LIPAMANKA PI FONT ALA

[boreal scarab]

r u a reditor

[digital harness]

Very well.

[boreal scarab]

do you go on

r/debate

[digital harness]

Yes, and no

[boreal scarab]

do you enjoy shitting on peoples desks and pointing out logical fallacies when they get mad

[digital harness]

No

[floral crescent]

it’s like really not your place to have a take on what types of pronouns people should use

[rocky urchin]

-mute 904736339847692338 toki utala li ike e kulupu

[scarlet briar]

🔇 Muted Qaziquza#2733 indefinitely

[floral crescent]

okay no use continuing the discussion after the mute

[boreal scarab]

good riddance

ok whats this essay

[floral crescent]

it’s a lot of essays

this is just the channel where i put my essay ideas

[boreal scarab]

awesome

[floral crescent]

it’s kinda like a third sona kulupu at this point (the second being #912286596517220363 wait i made that one too)

[rain lotus]

meditates on the thought that "toki utala" and "toki utala" are the same phrase

[floral crescent]

yes they are

the same

identical, even

[rain lotus]

y'know what I mean tho?

[floral crescent]

no because i try not to think of english through toki pona too much

[rain lotus]

sorta my point. like, it is ike to draw a distinction between debate and argument

[boreal scarab]

how are they different

yes

same thing no ??

[floral crescent]

i think that the english words have complex connotations beyond what toki pona can express with one noun phrase

[rain lotus]

in English generally no I think? "debate" has polished connotations, constructive disagreement. "argument" is bad, bordering on abusive (unless it's the uncountable "argument", which means the same thing as "debate")

[floral crescent]

but they can both be types of toki utala

[boreal scarab]

seeing as how debate bros are i dont think debates are that polished

[floral crescent]

kdjdkdkfjjglsldk

[rain lotus]

yeah that's what i'm getting at

pona la, toki utala li toki utala

now, jan li ken toki lon pilin ante

that's one thing

idk if i'm making sense. philosophizing.

[floral crescent]

yes

jan li jo e pilin ante la ona li ken toki e pilin ni a

taso pilin li ike la ona o weka

[boreal scarab]

indeed 👍 toki pi mani ala

free speech

[floral crescent]

free speech = anticapitalism confirmed

[rain lotus]

yeah. and drawing a distinction between debating the right way and the wrong way is maybe something that makes sense in a toki ike space, but not in a toki pona space. because all utala is utala.

(or, debate of such a sort that one needs to label it as debate rather than as just we are expressing diverging views)

(like if I politely disagree with someone over whether "kin X" or "kin la X" is better, that is descriptively a debate maybe, but that's not how I would conceptualize it, and toki pona la I would not describe it as a toki utala.)

anyways, that's my front time. ttyl.

[floral crescent]

goodbye enjoy ur tenpo lawa

[boreal scarab]

byee

[cosmic seal]

i almost never use this server but i should

[sand marsh]

i think they’re analogous to neopronouns because neopronouns are often less gender-based than our old pronouns, not because they’re new /g like star/starself is somewhat similar to mun

[winged brook]

did you mean 'toki utala' and 'utala toki'?

[young moat]

headpronouns (using mi, sina, or ona as headnouns)

neoheadnouns (using nimisin i guess)

now that i think about it for longer than 3 frames neither of those are novel things

there must be a mildly entertaining permutation in here somewhere

headnounself pronouns?

is that a thing? that's gotta be a thing

[sand marsh]

like luna Luna?

[visual oracle]

nano li ni

[prisma oar]

good mronig lipamanka

gornin lipamanka /esoteric

[boreal scarab]

same thing

[rain lotus]

hm i'm not sure i agree

v similar though

[maiden light]

I think of like Lincoln-Douglas style debates with the word debate which isn't the same conception at all when compared to an argument.

This isn't how most informal "debates" are though, which are usually arguments or less commonly constructive conversations.

[leaden cradle]

oooh i love the lincoln-douglas debates

[worldly yacht]

such philosophical questions

i am touched

[sand marsh]

i like it when debates are more socratic seminars. let everyone give the thoughts and then go home and sleep on it

[digital harness]

jan o
I am sorry for my statements ~10hours ago. I was unwarrantedly adversarial and heartily mistaken. I apologize to all whom I was rude to. If there are any reparations I need to make, I shall make them.

[floral crescent]

thank you for apologizing

[worldly yacht]

news flash: they singular has been in use since the 1300s

although i wouldn't like to continue the convo in this channel either way

[worldly yacht]

looking at this straight up makes me question about toki pona usage so much

😵‍💫

actually, i'd like to see being pointed somewherelse in art form for a more musi visual element

i'd love to see something like this more

[rain lotus]

i do this all the time

[worldly yacht]

owo

[rain lotus]

I do this all the time too

[worldly yacht]

owo

[keen forum]

i do something vaguely equivalent to this in sitelen Lasina

· mi wile e ni → jan ale li akesi ← ni li kama la ale li pona ·

[rain lotus]

surrounding it all with dots... punctuation has gone too far

[worldly yacht]

punctuation is getting out of hand

however, if language evolves into so, i'll adapt accordingly

[near crystal]

such is toki pona

[rain lotus]

No. 😛

kule Olipija ↩️

[Reply to:](#1032830156676538378 message) did you mean 'toki utala' and 'utala toki'?

[winged brook]

???? n... oke

WAIT I CAN INTERROBANG ‽

n‽

[keen forum]

i do it because

waso Kenu li toki
wawa li mu 

could either be or waso Kenu li toki · wawa li mu or a wrapped waso Kenu li toki wawa li mu
and also because just putting a dot on one side (like jan Kasape does) feels asymmetric

and i don't do periods because to me they feel like they indicate serious intonation

same reason why i usually don't do quotation marks but rather code blocks

</rant>

[rain lotus]

⸘a‽

kule Olipija ↩️

[Reply to:](#1032830156676538378 message) n‽

[worldly yacht]

ni pointing somewhere else just

seems so "sign-language-y"

"ona" and "ni" are both represented by pointing at anywherelse except the speaker and the listener

[undone crescent]

points to self, "ni"

[worldly yacht]

[rain lotus]

i understand why
doesn't mean i like it :p

poni nano Kita (toki ike taso) ↩️

[Reply to:](#1032830156676538378 message) i do it because

waso Kenu li toki
wawa li mu 

could either be or `waso Kenu li toki · wawa l…

[keen forum]

· too bad because i'm considering to force it into english as well ·

[rain lotus]

i think ppl should simply not care about how ambiguous text is (and embrace it instead)

[keen forum]

· too bad again because i'm a loglanger ·

[prisma oar]

lojbaner

[keen forum]

not lojban necessarily

my usual example would be logoasti but it's abandoned and only available on wayback machine

[prisma oar]

!

logoasti li seme

[rain lotus]

hope u get better soon /lh

poni nano Kita (toki ike taso) ↩️

[Reply to:](#1032830156676538378 message) · too bad again because i'm a loglanger ·

[worldly yacht]

they just look like brackets now

wwww

[hushed gorge]

I'm not familiar with this newfangled discord feature, is there a way to jump to the first message without scrolling forever

[floral crescent]

no sorry D:

but I can ask a mod to pin it

here it is

@blissful crag bestie can u pin it

or can you give me pin perms in this thread

[blissful crag]

idk if I can give perms per thread, and I am on mobile so not gonna try

[floral crescent]

okay :3

can u pin it tho

[blissful crag]

BUT ye can pin first post
silly discord not adding obvious features

uhhhh hey wanna link me the first post

[floral crescent]

ACTUALLY ALSO pin this
https://lipamanka.github.io/essays
this is a more updated running list of essays I'm working on

[floral crescent]

here is me linking u

to the first post

[blissful crag]

Oh hey ye

[blissful crag]

enjoy

hmm we should work out if thread owners can pin inside threads tho

[floral crescent]

yee

[blissful crag]

that would be nice and a really obvious features

feature singular*

[floral crescent]

or give out a role for "can pin in threads" to people who have big long lasting threads

huh actually my thread is the only one above 1k messages

[floral crescent]

on choosing a name in toki pona: Often when learning a new language (but not always) a beginner will desire to choose a new name in that language. No other language I've encountered yet has as complex a culture around this process as toki pona. I've introduced toki pona to many people, and a surprising lot of them open with "how do I choose my name?" and I realize, there's no good way to choose a name that early on. There are so many choices that have a steep learning curve behind them - knowing all the content words so one can choose a head noun, knowing how to tokiponize and loan words from other languages so one can try out multiple options. I feel that often learners are rushed into choosing these things which are really not easy to choose. A possible solution to this is to provide a list of contrastive examples of names that use all sorts of methods. Here's a non-exhaustive list that uses respected/well known toki ponists:
jan Tepo - this is just a tokiponization of a name that is not from toki pona, nothing extra
jan Misali or jan Ke Tami - these are examples of two different methods of taking a full name (first and last) and tokiponizing it as either one word or two words
jan Deni - this is an example of someone using a word that doesn't fit the rules of toki pona as a name, something that is allowed
soweli nata - an example of someone using a head noun that isn't jan. this is like super common
kulupu kasi - here's an example of a "name" that doesn't really function as a name, rather it functions as a descriptor, in a trend that a lot of speakers like to use
api Masewin or jan Kekan San - these show examples of people using nimisin as head nouns or parts of proper names
lipamanka - this is me lol I don't use a head noun or capitalize my name

one thing I've noticed a lot of beginners try to do is take words they think represent them and mush them together, like "jan Tonki" as a mashup of toki and tonsi, because someone is a trans linguistics nerd and wants to include that in their name. While there's nothing inherently wrong with doing that, I feel that it misses the trends above that are used by speakers.

