jansegers @jansegers@qoto.org
Webosoof
Joined Oct 2019
Nicholas Layton
Sun May 4 12:49:55 49558,
Well let's be honest, toki pona is useless as a language. You can try to play with it in small talk but no one is going to understand what each other is trying to convey in any kind of meaningful conversation. And let's be even more honest, any efforts put into creating a new IAL is an exercise in futility.
It's mental masturbation at best and will never be anything useful to anyone, including yourself.
Rynabunny
Sun May 4 12:47:54 49558,
I think you all have valid points. Anthony thinks of conlangs as tools for communication. To them, a bad conlang is one that fails at that (by being too
simplistic, in the case of Toki Pona).
The others think of a conlang as having its own purposes. Someone said conlang creation is an artform. Some people, myself included, create conlangs for fun and/or for personal use. They don't have to be perfect, or good for communication, or even useable (e.g. kay(f)bop(m)!). For a personal conlang, they just have to make its creator satisfied and it will have achieved its purpose. Different conlangs set out to achieve different goals. Esperanto arguably achieves a lot of its goals (relatively simple to learn, useful tool for communication) and yes, it is a good conlang in my opinion. But that doesn't automatically make Toki Pona a bad one. The latter also achieves its primary goals (extreme simplicity and ease of learning), perhaps even overachieving.
So I guess Anthony has a fairly narrow view of what a conlang should be, and that's fine! But it should be understood that not all conlangs had/have/will have exactly the same goals, and I think comparing two vastly different languages is a futile exercise.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:20:20 49558,
I'd like to see someone write a news report into the Trump-Russia scandal in
T.P. Or the firing of James Comey. How would you say, "Donald Trump fired
James Comey to try to stop the Russian election hacking investigation".
You limit your vocabulary to 120 words, you'll find yourself severely limited
in what you can talk about and what you can say about that. You want to play
with that, I'm not against that. Pretending it can function as a full language
is a fraud.
I'm the one who pointed out, over and over again that Ms. Lang, in inventing
T.P. said she didn't want it to be able to talk about complex topics. Which is
incompatible with a full service language.
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:20:22 49558,
Anthony McCarthy "Akesi utala jan pali e James Kome tawa pali tawa pakala ike e
Lusia pali kulupu tawa lon li e ike tawa oko li sona"
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:20:25 49558,
The test would be to give that to someone telling them nothing about what it
said and seeing if they could figure out what you were saying. Someone who
didn't know anything about it. I will bet it wouldn't work because, frankly, I
can't figure out what you're referring to and I proposed the sentence. Give a
word for word translation back into English.
Conlang Dude
Sun May 4 12:20:27 49558,
Anthony McCarthy "jan Tono Tunpu li pakala e pali pi jan Kemu Komi la ona li
ken pakala e lukin pi pakala pi lawa pi jan ale pi ma Lusa pi jan Kemu Komi."
Conlang Dude
Sun May 4 12:20:18 49558,
Anthony McCarthy Similarly, Toki Pona achieves its goal. It's goal was to creat[e] communication with a radically small vocabulary. It does this, it does it effectively, and most importantly it does it functionally. By design it isn't meant to go into specifics but specifics in a sentence don't limit communication by very much. Take the sentence "I glanced at the words littering the page, before flicking my eyes over to him." It's a relatively detailed sentence. Now saying "I looked at the words on the paper, then I looked at him," doesn't communicate anything different. Now you could translate "mi lukin e nimi pi lipu. mi lukin e ona" as either because they both mean the same.
Being able to differentiate between "disgusting paste (ko jaki)" and "mud" isn't necessary because 99 times out of 100 it makes sense contextually. Your argument is that TP has no detail but details come from context.
[...]
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:20:04 49558,
The trick is translating it in a way so that a person who doesn't know the story, or the section translated, would understand what was going on in it. I
was familiar with the story and I am familiar with Toki pona and I would never have been able to figure out what was happening in the story. Toki pona, with
its radically tiny vocabulary cannot do what is done by Claude Piron in that book, give people an easy to learn language which will provide them with a
vocabulary and grammar able to do what can be done in any natural language with the same level of precision and specificity. If you want an easier challenge
you could try to translate the texts and exercises of the Zagreb Method textbook - available all over the place, free, online, with an even more reduced vocabulary. I will bet you won't get far into it before the resources of Toki pona are proven to be unable to produce the same equivalent use of
language that Esperanto does and has since the end of the 19th century. I counted the vocabulary for the first lesson at about 40 words, or a third of the entire corpus of Toki pona, By the time you get to lesson 4, you already surpass the corpus of T.P. words for numbers and I'm sure in many other categories of vocabulary.
I am sure you might give some vague sense of what is going on in the original, though not much that is very specific. And according to the inventor of the language, that was her intention. To only be able to talk about very simple things, not a full range of human experience. It does no one any good to pretend you could possibly do that with 120 words. Plus or minus "unofficial"
neologisms which, as it is the nature of neo-logisms, will start muddying the water as fast as you invent them to clear things up. Anyone who has ever read
novels in a second language will know that experience, especially when those words are ones you can't find in any but the most specialized dictionary of
jargon.
