Nyako Bwazo | 2012
Ever Heard of the Language Toki Pona?
Less than 200 words in the entire language and grammar is simple
rdmiller3 | 2012
mi jan Wiko. mi jan sona pi toki pona.
I'm Rick, and I'm a Toki Pona expert.
It doesn't take long to learn the vocabulary of Toki Pona. The grammar isn't too difficult but it takes practice. The real challenge in Toki Pona is learning how to say only the core meaning without unnecessary detail. Most people learning Toki Pona don't get this, but it's the whole reason that the language was invented.
Beginners ask, "What's the word for 'cat'? What's the word for 'dog'?" When they find out that there is no specific word but that any land mammal is called "soweli", the beginner's impulse is to create short phrases to differentiate between the animals. Then they want to have new words or phrases for numbers like "ten" and "thousand". They want to have a code to convert their native vocabulary directly into Toki Pona, and they try to use these phrases as drop-in replacements for words.
People who say that you must learn lists of these phrases in order to communicate in Toki Pona are doing it wrong.
In English, I talk to people about my "cat". I don't have to call it a "neutered, pedigreed, full-breed, white-with-peach-tips himalayan" every time, do I? Technically a "cat" could be tabby kitten or a full-grown tiger but I don't have to tell you which every time I mention it. Either it doesn't matter or you will get it from context. That's how Toki Pona works, but it takes the generalization to a higher level.
So why learn Toki Pona? Because when you generalize like that, it forces you to think about the core meaning of what you're saying. And sometimes it will surprise you, what's been hidden under all that unnecessary detail. Especially when you use Toki Pona to talk about what's going on in your own life.
Source(s): http://tokipona.org
Matthew M | 2012
Yes. It has about 123 words. It used to have as few as 117 and if you count edge cases, the count goes as high as 140 something. That said, it requires memorizing about a few thousand set phrases in order to competently read or write it. On the otherhand, if you don't memorize those phrases, it isn't that hard to make up new equally good phrases on the spot and most people will understand that most of the time.
There isn't much in the language, in terms of mechanisms for communication, so one can learn it in about 30 hours and one can say a remarkably large number of things in toki pona if you take into consideration that it only took 30 hours of study.
You can't really use toki pona as a full language, i.e. you probably couldn't translate an entire book into toki pona, or hold a conference and we don't really know if you can run a house hold in toki pona, no one has tried, but it seems with in the realm of possibility. You can use it as sort of a game or intellectual exercise, or a way to learn a "foreign" language without investing the several thousand hours it takes to learn a second language.
Get started by posting short writings on the forum, lots of people are there to correct & edit your work. Conversation in toki pona mostly happens on twitter, toki lili (another twitter clone) and sometimes on the IRC channel.
Source(s): Sources: http://forums.tokipona.org http://tokipona.net http://suburbandestiny.com - the toki pona articles
And many other resources scattered across the internet.
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20111007182912AAEsMb1
