toki pona

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Toki Pona is a philosophical artistic constructed language known for its small vocabulary. It was created by Canadian linguist and translator Sonja Lang for the purpose of simplifying thoughts and communication. It was first published online in 2001 as a draft, and later in complete form in the book Toki Pona: The Language of Good in 2014. A small community of speakers developed in the early 2000s. While activity mostly takes place online in chat rooms, on social media, and in other groups, there were a few organized in-person meetings during the 2000s and 2010s.

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Translation Request (lemmy.ml)

submitted 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) by vimino@lemmy.ml to c/toki_pona@lemmy.ml

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I tried to use Toki Pona and made this phrase:

mi lukin sona toki lon ni ike nasa toki taso ni li ala sama soweli toki

But I think it's missing something, so I'm asking you guys to translate it so I can see if it's understandable.

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[–] Krisha@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 year ago

it's missing grammar. even with HEAVY interpolation and deduction i'm guessing you're trying to say something like "I seek language knowledge (i want to learn) in this weird bad language, but it's not (or did you mistake this word for ale and wanted to say all?) like animal speech." but that might be a lot of conjecture on my part

first of all you've messed up the order of words in phrases. in toki pona, the head of the phrase comes first, so it's a "balloon red big" not a "big red balloon" (sike loje suli).

Second of all, you did use the word "li" there which is good, but you're missing another very important word for SVO sentences, the particle "e". That word makes it so that the phrase following it is the subject of the sentence, so "mi lukin e ona" means "i see them"

Thirdly, the word "lon" is kind of confusing me, which is probably because your sentence construction is not very good. but if the start of the sentence is trying to say something like "I'm learning this weird language" or "i want to learn it", i would not use lon, i'd either say "mi kama sona e..." or "mi wile (kama) sona e..."

fourthly, animal sounds have a special word in toki pona, that being mu. yes it sounds like moo.

so the whole sentence would be something like "mi wile kama sona e toki nasa ni. taso, ni ale li sama e mu."