The history of Ido as opposed to Esperanto shows that once you start fiddling to "improve" a language, you'll more likely drive your reform into decadence.
I can read Ido - it's really a dialect of Esperanto, more or less - but if I'm going to use a conlang I want one where people will understand what I'm saying instead of being confused by my "improvements" or "reforms" or neologisms. I
do agree with the late Claude Piron on the desireability of clarity over novelty. I am certain you will never be able to translate his fine study La Bona Lingvo into TP.
As I said, I have no problem with people wanting to play with Toki pona or Lojban or Ido but except for the ever fading project of Ido, there is no chance of them becoming a useful conlang for general communication.
[...]
http://www.orenwatson.be/anthonymccarthy.htm
#TokiPona #Ido #Esperanto #Lojban #conlangs #konlan #anno2019
[...]
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:07:46 49558,
I'd have to see what it was, the active, using community it attracted, the ways
it is USEFUL and the literature it produced. One person doesn't determine if
one conlang is better than another, a community that adopts and uses it does.
That is if it isn't something ridiculously impractical such as Loglan or Toki
Pona
The history of Esperanto "improvements" is a long one but the only ones that
have been successful are minor points which have changed in the century + of
its use by a community of users. The basic structure of the language has,
already, passed the test of time in users whose native languages have been from
many different families of languages around the world. Several of the best
writers in Esperanto grew up speaking such non-Indo-European languages as
Japanese and Hungarian.
Mike S.
Sun May 4 12:07:48 49558,
Loglan is often presented as a "logical language", but actually it was a
homebrew project putatively designed to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. That
needs to be fully appreciated if you wish to understand why the language was
designed the way it was. Starting in 1955, the creator seems to have been
working mostly on his own, with minimal input from others, and never
incorporated the various advances in transformational grammar, formal
semantics, case role theory, etc that appeared in the 1970s and 1980s. Along
the way, innumerable kludges, patches and just plain bizarre design decisions
found their way into the language over the time of several decades. Suffice
to say that Loglan and Lojban should not be presented as IALs. However, just as
with Toki Pona,some enthusiasts did not get the memo that the language was NOT
designed to be an IAL. I will say, however, that a properly reformed loglanoid
language could probably be used as an auxlang. Such a language might be useful
in clearing up ambiguities that might arise between people of different
cultural backgrounds in conversation, arguably helping to avoid
misunderstandings. Whether a properly reformed loglanoid would ever attract a
significant following and a movement is, of course, an entirely different
question.
[...]
[...]
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 11:55:21 49558,
I assume that anyone who is reading this should assume since you have not
mentioned which one you actually can speak that the answer is you don't speak
any of them .
Let me guess, you can speak English and maybe a little, tiny bit of a second
language but you couldn't actually live in what you know of it. Typical.
Conlang Critic
Sun May 4 11:55:23 49558,
sina sona ike! mi ken toki kepeken toki pona. taso, ona li toki lili. jan ale
li ken kama sona toki kepeken ona kepeken tenpo lili! tenpo pini la mi toki ala
e ona tan ni. ni li ale.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 11:55:24 49558,
toki pono or whatever it is? Give me a break. Show me the bibliography.
Show me the speaking language community, show me the technical literature
written or translated into it, show me the literature from many countries
translated into it. I wonder, since its inspiration is supposed to be Taoism
if they've translated any of the literature of Taoism into it.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 11:55:26 49558,
toki pona is a game that is a little above pig-Latin and way below Ido. About
its only virtue is that it lacks the nationalistic hegemony of Basic English.
I'd love to see someone try to translate a 4th grade level chapter book into
it. Or try to. Why don't you wow us by translating The Little Engine That
Could or .... no. An even better demonstration. How about you translate
Gerda Malaperis into it.
Mike S.
Sun May 4 11:55:28 49558,
Ouch.
Flaming Obsidian
Sun May 4 12:06:23 49558,
I can translate the entirety of Moby Dick, if you want to challenge me. Also,
Toki Pona has a whole community, unlike slowly dying Ido.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:06:25 49558,
I'm not an idist, I'm an Esperantist, a language which has the largest
"conglang" community in history. I bet you couldn't translate Moby Dick into
toki pona and have anyone who hadn't read the original tell you what was going
on in most of it. I'll bet your translation would be controversial. The
language is radically vague except when talking about the simplest things. It
wasn't designed to talk about complicated things, its inventor said as much.
[...]
http://www.orenwatson.be/anthonymccarthy.htm
#TokiPona #Ido #Esperanto #Ito #Epelanto #conlang #konlan #anno2019
Новый язык элиты уровня /b/. Тред №30.
- Простота – необходимое условие прекрасного.
Да, это токипоны и немного эсперанто и ложбана тред.
В чем суть? Лампово общаемся, оттачиваем sona pi toki pona, переводим смищные картинки. В общем, тот же /b/, но на токипоне.
Почему токипона?
1) Она до примитивности проста, что позволяет освоить основы всего за пару часов (120 словарных слов + несколько грамматических правил)
2) Представляет из себя интересную головоломку по семантической декомпозиции, в процессе которой начинаешь глубже понимать смысл слов.
