said "i got a rock..." with the same monotone voice as in the movie, and loled at "halloween night". kind of a joke within my family, funny to see it here
31:10 I translated it’s as sina pakala e lipu Because there was no indication that that thing spilled on the book was gross, but spilling a liquid will often ruin the book
thank you so much for your lessons! toki pona is such an interesting language, thanks for making it easier for all of us! you make it feel like a little academy, it's so nice! sina pana e sona! sina pona!
Currently learning this language beacuse so I can attempt to describe/say the most down bad; horrendous, dirtiest, toe-curling, mouth watering feet-licking stuff in school without ANYONE having a clue. Wish me luck and thank you watching videos on it is more interesting than a stupid book + I like you avatar star thing. ❤
I've used toki pona for secretive and mildly nefarious purposes before, aha. It's great at that, since there probably aren't any speakers near you- but if you got a friend in on it, you could collab! Just be good to others :P And thank you for the compliment on the star! It me.
That's good to know! When I get this series done, my plan is to make a series of shorts to compliment it, so knowing what's easier and harder is great!
Yes it does! It has a slightly different meaning, where "sina jaki e lipu" is more literally "you gross-ed the book" and "sina telo e lipu" is "you liquid-ed" the book". But this does work!
I think I would say a totally different thing to stand in for the same idea, like "mu musi!" or "mu monsuta!" While the statement "trick or treat" has a specific meaning, I experience it as a sort of silly sound meaning "please give me candy!"
personally, i would do « nasa » which could refer to dizzy or weird. ur not wrong tho! any interpretation including ike, nasa, or jaki would be understood to me.
Yep, like @squippeak said you can totally use nasa, ike, and jaki here. They all mean similar things *in this context*. I agree that nasa is the most appropriate for dizziness or confusion, while jaki is best for full on sickness, and ike can talk about pain or general unpleasantness. That all said, any of them can work- it's very vibes-based!
with "lape li wawa e sina", to explicitly express that wawa applies to sina in an agent-patient relationship, cant you use tawa instead of e? ive seen constructs like "[something] li pona tawa mi", [something] is good for me/i like it, expressing that the verb applies to the object. similarly, wouldnt "lape li wawa tawa sina" be another/a better way to express this thought of sleep being good for you?
@SlimeyPlayzOSE So, kinda! The interpretation would be a little different. With "e", wawa is being explicitly applied to "sina"; sina is a direct object. With "tawa", wawa is still relevant to sina, but sina is an indirect object. This is different most of the time! I would read something more like "Sleep is powerful to you." Close, but not the same! If I wanted to be closer to the original meaning but still use tawa, I might say "lape la wawa li tawa sina", "in the context of sleep, strength goes to you"
16:25 i thought you wrote pali li pona e sina in my head i was thinking "treat yourself" ( as in create/make > good >> yourself ) as the best translation and then u started with the dinner table lol
That's true! In this case, you'd extrapolate from the definition given there to what musi would mean as a noun. If musi is "fun, funny, entertainment", then "... e musi" is referring to a fun, funny, or entertaining object!
Ah, because I misspoke! I had an image in mind of the parent being able to see you, rather than the sentence I wrote which was "the parent sees you." My bad!
so, if for example, i was saying *I have the paper*. would i write that as 1) Mi jo a lipu OR 2) Mi li jo a lipu im kind of confused on when you use li and when you do not.
It's *almost* the first- you say "mi jo *e* lipu" You use li after the subject to mark the verb for everything, *except* exactly mi and exactly sina. Examples: mi tawa (I go) sina tawa (you go) ona *li* tawa (They go) mi en sina *li* tawa (me and you go) jan li tawa (a person goes)
The trouble is that in toki pona, you don't have tense to tell you the difference between "the water is wanted" and "the water wants". So the entire pattern is often avoided! Some people do it though, and it does work just fine in the right context.
