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= Toki Pona =
======================================================================
Introduction
======================================================================
Toki Pona (; , , ) is a philosophical and artistic constructed
language designed for its small vocabulary, simplicity, and ease of
acquisition. It was created by Canadian translator and polyglot Sonja
Lang with the stated purpose of simplifying her thoughts and
communication. The first drafts were published online in 2001, while
the complete form was published in the 2014 book 'Toki Pona: The
Language of Good' (referred to as in Toki Pona). Lang also released
the 'Toki Pona Dictionary' (), in July 2021, describing the language
as used by its community of speakers. In 2024, a third book was
released, a Toki Pona adaptation of 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz',
written in Sitelen Pona.
Toki Pona is an isolating language with only 14 phonemes and an
underlying feature of minimalism. It focuses on simple, near-universal
concepts to maximize expression from very few words. In 'Toki Pona:
The Language of Good', Lang presents around 120 words, while the later
'Toki Pona Dictionary' lists 137 "essential" words and a small number
of less-used ones. Its words are easy to pronounce across language
backgrounds, which allows it to serve as a bridge for people of
different cultures. However, it was not created as an international
auxiliary language. Partly inspired by Taoist philosophy, the language
is designed to help users concentrate on basic things and to promote
positive thinking, in accordance with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
Despite the small vocabulary, speakers can understand and communicate,
mainly relying on context, combinations of words, and expository
sentences to express more specific meanings.
After its initial creation, a small community of speakers developed in
the early 2000s. While activity mainly takes place online in chat
rooms, on social media, and in other online groups, there have been a
few organized in-person meetups.
Etymology
======================================================================
The name of the language has two parts: , derived from Tok Pisin ,
which itself comes from English 'talk'; and , from Esperanto , from
Latin . The name therefore means 'good language', 'the language of
good' and 'simple language', emphasizing that the language encourages
speakers to find joy in simplicity.
Purpose
======================================================================
Toki Pona was designed both as a personal artistic language and a
philosophical language focused on minimalism. It is designed to
express maximal meaning with minimal complexity. Inspired by pidgins,
it focuses on simple concepts and elements that are common among
cultures. Its minimal vocabulary and 14 phonemes are devised to be
easy to pronounce for speakers of various language backgrounds.
Partly inspired by Taoist philosophy, another goal of Toki Pona is to
help its speakers focus on the essentials by reducing complex concepts
to basic elements. From these simple notions, more complex ideas can
be built up by simple combining. Some argue that this allows the users
to see the fundamental nature and effect of the ideas expressed. It
was designed for the speakers to become aware of the present moment
and pay more attention to the surroundings and the words people use.
According to its author, Toki Pona is meant to be "fun and cute".
On the basis of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which states that a
language influences the way its speakers think and behave, Toki Pona
was designed to induce positive thinking.
Although it was not intended as an international auxiliary language, a
worldwide online community uses it for communication.
History
======================================================================
Toki Pona was developed by the Canadian polyglot and translator Sonja
Lang. Born in 1978 in Moncton, New Brunswick, Lang grew up in a
bilingual family; her mother spoke French, and her father spoke
English. During and after her high school years, she became fluent in
five languages, including Esperanto. Esperanto was the inspiration for
her creation of constructed languages.
In 2001, Lang was experiencing depression and started working on Toki
Pona as a way to simplify her thoughts. In the same year, an early
version of the language was published online, and it quickly gained
popularity. An early community formed in a Yahoo group created by
Lang. She was inspired by hunter-gatherers, saying in an interview
with 'The Atlantic': "I thought, what would it have been like to just
be a person in nature, interacting with things in a primitive way?"
In 2014, Lang released her first book on the language, 'Toki Pona: The
Language of Good', which features 120 main words, plus 3 words
presented as synonyms of these, though generally in use with different
meanings, and provides a completed form of the language based on how
Lang used the language at the time. In 2016, the book was also
published in French, and versions in German, Esperanto, and Persian
have since been completed. In April 2026, Lang posted a declaration on
X.com dedicating the original English edition of the book to the
public domain.
In 2021, Lang released her second book, 'Toki Pona Dictionary', a
comprehensive two-way Toki Pona-English dictionary including more than
11,000 entries detailing the use of the language as she gathered from
polls conducted in the Discord server over a few months. The book
presents the original 120 words plus 16 () as gathered from at least
over 40% of respondents. It also contains 45 words given by 40% or
less of respondents, referred to as (), sometimes also called .
After two failed applications for an ISO 639-3 code, a third request
was filed in August 2021, which resulted in the ISO 639-3 code being
adopted in January 2022.