3) Несмотря на всю простоту языка, на нем можно полноценно общаться, что было не раз проверено в прошлых тредах.
Учебник: https://ru.wikibooks.org/wiki/Токипона/Введение
Учебник pdf-версия: http://rghost.net/87fNpQLCC
Словари: http://tokipona.net/tp/ClassicWordList.aspx
https://ru.wikibooks.org/wiki/Словарь_токипоны
http://ixite.ru/toki_pona/thematic/
http://rowa.giso.de/languages/toki-pona/english/latex/toki-pona_english.txt
Вишмастер для ведра: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.memrise.android.memrisecompanion
Примеры предложений на tatoeba:
http://tatoeba.org/rus/sentences/search/page:1?query=&from=rus&to=toki - внимание, там жульничают с названиями животных
Предыдущие треды на архиваче: http://arhivach.org/?tags=3135
Транслитератор в иероглифы: http://sitelen-pona.herokuapp.com/
Вишмастер для поддержки иероглифов на макабе: http://pastebin.com/vvZ7JL8J
Онлайн-курс для запоминания слов: http://www.memrise.com/course/352694/speak-toki-pona-with-audio/
NASIN NASA - the comic series
29. JUIN
**TOKI PONA BELOW**
Join us for the official launch of Nasin Nasa, the new comic from visual artist Vacon Sartirani. Set in the weirdly fleshy and coloured world of Vacon’s imagination, this bizarre comic series has a peculiarity: it appears to be written in some sort of alien hieroglyphic language! This because it is the first comic series entirely written in toki pona, an artificial language created by linguist and translator Sonja Lang in 2001. Confused? Intrigued? Bewildered? Thats good. Come and have a taste for yourself of how alien comic books can look like!
The artist will be present to confuse you further.
**TOKI PONA**
NASIN NASA - sitelen musi - open
o tawa tomo sitelen! lon ni mi mute li open e sitelen musi pi jan Wakon nimi “Nasin Nasa”. sitelen toki li toki kepeken toki pona. toki pona sitelen li kepeken nasin nimi sitelen sitelen. sitelen ni li musi li nasa mute. sina tawa tomo sitelen la sina musi mute mute!
jan sitelen Wakon li lon tomo sitelen.
SERIGRAFFEUR
On Media and the Medium of Media
April 14, 2017
[...]
While there’s the definite sting of “but I miss having a Nokia”, it was another thing entirely that put me at peace with being too far along to go back to them, and that’s my recurring fascination with toki pona. Yes, I’ve talked about it before around here, but last time I mentioned it, I suggested that it’s a good thing to keep things simple; with a lexical inventory of only 120-some words, there’s not a lot of nuance; in fact, there’s barely any nuance at all, and most of the time, what’s understood must be understood from context and other cues. While, in some ways, viewing things at their core in the simplest terms possible using a restricted vocabulary can be useful, simplicity has its cost, and it’s not something I mentioned back in 2015. I like to use the Chinese expression “10,000 things” to refer to the (literally) myriads of things in the cosmos, from the smallest hair-split concept to the largest possible intergalactic superstructure; for this, and all the shades of variations of differences of types of kinds of sorts of things, sometimes a single word really does work better than a roundabout explanation, and for that, a language of 120 words puts me at an extreme disadvantage. I cannot envision rewriting Agrippa’s Three Books, for instance, in toki pona; heck, I’d have a hard enough time in English, when I have the option of using Greek or Latin derivatives for their subtly different meanings (pneuma or spirit?), straight-Latin or French-Latin (destruct or destroy?), Greco-Romance or Germanic (apotheosis or godhood?), all of which offer subtly (but importantly) different meanings or reflections of a single topic.
In other words, while I many use toki pona to verbalize a particular instance of existence into simplicity, I cannot operate in toki pona to construct types of thinking when there are necessarily more things that can be conceived of than exist. toki pona is too simple to think in when it comes to something so nuanced as deeply-explored theurgy, and as such, would be a burden to use compared to another language. Likewise, it’d be more of a burden to go from my smartphone to a dumbphone, when I’d have to re-add in otherwise redundant or obsolete devices that bring in more complexity to the overall system. So, while I’d like to use toki pona as an actual conversational language, I’d also like to use a Nokia brick. They would be nice, but not worth it in the end except as thought experiments or sandboxes to try certain things out in.
[...]
https://digitalambler.com/2017/04/14/on-media-and-the-medium-of-media/
Reading Toki Pona is Hard
March 9, 2011
Reading toki pona is far more difficult than writing it. Valid toki pona can be read many ways and has garden paths (places where you need to back-track and re-think what you read). So as you read along, you need to have this sense of the odds that a phrase is parsed one way or the other that mostly comes from experience.
Invalid toki pona even harder to read because you have to parse it with common errors in mind. It boggles the mind that to read toki pona, you must have in mind a correct grammar and several alternate defective grammars, parse a sentence using all of them and then someone pick out which one was meant.
Still, there is a class of errors that are effortless to read. I think that the reading gotchas and the effort-less to read mistakes are signs of mistakes or limitations in the conlang’s fundamental design– underspecification and overspecification respectively. The grammatical errors that are likely to completely throw the reader off track are errors of the writer and not the language.