"pakala" can be used as a curse word in the same way "frick" and "heck" can be swears. If I drop something, it shatters on the ground, and yell "pakala!"- it fills the same role! But it's not a swear, a a And, "mi pona e jan" is "I help a person". You want "mi jan pona"- see lesson 4 on modifiers!
No surprise there! I often mutter toki pona to myself in public, and if anyone ever stopped me because they *did* know what I said, I'd be truly shocked
Speaking from experience, when saying sina pakala people can sometimes take it hard and think you said "You destroyed it!" to clarify I like saying that it is a small mistake which is pakala lili. Just asking is it pakala lili or lili pakala because with pakala lili I think that it is a small mistake but with lili pakala it is a mistake that is small which is wrong grammatically or is it the the way round?
Nope, it does not, but I see where you'd get that from! If you wanted to say you like the rock, you personally could say "kiwen li pona." You're expressing your own feelings in a statement! But if you wanted to say that the rock is good in somebody else's opinion, you'll have to go a step further and use either prepositions or la: "kiwen li pona tawa jan", or "jan la kiwen li pona". Same meaning, though you might choose to translate them differently: "The rock is good to the person."
16:14 I thought it was "You will like the food". In Arabic, this sentence may start with the word "Food" like (الأكل سوف يعجبك). Arabic is a right to left language. "الأكل" means "The Food"
For me just leaning this, my brain wants to translate this example sentence 13:38 “jan li pilin e kiwen” as person touches the rock, or person has feelings for rock Is that a bad understanding? I am trying to get my head around this. (Also I know kiwen could be rock or solid object)
Both of those are fine interpretations, although be aware that the second, "a person has feelings for the rock", is a good bit less common and might not be understood since people would think of the first interpretation more often. That said, pilin is often used to refer to thought, so you could say "jan li pilin e kiwen" is more like "a person thinks about a rock." And this would be more appropriate than using toki to refer to thought, cause imagining a rock doesn't really involve any toki!
When I spell the words aloud i sound the vowels according to the toki pona alphabet's phonetic sounds. English 'a' sounds like toki pona 'e' ... I get confused at times when you spell out toki pona words using english phonetic.
so "mi pona e jan" could be (mi = I pona = take care e = of jan = people ) as an example and li could be "is" because just like in english you cant use is for "you" and "me" I said could because not all the time "e" in "mi moku e pan" would act as a particle and in direct translation would be "I eat bread" and if you direct translate in 12 above repetitions it would give you other meanings of pan , it'll give you future present and past tenses but no word for e so without e that would just be bad grammar. Correct me if I'm wrong if there's anything wrong or anything disrespectful like lack of politeness in sentences please reply. Yes I know There are no periods and "," in the big explanation I'm not going to fix that this isn't an English channel its about toki pona the only thing that matters is whether you understand what I'm talking about or not.OK maybe there is a "," in the explanation,but still this is a better sentence.
"mi pona e jan" can be translated as "I take care of people," that's valid! And then, yes, "mi moku e pan" would be "I eat bread" But the grammatical rules for Toki Pona don't come from how they translate into English! "li" isn't "is." (or "are", or any other similar word in english.) "li" is a particle that introduces a verb, an action the subject takes. "e" doesn't have a translation into English, but it is used to introduce an object: some specific other thing that is separate from the speaker and from the action of the sentence. We say "mi moku e pan" because there is a specific "pan" thing, and "mi" am "moku"-ing it. If something were an action, like the act of dancing, you wouldn't use e: "mi tawa musi," "I move entertainingly"
@@gregdan3d hello, I am facing quite of a problem and am not sure if I should fix it now or later.I cannot memorize words but can remember meaning.Learning grammar and everything from the lessons is simple but remembering the words is quite a predicament should I fix this after all the lessons or now because I think it would be wiser to fix it later, I just don't know how.😁
Not quite, but you're very close! If you jump ahead to lesson 6, you'll learn about prepositions and specifically the word tawa: "sina pana e sona *tawa* mi" The second e would have meant I was giving knowledge, and you :P The tawa is similar to "to/for"!