If I'm going to flesh out this guide as a resource eventually I'd need to collect consent and examples/testimonials from well respected/well known community members about how/why they created their names and chose what they chose so a beginner can have examples. There are rules to choosing a name, but you're allowed to break them in any way you want. But laying out what those rules are in practice could be invaluable to learners.

Another thing to mention is that there are a lot of words to choose from when it comes to your head noun. Choosing one is really hard when you don't know any of them yet. encouraging people to interact with community members and wait to choose a head noun/be flexible might be useful as well.

I guess I might as well ping the people I mentioned who've frequented this channel or who would be interested @gloomy shale @undone crescent @visual oracle @ivory falcon @proven brook @blissful crag

[undone crescent]

thank

[floral crescent]

ideally this would be like a "so yer new to toki pona are ya? her's how to choose a nAARme"

[rain lotus]

how to choose a name:
step 1) find a creature in your local wilderness
step 2) ask them what you are
step 3) now repeat with everything you meet
step 4) ???
step 5) you have lost your name and are now cooler

[floral crescent]

this is what I did and fae told me I was an akesi

oooh what if it was like

learners had to ask a speaker to choose a name for them

and they could change it whenver they wanted after that but that would be cool

[rain lotus]

this would be nice... if there weren't just So Many learners who would eventually just give up on the language

naming ppl all the time is hard!

[undone crescent]

I should have known there are fairies where you live

[floral crescent]

one thing I've noticed a lot of beginners try to do is take words they think represent them and mush them together, like "jan Tonki" as a mashup of toki and tonsi, because someone is a trans linguistics nerd and wants to include that in their name. While there's nothing inherently wrong with doing that, I feel that it misses the trends above that are used by speakers.
anyone know why beginners assume this is what they're supposed to do

bc tbh it's kinda cringe

and by that I mean a bit uncreative and reductionist of cool naming practices

[undone crescent]

that should definitely not be standard
same as something like "jan Soweli"

[floral crescent]

for sure

also we should normalize ijo being a universal head noun for someone unless they tell you not to use it

or for something

it works great

gonna start doing this

further removes the concept of animacy from individual lexemes

[undone crescent]

I have my disagreements with that, but you already know about it

[floral crescent]

toki pona's supposed to be about slowing down and describing things, and if the quality of a sentient being is that you cannot describe it without asking it what it would like to be called first has been annoying me for a while

[visual oracle]

toki li pona

[floral crescent]

pona

[rain lotus]

can you clarify what those disagreements are? i can't rember /gen

jan Ke Tami [💎+][⌂Yρ⨃] ↩️

[Reply to:](#1032830156676538378 message) I have my disagreements with that, but you already know about it

[proven brook]

i’ll admit it’s just a cooincidence, but I do find it fun that my name lines up with ma-sewi-n or ma-sewi-wile-insa how I spell it in sp

Sometimes fun coincidences like that just happen

[sand marsh]

what other fun naming conventions are there?

[undone crescent]

I don't want to right now
I don't want to be called ijo, there are other approaches that I like, but don't see used all that often

[floral crescent]

oo that is fun

[proven brook]

sitelen pona cartouches are a whole other area of creativity in names

[sand marsh]

i like being wise mush, personally

[floral crescent]

wdym

ko sona?

[sand marsh]

yeah

[blissful crag]

@floral crescent do you have a planned follow-up on choosing a name in sitelen pona? bc you already have at least 2 cool examples of it being done in a Cool, Unique way
@river jackal has a very cool stylized name in pfp (they weren't one of your examples)
kulupu kasi has the very cool stylized name in their account pfp but uh idk how to mention them
and my name is weird too, hang on

[blissful crag]

this is an example of my favorite use of toki pona names
where they are descriptive, but also still a name

yes there are mute of me

[floral crescent]

there's also my name in sp

[proven brook]

f**king art that is

[floral crescent]

ye

it's perfect

I'm majestic

[blissful crag]

nice

[proven brook]

:O sina la kalama nasa seme li ken?

[floral crescent]

n

there's no dot after it so it's just treated normally

[blissful crag]

tenpo pini la mi kama sona e nasin pi kalama uta pona
taso, mi wile ala pona e kalama uta mi lon tenpo mute la mi nasa e ona :P
mi ken ante e kalama uta mi tawa lili, tawa suli, sama soweli, sama ilo, a a a

[rain lotus]

we ought to show up if you do @kulupukasi?

jan Kekan San ↩️

[Reply to:](#1032830156676538378 message) @floral crescent do you have a planned follow-up on choosing a name in sitelen pona? bc you alr…

[blissful crag]

oh hey you do! neat

[rain lotus]

tbh though our pfp isn't rly our Name
it's a representation of the place that our name describes

[ivory falcon]

\the pfp in q for those not following

[blissful crag]

ye, true
sorry, i was not specific
but it is still a cool example of stylized sp in a unique way that is name-adjacent, and i vibe with it

[rain lotus]

ahh

[keen forum]

also my old name, Weko, that made it into linja sike (and by extension sitelen seli kiwen)

[floral crescent]

@boreal scarab remember leko minus L

that’s cool

[keen forum]

-ohhhhh i get it now
i thought it was just an arbitrary section being removed

[boreal scarab]

awesomeee

[floral crescent]

yeeee

[keen forum]

,,hey what if my new name glyph were to be an extremely minimalist kijetesantakalu

-nono wait the tail of the kijetesantakalu
so it's a double pun

(kita in polish means "bushy tail")

not sure which i prefer

the bottom ones are more accurate but look more eh (e.g. like the champion logo ||and definitely nothing else||)

could just be any sufficiently bushy tail

the tail of whichever aminal i'm currently thinking about

[maiden light]

I don't know if this is included in something here, but also there is the option of just making up a random toki pona name because you like the sound of it.

I believe jan Lakuse (or maybe just for jan Sasalin) and jan Selan both did this for their names,

[blissful crag]

my name is more over-justified than anyone else's name lmao

[keen forum]

mi ni

[winged brook]

you could add now in MPPTP culture yoy have both a name and whatever your name on your acc is which are not necessarily the same

and there is a second layer of culture going on there

standard naming

then humerous transitory naming

[prisma oar]

o.o

wots that abt

[visual oracle]

yeah that's true

I feel like over the past year I see a lot more people playing with names

[winged brook]

and each form often pulls from the other with people blurring the lines a lot

buuut

it is still two phenomena

[blissful crag]

name
to interact with your own or others names as they appear in Toki Pona

[winged brook]

Wish my name wasn't as iconic as it id otherwise would do this

[visual oracle]

I will admit when your name differs a lot I find it hard to see you since your discord account name isn't particularly memorable

[sand marsh]

ohhhh i’ve just been using for that because the quote that explains mora doesn’t explain how to do coda n

[sand marsh]

i have a cat named Kita! her name apparently means pini

i end up picking tokiponizations for things differently depending on if i’m doing them in sitelen Latena or sitelen pona. like i translated “sam” as jan San originally for a translation and then when i put it in sp i decided to do jan Sama instead because it was shorter to write in sp using mora

[leaden cradle]

i should make a name glyph hmmmm

[keen forum]

if i ever write something in sp i might just give everyone arbitrary non-sp name glyphs with no canonical pronunciations

[leaden cradle]

yes omg

[hushed gorge]

Ooh that'd be fun

[floral crescent]

writing an essay about how i am going to try to go to airplane today on zero hours of sleep

[leaden cradle]

idea: make up name glyphs for everyone here and we have to guess which one we are

[river jackal]

i feel powerful for being mentioned here
idk if there's a specific conversation topic here but i would like to also say that jan Jalu made some cool pfp with glyphs, this is one of them i found quickly on kama sona for jan Lewan

[hushed gorge]

Can you sleep on airplanes

[floral crescent]

idk i’ll be fine tho prolly

[hushed gorge]

Ok good luck

[maiden light]

lon a, good luck

[rain lotus]

you can just change it
noone can stop you

kule Olipija ↩️

[Reply to:](#1032830156676538378 message) Wish my name wasn't as iconic as it id otherwise would do this

[winged brook]

i know but olipija works so well

[floral crescent]

o Lipija

and then we’re twinsies

which is funny because my twin sister’s name is tokiponized as olipija

[rain lotus]

is her name olippia

[floral crescent]

yes actually

tone tag left ambiguous

[prisma oar]

lapemanka

[leaden cradle]

happy thanksgiving i am thankful for the people in This Thread Specifically

[maiden light]

a sina kin li pona a <3

[proven brook]

im just flattered to be considered anything like ‘a well-known tokiponist’

so pona tawa sina, lipamanka o

[river jackal]

what is this thread even for help i just started seeing it

[maiden light]

lipamanka () writes essays about toki pona, and this is for their essays. Usually just discussing their essays I think.