Parsing gotchas- Reading Valid Toki Pona
Syntax.
That first sentence might be a conditional.
The last word could be a modifier or someone/something that owns it.
The ni could refer forward or backwards and can refer to sentences, things, and things in the environment.
The ona could refer forwards or backwards and can refer to things and things in the environment.
post-verb, pre-e words can be a noun complement or an adverb.
The participle-like word might be first or last. Sometimes these have a verb/adverb reading as well.
waso tawa. running bird.
tawa pona. good running.
pana mani. monetary giving (payment)
pana sona
kama sona
The "x li lon y e z" construction feels backwards because place normally comes last (or at least late in the sentence).
The "noun li noun e noun" construction will probably be read with the noun as a verb 1st.
jan li pali e musi. The man turned the game into work. vs The man enganged in a game.
Predicate vs Intransitive readings
sina suli. You're fat. You are growing.
Modifiers to mi and sina (rare)
sina suli li tawa. You're fat/growing and are walking, vs You, sir, are going.
Semantics.
Some polysemy borders on homophony (most meanings are similar, some are getting kind of different)
pona means wash.
sona means understand.
Some meanings border on contronyms
awen - to keep doing something
awen - to hold, as in to stop.
poka
physically near vs collaborate
Mind reading anaphora. You know what ona and ni refer to, I don't.
Short noun phrases. I read it with one of the basic meanings, you mean one of the obscure meanings.
L1 interference
mi, sina, ona mean us, y'all, and them, too.
Parsing invalid toki pona
These errors can be very difficult for the *reader* to recover from
A particle may have been dropped. pi's and e's most likely. Missing li is problematic for sentencesd with complex subjects.
An e phrase may have been dropped. Usually not problematic.
A 2nd li phrase uses the object of the last sentence as subject.
* mije li lukin e meli li tawa lon esun.
Means A man saw a girl and he was walking in the store.
Not "A man saw a girl walking in the store"
Minimal pair confusion. If a sentence doesn't make sense, try mentally swapping out the minimal pairs with its alter-ego.
a/i/e confusion is really bad for readability
missing period. In general, where phrase splits aren't explicit, reading is harder.
Some errors are (mostly) effortless to recover from *for the reader*:
period instead of colon after ni
extra li for mi/sina
missing noun for a proper modifier
lower case proper modifiers.
missing "e" sometimes, because adverbs are rare and you can parse the DO by position.
dropping lon from a prepositional phrase, e.g.
laso suli li lon sewi lawa mi
vs
laso suli li sewi lawa mi.
pi missing before mi mute/sina mute. No one shuffles modifiers and mi mute/sina mute.
n/m confusion is a non issue.
ala could negate the previous single word, or the entire phrase.
mi wile lukin ala e sitelen tawa.
vs
mi wile ala lukin e sitelen tawa.
repeating prep phrases vs using en (And I'm not sure if one is an error!)
suwi li tawa mi tawa sina. vs suwi li tawa mi en sina.
questions without seme
yes/no questions that dispense with the X ala X pattern
Conjoining sentences with taso, anu, en
Conjoining verb phrases with en instead of li. (less common)
Opatative/Hortative with o in wrong place
* mi mute o musi! Lets play! vs. o mi mute li musi!
* jan o utala ala! let there be peace vs o jan li utala ala!
Modifying prep phrase in the subject
soweli lon tomo mi li wile e moku. The cat in my house wants some food.
Toki_Pona-Parser
Toki Pona Parser - A Tool for Spelling, Grammar Check and Ambiguity Check of Toki Pona Sentences
Toki Pona is a constructed, minimal language, designed by the translator and linguist Sonja Lang. Toki Pona favors simplicity over clarity, and touts itself as “the language of good. The simple way of life.”
By virtue of Toki Pona’s extremely small vocabulary, and order-independent syntax, the language is good at talking about feelings and simple relationships, but not about the finer points of politics or silicon-on-insulator microchip fabrication techniques. Tokiponists believe this is exactly as it should be.
Whether you accept the philosophy or not, Toki Pona is fun to speak.
About
This parser analyzes Toki Pona sentences. It ckecks the spelling and grammar. Furthermore, it finds possible grammatical variants. That is, it finds grammatical ambiguities. It helps you to form correct and clear Toki Pona sentences.
This parser is written in SWI-Prolog. SWI-Prolog is a free implementation of the programming language Prolog. Prolog is a general-purpose logic programming language associated with artificial intelligence and computational linguistics. SWI-Prolog supported the Definite Clause Grammar (DCG). DCG is a logic way of expressing grammar, either for natural or formal languages. These scripts contain DCG rules for describing the Toki Pona grammar.
In short: This tool analyzes Toki Pona sentences based on logic and not on “maybe” or “could be”.
It based on the offical Toki Pona book of Sonja Lang ( tokipona.org ), the lessons of jan Pije ( tokipona.net/tp/janpije ), the lessons of jan Lope ( jan-lope.github.io ) and many text examples.
[...]
Toki Pona Analysis: Parts of Speech
pisceyo | 2019
Heads up: This is a long post!
