== History ==
An early version of the language was published online in 2001 by Sonja Lang, and it quickly gained popularity. Early activity took place in a Yahoo! group. Members of the group discussed the language with one another in English, Toki Pona, and Esperanto, proposed changes, and talked about the resources on the tokipona.org site. At its peak member count, the group had a little over 500 members. Messages in the group were archived in the Toki Pona forum using phpBB.
Lang later released an official book on the language, Toki Pona: The Language of Good, in 2014. It is also sometimes referred to as pu in the Toki Pona community. In 2016, the book was also published in French. Although other resources for the language have been created by the community, the major sources for learning continue to be Lang's book and online lessons developed by Bryant Knight or "jan Pije", an early adopter of Toki Pona.
In 2008 an application for an ISO 639-3 code was rejected, with a statement that the language was too young. Another request was rejected in 2018 as the language "does not appear to be used in a variety of domains nor for communication within a community which includes all ages".Toki Pona was the subject of some scientific works, and it has also been used for artificial intelligence and software tools, as well as a therapeutic method for eliminating negative thinking by having patients keep track of their thoughts in the language.