[river jackal]

ah

[floral crescent]

well i mean your name was right there or something

i’m just making up excuses i have a lotta respect for u

[proven brook]

meanwhile this entire community would not be the same lovely kulupu that it is without yourself

[floral crescent]

what no i’m a menace

i tare apart peoples hopes and dreams

[undone crescent]

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tare#Verb oh yeah - you do!
(couldn't resist)

[proven brook]

goddamn linguists

[floral crescent]

i’m linguists

[proven brook]

i think lipamanka probably defies any single description

[floral crescent]

yes i’m literally dozens of people

you need at least dozens of description

[proven brook]

how many of you are kijete tbh

[floral crescent]

none of us are kijetesantakalu

[proven brook]

ah, mi pakala

[floral crescent]

we do have a weasel, a cat, a dog, maybe a horse, a snake, yeah

so a bunch of soweli

[proven brook]

Ooh horse personas I have never seen before

[rain lotus]

gods we have such different system vibes

[proven brook]

If your system was a pantheon of gods in a fantasy world, what would the world look like?

[rain lotus]

our nonhuman folks:

• otherworldy bird creature
• the above but blue
• a spider
• a bat
• lots of bees
• several ponies
• a slugcat

you forgot the most important soweli: a car

lipamanka ↩️

[Reply to:](#1032830156676538378 message) we do have a weasel, a cat, a dog, maybe a horse, a snake, yeah

[floral crescent]

the car is not in the system anymore

[rain lotus]

they drove away 😔

[floral crescent]

true

[proven brook]

into the sunset

[floral crescent]

everything’s green and gold

so i’m not in hell yet

[proven brook]

and all the workers in my office took a vacaation

cos they say that i haven’t been paying them

very much anymore

🎶

[hushed gorge]

Is this a reference

[floral crescent]

*and the people who work on my office they went on vacation

[proven brook]

fakala

[floral crescent]

MOUNT SAINT HELLENS HAS A PRETTY COOL GIFT SHOP

[proven brook]

only to the greatest musician of all time

[hushed gorge]

Ah now I get it

[proven brook]

I haven’t been there in a whiiile

[floral crescent]

and i’ve been wondering

[proven brook]

if it’s even still theeere

[leaden cradle]

oh lipamanka how many are in your system? ive been wondering

you too waso

[proven brook]

🎵 and the climate has been changing
soon it’s gonna change moore

I love that man

[rain lotus]

mute

[leaden cradle]

[proven brook]

ok you sid just ask for a nanpa in ma pi nanpa li ike

did*

[leaden cradle]

that is true

i got what i asked for

[rain lotus]

ma pi nanpa li ike
this hurts me

[proven brook]

ahahahaha

[rain lotus]

but more seriously it's like. not clear

we tend to have like ~30 ppl but most don't stay in the front at all

and many come and go/morph about

[floral crescent]

like somewhere between 40 and 1040

or possibly like intimate

*infinity

like basically there are portals in my brain to other dimensions with lots and lots and lots of people

i don’t like, access them often

but like i can

like imagine my brain has a narnia wardrobe

but like a lot of them and they all go to different places

[hushed gorge]

That sounds neat

[leaden cradle]

i have something like that in my head but theyre arent people behind them

(theyre not narnia wardrobes tho theyre slides)

[floral crescent]

woa cool

are u sure there are no people

u should double check

[maiden light]

We have just one lycanthrope, but otherwise all humans, which is a totally different "system vibe" I guess.

[floral crescent]

oh I was just listing the animals

I ahve plenty of other nonhumans

[maiden light]

Also lipamanka o, are you a cupcake now?

[floral crescent]

no

brigadeiro

[maiden light]

(I'm not sure what those are a a)

[prisma oar]

lapemanka o how are ur cats

[floral crescent]

why do people keep calling me lapemanka

so confused

but she’s fine

[maiden light]

a a ken suli la ona li tan ni: tenpo pini la nimi sina pi ilo Siko li lapemanka. kin la nasin lape nasa li suli lon sina.

[floral crescent]

true

[prisma oar]

ur nickname was lapemanka for like 2 seconds and that was enough for jaydie (me) to think "ok thats their name now, forever"

same thing happened to wall pulepo in ma ante

[prisma oar]

yay :)

[hushed gorge]

lipamanka o, what is a brigadeiro

[prisma oar]

lapemanka o what is a brigadeiro? /lh

[floral crescent]

cw food ||brazilian chocolate fudge truffle rolled around in chocolate sprinkles||

[hushed gorge]

Ooooh

[prisma oar]

WOH

[worldly yacht]

dang wish i could be the same

[proven brook]

sina suli

tawa mi

[blissful stag]

random thought i had
https://lipamanka.github.io/essays/semantic-spaces
on the topic of dictionaries, i can imagine people historically have tended to prefer keeping definitions tiny
i remember a lot of the older dictionaries out there looking like lists, sometimes ordered such that they can all fit in your screen

[leaden cradle]

yea

i think that is silly and not pona

[blissful stag]

personally i don't know

there's ways to get lost in details, there's ways to stay too superficial

i think giving people the gist of a word can be very helpful

just 1 or 2 english words is not a good dictionary. if it's a kind of mnemonic like on that big sitelen pona image, that's okay, it's not exactly a dictionary but it is a list of words

at the other extreme, giving people a long list of the different uses, accompanied with examples (citations), and/or with english noun verb adj etc translations and/or more roundabout descriptions... can be really helpful, something like this would be incredibly cool to have around for tokiponists, but maybe not for all learners, cause with all details or the most complete descriptions you'd want to give, you'll inevitably make some things pretty cluttered

you can be informative, or you can keep things tidy and easier to grasp quickly; you always risk giving too much or too little info, and there is no obvious middle point. not all dictionaries try to do the same thing, depending on the audience they have in mind

A cool idea is: you could have different explanations of a word on different levels of complexity, and let people select which one they want to see

[floral crescent]

there’s utility to both

keeping the dict tiny is great because learners can have a quick reference to check

but at the moment besides mine it seems like that’s the ONLY type of dictionary available

[blissful stag]

yeah i think historically there's been too much of that

[floral crescent]

yeah that’s like all dictionaries besides mine

[blissful stag]

where can i see your dico

dictionary

[leaden cradle]

ive seen learners be very confused by that kind of thing and try to swap in the One Word the dictionary shows when they translate tp->eng

[blissful stag]

part of it is just about the general way people think about toki pona, and how they want learners to feel, probably

[leaden cradle]

it is the link you sent

[blissful stag]

ah

[leaden cradle]

no it is not

hold on

[floral crescent]

https://lipamanka.github.io/essays/dictionary

[blissful stag]

TP's 'branding' if you'll let me call it that has been about "only X words", "simplest language"

in a strong form of that view, anything that might intimidate learners, that might just give the impression of complexity and therefore of difficulty, is to be avoided

[blissful stag]

These are interesting descriptions

[floral crescent]

im going to redo most of them

[blissful stag]

i think it'd be interesting if we could eventually see a dictionary that cites specific toki pona texts, both to give concrete examples of meanings and as a kind of evidence of how it appears ""in the wild"" (in TP, but also in a relatively 'canonical' text or at least a text with 'canonical' grammar) but of course for that you'd need a good deal of textual, probably digitalised material first

[blissful stag]

i think it really is a good thing that simple word descriptions exist, it's only a bad thing that there's very little else, or said otherwise too many of that first kind

[floral crescent]

yes

exactly

[floral crescent]

it’s been a while since i’ve revisited this essay and the concepts in it

[blissful stag]

there is no one alternative though, there's different ways to write definitions and to think about what a def° even is

i also mean different ways to make a dictionary more generally

like your definitions seem to be pretty introspective, nothing wrong with it
i think examples can enrich explanations a lot, like

A hidden bird could be a "waso len."
especially examples made not for the intent of writing a dictionary definition
but that ideal comes with issues of texts available, citing & rights, privacy?, over/underrepresenting some contexts & communities, etc; it seems a little idealised, and the intuitions of the person writing a definition don't pose those same problems even if they do others

rereading i worry my tone is a little more critical than i intended

just been having a slight uptick in interest for dictionaries past few weeks

[floral crescent]

oh as i mentioned they’re not finished, i was planning on adding examples for each of them

[blissful stag]

ok

[floral crescent]

but i appreciate all the feedback

[floral crescent]

ah ye i see

[blissful stag]

i don't know if much of what i said was actually helpful to you particularly

[floral crescent]

no worries, i appreciate the feedback a lot!