So, I think there are some misunderstandings of internal / meta Toki Pona structures in the community on both ends. Regarding parts of speech (hereon referred to as PoS), many beginners may get caught up in "can this word be a noun?" or "how do I say X if Y is a verb?" Every language has its parts of speech, and while there are lots of similarities, there are plenty that deal with this matter differently than say, English (a language I believe most in thus sub speak). In this post I'm going to be breaking down what the actual distinct parts of speech are in toki pona. Thank you to my friends on ma pona for helping me clear up some blockages!
1. Content Words
Def.: A word with its own semantic value and range that cannot be used to perform any specialty grammatical or syntactic functions.
Content words are the majority of the dictionary in Toki Pona. Examples include moku, telo, and sinpin. Content words can be the head of a phrase [moku pona], they can modify heads [moku pona], they can be in verb slots [mi moku], etc. They cannot, however, act as particles or any other specialty part of speech to function as anything other than semantic value.
2. Prepositions
Def.: A word that can form new prepositional phrases and heads in a clause, but can also function as a content word and holds semantic value when mediating grammatical functions.
Prepositions are a closed class of the following words: tawa, lon, sama, kepeken, and tan.
These words, as stated in the definition, are unique in that they can function as grammatical/syntactic units, however they also have semantic value. For example: mi moku kepeken ilo trans.: I eat with a fork. mi moku tawa ilo trans.: I eat for a fork. or ona li jan pona sama moku trans.: She is a friend akin to food.
Whether or not prepositions can directly modify heads in all slots is up for debate between differing perspectives. I've seen convincing proof for them modifying heads (plus its not uncommon for people to already do), but I won't discuss that in this post. The semantic value of prepositions also allows them to function as content words, such as: mi tawa (I go) or mi sona ala e tan (I don't know why)
3. Preverbs
Def.: A word that can precede a verb, in contradiction to typical modifier order, to add additional semantic or aspectual information, but can also function as a content word.
Preverbs are very similar to prepositions in some regards. They are specialty words that hold function, while also holding semantic value and the capacity to be a content word.
Some examples of preverbs: wile, kama, lukin. Example sentences: mi wile moku // mi kama lape. As content words: sina wile e seme? // mi kama.
Preverbs are slightly more open, in that there are certain preverbs not explicitly listed that are commonly in use. For example, the usage of alasa as "to try/attempt at," open for "to start to/begin to," etc. Even with these examples, preverbs are still a relatively small closed class of set words.
4. Particles
Def.: A word that can perform grammatical or syntactic functions that has no semantic value or capacity to take on another part of speech
Particles include li, e, en, pi, etc. They function solely for grammatical and syntactic operations. Although each particle performs a separate function, they all demonstrate this behavior. Examples: ona li moku // sina lukin e ni.
Note: pi is the particle equivalent of a neutral preposition. It starts new heads in phrases, but has no additional semantic value between operations. Similarly, li could be said to be the particle equivalent of preverbs.
5. Semiparticles
Def.: A word that performs as a content word, but can also perform specialized grammatical or syntactic functions akin to a particle.
This class of words is much smaller, but because of a few outliers in the behavior of vocabulary, it exists! The semiparticles are: taso and nanpa. Additionally, kin could be said either to be a semiparticle or in the category with a later on, depending on the speaker's usage (more later).
A particle cannot hold any semantic value or act as a content word, right? So then, how does nanpa function in jan nanpa wan ? It is a semiparticle, because nanpa is a content word (meaning numeral, etc), but also performs specialized grammatical function without syntax in converting numerals into ordenals ("first person").
Then there is taso, which is also a content word such as in mi wile e moku taso ("I want only food"). However, it can also act as a conjunction/link between sentences at the beginning of a sentence such as in taso mi wile ala.
Where kin fits in is its usage as a head. The usage of kin varies from speaker to speaker, either being identical in semantics to a, separate in usage but identical in syntactic behavior to a, or as a potential content word and semiparticle.
6. Interjections
Def.: A word or phrase that when isolated can act as an exclamation, response, reaction, etc.
Interjections are potential functions of content words and some particles.
The potential interjections are:
pona, ike, lon, nasa, jaki, pakala, a, o, mu, ken, [content word] pona, sama, suwi, toki, (answer to a yes/no question)*
Example: pona! // lon! // a! sina lon
As in the list of interjections, phrases such as moku pona, tawa pona, etc. that would typically break some kind of grammatical rule (such as the dropping of o) can stand alone.
7. Loaned Adjectives
Def.: A proper name or word that is loaned and acts solely as a modifier to a native Toki Pona content word.
These are pretty self explanatory. Examples include names and proper place names. ma Sonko or jan Salan
Lastly... a or the Emphatic Particles !
a is a special word, in that it is partially an interjection, partially a particle, and maybe a little of something else! It often acts like a modifier, adding emphasis to a word or sentence with a hint of emotional comment as well. However, because it can modify an entire sentence when at the end, this behavior says its not just a content word. It also cannot form its own heads or phrases as all content words can. a doesn't really perform a syntactic operation either. Thus, it gets its own category. One could potentially call it an emphatic particle.