Toki Pona was the subject of some scientific works, and it has also
been used for artificial intelligence and software tools. One
psychiatrist has studied a therapeutic method for eliminating negative
thinking by having patients keep track of their thoughts in the
language. In 2010, it was chosen for the first version of the
vocabulary for the ROILA project. The purpose of the study was to
investigate the use of an artificial language on the accuracy of
machine speech recognition, and it was revealed that the modified
vocabulary of Toki Pona significantly outperformed English.
In February of 2024, Lang released the book 'The Wonderful Wizard of
Oz (Toki Pona edition)', the first in a planned series of illustrated
storybooks written in Sitelen Pona (referred to collectively as ).
Phonemic inventory
====================
Toki Pona has nine consonants () and five vowels (). Stress falls on
the initial syllable of a word, and it is marked by an increase in
loudness, length, or pitch. There are no diphthongs, vowel hiatus,
contrasting vowel length, consonant clusters (except those starting
with the nasal coda), or tones. Both its sound inventory and
phonotactics are compatible with the majority of human languages, and
are therefore readily accessible.
Consonants
! Labial Coronal Dorsal
Nasal
Stop
Fricative
Approximant
Vowels
! Front Back
Close
Mid e o
Open colspan="2" | a
Distribution
==============
The statistical vowel spread is fairly typical when compared with
other languages. Counting each word once, 32% of vowels are , 25% are
, with and a bit over 15% each, and 10% are . The usage frequency
from the official Toki Pona mailing list and websites of fluent
speakers was slightly more skewed: 34% , 30% , 15% each and , and 6%
..
Of the syllable-initial consonants, is the most common, at 20% total;
are over 10%, then the nasals (not counting final n), with the least
common, at little more than 5% each, being . The high frequency of
and low frequency of is somewhat unusual among the world's languages.
Phonotactics
==============
The first syllable of a word follows the form (C)V(N), i.e. an
optional consonant, a vowel, and an optional final nasal. Subsequent
syllables follow the same form, except that the leading consonant is
required. Syllables can thus be CV, CVN, V, or VN. As in most
languages, CV is the most common syllable type, at 75% (counting each
word once).
The following sequences are not allowed: * , nor may a syllable's
final nasal occur immediately before or in the same word.
Proper nouns are usually converted into Toki Pona proper adjectives
using a set of guidelines. The native, or even colloquial,
pronunciation is used as the basis for the subsequent sound
conversion. Thus, English becomes and John becomes .
Valid syllables in Toki Pona -a -an -e -en -i -in -o -on -u
-un
∅- a an e en i in o on u un
p- pa pan pe pen pi pin po pon pu pun
t- ta tan te ten colspan="2" to ton tu tun
k- ka kan ke ken ki kin ko kon ku kun
m- ma man me men mi min mo mon mu mun
n- na nan ne nen ni nin no non nu nun
s- sa san se sen si sin so son su sun
l- la lan le len li lin lo lon lu lun
w- wa wan we wen wi win colspan="4"
j- ja jan je jen colspan="2" jo jon ju jun
Allophony
===========
Because of its small phoneme inventory, Toki Pona allows for extensive
allophonic variation. For example, may be pronounced as well as ,
along with /t/ being either dental, alveolar, or retroflex, as or
as well as , as as well as , and vowels may be either long or short.
Furthermore, while written as 'n', the nasal at the end of a syllable
can be pronounced as any nasal stop, and it is normally assimilated to
the following consonant.
Writing systems
======================================================================
Fourteen letters of the Latin alphabet--'a', 'e', 'i', 'j', 'k', 'l',
'm', 'n', 'o', 'p', 's', 't', 'u', 'w'--are used to write the
language. They have the same values as in the International Phonetic
Alphabet: 'j' sounds like English 'y' (as in many Germanic and Slavic
languages) and the vowels are like those of Spanish, Modern Greek, or
Modern Hebrew. Capital initials are used to mark proper names, while
common words are always written with lowercase letters, even when they
start a sentence.
Besides the Latin alphabet, which is the most common way of writing
the language, many alternative writing systems have been developed for
and adapted to Toki Pona. Most successful and widespread are two
logographic writing systems, Sitelen Pona and Sitelen Sitelen. Both
were included in the book 'Toki Pona: The Language of Good'.
Sitelen Pona
==============
Sitelen Pona () is a logographic writing system devised by Lang as an
alternative writing system for Toki Pona, and first published in her
book 'Toki Pona: The Language of Good' in 2014. As a logography, each
word is represented by its own symbol. It has been described as "a
hieroglyphic-like script that makes use of squiggles and other
childlike shapes".