[blissful stag]

np

it got me thinking about the abstract idea of what sortsa dictionaries it would be cool to have too and by that point i start writing really long thoughts that don't join with each other well

[floral crescent]

your ideas have definitely been helpful and if you have any more i encourage you to share them

because i’m working on a jew dict

*new

[leaden cradle]

real !!

[prisma oar]

real !!

[blissful crag]

My lessons strike a balance on this, giving a pile of examples and then a generic statement of the semantic space in a short phrase

[floral crescent]

rejoining the thread

(because I got banned from ma pona real quick)

[keen forum]

there's https://sona.pona.la/wiki/Corpora
and you could always ask people for permission (i hereby give permission)

but yeah representation can very easily be an issue

see: ku being based entirely on ma pona

i'm tempted to search through a prolific member's messages in #toki-pona-taso but i'm not sure what to even look for

[blissful crag]

musi la mi toki lili lon kulupu tomo pi toki pona taso...
mi toki pona lon tenpo mute, taso ona li lon tomo ante.

[worldly yacht]

🥺

[proven brook]

mi pilin suwi e lawa

[echo lion]

I was thinking about non-physical kiwen and i realized that’s essentially the difference between windowed fullscreen and actual fullscreen

windowed fullscreen li kiwen ala

[leaden cradle]

i am Confused

what do you use non-physical kiwen to mean?

[floral crescent]

unchanging

like a rock y'know

[urban fractal]

set in stone

[floral crescent]

I like to avoid uh

what's going on do I exist sorry today's been hard

aaaaaaa

dw about me I'll be fine

[urban fractal]

a

i can see why translating a toki pona metaphor as an english idiom or double meaning might be since it can lead to false equivalences

[floral crescent]

yes that's what I meant thank u so much

[leaden cradle]

oooohhhh i get it now

i was thinking about the wrong aspects of kiwen and the wrong aspects of fullscreen modes

[raven ibex]

reading back
I think a cool recommendation for jan sin would be to call themselves just "ijo"
and if they don't like that then they can think about why, and address it

[rain lotus]

!!!! genius

gonna begin teaching ijo as the default instead of thing to figure out how to teach names in general

[keen forum]

honestly it's kinda weird that ijo isn't taught early

learnthesewordsfirst introduces "something" in the very second example (though it kinda has to because it's a monolingual course at its core)

[rain lotus]

the sitelen sitelen only course introduces ijo early on

[keen forum]

i oughta do the same with my picture-based one, if i ever make it a thing

[rain lotus]

true

[floral crescent]

on writing and toki pona: I usually struggle to write clearly and concisely in english. I want to explore how I can use what toki pona has taught me about communication to explore paths to improvement. toki pona is for quite a few things, but the relevant one is to strike a balance in communication.

We communicate (either in writing or conversation) to give information to one another. Sometimes when we do this our communication suffers because we oversimplify or overcomplicate our idea by explaining too much or too little. Sometimes they're short and they lose important nuance, leaving the audience lacking. Sometimes they're long and try to account for too much nuance, some of which isn't needed to explain the idea.

In English, it's easy to do this and still be understood enough for the audience to assume they understand you completely and properly, even if that's not the case. In toki pona, it is much more difficult. If I were to oversimplify something in toki pona, there wouldn't be enough context for any of the words to have enough meaning for the audience to know what I was trying to tell them. "kala li tawa e sike" doesn't convey properly that a seal that's part of a circus act pushed a ball through a hoop. The audience doesn't understand. But on the flip side, if I wanted to explain every piece of nuance, especially unnecessary nuance, it would take me longer than in English. This is because in English, if we want to add more nuance we can append a couple of words to the sentence, making it a bit longer. This has tempted me many a time and led to super long run on sentences that are hard to read. In toki pona, in order to add this nuance, you need to add a new sentence.

There comes a point where toki pona makes that impracticality obvious, but I've seldom thought about how this could help me write in English. A friend told me recently that if you need to put "significantly" in a statement for it to sound true, it probably isn't as sound as you think. I think toki pona lacking a lot of extra words is freeing by forcing the speaker to reëvaluate what they're saying, lest the idea become too long to convey at all.

(yes this is just the description it's not a full essay, the paragraph brakes are a bit arbitrary because I wrote it as a wall of text and it was very long and now I'm realizing it's essay length and I could prolly call it a first draft)

[pine niche]

❌ PluralKit cannot proxy messages over 2000 characters in length.

[rain lotus]

be quiet

[floral crescent]

@blissful crag @winged brook @hushed gorge @visual oracle @undone crescent y'all have been interested in the past and have given good thoughts and I thought you might be interested in this one, lmk if you have any thoughts (goes for anyone else too)

[undone crescent]

A friend told me recently that if you need to put "significantly" in a statement for it to sound true, it probably isn't as sound as you think.
I might translate that word with "a" sometimes
and while a statement wouldn't be any less or more true with or without "a", it might feel more true with "a"
idk, this doesn't feel important to really respond to, but there was a ping, so my fingers started typing

[rain lotus]

hmmm

would you back translate a sentence with a in it with the word "significantly"

because "significantly" -> "a" is a simplification imo

a just shows that you feel strongly about it

"significantly" in english helps you make the thing you're saying sound more true

even if it isn't

removing a removes more than removing significantly if the statement is true

[undone crescent]

I said sometimes
and I was thinking of things maybe like "This is worse" vs "Oh this is significantly worse"
Hm, is this like "literally" where people don't mean literally literally?

[rain lotus]

I think that's kinda filler? more of a filler

[undone crescent]

a does feel like that often

[blissful crag]

Ooo! Your friend taught you about badverbs!

You can almost always drop adverbs
"Significantly" is one such adverb
If dropping an adverb would change the truthfulness of the statement, rewrite the sentence

So this essay is an expression of writing principles in Toki Pona
Funny enough, when I wrote long enough papers in either English or toki pona it starts to feel like writing code
But that's probably a me thing
Either way, this is a solid starting point

[sand marsh]

yeah my speech class and writing class both said to cut out stuff like “i think” or “a lot” because it makes you sound unsure of yourself

[hushed gorge]

I've mentioned before how I've sometimes tried to make super long unreadable sentences in toki pona, and I've realized that I do that in english too. English sentences are waaaay more complicated and I can usually get away with it. I think the reason I do this is still to sound smart or clever or to show that I have a good understanding of whatever language, but these super long unreadable sentences just make things harder to understand for everyone.
(Now I'm going to be so self conscious of every time I do and don't use a period today lol)

[sand marsh]

well in text people often use commas where a period should go grammatically, and that’s just an okay thing

[blissful stag]

sentences are important grammatical units but in language as used in practice it can be hard to tell where one ends and one begins

like, natural human languages don't have dedicated "start/end of sentence" words to stick between em it'd just get in the way of communicating efficiently

basically it's fine to use punctuation to convey any of a bunch of things

[floral crescent]

lipamanka essay

[digital harness]

Eh, I think certain particles could qualify, like, umm, eh, umm, like. They also serve as purposes, semantic ones, but they act as such. (Also, if anyone isn't comfortable with me being in this channel, say the word. I understand that I pakala'd suli.)

[floral crescent]

i don’t care about your past bad terrible shitty opinions as long as you don’t have them anymore

like i used to have terrible shitty opinions

also i forgot what you said so it’s prolly fine

[blissful crag]

^ was that supposed to be in #912286596517220363

[maiden light]

(a a I was about to say)

[floral crescent]

huh

i’m confused

[maiden light]

#sona-kulupu-tpt message
As in relating to this^ poll

[raven ibex]

lipamanka was referring to the parenthetical at the end of this

[floral crescent]

8 was responding to jan Kasikusa

[maiden light]

a, nasa. I don't know why jan Kekan San and I both thought that if it was right there /lh

[floral crescent]

lmao

[maiden light]

jan Kekan San was the drunk one

[floral crescent]

lmao my roommate was crossed last night it was so funny

[dull sigil]

lipamankessay

[floral crescent]

so true

[dull sigil]

basson

basbons

[floral crescent]

sapphoon

[hushed gorge]

Wait I thought this was #lipamanka-fan-club?

[floral crescent]

you can say nice things about me like if u want

no pressure but you can totally use this channel to gush about how cool i am

[young moat]

Have i said how linja sike basically got me into this community at a time when i was struggling to learn anything

[floral crescent]

me too actually

i’ve been thinking about ditching my most recent linja sike design goals and taking what i have with ucsur codepoints and making it into a ligature font as well

and then adding lots of extra shit to it

but i’m gonna work on my class work first

[young moat]

oh?

