its source."
My brain is in pain, I gotta learn this language
lipu ku is a wonderful book. And it was very relaxing to listen to this review by the fireplace. pona mute a!
Thank you! Your videos are very good. It's nice to just hear some authentically spoken toki pona. And I agree, lipu ku is a great book. sina pona mute a!
As far as I know, stressing the first syllable in kijetesantakalu isn't part of the number system, since it would refer to the animal. So given that, the kijetesantakalu number system (when written down) only shows orders of magnitude in seximal:
kijetesantakalu = 1 to 5
kijetesantakalu kijetesantakalu = 10 to 55 (decimal 6 to 35)
kijetesantakalu kijetesantakalu kijetesantakalu = 100 to 555 (decimal 36 to 215)
kijetesantakalu kijetesantakalu kijetesantakalu kijetesantakalu = 1000 to 5555 (decimal 216 to 1295)
...
i consider myself jan pi toki pona ale- the language was certainly constructed with a clear goal in mind, but between dialects, pidgins, and all kinds of things about the way language changes, i don't think any language can or should stay that way for long. It would be like trying to put a fence up in the ocean- what water is yours when it can flow between the gaps in the beams?
I almost wonder if there’d be a way to gather up the people taking on translating the Book you mentioned to collaborate. I do little bits at time myself, basically whatever our local lawa kulupu talks about every Sunday. Let me know if you’re interested in a collab!
That would be a pretty cool idea to try out. Since I've been working on that book less and less, it could also be a good idea to work up to that by translating other books first to see how a group of translators would work together to do something of that nature. However, that still sounds like a pretty fun idea. If enough people would be willing to do something like that, I'd be willing to be a part of it. It would be nice to start out with more straightforward books since some read the Bible, believing it to all be literal, whereas others read it with a lot more symbolism. "The Stranger" by Albert Camus would be a good example of what I mean (though, I am biased as it's my favourite novel and Camus is my favourite author). It would also be fun to translate albums. The only problem with most of this is getting a group of people who would all agree to work on translating these things without making it clear that there are different writing styles in use (for example, in regards to specificity), but, that could also be part of the fun. Sorry for the late reply.
voice recorder: ilo kute
image recorder: ilo lukin
recorder: ilo pi kute en lukin
Those all make sense. They’re great translations!
Might I propose “ilo kalama kon” for the instrument?
@@stidium it could also generally refer to any woodwind as well
I just ordered the standard toki pona book yesterday só me and my girlfriend can speak to each other in this!! I’m really excited to see how fast we can get this and use in public
That’s cool, I hope you have fun learning! If you want any other good resources for learning and/or discussing toki pona, I recommend that you go to the toki pona subreddit or the discord server, ma pona pi toki pona.
I’ve had arguments on reddit where purists refused to consider possible new words. I remember when this came out and it had a number of new words. I laughed. even jan Sonja says it is a living language. I know the goal is to keep it simple but sometimes concepts come up that need their own TP word. for example the concept terms for left and right is confusing and not straightforward and so I loved the new terms in ku. I have been into TP since the early years so many of these “new” words aren’t really new to OGs. Nice to see the vindication coming from jan Sonja. so hopefully purists have changed their tune. and i was happy to see the new numbers in that book too
1:18 hehehehehe pupu
2nd time I find one of your comments in a YT video xd
pipi a a a
@@IamSamys ona li jo e kalama sama nimi ijo pi pana telo jelo lon toki Inli a a a
I don't know why mushrooms or fungi need their own word. Why not 'kili ma' to refer to tubers, mushrooms and other ground-dwelling edibles?
I see soko as existing for fun than for practical purposes. In theory, you could say that they only word you need for an animal is soweli and then say “soweli ma” for land animals, “soweli telo” for water animals, and “soweli kon” for birds. Also, biologically speaking, fungi are kind of weird, looking like plants but actually sharing more DNA in common with animals. I try not to think about it too much; it exists just for fun.
@@stidium Good points. Nice to see people passionate about the toki pona!
Mushrooms are rather akesi ma awen. But if someone doesn't know this, it is a kind of kili for such a person... They deserved their own word.
I'm really looking forward to your translation of the Bible!
mi a wile lukin e lipu Pipe sina kepeken toki pona
(i probably made some mistakes but i've only known toki pona for a few days)
It might be awhile before that's ever finished. taso, toki pona sina li pona a!
I never understood the mi/sina can’t be paired with li rule. It just seems kind of random.
If I'm not mistaken, li comes from the Tok Pisin word i, which goes after third-person subjects and before the verb. For example, in "kaikai i gut" ("Food is good"). I think jan Sonja intended to have li be pretty similar to i, which would explain why you don't use it after mi or sina, as you don't use i after any of the first or second-person pronouns in Tok Pisin (there are 11 of them, so I'm not going to list them all here). This would also be the reason why the multiple li in a sentence thing wasn't originally done with mi or sina, since li was intended to be a third-person marker. Since I don't speak Tok Pisin myself, I can't exactly be 100% sure about that, but I think that's why. I hope this helps you understand.