Symbols representing a single adjective may be written inside or above
the symbol for the preceding word that they modify. The symbol of the
language class=skin-invert-image is written in Sitelen Pona, with the
symbol class=skin-invert-image () written inside the symbol
class=skin-invert-image ().
Toki Pona - toki.jpg|'toki' (language)
Toki Pona - pona.jpg|'pona' (good, simple)
Toki Pona - toki pona.jpg|'toki pona' (the language of good)
Toki Pona - telo.jpg|'telo' (water, liquid)
Toki Pona - lete.jpg|'lete' (cold)
Toki Pona - telo lete.jpg|'telo lete' (cold water)
===Sitelen Sitelen===
Sitelen Sitelen (), alternatively known as (), is a mixed writing
system for Toki Pona created by Jonathan Gabel. This more elaborate
non-linear system combines a logographic script with an abugida for
writing syllables (especially for proper names). The complex artful
designs of the glyphs are chosen to help people who use this writing
system to slow down and explore how not only the language but also the
method of communication can influence their thinking.
Sitelen Sitelen's overall aesthetics are inspired by US west-coast
comix artists such as Jim Woodring and US east-coast graffiti artists
such as Kenny Scharf. The designs of many individual characters are
inspired by characters and principles from various other writing
systems, including Egyptian hieroglyphs, Linear B, Chinese characters,
Maya script, Mi'kmaw hieroglyphs, Dongba symbols, as well as early
Pagan and Christian signs and symbols.
jan - sitelen sitelen word symbol drawn by Jonathan Gabel.jpg|'jan'
(person, people)
ale - sitelen sitelen word symbol drawn by Jonathan Gabel.jpg|'ale'
(all)
li - sitelen sitelen word symbol drawn by Jonathan Gabel.jpg|'li'
(particle)
kepeken - sitelen sitelen word symbol drawn by Jonathan
Gabel.jpg|'kepeken' (use)
e - sitelen sitelen word symbol drawn by Jonathan Gabel.jpg|'e'
(particle)
toki - sitelen sitelen word symbol drawn by Jonathan Gabel.jpg|'toki'
(language)
sama - sitelen sitelen word symbol drawn by Jonathan Gabel.jpg|'sama'
(same)
Grammar
======================================================================
Toki Pona's word order is subject-verb-object. The particle
introduces the predicate (marking the main verb phrase, including any
preverbs), and the particle introduces direct objects. Toki Pona is
head-initial: a noun or verb is followed by its modifiers.
Some words are grammatical particles, while the others are content
words with lexical meanings. The content words do not fall into most
traditional parts of speech; they may be used as nouns, verbs,
modifiers, or interjections. A content word's position in a sentence
and phrase determines its role, allowing the limited number of words
to serve many purposes. Thus, the word means "to eat" in the verb
position following , but means "food" (that which is eaten) in a noun
position, and might mean "edible" (of or relating to eating) as an
adjective.
Toki Pona has more complicated sentence structures as well. There are
closed classes of content words that can act as preverbs and
prepositions in specific parts of a sentence. Preverbs are catenative
and are inserted between and the main verb. Prepositional phrases
follow the objects. The particle ends a phrase or clause that comes
before the subject to add additional context.
Sentence structures
=====================
A sentence may be an interjection, statement, wish/command, or
question.
For example, interjections such as , , , , , , , , etc. can stand
alone as a sentence.
Full sentences all follow the subject-predicate order with an optional
phrase at the beginning. In statements, the word precedes the
predicate unless the subject is or . The marker comes before direct
objects. More and markers can present more predicates and direct
objects respectively. Vocative phrases come before the main sentence
and are marked with at the end of the phrase, after the addressee.
at the start of a sentence indicates an imperative. It can also
replace , or come after the subjects or , to indicate the
subjunctive.
There are two ways to form yes-no questions in Toki Pona. One method
is to use the A-not-A construction, "verb verb", in which comes in
between a duplicated verb, auxiliary verb, or other predicates.
Another way is to put the question tag () after the phrase being
inquired about.
Non-polar questions are formed by replacing the unknown information
with the interrogative word .
Pronouns
==========
Toki Pona has four basic pronouns: (first person), (second person),
(third person), and (demonstrative). As with content words in
general, number and gender are not obligatorily marked, but can be
specified with additional modifiers to the pronouns.