Jo means “to have” in Cantonese / Chinese (the etymology of the word) the same way English does, so saying it cannot mean “have time” abstractly seems like a not pona way to sway how people shouldn’t use the word in what seems natural. Especially when toki pona is supposed to be pretty liberal when in comes to word meaning (while not grammar).
Toki Pona's jo comes from Cantonese, but that doesn't mean it exhibits all the same semantics as it or as the words used to define it! Those words are for reference, and can't fully capture what the word means in the target language. That's why that qualifier is important! This is a fair criticism if you were examining toki pona for its adherence to learners' assumptions- but it is a living language and has its own rules, semantics, and community. And the community has largely moved away from using "jo" in all the ways "have" or its equivalent in Cantonese are used. Put another way: If somebody were learning a language, and complained that a word in the language isn't the same as it the words used to describe it in their parent language, wouldn't that be a bit silly? Definitions, especially those given in other languages, do not capture a word's meaning fully. There may be extra unintended meanings, or not enough nuance captured. Ultimately, my goal is to tell you how Toki Pona is actually used- not mislead you! Thus, the warning.
I don't get how you can touch the rock and not have the rock become touched. Would not "The person makes the rock touched" be the same as "The person touched the rock"? For some reason I can remember the symbols for the word I need than the actual word. Which doesn't help the IME give me what I need 😆
It's not so much that those literal facts aren't true, but that the relationship of those facts to the listener can change how your sentence is understood! If I said "kiwen li pilin" to try and mean "the rock was touched", there's actually a lot of information missing from the sentence- most notably, an actor, somebody to actually do the touching. In other words, I'm much more likely to think you're telling me that the rock has feelings than that the rock were touched. If you said this in the specific, previously established context that somebody were touching the rock, it would be fine!
15:21 couldn't those be interpreted as 'the rock is felt by the person' and 'water is needed by me' I know it sounds weird in english but it does make sense (kinda)
What I'm getting is that "li" transforms the object to an Adjective whilst "e" transforms to a Verb ie. "Telo li lete" = "the water is cold" "Mi wele e telo" = "I am thirsty" ("thirsty" being the doing and thus a verb)
I replied to your other comment, but it's worth clarifying here too: "ona li pali" has pali as a verb, and in the position of the verb! I also more consistently call it the position "predicate" later on. "telo li laso" has laso as an adjective, but still in that verb position! Your translations are great though!
These express two different ideas, is the answer! "mi pali seli" is "I work in a hot/heat related way" "mi pali e seli" is "I create/work on heat" The "e" is bringing the idea that there is a separate object, and the action applies to that object. So, "mi pali e seli" is "I am working **on a separate thing, fire**."
Sure you can. You can talk about philosophy (nasin), emotion and thought (pilin), mathematics (nasin, nanpa), psychology (pilin, lawa), simulation theory (I have a video about it!), and anything else you'd like. And note, the example words I've given are just the main way you'd think about those topics- not at all the only ones!
@@ondrejkral653 Honestly, that explanation I gave is a little misleading. It would be better to say that concrete things are easier to talk about than abstract things, similarly to how it's easier to say things literally than to be metaphorical
I try not to make any assumptions when it comes to Toki Pona and language learning- I've seen perfectly confident English speakers make mistakes like these before, when translating back into English! I've also seen the grammar of an English statement intentionally futzed with to make a point while translating.
![⭐️( ลอยกระทง 2024 ) Ver. แดนซ์ Remix BY [ ดีเจกิต รีมิกซ์ ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/rMWOLhgXUHc/mqdefault.jpg)
5:17 - not to contradict you, but pu is more liberal with its use of jo: "ale li jo e tenpo."
This is true- I am intentionally diverging from pu to teach modern use of each word. This is also why I did not teach "do" for pali in this lesson.