However, a isn't necessarily alone. As most of the community uses it, kin is nearly identical to a in where it appears, except it offers a separate kind of emphasis than a does, without the emotional content.
And that's it! The parts of speech in Toki Pona and their functions. There's a lot of stuff I didn't touch on in this that can break down even further, so I plan on making some more of these analysis posts for different topics. Hopefully this was helpful, feel free to leave questions, comments, or let me know if I left anything out!
https://www.reddit.com/r/tokipona/comments/df0zbi/toki_pona_analysis_parts_of_speech/
International Auxiliary Languages
"That international auxiliary
language is best which in every point offers the greatest facility to the greatest number" - Otto Jespersen, 1908
International Auxiliary Languages (IALs) are languages constructed with the aim of facilitating communication between people who would otherwise have no other language in common. They are usually designed to be significantly simpler, and thus more easily learnt, than national or "natural" languages.
[...]
Here are some links to information on other International Auxiliary Languages. These links should lead you to all the information that is available on each language.
Esperanto - Don Harlow's compendious site.
Virtual Esperanto Library by Martin Weichert.
The International Language Ido maintained by myself.
The International Language Ido: improved Esperanto - Includes English-Ido, Ido-English vocabularies. By Robert Carnaghan.
Novial - Novial-Informatione, maintained by myself.
Novial - Bruce Gilson's pages on the language of Otto Jespersen.
Union Mundial pro Interlingua - Official Website of the Internationalllll Uniion for the IALA's Interlingua.
Interlingua 2001 - Celebrating 50 years of Interlingua. Pages by Thomas Breinstrup and others.
Glosa - Official-looking Glosa site with information in several languages, by Marcel Springer
Glosa - a possible second language for the world by Robin Gaskell.
Occidental - Naturalistic IAL published by Edgar de Wahl in 1922. Pages (partly in Norwegian) by Morten Svendsen.
Cosmoglotta - Electronic journal in Interlingue-Occidental. Pages by Robert Petry.
Latino sine flexione - Nice new pages from Jay Bowks on Peano's "Latin without inflexions".
Basic English - Simplification of English invented by C. K. Ogden. Pages by Jim Bauer.
Volapük - First IAL ever to gain mass acceptance, now looks quite archaic. Pages by Ken Caviness.
Dutton Speedwords - Shorthand system also proposed as an international language. Pages by Robert Petry.
Dutton Speedwords - Internet resource from the New Congress s.Z.
Novial 98 based on the language of Otto Jespersen.
Novial Pro - Novial reform by Marcos Franco.
Latino Moderne - Highly naturalistic Latin-based IAL proposed by David Stark.
Romanova - New naturalistic IAL. Pages by David Crandall and others.
LangX/Lang53 - New project to define a hierarchy of languages. Pages by Antony Alexander.
Lango - Project for an IAL based on a spelling reformed English, by Robert Craig and Antony Alexander.
Ceqli - Language based on English and Mandarin, by Rex F. May
Unish - International language project by Sejong University in South Korea. This site is now the home of the Journal of Universal Language, information on Unish can still be found here
Lingua Franca Nova - Romance-based IAL by Dr. George Boeree
Intal - Novial-like system developed by Erich Weferling
Intal - Le INTernational Auksiliari Lingue - new Intal site by Stefan Fisahn, with complete grammar of Intal
Folkspraak - Germanic-based IAL, presented by the The Folkspraak Institute
Universal Picture Language - context-based picture language, presented by Wally Flint
Aiola - New Esperanto-like project by the Aiola Research Group (ARG)
Blissymbolics - Symbol system by Charles K. Bliss. New activeBliss site courtesy of Matt Landau
Lojban - Logical language developed from James Cooke Brown's Loglan. Presented by the Logical Language Group (LLG)
Esata - Based on English cut down for international use. Including complete description of the language
Sona - by Kenneth Searight, designed with sonority in mind, based on a limited set of "radicals"
Neo Patwa - formerly Dunia Patwa, creole-based system by Jens Wilkinson
Atlango - Esperanto-derived system by Richard A. Antonius
Mondlango - Another Esperanto-based system, this time with a fair helping of English, by He Yafu
Kotava - La langue de communication universelle, aprioristic system developed since 1975
Latinvlo - a development of Stephen Chase Houghton's Master Language, by Paul Bartlett
Medilingua is an attempt to reform Novial in the direction of Interlingua (IALA)
Europaio / Modern Indo-European is a project to revive Proto-Indo-European, with multilingual website
Temenia is an international auxiliary language, or model for constructing one, which is unusual in that it uses the Greek alphabet
Pandunia is a constructed language with a cross-cultural vocabulary and phonology with traits from the most widely spoken languages of the world, by Risto Kupsala
Toki Pona is a constructed language with a limited vocabulary, simple phonology and positive outlook, by Sonja Elen Kisa
Sasxsek - A Language for Earth, a constructed language designed to be used as an auxiliary language, by Dana Nutter
Lingwa de Planeta or LdP, a new project based on world languages such as Chinese, Russian and Arabic. By Dmitry Ivanov and others.
[...]