I'm not familiar with those goals

or maybe i am

I'm not familiar with whether i'm familiar with those goals

But i am unfamiliar with whether i'm familiar with whether i'm familiar with those goals

I'm familiar with that much

[leaden cradle]

lipamanka is so great and cool and genuinely my biggest role model in this community and i love the way they think and their sense of humor and they used to scare me a bit but now i just think they are the greatest

ily lipamanka

[young moat]

lip of manka makes good essays and should make more also good essays

[floral crescent]

wait i used to scare u

that’s fun

[leaden cradle]

yea u intimidated jan sin temi

[floral crescent]

nice

[leaden cradle]

i need to go to sleep before i say something weird and get banned istg

meds gone its intrusive thought time so byeee

[floral crescent]

can't sleep so I'm gonna start writing this actually

okay I can do this

today I prove to myself that if I can write something off meds at 12:30 AM then I can do my homework on meds that I need to do for my classes this week and next week

and also study for my portuguese final and phonetics oral exam

and do my project for phonetics and my other class

and make a presentation for portuguese

[young moat]

Boa sorte

[floral crescent]

obrigadê

question does the concept of a "head noun" come from pu or somewhere else

[young moat]

"Proper nouns behave as adjectives. Use them after a noun that describes what they are." (37–38)

[floral crescent]

I see

[young moat]

This is how it describes it in the chapter where it's taught,

If you mean like historically where did it come from then i have no clue

or the term

[floral crescent]

okay

that's alright lol thank you that was a big help

[worldly yacht]

i have a The Eiffel Tower chair

[rain lotus]

new essay idea: math in toki pona; a deep dive into math in Ancient Greece and other places around the world and how you don't actually need complicated numbers to appreciate or understand math, also video essays about math on like youtube are basically how you would describe math in toki pona anyway

(actually a previous one)

(a previous idea)

also to be clear there are benefits of having numbers and complicated lexicalized notation in a math context, just like there might be benefits to like having more specialized words in a language; HOWEVER the point of toki pona is to think about things WITHOUT doing that, and I just want to explore how this doesn't make toki pona "you can do super cool things yeah! but also you can't do math :/ sorry 'bout that" because you totally can

[young moat]

I'm interested

[hushed gorge]

Ooh that sounds really cool

I feel like the biggest barrier to math in toki pona is the lack of a consistent, universally recognized number system, although if you're about to talk about math you could just mention what number system you want to use then hope everybody else knows about it

The toki pona numbers paradox: every number can be described in a single toki pona word, because when somebody finds the smallest number that doesn't have a lexicalized meaning in another word, they will create a nimisin for that number or expand an existing word's definition to include it

[blissful stag]

kulupu toki Karnic lon ma Oselija la tu wan li jo e nimi kulpari, ona li ken tan nimi waso

[T]his form is presumably cognate with *kurrpara, though the details are unclear (most Karnic languages have a 'two'+'one' form for 'three'); Luise Hercus (p.c. 2010) suggests that this is related to *kulpari 'emu', the etymological connection being that that emus have three (Bowern & Zentz 2012: p. 149)
Bowern, Claire & Jason Zentz, 2012. Diversity in the Numeral Systems of Australian Languages. In Anthropologistical Linguistics, 54 (2). 133-160

idk this is a random proposed etymology i really like

south america has a lot of weird number origins

[rain lotus]

the semantic space of lupa

A lupa is usually a hole. Here's what that means: these holes can go through objects, like the hole in a donut, or they can be an indentation in an object, such as a hole dug in the ground. Things that are lupa continue to be lupa even when there is something blocking them, like a door or a window, because they are still meant for things to pass through them. From a perspective of function, that's what lupa are for. A lupa is a part of an object that things can pass through. A door is still a lupa because people can open it, and a window is still a lupa because it's meant for light to pass through. Empty space is not a lupa because it's not part of an object. The semantic space can be extended to describe other things that fit this description, even if they aren't physical holes, such as portals or links on the internet.

this is the first one that I'VE written

I think it's BETTER than lipamanka's or the writer's

[blissful stag]

where do i see lipamanka's or the writer's

[rain lotus]

uhh

lipamanka's good at typing out the url but I'm not let me go fetch it

https://lipamanka.github.io/essays/dictionary

[blissful stag]

i can't find lupa entry

[rain lotus]

that's because I haven't added it yet

https://lipamanka.github.io/essays/weasel-dictionary

this one's better though

[blissful stag]

ok

[blissful stag]

it's really cool how you made the nonbinary flag fit with toki pona's colour scheme

[rain lotus]

that wasn't me it was jan Nikola

but yes I agree it's very cool

[blissful stag]

a cool

[rain lotus]

The semantic space of sijelo contains the form of an object. This isn't the same thing as the object itself. The form of an object is the shape it takes. For example the form of a human is their body. A form of a road trip is the line on the map you travel along, the plan. The profile picture of an account is a sijelo. the image of something or the aspect of something that you can see can be sijelo, because its form can be seen, but this can work for other senses too, like touch and hearing.
this is what I have so far

[echo lion]

First sentence has a typo but otherwise very thorough and understandable!

I hadn’t considered the more abstract usage before

[rain lotus]

what's the typo

[echo lion]

Semantic space of sijelo, not selo

[rain lotus]

lsdjflsk

fixed

[echo lion]

And like they’re juust close enough that i thought “huh that’s an odd way to define selo” until the third sentence

[rain lotus]

slkdjfslk

[urban fractal]

i think the form of an object also includes its matter

The form of an object is the shape it takes.
this seems limited

[rain lotus]

yeah.. ye

hmm

idk if I agree tbh? the matter of a thing it's its sijelo

*isn't its sijelo

[urban fractal]

interesting

[rain lotus]

the matter of something is the thing itself

the material is just the thing it's made out of

the sijelo is the shape it takes

(I think I'm fronting?) if I replaced every atom in your body with carbon then the sijelo hasn't changed

[urban fractal]

there is more to a thing than its matter
a thing does things, it has properties that are not matter
sijelo, in my understanding, is what you can use to describe just the matter of something
this is why sijelo for account makes sense
the thing, the user, is the same, but there is a different manifestation of it

[urban fractal]

mi la it has

[rain lotus]

has the sijelo changed? the thing itself has changed but the sijelo isn't the thing

it's the sijelo of the thing

[urban fractal]

i think what you are describing is more like kon maybe

[rain lotus]

I think sijelo is like location words but instead of being a different object defined in relation to the object in question, it is the object itself from that location word perspective

[urban fractal]

so sijelo is the space that an object takes up, rather than the space around/above/etc it?

[urban fractal]

(also replacing every atom of a human with carbon would increase its mass significantly but i get what you meant)

[rain lotus]

yes I think so

more or less

it would but I don't think the mass of an object is part os sijelo

jan Seli ↩️

[Reply to:](#1032830156676538378 message) (also replacing every atom of a human with carbon would increase its mass significantly but i get wh…

[urban fractal]

well it would then immediately change shape

[rain lotus]

not if I used magic

anwya

could replace you with a statue made of lead shaped exactly like you and I would say that the sijelo stayed the same even if most of the other properties changed

[urban fractal]

i would say the opposite
it is specifically the sijelo that you are changing

[rain lotus]

nasa

[urban fractal]

this would be a good poll topic i think

[rain lotus]

it would

gonna make one when toki pona taso day ends

@urban fractal I would like to make it later if that's alright

[urban fractal]

why not now

[rain lotus]

because I want it to reach a larger audience of people who might not answer a toki pona taso poll and also I want to design it

jan Seli ↩️

[Reply to:](#1032830156676538378 message) why not now

[urban fractal]

hm

mi toki e wile sona ni la mi wile ala weka e ona
mi pana lon tomo ni

mi ante e jan. tenpo pini la selo en insa en telo li lon ona. ante mi la ona li kiwen taso. taso nasin ona li awen sama tawa lukin. luka kiwen en noka kiwen en lawa kiwen li lon.

a, toki open li lon, taso wile sona li lon ala

[rain lotus]

actually

I'll make one now

[urban fractal]

sijelo li ante ala ante?

make sure to not use sijelo in the description

[rain lotus]

I did not use sijelo in the description

[echo lion]

toki pona la sijelo tu li sama
But in english they aren’t identical

[urban fractal]

ye they are similar but a difference is there

i would phrase this as "ante li lon ala lon" or something

[rain lotus]

the main difference is that their shapes are not exact copies which is very hard to do

so I'm going to do another poll

[echo lion]

Perhaps colored orbs

[urban fractal]

i think describing the situation is best since there's always a difference that could be found in a picture

[rain lotus]

hey this is my poll

kind of rude and also I was already typing that out

[urban fractal]

,,,,,,, i literally typed it first and was the one who suggested to make a poll before you told me not to and then did it yourself

[rain lotus]

I was going to make a poll already, and this is for my semantic space, right?