@@stidium imo that rule feels kinda useless and constraining
I have my volume cranked to max and this is still hard to hear. Might want to up your mic gain/input volume when recording. Anyway, no one is right or wrong, just thought I would toss in my own 2 cents for recorder since I found it interesting trying to come up with something for it. I would go with either "ijo kute" or "ijo kute sitelen" and thank you for making me think that through. :)
11:05 n - sina ken kepeken e kulupu nimi tu taso: ‹mi moku e kili e kala. mi toki.›
15:00 ni wile li ‹toki e ni tawa soweli tomo *ona:* jan Sisijun li toki e toki› anu seme?
11:05 la, mi toki e ni: sina wile kepeken ala e nimi “li” mute e nimi “e” mute la, sina kepeken e kulupu nimi tu wan. jan li wile kepeken ala e nimi ni mute la, ona li toki ala e ni.
15:00 la, mi toki e ni: “Tell your dog I said hi” nasin toki mi la, mi toki e [jəɹ] anu [əɹ] tawa nimi “your”. tenpo mute la, kalama ona li sama nimi “her”. mi pakala tan toki ike mi.
sitelen tawa sina li pona a. mi kama e sona mute. ali pona tawa sina.
nimi kepeken la, I use “kepeken e” if I want to modify kepeken, similar to how Mandarin has 少用。example: telo li mute ala. o kepeken lili e telo.
pilin mi la, that's a pretty good way of using kepeken that I've never thought of before. I might want to add that to the way I speak.
Holy
lipu oko sina li pona tawa mi!
mi wile e ni: sitelen tawa pi Toki Pona mute tan kulupu sina pi sitelen tawa.
u translating the bible?
It was a plan I had around this time. There is now a discord server dedicated to this project and similar ones (The Iliad, The Aeneid, The Odyssey, etc.). It was quite the task to try and take on by myself!
@@stidium I started doing that a few days ago as a learning project, and when I compared my first 5 verses to another I found I was amazed at how different others' understanding was. Examples:
- God was translated as "Jan JAWE", despite the word in Genesis 1 being "elohim" (God, proper noun), not "yahweh", so would most accurately be "Jan kon pi sewi mute", or "most high spirit person" (the pi is added to avoid the translation of "many aliens")
- A lot of verses went like "now [event], and [event], and [event]." I used "kin la" to mean "and then" or "also this:", but they went with a straight "taso" without a "la", which seems to me to feel more like a "but" or "however", which is not accurate to the original.
- Day one, god makes light, not the sun it self, so I translated his statement "let there be light" as "o ken e lon pi ijo suno", "allow the existence of sun stuff", but the other one just used suno, suggesting maybe the sun had appeared and not just light.
@Jero Toro Interesting. When I did it, I just used “jan sewi Elowin”, as that’s enough to clarify with god is being discussed, is more simple, and uses the less offensive name.
For making light, my translation was: “mi wile e ni: suno li lon.” This is because “let” represents hortative statement expressing a wish rather than a command. I just used suno as that can mean light too.
I also used the “kin la” strategy. Alternatively, I would just make a new sentence.
@@stidium Interesting! I prefer jan sewi Elowin, much more efficient.
I had to do some reading regarding "let there be" in god's statement, and it seems that it's not an imperative OR hortative... it's a jussive, a mood unique to Hebrew and Arabic that is a mix of command, permission and agreement, similar to "ok let's do this". The verb (yehi) is a jussive "to become/cause", so I'm almost thinking kama might be a closer verb to use. Maybe "oke o" can be a jussive marker?
Can you pronounced voiced unvoiced rounded unrounded nose cancer lateral pharyngeal coshdhid-articulated nasal glottal labial fricative
/ẏ́̃̇́́/
No
yes
Okay but can we talk about how toki pona defaults to genderless references to people, and so the use of "tonsi" feels kind of against the spirit of the language? Why not erase gender altogether, have meli and mije refer to body types, and use tonsi to refer to any body type that doesn't strictly fit meli or mije, like someone who's had top but not bottom surgery or a flower with both sets of reproductive organs?
Some people do drop all gender words and that is respectable. But seeing as meli and mije are so common you can't really erase them from existance so tonsi partially exists to adress and imbalance.
Gender is very important to a lot of people. Often its more important than bodily sex. *tonsi* means a lot to those who use it.
Suggesting that we only refer to bodily sex is problematic not least because it reinforces transphobia. Its also not relevent if a person is fully clothed and presentig a different way - often you can't even tell someone's body type underneath their len. In addition it is also not necessary and "against the spirit of the language" as you can just refer to individual bodyparts instead.