But I use "o jo e tenpo pona" all the time :(
the "I got a rock" charlie brown reference was very appreciated
was fully expecting it to be "i have a diamond" when you wrote it down
I think it would be more worded like: I got a rock teh colour of 💧
said "i got a rock..." with the same monotone voice as in the movie, and loled at "halloween night". kind of a joke within my family, funny to see it here
ehehhe, I stole it from Peanuts if I remember correctly. It is a great joke though :)
31:10
I translated it’s as
sina pakala e lipu
Because there was no indication that that thing spilled on the book was gross, but spilling a liquid will often ruin the book
That's valid too!
thank you so much for your lessons! toki pona is such an interesting language, thanks for making it easier for all of us!
you make it feel like a little academy, it's so nice!
sina pana e sona! sina pona!
Currently learning this language beacuse so I can attempt to describe/say the most down bad; horrendous, dirtiest, toe-curling, mouth watering feet-licking stuff in school without ANYONE having a clue. Wish me luck and thank you watching videos on it is more interesting than a stupid book + I like you avatar star thing. ❤
I've used toki pona for secretive and mildly nefarious purposes before, aha.
It's great at that, since there probably aren't any speakers near you- but if you got a friend in on it, you could collab!
Just be good to others :P
And thank you for the compliment on the star! It me.
Quentin Tarantino li pilin e pona... ona li pilin suli e pona
(....did i get that right?)
"I got a rock 😔"
-Pigpen
SINA SONA!!
pona :)
@@gregdan3dwow the teacher himself has responded. I thought that reference was pretty funny, I wonder if anybody else got it. Sina musi!
These lessons are really great! Learning toki pona is going so well! Mi sona e toki pona!
wawa MUTE :)
For some reason out of the 4 lessons I have done this was the hardest for me to remember the words
That's good to know! When I get this series done, my plan is to make a series of shorts to compliment it, so knowing what's easier and harder is great!
@@gregdan3dooo that sounds cool
i am curious if "sina telo e lipu" works for "you spilled something on a book"
Yes it does! It has a slightly different meaning, where "sina jaki e lipu" is more literally "you gross-ed the book" and "sina telo e lipu" is "you liquid-ed" the book". But this does work!
Maybe you could say: "sina telo e lipu. lipu li jaki."
It gives you understandance of what has happened ^^
@@gregdan3d how dare you liquefy my book i was reading that >:(
Yes
It’s more like “You made the book wet.” It still works
if i want to say "the water is ruining the books" can i say "telo li pakala e lipu"?
Yes you can! That's perfect :)
26:08 Well let's say I wanna show that this was a small mistake. Can I say: "Sina lili pakala."?
Almost! "sina pakala lili"
Modifiers follow the word they're modifying! That's in the next lesson :)
Hearing the trick or treat example makes me wonder how you would say trick or treat in toki pona
I think I would say a totally different thing to stand in for the same idea, like "mu musi!" or "mu monsuta!"
While the statement "trick or treat" has a specific meaning, I experience it as a sort of silly sound meaning "please give me candy!"
Can you say mi pilin jaki if you are like hungover, or just motion sick from a long car trip? Or would be better to use ike?
personally, i would do « nasa » which could refer to dizzy or weird. ur not wrong tho! any interpretation including ike, nasa, or jaki would be understood to me.
Yep, like @squippeak said you can totally use nasa, ike, and jaki here. They all mean similar things *in this context*. I agree that nasa is the most appropriate for dizziness or confusion, while jaki is best for full on sickness, and ike can talk about pain or general unpleasantness. That all said, any of them can work- it's very vibes-based!
I feel like "pakala" is kinda similar to "pako" or "zpackat" in Czech and if that's true, I'd be very happy.
You can find the etymology in lipu Linku at linku.la
Turns out, it's from tok pisin "bagarap", which itself is from English "bugger up"!
@@gregdan3d oh cool
sina pakala e musi - you broke the humour :)
anyways tysm for tp lessons sina musi
I interpreted it as "you ruined the joke" at first before the context arrived
toki pona mi li kama pona tan sina!