[urban fractal]

you do not own the semantic space of sijelo

[rain lotus]

I'm trying to design them so that more people will share their thoughts

[urban fractal]

ok but the wording you used is strongly biased in favor of the answer you want

[rain lotus]

I do not think it is, and I was planning on making a followup poll anyway which I was typing out

[leaden cradle]

i have realized that i do not use sijelo enough and have not given much thought to my usage of it this is so interesting

you may continue your discourse

[urban fractal]

"sama" doesn't just mean same
the answer to the poll is sama if there is any similarity
so even if someone answering doesn't think of sijelo the way you do, they will probably answer sama

[rain lotus]

that's why I wanted to wait until toki pona taso day was over so I could ask in english

because not everyone responding to the polls know that nuance of sama

[urban fractal]

ok but like there are ways to specify

[rain lotus]

and then the text gets long and fewer people react

toki pona taso polls get far fewer reacts in general

even from fluent speakers

[urban fractal]

then just wait for tpt day to be over

[rain lotus]

I would have to wait awhile until it wouldn't count as "this poll has been made recently"

[urban fractal]

i would've waited if you didnt go and post a highly biased version of my poll

mi tawa

[leaden cradle]

[rain lotus]

okay I deleted the highly biased version of your poll

the main problem I have with it is that the property of the sijelo is different but does that make the sijelo itself different

does it make it a different sijelo or just a sijelo with a different property that isn't "sijelo"

like if I do the same thing to a lipu, the lipu has become ante, but it is still lipu and its lipu-ness hasn't changed, has it? but it's still ante

so has its sijelo-ness changed?

[echo lion]

Hmmmmm i’m a little lost tbh

[rain lotus]

what I'm saying is that jan Seli's poll is still biased because it uses "ante" to describe the object, not the object's sijelo

one of the things I think I wanted to avoid when I was thinking about making a poll

which doesn't really make that much sense

[echo lion]

That makes sense

I think it’s really hard to get across the root of the issue using toki pona taso

Specifically because the poll is about nuances of semantic spaces

[rain lotus]

hmm

okay I've been thinking

I think an object can be a type of sijelo

but sijelo can also be a specific quality of an object

and I'm curious about that specific quality, not about the object itself (because the object is already ante because it's different)

so my poll wasn't biased it was just asking a different question

so I'm going to rewrite my semantic space to illustrate those new ideas I think

[maiden light]

Tim o, sitelen lipamankaR li kala linja mute, anu seme?

[rain lotus]

kala

[maiden light]

a a pona

[rain lotus]

okay so the main question I wanna ask here is can a sijelo be an object with a form and I think the answer is yes

[sand marsh]

sijelo implies a center of an object tawa mi. if it has a sijelo, i feel like it also has another body part like luka or selo or smth

[rain lotus]

really?

I don't think a sijelo is limited to things with those things but that's kind of interesting

and everything has a selo I think, at least every physical thing's outer layer is a selo

[sand marsh]

yes but why would you say sijelo instead of ijo unless there was a non-sijelo part to exclude? i think this is more about common usage than semantic space tho

[rain lotus]

sijelo is an object though I think

not just the quality of shape

so jan Seli is right

[maiden light]

I would say it's the physical shape of something and not the quality of shape. Is that different from what you're saying?

[rain lotus]

maybe

[echo lion]

If i say “pilin ike li lon sijelo mi”, i’m not referring to my shape in any way

I think sijelo describes some more general aspect of physical things

Well

Am i referring to my shape

No i’m sticking with what i said

[sand marsh]

pilin ike li lon sijelo mi and not pilin ike li lon mi because [something] idk kon

[maiden light]

sijelo jan to me would be the form of their being, which is both the shape and not the shape depending on context.

The dimensions or size of one's sijelo is a sort of shape, for example.

[gloomy shale]

aa mi sona ike e wile sona sina
mi lukin ala e nimi 'sijelo'
mi toki e ni: ijo li ante ala ante lon jan? ante

[urban fractal]

nasin sina la sijelo li sama lon kama kiwen jan anu seme

[gloomy shale]

n

selo sijelo li sama
insa sijelo li ante

[urban fractal]

sona pona

[maiden light]

sijelo sijelo li sama

[thin granite]

why kipisi isn't needed: kili can mean "apple slice"
what exactly do you mean by this? please elaborate a little /neu

[echo lion]

I’m not them but (somewhat food related)
||soweli can refer to a whole cow, several cows, or a steak bc the number of nouns isn’t specified
In the same way, kili can refer to a bunch of bananas, just one, or just a slice||

From what i understand

[thin granite]

ah. i see.

what about (cwing just in case) ||non-fruit-related slicing?||

[urban fractal]

(this doesn’t have to be cw’d)
yeah, any sort of slicing
nasin ni la a word can refer to a number of discrete things, or it can refer to parts of it

[thin granite]

right okay
how would this apply practically in expressing the concept 'slice'?

[urban fractal]

you can just call it kili
if you want to describe it more you can but the point is that kili works as a headword for apple slice

[echo lion]

Slices could be kili lili if they’re compared to a kili wan

They could also be kili tu

[floral crescent]

kili mute

also yeah that’s the idea thanks for explaining

[winged brook]

legitmately though - transcription of actual speech often leads to the conclusion that people just don't speak in sentences

it'd be interesting to do some transcription of naturalistic spoken TP

[blissful crag]

this is actually a really fun point
i've observed semi-jokingly before that written language and spoken language are not really the same language, but two separate languages trying their best to be the same language
this bit of info makes me want to scoot that opinion further over into the "not so joking" category

[blissful stag]

many french linguists would agree with you

[blissful stag]

they say that at least hexagonal french, or european french or something, is in a state of diglossia

a typically formal typically written variety and a typically informal typically spoken variety, that have pretty different grammar

[floral crescent]

new essay idea:
TRANSMUTATION: the art of changing one thing into another using toki pona
it'll about how to describe turning something into another thing and it's mostly about how it varies heavily based on context. this essay will hypothetically when it's done will describe a method for finding how to describe the act of making something something else, and it'll provide ample examples

[echo lion]

Oo do you mean like
mi poki e len
To mean “i will make the cloth into a bag”

[floral crescent]

maybe

[sand marsh]

or mi ante e X tawa Y, mi kama e X tawa Y, etc etc

[winged brook]

interesting

[floral crescent]

this is what inspired me to make this essay because i think this construction is often not interesting to use

[sand marsh]

fair, it’s pretty passive

[floral crescent]

mostly it just doesn’t make sense

if you ante e something you make it different sure but what are you doing to it to make it change

[sand marsh]

that’s just vague to me? it still makes sense

[floral crescent]

i think it’s a cop out and doesn’t do what toki pona’s supposed to do (slow down your thoughts and your way of describing the world)

[winged brook]

mi pilin sama

[urban fractal]

what is so bad about mi ante e sina tawa soweli instead of mi kama e ni - sina sowei or mi soweli e sina

[winged brook]

I like

mi Y e X
mi tan X tawa Y e X
mi kama Y e X

if I am transforming I'd say
mi tan X tawa Y

though in LP I'd use ANTE

but like directionally modified

as 'to become different'

AKESI(poka nanpa 1) WASO(poka nanpa 2) ANTE(tan poka nanpa 1 tawa poka nanpa tu)

akesi li kama waso

[urban fractal]

aaaaaa
mi kama Y e X is my pet peeve

why is it not mi Y e X

mi kama Y e X is “i start to turn X into Y”

the preverb isn’t part of the causative

[floral crescent]

i mean in the case that you’re literally doing transmutation magic

so it makes sense

otherwise how else would you turn someone into a soweli

[urban fractal]

i am confused as to what usages you actually dislike then

[floral crescent]

i don’t universally dislike any individual usage i just don’t like when people using boring ones in situations where it doesn’t make sense

[young moat]

o soweli e mi

[floral crescent]

gotta write about esun soon

[blissful crag]

uhzhoon

[maiden light]

wawa

[floral crescent]

mu

my threads here have the most posts

messages

whatever

i’m winning :D

[young moat]

umesing

[floral crescent]

true

[floral crescent]

essay idea maybe: protection. what is it?

based on the asi poll

thanks @past bear

just gotta write my thoughts out in essay form

[visual oracle]

nonchangifying something

[floral crescent]

protection as an action in english is usually a way to reframe a different action as being applied to an object that the action doesn’t really involve

in reality the protected object is just a motivation for the action

the action itself is usually something else

it can often depending on context be framed as a type of awen though and i want to explore the limits of that and use my essay to encourage people to think about protection in different ways

because that’s one insight toki pona can give us

someone who’s protecting us isn’t doing anything to us. so if we aren’t their motivation either, then are they doing anything good to us?