*** Why Toki Pona? ***
Simple and Natural
Modern languages are cluttered with complex methods to express the simplest things.
What is a geologist but a person who studies the earth? Is there any useful difference between the words talk, speak, and say? Toki Pona breaks down all advanced ideas to their most basic elements. If you are hungry, you want eat. To teach is give knowledge.
This allows us to drastically reduce the vocabulary and grammatical structures needed to say what we have to say. Less is more.
Philosophy
A number of philosophies or principles have inspired me to create a language such as Toki Pona.
Toki Pona is semantically, lexically, and phonetically minimal. The simplest and fewest elements are used to create the maximum effect.
In many ways, Toki Pona resembles a pidgin. When people from different cultures need to communicate, they must focus on the concrete, simple things that are most universal to humanity.
Toki Pona follows the principles of Taoism, which advocates a simple, honest life and noninterference with the course of natural events.
I have also been inspired by primitivists such as John Zerzan, whose writings critique the totality of modern civilization, recognising the superiority of natural, primitive cultures.
Toki Pona can lead to an interesting game of semantic decomposition. Just as one can decompose a mathematical fraction such as 4/8 to 1/2, we can break down language to its most basic and tangible units of meaning and discover what things really mean.
According to reductionism, complex ideas and systems can be completely understood in terms of their simpler parts or components.
Since Toki Pona expresses things in their most natural and simple way, an inherent idea of goodness is transparent throughout the language. Health is good body. Happiness is feel good. Toki Pona itself means good language.
Above all, Toki Pona must be fun and cute. As everything seems to be oversimplified and ideas focus on the good, one could almost imagine a race of little cartoon creatures speaking in Toki Pona.
Cons
By being so general and vague, Toki Pona often lacks the ability to distinguish finer shades of meaning. For example, by lumping every possible bird species into one lexeme waso, we eliminate the need to learn hundreds of vocabulary items, however we are also left incapable of distinguishing between eagles and chickens. The closest translation might be an expression like waso wawa strong bird or waso nasa stupid bird.
Toki Pona has a rather narrow range of functions. Although it is very easy to communicate honest thoughts and everyday activities, it would be impossible to translate a chemical textbook or legal document in Toki Pona without significant losses. Such texts are products of the complex, artificial civilization we live in and are not suited for a cute, little language like Toki Pona.
Although the vocabulary and grammar are very simple, the language does contain a few basic syntax rules that are essential in keeping the sentence structure together. For instance, one must learn that the word li is used to separate the subject from the verb.
Etymology
The vocabulary was borrowed from other languages and adapted to the sounds of Toki Pona. The chief source languages are:
English
Tok Pisin
Finnish
Georgian
Dutch
Acadian French
Esperanto
Croatian
Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese)
[...]
Send comments or questions (in Esperanto, English, French, or German) to my e-mail address
Site last modified: January 2000
Slovio, wenedyk, toki pona i klingoński. 10 najciekawszych sztucznych języków
Łukasz Michalik
Spis treści: 3. Toki pona
Toki pona
Logo toki pona i części ciała w tym języku
Logo toki pona i części ciała w tym języku
Jaki powinien być dobry język? Kanadyjska lingwistka Sonja Elen Kisa doszła do wniosku, że powinien być przede wszystkim tak prosty, jak to tylko możliwe i pozwalać na przekazanie jak najobszerniejszych treści w nieskomplikowany sposób.
Rezultatem takich założeń jest inspirowany taoizmem toki pona ('dobry język'), składający się z 14 głosek i 118 wyrazów. Zgodnie ze wspomnianą przy języku loglan hipotezą Sapira-Whorfa tak prosty język ma ułatwić jego użytkownikom skupienie się na najważniejszych, pozytywnych stronach życia, czemu może służyć np. ograniczenie liczebników. W toki pona jest tylko jeden, dwa i wiele.
Jak brzmi tak minimalistyczny język? Oto przetłumaczona na toki pona modlitwa „Ojcze nasz”:
mama pi mi mute o, sina lon sewi kon.
mi wile e ni: nimi sina li sewi pona.
mi wile e ni: ma sina li kama.
mi wile e ni: ali li pali e wile sina lon sewi kon lon ma.
tenpo suno ni la o pana e moku tawa mi.
o weka e sona pi pali ike mi sama ni: mi weka e sona pi pali ike
pi jan ante.
o pana ala e wile ike tawa mi.
o awen e mi weka tan ike.
ni li nasin.
https://gadzetomania.pl/2725,slovio-toki-pona-i-klingonski-10-najciekawszych-sztucznych-jezykow,3
Curieux ?
Créatif ?
Utopiste ?
Pionnier ?
En recherche d'originalité ?
Boostez votre créativité en regardant la vie autrement. Ouvrez vous à une autre approche du monde. Une approche simple. Simpliste ?...
Osez l'aventure : découvrez le toki pona. Rien à voir avec la peinture ?... Peut-être pas !... Par exemple les couleurs sont construites à partir des trois primaires. Ce langage simplifié pourrait rejoindre la technique du croquis dans son approche schématique et minimaliste. Pour une vision plus globale, personnelle. Ou comment échanger sur ce qui nous entoure avec des moyens extrêmement limités ?
