Toki Pona (meaning “good language” or “simple language”) is a planned language that is characterized above all by its minimalist grammar and a small vocabulary of around 130 words. It was created by the Canadian Sonja Lang (then Sonja Elen Kisa). She first published Toki Pona online in the summer of 2001. According to her estimates, there were at least 100 fluent speakers worldwide in 2007. The name of the language is derived from the Tok-Pisin word tok (from the English talk “to speak”) and the Esperanto adjective bona (“good”).
The Toki Pona alphabet contains 14 letters. There are five vowels a, e, i, o and u and nine consonants j, k, l, m, n, p, s, t and w.
The book “Toki Pona: The Language of Good” by Sonja Lang, which is usually used as a general reference, lists 123 words with 120 meanings. Over time, a few more words have become commonplace. The official website lists 137 words as essential. In addition, there are various words that are rarely used or not used at all, many of which are obsolete, only used in small groups or jokes. With these, Toki Pona has around 340 words.
The numbers in Toki Pona testify to the minimalist concept of this planned language. There are no number words from one to ten, on which the entire number system is based. This was deliberately omitted in order to make the use of higher numbers more difficult and to return to a simple way of thinking in the spirit of Daoism. All in all, there are only six number words – taking the zero into account: 0, 1, 2, 5, 20 and 100.
Writing systems
- Sitelen Pona. Here, each word in Toki Pona is represented by a hieroglyph. The system is linear from left to right and from top to bottom.
- Sitelen Telo is a writing system for Toki Pona inspired by Japanese.
- Sitelen Sitelen is another writing system that is also based on hieroglyphs, but is not linear. It is similar to Mayan hieroglyphics.
Sitelen Emoji. This works in a similar way to Sitelen Pona, but here each word is assigned an emoji.