[echo lion]

Something can just happen to protect you yeah

[floral crescent]

and the acts that they do might even be to us. like the tsa protects us by making us go through metal detectors. but the actual action they’re doing is making us go through metal detectors and take our shoes off etc.

so where’s the protection? well in toki pona i’d consider giving an example of what bad things might happen if tsa doesn’t exist

[echo lion]

“The tsa protects us”

[floral crescent]

i might bypass the concept of protection completely

it doesn’t seem relevant to my experiences q lot of the time, and when it does toki pona helps me reëvaluate what protect is actually talking about

[echo lion]

I think “weka e ken ike” pretty broadly covers protection

[floral crescent]

just using awen there is a bit reductive of toki pona’s potential to slow down our thoughts about what protection is

[floral crescent]

yeah but that’s not in and of itself the same act as protecting; it’s the actual active attack preformed by the agent

[echo lion]

I especially noticed that when asked to translate “protect… from smthn” because there isn’t really a preposition that covers from in this sense imo

So it forced me to rework the sentence in a way that didn’t use awen as the main verb

[floral crescent]

yeah toki pona should help us think about what the actual action being taken is

so “mi awen e sona tan jan ike” seems a bit. boring.

but also “awen” does work. it’s another perspective of protection

but people usually reach for awen immediately when weka as a word to describe the action being taken is more accurate

some other interesting things:

• selo protects the insa
• tomo protects that which habitually lives inside it

[floral crescent]

well this got starboarded

[maiden light]

lon a a. mi sona ala a e tan

[rain lotus]

another thing to write about: how to fuck around with and demolish phatic phrases with FACTS AND LOGIC

i understand @blissful crag wrote something similar but i have takes tbh

[blissful crag]

i did! i also happen to clean up that lesson today

https://mun.la/sona/phatic-phrases.html

it has sitelen pona like my lessons do! and the examples are more consistent with how i structure them there!

[rain lotus]

why is there latin in the

in the sitelen pona

latin punctuation

[blissful crag]

because of ligature fonts!
i have to either give correct punctuation for sitelen Lasina, or give correct punctuation for sitelen pona, or totally re-design my site to distribute content differently so i can have two different texts for each option
right now i have chosen to use punctuation for sitelen Lasina bc it is easiest for me
but if we had a ligature font that simply n't'd the latin punctuation, or at least collapsed it into one widely used punctuation option, that would be perfect

also is it possible to ping individual members of a system using pk?

[rain lotus]

no but most systems are fine with using the base account

[undone crescent]

The one font that does that - and I'm the one who did that, but it's not necessarily a good idea - is nasin sitelen pu mono

[keen forum]

ideas:

• add a blank font with subsetting such that it only hides the punctuation
• do javascript to it
• do server-side to it (wrap the punctuation in <span>s that get hidden in sp mode)
• join the kulupu kulijo and use sp-style punctuation in sL too

[blissful crag]

1. this is the ideal
2. i want as little JS as possible bc the point is to have a static site
3. i... could do this? that's not so much server-side as during build but i could do it
4. this is unironically the worst solution due to being the least commonly used nasin

[keen forum]

-or actually wait you could just edit the existing font

fontforge is scary but this part should be simple enough

issue being it's now a thing you have to do every time you update/change the font

vs having one extra file load

fun bikesheddable

[rain lotus]

4 la
is it tho?

[blissful crag]

is it the worst? by another metric maybe not
but by how commonly it is used? i know.... two people who do so? maybe three

[rain lotus]

have it use newline in both

no punctuation in either

[visual oracle]

I've come to view awen as less protect and more about making something not change

awen preverb - continue to do something
not change the action you're taking

mi awen - waiting in a place. not changing your place

so the awen e usage is "make the object be unchanged"

and that's where protection comes from, for me

and I like that this reframes it

protection is typically a positive connotation

but "not changing" isn't always

and I like adding some of that nuance to awen

[rain lotus]

that’s one way of looking at it, but there are other cooler ways of looking at it that bring greater insights that people don’t use enough

soweli Deni ↩️

[Reply to:](#1032830156676538378 message) and that's where protection comes from, for me

[visual oracle]

ok

[floral crescent]

things to add to my “weird deviations” thing:

• sentences with more that one participant
• using jan for penguin

[nimble sentinel]

I CAN SO MUCH DEFENSE OF SOKO

Fungi is a completely different kingdom of classification from plantae and animalia

[maiden light]

Why does science matter to toki pona? A penguin can be a kala.

[nimble sentinel]

Scientifically soko deserves to exist. Culturally discussion of mushrooms is becoming more prevalent with the advent of cottagecore aesthetics

Gay people love mushrooms /lh

[nimble sentinel]

Dont come into my house and say this

I think more nimisin should be used as languages are made for evolution. A language should be a constantly shifting thing reflecting the current times and culture

Take English for example. If you look in old newspaper clippings you can pin it to a specific era on the writing alone. The slang used especially, with also certain colloquialisms and pop culture references, are a huge part of everyday speech as well as formal speech

If toki pona is to have as much credibility as the english language, it needs to be able to shift and evolve like this. The speakers control the language in every sense. You can write a billion dictionary definitions of how the word “bad” is meant to mean something unsavory or unwanted, and people will still use it to describe a cool fit.

The current internet culture almost necessitates a word for mushroom. This can be part of our snapshot. We can all look back and say “oh, soko, this must be from the 2020s when mushrooms were big.”
The language adapts to the needs of the speakers because it is only used by the speakers. They just make it to be the most useful for them at that time. And right now, everyone’s talking about mushrooms

@tribal stone has good thoughts on animacy

[echo lion]

I disagree that any nimi sin is necessary

toki pona works perfectly fine without soko, it’s just an aesthetic choice of whether or not fungi are a Fundamental Concept in toki sina

[floral crescent]

this is a bad reason

the defense of soko is that i like fungus and i don’t think of it as any sort of plant and i never have

toki pona is fine without soko

but soko is still cool and i use it because it’s great

[floral crescent]

the way this manifests in toki pona is slow gradual change in the semantic spaces of words that already exist, not mass coining of new words. nimisin fall in and out of favor slowly as well. i think it’s best to let the language settle on its own. language changes take a while and are hard to notice within a few months

[floral crescent]

you can do this with toki pona too, or at least you’ll be able to. keep in mind that the reason why you can do this is because it evolves slowly.

[nimble sentinel]

Yes and now we are evolving to SOKO!!!!!!!!!!

It’s getting into that area where its a bit too late for my brain to work

[floral crescent]

the current internet culture almost necessitates a word for mushroom

where are you getting this from

[nimble sentinel]

People like yhem

I said earlier like cottagecore

[floral crescent]

people like lots of things

that doesn’t mean there should be a nimisin for all of them

soko is one of the only nimisin i use and i use it becauee i don’t use a lot of others in excess. nimisin are fun in moderation, as long as the toki is still pona

[nimble sentinel]

Mushroom is talked about enough rn that being able to use it as a designation makes sense tawa mi

[floral crescent]

should we have a word for communism then

communism is also talked about quite a lot

your defense of soko doesn't make sense is what I'm saying

it's really hard to say what is popular enough to warrant a nimisin

[nimble sentinel]

I think the concept of communism and capitalism could be a nimisin yea. I dont think it would be used

But i dont see why not

[floral crescent]

why though

like doesn't that go against the whole point of toki pona (yes)

[nimble sentinel]

I dont like being stringent about language. My english breaks the rules a lot and i like when i can be creative with words

I know the concept of toki pona is minimalism

I’m still going to use toki pona in a way that is conducive to me. I think soko is good

[floral crescent]

I mean breaking the rules in the language is something that is done and is cool, but it is still breaking the rules. it doesn't mean that there are no rules.

[nimble sentinel]

It is helpful in my discussions to designate between all other kasi or soweli or whatever. I dont think soko falls into either category and therefore i think a distinction for soko is good for clarity

[floral crescent]

breaking the rules in language is often not seen as serious and is a bit funny

[nimble sentinel]

It isn’t quite a vegetable. It isn’t quite an animal. One would be remiss to classify it as either

[floral crescent]

I mean

it's up to personal taste

[nimble sentinel]

Even within toki pona’s minimalist concept, you would still need soko

[floral crescent]

some people see fungi as a vegetable and would lump it in with akesi and that's fine

you absolutely do not "need" soko

[nimble sentinel]

Akesi? Or kasi?

[floral crescent]

I meant kasi

[nimble sentinel]

Okay

People’s perceptions of fungi as a vegetable is okay but there are others that disagree.

