Toki Pona
| toki pona | |
|---|---|
| Language family | Pona languages |
| Writing system | Latin, Sitelen Pona, Sitelen Sitelen |
| Official status | |
| Spoken in | Nāroňpār |
| Speaker | |
| Endonym | toki pona |
| Number of speakers | 2+ |
| Technical information | |
| Usage | National Language |
| Language code | TOK |
toki pona is a language with a notably small phoneme count and vocabulary. It is an official language of Nāroňpār, and formerly was an official language of LukaLand.
Phonology
toki pona's phoneme inventory is extremely small. Most natural languages have all of Toki Pona's phonemes, and all natural languages have most of Toki Pona's phonemes. The distribution of phonemes is also fairly natural, although /l/ being common and /t/ being uncommon is somewhat unusual. The distribution of /l/ is slightly more understandable if it is assumed to be rhotic.
Syllables are of the form CV(n), though the first consonant of a word can be null, and there are several phonotactical restrictions. For example, if a syllable has coda /n/, the next syllable must begin with a non-nasal.
| Front | Coronal | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | |
| Plosive | p | t | k |
| Fricative | s | ||
| Approximant | j | l | w |
| Close vowel | i | u | |
| Mid vowel | o | e | |
| Open vowel | a |
Orthography
There are many different proposed writing systems for toki pona, though only three are commonly used. The romanization is the most popular, with 14 total letters, referred to by words that start with the letter: akesi, esun, ilo, jan, kala, luka, moku, nena, oko, pipi, suno, tomo, uta, waso. This is also the only popular writing system which is phonemic. Notably, all native words are written entirely in lowercase, even when they are the name of something. This is seen in the name of the language itself. Only loaned proper adjectives use capital letters.
The sitelen pona script, devised by prominent toki pona linguist jan Sonja, is a logographic script that uses very simple symbols (hence the name) of each object. The symbol for toki pona, used on its language flag and other such iconography, is toki pona written in sitelen pona.
The sitelen sitelen script, also referred to as sitelen suwi (no relation to Suwi), is a logosyllabary where each native word and syllable which does not coincide with a native word has a symbol. These symbols are usually stacked or otherwise connected to form a sentence. sitelen sitelen has no linear directionality.
Vocabulary and grammar
toki pona authorities vary in how many words they say the language has, but all estimates fall within the range of 120 and 181. Regardless, this would make it one of the smallest languages in Nguhcraft. All of these words express very basic concepts, with more complex concepts requiring multiple words to express.
There are extremely few numerals in toki pona, with even san (a commonly used word for three) not having official support. Technically, toki pona as written counts in pentary, but number words usually function more like Roman numerals. For those that say numbers in a more traditional manner, seximal is the most common base, usually counting it as wan tu san tutu luka mute.
toki pona uses subject-verb-object word order, but both the verb and direct object are marked. The language is exclusively head-initial. All content words are nouns, which technically form both verbs and adjectives through zero-derivation (though the particle li can be seen as a verbalizer). Prepositional phrases follow all objects, while the word la is used after phrases that add context and before the subject.
toki pona has no native names. In fact, rather than proper nouns, toki pona has proper adjectives - names of objects come after the word for the object itself. These are usually also aggresively loaned into toki pona phonology, where even in the romanization, a proper adjective is written as if it were a toki pona word. For example, rather than *"Youmu li moku", a toki pona speaker would write "jan Jomu li moku".