Lastly *tonsi* is a very toki pona word in the way that its utilised. It doesn't have a specific meaning but depending on how its used it can refer to trans, nonbinary, intersex, gender-non-conforming and anrogynous. Compared to meli and mije it these are comparatively small groups, but they do represent an important part of humanity that ignoring or having clunkier way of discussing causes problems - not least it makes us feel like an afterthought, not equal. Of note is the fact that more people identify with tonsi than meli according to both toki pona censuses (2021 and 2022) with the 2022 census showing that 34% of the community are tonsi whereas only 24% are meli. Suggesting that it is an important identity label for the toki pona community.
tonsi li nimi pona.
@@water594 I do find it interesting how you find my reference only to bodily sex as transphobic. You seem to be under the false impression that I'd be referring to people as meli or mije, just at a glance or as ways of identifying them. That is a missed communication, I believe. Similar to a person's blood type, tooth count, or other things you can't tell at a glance, of course I wouldn't call someone meli or mije to identify them, ESPECIALLY if it's not something visible. Yes, gender is important to many people, and i wouldnt deny that. Toki pona generally doesn't aim to cater to the values of people, there are MANY important values that are underrepresented. That doesn't mean it can't be discussed. Removing gendered language from the average lexicon is an important next step for acceptance and equality of all people. I also disagree with your point that meli and mije are so common they can't be changed- toki pona is an incredibly small language, and thus is still quite malleable, and it has innately baked into it the idea of "nasin sina"- meaning everyone can speak it how they best see fit.
@@waggythegeek2030 Fair enough. That does make it less bad. But its still dangerous waters because human bodies aren't quite that simple. Unless you are willing to factor in phychological state like dysphoria or other mental differences that potentially separate trans people from folks of our assigned genders. Because even pre-transition the trans body (incl the brain as a part of the bofy) is different and the way trans people relate to our bodies is different.
TBQH while its a neat discussion and could make the interesting basis of discussion for a conlang (I wouldn't object to a conlang that works like this) - the quibbling is not very toki pona.
toki pona doesn't work off strict definitions and the like. While it often does push you into describing the real world rather than abstract concepts - it does so using veeeery broad and abstract concepts.
Like a dolphin is a kala cause it looks like other kala and does the same stuff give or take. It is more similar to a kala than it is a soweli. Its biological classification (as a mammal) is not important. A trans woman (pre transition) is a meli because she looks like other meli and does most of the same stuff give or take. She is more similar to other meli than other mije. Her biological classification does not matter.
Gender is important because it affects so much of our life. I understand the philosophical dtatement of dropping it, but 1) that ALSO applies to sex too and 2) toki pona works off functional minimalism, not philosophical absolutism and gender is far more functional than sex in our conversations.
I also think that its interesting to do the reverse - have only gender words and no sex words for similar but reversed philosophical reasons.
@@waggythegeek2030 "nasin sina" la, sina wile weka e gender tan nasin sina la, sina ken.
I fully support doing this.
But why not go the whole hog and not describe sex either? If a person has a p3n1s its a palisa jan, if a v4g its a lupa jan. If they have bre4sts then they have nena.
o toki taso e nimi 'jan' e nimi pi ijo sijelo.
I think you misunderstand my comment about the fact meli and mije can't be erased. They can from your usage, and if enough people start to agree they may become archaic. BUT the community is big enough that unlike pre-pu jSonja can't really decommission words and posts against certain words by individuals won't be seen by everyone.
Trust me, I tried in a way. I think *lupa* is an extranious word and *uta* can take all its meanings while also being more philosophically and aesthetically interesting. And 0 people adopted the change. Likewise with my use of double-en. But even if a few had it would have to snowball in order to be written off.
mi ken ante e nasin mi taso.
If you want to add to the snowball campaign to get mije, meli and tonsi archaicised and remove gender from TP- I support you and am willing to join you in the long run, infact I rarely ever use meli or mije (I use tonsi faaar more often). But in the meantime I will be using tonsi because its the best solution.
@@water594 honestly, a good abstraction of my idea is to say that "mije" just means male bodied genitalia, and "meli" just means female-bodied genitalia, and that "tonsi" is the catch-all for both, neither, or anything in between. We are kind of describing the same idea in different words, I believe. And yes, nasin mi li nasin kepeken ala e nimi "mije" tawa toki Inli "man". I left my initial comment because I feel the inclusion of the word tonsi was contradictory to the spirit of the language, which was making in part a spectacular push for the removal of gender distinction in language. Most words in this language, including meli, mije, tonsi, lupa, and many others, can be considered extraneous, it's just a matter of where we choose to draw the line of ike mute. The only reason I bring up tonsi and not any of the others is because it seemed against the spirit of the language, since by *default* everything was already tonsi.