Contextually you can likely use kasi without much confusion, but you can definitely use soko without confusion

[floral crescent]

idk this is annoying me a bit because

1. you're kinda misunderstanding the point of toki pona
2. you're kinda misunderstanding linguistic descriptivism
3. you're making claims that are inaccurate about the way toki pona is used
4. you're making claims that are inaccurate about the way language evolves

like I am not speaking to soko specifically

[nimble sentinel]

I thought this was just a place for discussion topics about the essays youre writing

So you can get multiple opinions to base your arguments on

[floral crescent]

this is making me realize that if I want to write about using soko it should go in the my deviations section

[nimble sentinel]

If that’s your goal here, even if i am missing all the points like you said before, you can still use all of this for your argument

[floral crescent]

I mean I don't mean to offend but your opinions here are not ones that I would consider writing about at all

[nimble sentinel]

Well it’s your project and I can’t force you to do anything but personally I find that a poorly-constructed opposing argument is oftentimes more instrumental in bolstering ones own than an agreement

[floral crescent]

do you think my essays are supposed to be part of a debate

[nimble sentinel]

I just find “this person is wrong and heres way” to be more concrete and easier to understand than “here are the reasons i am right”

Well no but i assumed they were argumentative in nature

[floral crescent]

why would I base my musings about toki pona on other people being wrong about toki pona

that just seems shitty for an artlang

like yeah I have some opinion pieces that kind of do that but mostly I'm just going for informative essays about my thoughts, not specific people or ideas being wrong

[nimble sentinel]

Okay i think i misunderstood the point of your thread here. Lets just end this amicably while we can

[floral crescent]

I'm not here to make a fool of myself by trying to shoot people down who I haven't even talked to

like most of my ideas don't stem from trying to prove people down

(some of them do though lol)

[nimble sentinel]

I’m used to argumentative essays. I assumed that’s what this was. I’m sorry for that assumption.

Simply excuse my former comments

[floral crescent]

okay sure your former comments are excused

mi pana e sona

ni taso

mi utala ala mute

pana li suli
utala li lili

[leaden cradle]

akesi
vegetable

[blissful stag]

if it doesn't move around a lot it's a kasi 🧠

[undone crescent]

If it's non-locomotive
Which reminds me, trains are ka

[raven ibex]

a train could maybe be a ka if I saw it in the wild and didn't know what it was

elephant snake

[blissful stag]

i wish i had ku with me right now because of the illustration for the submarine as a kind of kala

[ionic axle]

what if it's a Mobile Sprout™

would you still call it a kasi tawa

[undone crescent]

that's definitely a soweli in my nasin - to the annoyance of many

[floral crescent]

new essay idea:
nature and cities and toki pona - how do we conceptualize these things?

it’s about the industrial revolution and the fabricated concept of nature

and how we should use toki pona’s lack of words for “city” and “nature” to deconstruct those concepts and reëvaluate them

[river jackal]

wdym fabricated concept of nature

[floral crescent]

nature is fabricated by humans

[river jackal]

in what sense

[floral crescent]

so like

in victorian england the cities were disgusting

so the architects were like “let’s make parks”

so the concept of nature was made to make people feel like the cities they were living in were less artificial

[sand marsh]

ah, the concept of nature as opposed to not nature

[river jackal]

makes sense

[floral crescent]

in reality, there’s nothing separating humanity from nature. the separation of those concepts is completely fabricated

but toki pona does have a word for humanity - jan

so nature as a concept is just ale. separating jan out of that is just not something toki pona has ever done.

which is why toki pona, by design, should make us think deeply about what a city is and what nature is instead of just having a word

[river jackal]

your making my head cogs turn even though theyre really rusty rn

[floral crescent]

though i don’t have a problem with “ma tomo”

[floral crescent]

yes i’m good at that i’m very powerful

[river jackal]

ma tomo en ma kasi ok done easy essay over

[floral crescent]

so true

but what about a park

that could be either

[river jackal]

ma lili kasi

ma lili kasi lon ma tomo

[sand marsh]

i’ve always used a variant of “ma jan” myself. the idea that the buildings were the important part of cities didn’t occur to me until others used it

[floral crescent]

the line isn’t even blurred because it doesn’t exist

[river jackal]

fair a

[floral crescent]

the forest can be a ma tomo. the cities can be ma kasi.

it’s important to think about why it’s annoying to say certain things in toki pona

[leaden cradle]

oooooooooo

[floral crescent]

there’s no word for nature in toki pona because nature was fabricated during the industrial revolution. so was the concept of a very specific time of day and hours and minutes being synchronized. the utility of these concepts is rooted in capital and we must rise up to defeat the bourgeoisie wait what was i talking about

[river jackal]

we must defeat the burgers

[floral crescent]

this

anyway this is a cool essay idea time to not write it

[undone crescent]

I once learned that one definition of "nature" was anything that humans didn't make, whereas what humans do "culture"

[crimson kite]

i think this has to build on the “lexicalised compounds li ike” essay aaa

like, that’s a common isipin among the kulupu, but it might help to have an essay on it?

[undone crescent]

idgi

[floral crescent]

yeah that idea of nature is bullshit basically

it was made intentionally in the united kingdom by architects trying to modernize cities in colonized places by making them feel like they had more nature in them

[floral crescent]

yea maybe

but i’m thinking in general about making a bunch of essays that answer the question “why is there no word for xyz in toki pona?”

[undone crescent]

"because the UK"

[floral crescent]

anyway also full disclosure the city essay is based on a college course i haven’t actually taken but i read the blurb and immediately fell in love with the concept

so if i do write that essay i’ll wait until then to write it

[crimson kite]

en la, “word for thing” o lon ala tan ni: lexicalised compounds li ike

[floral crescent]

i mean they’re not even lexicalized compounds they’re lexicalized nimisin

all nimisin are lexicalized

[river jackal]

why is there no word for interdimensional travel in toki pona? we have a word for thing

[floral crescent]

because they’re added to the lexicon

[crimson kite]

lon

[floral crescent]

there is, “tawa”

[river jackal]

woah

[sand marsh]

o tawa lon ante >:C

[river jackal]

my brain cogs just rusted at 2x the speed there for a second

[sand marsh]

…

[floral crescent]

if there’s no word that a concept fits into then you won’t be able to express it using a noun phrase

[crimson kite]

tawaaaaa

[sand marsh]

well i wanted to distinguish between it and

[sand marsh]

oof that’s ugly

[crimson kite]

ike lukin

[maiden light]

ooh, what is the course about?

[floral crescent]

cities and nature

[maiden light]

Anything more specific? /lh

[crimson kite]

What’s the course blurb?

[floral crescent]

well i’d doxx myself if i gave too many keywords

yknow

[crimson kite]

I’m wondering if The Death and Life of Great American Cities is in the syllabus.

(i’m an urbanist and a nerd by avocation)

so this sounds like my kind of course

[floral crescent]

pona

[echo lion]

I really don’t like ma tomo as a lexicalization it’s one of my least favorite

It’s a fine name for city but if you only call cities ma tomo it’s SO hard to understand

[floral crescent]

actually i don’t have a huge problem with it

like that’s just what it is, a place with lots of buildings

[echo lion]

I tend to prefer kulupu tomo

Or even kulupu jan

[floral crescent]

i don’t prefer any of these

but ma tomo is great tbh especially from my perspective of my own city that i grew up in

[urban fractal]

ma tomo is any ma with tomo
so it can also be suburbs and such

[echo lion]

tomo mute

[floral crescent]

yes

[crimson kite]

ma pi tomo weka: low-density suburban development with minimum lot sizes and maximum lot coverages

ma pi tomo poka: dense urban development

[rain lotus]

new essay idea: “why toki pona doesn’t need more words for flavors”

tbh i just kinda want to explore this more anywya

[smoky temple]

toki

mi wile toki e ijo tawa lipu pi kon nimi

I like that the meanings / semantic spaces of the words are described so broadly

la I wonder about kili’s definition. imo it could also mean sth like “offspring, outcome, product”, figuratively speaking.

it’d be the same as in the definitions of “lawa”, “insa”, “kule”, there too more metaphorical meanings are listed

(even in soma natural languages kili, that is “fruit” or sth is used in that broader meaning at times)

ale la, lipu ni li pona mute

[visual oracle]

It's a meaning that people have proposed but in practice it isn't used that way

Maybe it could be at some point

But to put it in there now would be an effort to change the meaning, not to catalogue how it's used

[smoky temple]

hm I’m not sure if you can really know whether people use it that way or not, period. I assume that there are also definitions for other words that aren’t used by some/many people

#sona-kulupu-tpt message I once made a poll about that

[visual oracle]

Every single time I've seen that meaning, it's been a discussion in english about the meaning

I've seen it zero times in toki pona conversation

[rain lotus]

yeah

im not gonna be including those definitions

i was actually there when this was like first proposed i’m pretty sure, i have used it a few times but that was over a year ago. it definitely doesn’t fit in the semantic space of the most common usage.

jan Jonatan ↩️

[Reply to:](#1032830156676538378 message) la I wonder about kili’s definition. imo it could also mean sth like “offspring, outcome, product”, …

if someone used kili like that i’d understand them but only because i’ve heard this usage before

that being said i don’t dislike it it’s just super uncommon in practice

[undone crescent]

Post by sonatan » Mon Jul 24, 2017 2:09 am

I would not suggest "kili" be used as a general word for food, but rather a word for the " product of".
http://forums.tokipona.org/viewtopic.php?t=2362
(nothing found for offspring in connection to kili in the forums)

[rain lotus]

ah then i wasn’t there for the original proposition

[undone crescent]

it didn't have the same kind of traction, so it doesn't really matter

[rain lotus]

but in any case scrolling back through old polls in sona kulupu is pretty great and inspiring