"sina pakala e musi mi a!" - jan Kusuko
with "lape li wawa e sina", to explicitly express that wawa applies to sina in an agent-patient relationship, cant you use tawa instead of e?
ive seen constructs like "[something] li pona tawa mi", [something] is good for me/i like it, expressing that the verb applies to the object. similarly, wouldnt "lape li wawa tawa sina" be another/a better way to express this thought of sleep being good for you?
@SlimeyPlayzOSE
So, kinda! The interpretation would be a little different. With "e", wawa is being explicitly applied to "sina"; sina is a direct object. With "tawa", wawa is still relevant to sina, but sina is an indirect object. This is different most of the time! I would read something more like "Sleep is powerful to you." Close, but not the same! If I wanted to be closer to the original meaning but still use tawa, I might say "lape la wawa li tawa sina", "in the context of sleep, strength goes to you"
16:25
i thought you wrote pali li pona e sina
in my head i was thinking "treat yourself" ( as in create/make > good >> yourself ) as the best translation and then u started with the dinner table lol
24:00 i dont understand why is there musi at the end bc you said in episode one that musi means someone funny or somthing funny ect
That's true! In this case, you'd extrapolate from the definition given there to what musi would mean as a noun. If musi is "fun, funny, entertainment", then "... e musi" is referring to a fun, funny, or entertaining object!
19:52 why is it "[your parent] can see you" instead of "[your parent] is looking at you"? thx
Ah, because I misspoke! I had an image in mind of the parent being able to see you, rather than the sentence I wrote which was "the parent sees you." My bad!
so, if for example, i was saying *I have the paper*. would i write that as
1) Mi jo a lipu
OR
2) Mi li jo a lipu
im kind of confused on when you use li and when you do not.
It's *almost* the first- you say "mi jo *e* lipu"
You use li after the subject to mark the verb for everything, *except* exactly mi and exactly sina. Examples:
mi tawa (I go)
sina tawa (you go)
ona *li* tawa (They go)
mi en sina *li* tawa (me and you go)
jan li tawa (a person goes)
@@gregdan3dwait so if there's both mi *and* sina you still use the "li" then? So like, if it's a third person *or* more than one you use li?
Water is wanted. Fairly common pattern.
The trouble is that in toki pona, you don't have tense to tell you the difference between "the water is wanted" and "the water wants". So the entire pattern is often avoided! Some people do it though, and it does work just fine in the right context.
@@gregdan3d I hear you. Thank you for the series of lessons - excellent material!
pakala can also be used as a generic curse word
also, could "mi pona e jan" be used to say "i am a good person"?
"pakala" can be used as a curse word in the same way "frick" and "heck" can be swears. If I drop something, it shatters on the ground, and yell "pakala!"- it fills the same role! But it's not a swear, a a
And, "mi pona e jan" is "I help a person". You want "mi jan pona"- see lesson 4 on modifiers!
I tried to speak to my parents in this language. They asked me what it meant.
No surprise there! I often mutter toki pona to myself in public, and if anyone ever stopped me because they *did* know what I said, I'd be truly shocked
Speaking from experience, when saying sina pakala people can sometimes take it hard and think you said "You destroyed it!" to clarify I like saying that it is a small mistake which is pakala lili. Just asking is it pakala lili or lili pakala because with pakala lili I think that it is a small mistake but with lili pakala it is a mistake that is small which is wrong grammatically or is it the the way round?
It's "pakala lili"! Adjectives always follow the word they modify. See the next lesson!
mije li kute e ijo ante (the man is listening to something different) does this work?
Yes it does!
h e l l y e a h
14:40 Does the sentence also mean 'The person likes the rock'.
Nope, it does not, but I see where you'd get that from!