Nouns
=======
With such a small vocabulary, Toki Pona relies heavily on noun
phrases, where a noun is modified by a following word, to make more
complex meanings. A typical example is combining ('person') with
('fight') to make ('fighter, soldier, warrior').
Nouns do not decline according to number; can mean 'person, people,
humanity, somebody' depending on context. Adding , , or as needed
specifies singular, dual, or plural, respectively.
Toki Pona does not use isolated proper nouns; instead, they must
modify a preceding noun. For this reason, they may be called "proper
adjectives" or simply "proper words" instead of "proper nouns". For
example, names of people and places are used as modifiers of the
common word for "person" and "place", e.g. () or ().
Modifiers
===========
Phrases in Toki Pona are head-initial; modifiers always come after the
word that they modify. Therefore, (), can be a 'fighting animal',
whereas (), can mean 'animal war'.
When a second modifier is added to a phrase, for example , it modifies
all that comes before it, so might mean 'many good people', with both
('good') and ('many') modifying ('person'). The particle is placed
before two or more modifiers to group them into another phrase that
functions as a unit to modify the head: In , as a unit means 'much
goodness', to together mean 'very good person'. modifies , and as a
whole modifies .
Demonstratives, numerals, and possessive pronouns come after the head
like other modifiers.
Verbs
=======
Toki Pona does not inflect verbs according to person, tense, mood, or
voice, as the language features no inflection whatsoever. Person is
indicated by the subject of the verb; time is indicated through
context or by a temporal adverb in the sentence.
Prepositions can be used in the predicate in place of a regular verb.
This expresses the verb and preposition senses in one. For example,
means "to go toward" in this case.
Vocabulary
======================================================================
Toki Pona has around 120 to 137 words. Each is polysemous, and covers
a range of similar concepts, so not only means 'big' or 'long', but
also 'important'. Their use relies heavily on context. To express more
complex thoughts, the words can be combined. For example, can mean
'friend', although it translates to 'good person', and (), could be
understood to mean 'alcohol' or 'alcoholic beverage' depending on the
context. The verb 'to teach' can be expressed by (). Essentially
identical concepts can be described by different words as the choice
relies on the speaker's perception and experience.
Colors
========
Toki Pona has five words for colors: (black), (white), (red),
(yellow), and (blue and green). Although the simplified
conceptualization of colors tends to exclude a number of colors that
are commonly expressed in Western languages, speakers sometimes may
combine these five words to make more specific descriptions of certain
colors. For instance, "purple" may be represented by combining and .
The phrase means "a reddish shade of blue" and means "a bluish shade
of red".
More specific colors may be expressed by comparison with objects, or
other shared context. A common example amongst English speakers is -
combining "blue-green" with "plant" to mean green.
Numbers
=========
Toki Pona has words for one (), two (), and many (). In addition, can
mean 'zero' (its main meaning being 'no, none'), and () can express
an infinite or immense amount.
The simplest number system uses these five words to express any amount
necessary. For numbers larger than two, speakers would use which
means 'many'.
A more complex system expresses larger numbers additively by using
phrases such as for three, for four, and so on. This feature
purposely makes it impractical to communicate large numbers. This
system, described in Lang's book, also uses () to signify five, ()
to signify twenty, and () to signify hundred. For example, using this
structure would mean 102 and would signify 78.
Vocabulary history
====================
Originally, meant 'eye' and was used as a verb 'to see'. In 'Toki
Pona: The Language of Good', the meanings were merged into , being
the alternative.
Words that were simply removed from the lexicon include ('block,
stairs'), ('monster, fear'), ('old'), ('cut'), and ('sibling').
These words were considered outdated because they were not included in
the official book. However, , , , and retained enough usage in the
community that they were re-included in the lexicon as () in 'Toki
Pona Dictionary'.
Besides and , which replaced existing words, a few words were added
to the original 118: ('grain, bread, pasta, rice'), ('market, shop,
trade'), ('hunt, gather'), and ('extra, additional, spice'), another
word for ('new, fresh').
Provenance
============
Most Toki Pona words come from English, Tok Pisin, Finnish, Georgian,
Dutch, Acadian French, Esperanto, and Serbo-Croatian, with a few from
Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese).
Many of these derivations are transparent. For example, ('speech,
language') is similar to Tok Pisin and its English source 'talk',
while ('good, positive'), from Esperanto , reflects generic Romance ,
, English 'bonus', etc. However, the changes in pronunciation required
by the simple phonetic system often make the origins of other words
more difficult to see. The word ('sleep, rest'), for example, comes
from Dutch and is cognate with English 'sleep'; (any animal from the
superfamily Musteloidea) from Finnish ; ('use') is somewhat distorted
from Dutch , and from ('lizard') is scarcely recognizable. (Because
'*ti' is an illegal syllable in Toki Pona, Dutch 'di' becomes 'si.')