Un langage à la portée de tous. Peut-être la langue internationale de communication du futur... En tout cas, un exercice audacieux et intéressant sur une vision du monde et la manière dont nous l'exprimons à travers des mots.
Le maximum d'efficacité avec le minimum d'effort d'apprentissage.
Un alphabet succinct de 9 consonnes et 5 voyelles, flexible par rapport à la prononciation.
Une énonciation facile, qui évite les incertitudes.
Un vocabulaire volontairement limité à 120 mots. Le petit dictionnaire toki pona – français abrégé que j'ai rédigé tient sur une page A4.
Une grammaire extrêmement simplifiée.
Un apprentissage ludique et rapide. Ce n'est pas la mer à boire. Il est surprenant de voir comment dès que l'on commence, on a l'impression que la vie pourrait être simple, et l'apprentissage d'une langue, naturel.
Même si vous n'allez pas jusqu'au bout, le fait de vous interroger sur notre vocabulaire, nos règles grammaticales sera déjà une expérience enrichissante ou une parenthèse curieuse.
Osez essayer le toki pona !
En français :
http://lvogel.free.fr/tokipona/lecons.html
http://fr.wikibooks.org/wiki/Toki_pona
En anglais :
http://tokipona.org/ le site officiel
http://rowa.giso.de/languages/toki-pona/english/lessons.php http://rowa.giso.de/languages/toki-pona/english/toki-pona-lessons.pdf
« L’Arbre de l’Unité en Toki Pona », pour s’amuser
par libre fan - 4 janvier 2018 - 12:03pm
categories:Culture libre
tags:Sonja LangToki PonaPepper&Carrot
Voici un essai de traduction de l’épisode 24 de Pepper&Carrot en Toki Pona, petite langue réjouissante et reposante inventée par une linguiste canadienne, Sonja Lang, en 2001.
Le Toki Pona est une langue bien différente de l’Esperanto mais comme l’Esperanto, c’est une langue construite et très astucieuse.
Pepper&Carrot en Toki Pona ?
Il ne s’agit pas, pour moi en tous cas, de commencer à traduire tout Pepper&Carrot. Simplement, je trouve que cet épisode se prête bien au Toki Pona, qui ressemble un peu à un Pidgin. D’autres épisodes, comme « la Dent de Dragon » (n° 14) ou « Le Sage de la montagne » (n°16) ou encore « Le Souhait » (n°7), rendraient peut-être bien aussi en Toki Pona.
« L’Arbre de l’Unité » en Toki Pona
Ma tentative de traduction en Toki Pona d’un épisode de Pepper & Carrot « L’Arbre de l’Unité » doit sans doute être corrigée et améliorée mais surtout ne commencez pas à tout vouloir traduire. Le sens et la beauté du Toki Pona, c’est sa simplicité et son renoncement à tout exprimer et à mettre la vie et le monde en coupe réglée.
De plus, la paix et l’unité sont le but de cette langue. Pourtant, elle est paradoxale en apparence car elle est à peu près dénuée de mots se rapportant à ces idéaux. En revanche, les batailles, les conflits, le manque d’harmonie et d’entente, le bruit, les destructions et les catastrophes, les blessures, les tueries et la mort, s’expriment très facilement.
Dans « L’Arbre de l’Unité », l’idéal exprimé dans le titre n’est pas atteint et c’est plutôt le bazar le plus complet qui s’exprime librement. En réalisant la belle image de son sapin de l’Unité, l’apprentie-sorcière provoque dans la réalité une sorte de monstre d’exhubérance qui a échappé à sa baguette magique et qui transforme les 5 personnages en décorations de Noel. On imagine le travail des baguettes magiques des trois marraines pour tout remettre en ordre. Joyeux Noel et bonne année Icon wink
[...]
Linguistics Olympiad
[...]
Toki Pona Toki Pona is a constructed language, created in 2011 by the Canadian linguist Sonja Elen Kisa. Her aim was the language to be a minimal language, undervaluing the empty and abstract communication such as the ones of politicians and bureaucrats and pointing more directly to the concrete human life experiences. Therefore, the language makes use of only 123 words, with roots coming from different language families. What follows is a list of some words and expressions in Toki Pona and, out of order, their English translations: kiwen suno jelo, tomo tawa telo, jan Powi, ilo suno, telo jelo, jan ilo, jan toki, supa lape, supa moku, ma tomo, wile moku, tawa, nasin linja, wile pona, telo kiwen, lipu toki, wile lawa, linja lawa, tomo moku, linja kiwen prophet, well-intentioned, hair, lantern, ice, robot, boat, thorn, hungry, Boris, book, piss, city, bed, orthodoxy, movement, restaurant, dominant, dinner table, gold 1. Do the right associations between the words and translations. 2. Give the translation of all the simple Toki Pona words used in the compounded words and expressions of this problem. 3. How would you translate literally the name of the language? Problem by Bruno L’Astorina for the Brazilian Linguistics Olympiad 2012
https://mafiadoc.com/ancient-greek-linguistics-olympiad_59c5374d1723dd2b1c9e6710.html
Webosoof
Joined Oct 2019