If you wanted to say you like the rock, you personally could say "kiwen li pona." You're expressing your own feelings in a statement! But if you wanted to say that the rock is good in somebody else's opinion, you'll have to go a step further and use either prepositions or la: "kiwen li pona tawa jan", or "jan la kiwen li pona". Same meaning, though you might choose to translate them differently: "The rock is good to the person."
Thanks a lot for your great explanation!!!
16:14 I thought it was "You will like the food". In Arabic, this sentence may start with the word "Food" like (الأكل سوف يعجبك). Arabic is a right to left language. "الأكل" means "The Food"
For me just leaning this, my brain wants to translate this example sentence 13:38 “jan li pilin e kiwen” as person touches the rock, or person has feelings for rock
Is that a bad understanding? I am trying to get my head around this. (Also I know kiwen could be rock or solid object)
Both of those are fine interpretations, although be aware that the second, "a person has feelings for the rock", is a good bit less common and might not be understood since people would think of the first interpretation more often. That said, pilin is often used to refer to thought, so you could say "jan li pilin e kiwen" is more like "a person thinks about a rock."
And this would be more appropriate than using toki to refer to thought, cause imagining a rock doesn't really involve any toki!
@@gregdan3d okay thanks very much for clarifying and helping me to understand. And thanks for these video lessons.
When I spell the words aloud i sound the vowels according to the toki pona alphabet's phonetic sounds. English 'a' sounds like toki pona 'e' ... I get confused at times when you spell out toki pona words using english phonetic.
so "mi pona e jan" could be
(mi = I pona = take care e = of jan = people ) as an example and li could be "is" because just like in english you cant use is for "you" and "me"
I said could because not all the time "e" in "mi moku e pan" would act as a particle and in direct translation would be "I eat bread"
and if you direct translate in 12 above repetitions it would give you other meanings of pan , it'll give you future present and past tenses but no word for e so without e that would just be bad grammar.
Correct me if I'm wrong
if there's anything wrong or anything disrespectful like lack of politeness in sentences please reply.
Yes I know There are no periods and "," in the big explanation I'm not going to fix that this isn't an English channel its about toki pona the only thing that matters is whether you understand what I'm talking about or not.OK maybe there is a "," in the explanation,but still this is a better sentence.
"mi pona e jan" can be translated as "I take care of people," that's valid!
And then, yes, "mi moku e pan" would be "I eat bread"
But the grammatical rules for Toki Pona don't come from how they translate into English!
"li" isn't "is." (or "are", or any other similar word in english.) "li" is a particle that introduces a verb, an action the subject takes.
"e" doesn't have a translation into English, but it is used to introduce an object: some specific other thing that is separate from the speaker and from the action of the sentence. We say "mi moku e pan" because there is a specific "pan" thing, and "mi" am "moku"-ing it. If something were an action, like the act of dancing, you wouldn't use e: "mi tawa musi," "I move entertainingly"
@@gregdan3d hello, I am facing quite of a problem and am not sure if I should fix it now or later.I cannot memorize words but can remember meaning.Learning grammar and everything from the lessons is simple but remembering the words is quite a predicament should I fix this after all the lessons or now because I think it would be wiser to fix it later, I just don't know how.😁
6:21 sina pana e sona e mi.
Is that correct?
Not quite, but you're very close! If you jump ahead to lesson 6, you'll learn about prepositions and specifically the word tawa:
"sina pana e sona *tawa* mi"
The second e would have meant I was giving knowledge, and you :P
The tawa is similar to "to/for"!
Jo means “to have” in Cantonese / Chinese (the etymology of the word) the same way English does, so saying it cannot mean “have time” abstractly seems like a not pona way to sway how people shouldn’t use the word in what seems natural. Especially when toki pona is supposed to be pretty liberal when in comes to word meaning (while not grammar).
Toki Pona's jo comes from Cantonese, but that doesn't mean it exhibits all the same semantics as it or as the words used to define it! Those words are for reference, and can't fully capture what the word means in the target language. That's why that qualifier is important!