Although only 14 words (12%) are listed as derived from English, a
large number of the Tok Pisin, Esperanto, and other words are
transparently cognate with English, raising the English-friendly
portion of the vocabulary to about 30%. The portions of the lexicon
from other languages are 15% Tok Pisin, 14% Finnish, 14% Esperanto,
12% Serbo-Croatian, 10% Acadian French, 9% Dutch, 8% Georgian, 5%
Mandarin, 3% Cantonese; one word each from Welsh, Tongan (an English
borrowing) and Akan, four phonesthetic words (two which are found in
English, one from Japanese, and one which was made up); and one other
made-up word (the grammatical particle ).
Signed Toki Pona and {{lang|tok|luka pona}}
=============================================
Signed Toki Pona, or , is a manually coded form of Toki Pona. Each
word and letter has its own sign, which is distinguished by the
handshape, location of the hand on the body, palm or finger
orientation, and the usage of one or both hands. Most signs are
performed with the right hand at the required location. A few signs,
however, are performed with both hands in a symmetrical way. To form a
sentence, each of the signs is performed using the grammar and word
order of Toki Pona.
A more naturalistic constructed sign language called also exists, and
is more widely used in the Toki Pona community than . It is a separate
language with its own grammar, but has a vocabulary that generally
parallels Toki Pona. 's signs have increased iconicity as compared to
, and many signs are loan-words from natural sign languages. Its
grammar is subject-object-verb, and, like natural sign languages, it
makes use of classifier constructions and signing space. In 'Toki Pona
Dictionary', Sonja Lang recommends learning instead of .
Community
======================================================================
The language is fairly well known among Esperantists, who often offer
courses and conversation groups at their meetups. In 2007, Lang said
that at least 100 people speak Toki Pona fluently and estimated that a
few hundred have a basic knowledge of the language. One-hour courses
of Toki Pona were taught on various occasions by the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology during their Independent Activities Period.
The language is used mainly online on social media, in forums, and
other online groups. Users of the language are spread out across
multiple platforms. A 'Yahoo!' group existed from about 2002 to 2009,
when it moved to a forum on a phpBB site.
The largest groups exist on Facebook, Discord, and Reddit. Two large
groups exist on Facebook: one designated for conversation in Toki Pona
and English, and the other for conversation in only Toki Pona. The
former of the two is the more popular.
Memrise has user-created materials for learning Toki Pona.
In-person meetups have been organized by the community, including in
Sarajevo, Vienna, Maastricht, Berlin, Seattle, and Amsterdam.
Toki Pona Wikipedia
=====================
There is a Wikipedia written in Toki Pona (called ). Its first
iteration was closed in 2005 and moved to the wiki hosting service
Wikicities, now known as Fandom. On 23 April 2021 it then moved from
Fandom to an independent website at wikipesija.org. On 7 March 2022 a
request to return Toki Pona Wikipedia to a subdomain of wikipedia.org
was made on the Wikimedia Language Committee. This was approved on 12
September 2025, with the current iteration being hosted on
tok.wikipedia.org.
Literature
======================================================================
There are a few published books and many other works in Toki Pona.
Most of the published works are language-learning books for beginners
like and . Many other works are translations of original literature
in other languages.
Starting in 2020, a group has been working on and publishing a zine in
Toki Pona called (), and it is officially registered as a zine in the
United Kingdom.
{{lang|tok|tenpo li lili}}
============================
An original poem about time by , which won first place in a 2023
poetry contest.
{{lang|tok|jan Sitata}} (excerpt)
===================================
The opening lines of the novel 'Siddhartha' by Hermann Hesse,
translated by jan Kala, and written in Sitelen Pona by jan Majeka
The opening lines of by , a 2022 Toki Pona translation of the novel
'Siddhartha' by Hermann Hesse, follow below. The text uses interpuncts
as markers for end of the sentence.
Back-translation in English:
See also
======================================================================
* Engineered language
* Sitelen Pona
* List of constructed languages
External links
======================================================================
* [https://tokipona.net Primary community-run website] for the
language
* [https://sona.pona.la ], a wiki about Toki Pona
* [https://liputenpo.org ], a zine in Toki Pona
* List of Toki Pona words on Wiktionary
License
=========
All content on Gopherpedia comes from Wikipedia, and is licensed under CC-BY-SA
License URL: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki Pona
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