This is a fair criticism if you were examining toki pona for its adherence to learners' assumptions- but it is a living language and has its own rules, semantics, and community. And the community has largely moved away from using "jo" in all the ways "have" or its equivalent in Cantonese are used.
Put another way: If somebody were learning a language, and complained that a word in the language isn't the same as it the words used to describe it in their parent language, wouldn't that be a bit silly? Definitions, especially those given in other languages, do not capture a word's meaning fully. There may be extra unintended meanings, or not enough nuance captured.
Ultimately, my goal is to tell you how Toki Pona is actually used- not mislead you! Thus, the warning.
31:38 I'll also forgive drawing on the wall
I got better about that as I went along, lol
mama suli li likun e sina - big brother is watching you?
It's "lukin", but otherwise yes!
I wrote “sina pakala e lipu”
That's good too! Just a different perspective on the same action.
I don't get how you can touch the rock and not have the rock become touched. Would not "The person makes the rock touched" be the same as "The person touched the rock"?
For some reason I can remember the symbols for the word I need than the actual word. Which doesn't help the IME give me what I need 😆
It's not so much that those literal facts aren't true, but that the relationship of those facts to the listener can change how your sentence is understood!
If I said "kiwen li pilin" to try and mean "the rock was touched", there's actually a lot of information missing from the sentence- most notably, an actor, somebody to actually do the touching. In other words, I'm much more likely to think you're telling me that the rock has feelings than that the rock were touched.
If you said this in the specific, previously established context that somebody were touching the rock, it would be fine!
15:21
couldn't those be interpreted as 'the rock is felt by the person' and 'water is needed by me'
I know it sounds weird in english but it does make sense (kinda)
yes it could! this is a meaning many people try to avoid for clarity, but it works!
What I'm getting is that "li" transforms the object to an Adjective whilst "e" transforms to a Verb
ie.
"Telo li lete" = "the water is cold"
"Mi wele e telo" = "I am thirsty" ("thirsty" being the doing and thus a verb)
I replied to your other comment, but it's worth clarifying here too:
"ona li pali" has pali as a verb, and in the position of the verb! I also more consistently call it the position "predicate" later on.
"telo li laso" has laso as an adjective, but still in that verb position!
Your translations are great though!
Mi pona e toki pona
I don't understand why we can't say simply: mi pali seli
And say instead: mi pali e seli
What the E is bringing there ?...
These express two different ideas, is the answer!
"mi pali seli" is "I work in a hot/heat related way"
"mi pali e seli" is "I create/work on heat"
The "e" is bringing the idea that there is a separate object, and the action applies to that object. So, "mi pali e seli" is "I am working **on a separate thing, fire**."
@@gregdan3d Thank you 🙏 I have hard time to assimilate this for some reasons 😅
So you can't have anything abstract
Sure you can. You can talk about philosophy (nasin), emotion and thought (pilin), mathematics (nasin, nanpa), psychology (pilin, lawa), simulation theory (I have a video about it!), and anything else you'd like.
And note, the example words I've given are just the main way you'd think about those topics- not at all the only ones!
@@gregdan3d I thought you meant it as you can't use the word in abstract things
@@ondrejkral653 Honestly, that explanation I gave is a little misleading. It would be better to say that concrete things are easier to talk about than abstract things, similarly to how it's easier to say things literally than to be metaphorical
@@gregdan3d yes, okay
Sina pona e yan
mi alasa ni!
"telo tawa li pali e ko" would be better for creating context?
sina pana e lipu pona
ρ `ὸ' >> `ȯ' ︶ > ︶
nasin sitelen ni li wawa!
Mi wile e lipu- i (subject) want (verb) book
In English we'd add an article: mi wile e lipu, I want *the* book!
So you don't think i speak English?
I try not to make any assumptions when it comes to Toki Pona and language learning- I've seen perfectly confident English speakers make mistakes like these before, when translating back into English! I've also seen the grammar of an English statement intentionally futzed with to make a point while translating.