Toki Pona

Toki Pona is a miniimalistic conlang created by the Canadian translator and polyglot Sonja Lang (formerly Sonja Elen Kisa, born Christian Richard) and first published online in 2001. t's an a posteriori language, but it has simplified the phonetics of its etymons up to rendering quite a few of them hardly recognizable due to the syllable restrictions imposed on top of its nine letters / phonemes. It has only some 123 words. And some 10 grammar rules suffice to describe it.

Characteristics
Toki Pona has some quite unique features:

- it has no articles (neither indefinite nor definite - nor partitive of course)

- it has no verb 'to be' (copula zero)

- it has no consonant clusters

- it has no diphtongs (nor triphtongs)

- it has only one consonant that can close a syllable (coda), namely -n

- the -n coda can undergo a sandhi effect before k ( becoming /ŋ/ sounding like -ng in English ) and p (becoming /m/ )

- it permits allophones for the consonants k / g, l / r, p / b, t / d, s / z ( and maybe also w /  v )

- it's written mainly in the Latin Alphabet while the letters have their standard IPA sounds

- it has quite a few other scripts, including a Mayan hieroglyph like one, an emoji based one, a rune based one, etc.

- it has no tones

- it has no word forms (morphology) : all words remain unchanged all the time (no declinations, no conjugations, no plurals, no adverb formation rules and no word classes)

- it has a direct objet introductor, namely e (nota accusativi)

- it has a Subject - Verb - Object word order (SVO) - it has only one negation word (ala), one 'multiplicity' word (mute), one 'completion' word (ale) and one interrogative word (seme)

- it has two yes/no question structures : ona li pali ala pali ? or ona li pali anu seme ?

- the sentences structure in a wh-question stays the same as in a non question statement sentence:

sina wile tawa ma seme ? ona li pana e seme tawa sina ? sina wile lukin kepeken seme ? jan seme li lon ?

- the word stress is always on the first syllable (making five syllable words de facto impossible)

- it uses no capital letters except for non-TP words (usually in the form of Tokiponized adjectives)

Toki Pona usage and mentions
- There were Summer Splash Courses of Toki Pona at MIT (several years), Stanford (two times) and Yale (once)

- There was a course at the University of Geneva (once) and at a Catalan University (once or twice, not clear where exactly)

- Toki Pona was the first considered as basis for ROILA

- Toki Pona has been mentioned on radio and television and in newspapers

- Toki Pona has been mentioned in some research papers

- Toki Pona has been mentioned in numerous blog posts

- Toki Pona courses are available in many formats and on many platforms and in multiple languages

- Toki Pona wordlist are available in even more languages (including conlangs)

- Toki Pona users are findable on almost any social network (Facebook, Twitter, Identi.ca, VK, Mastodon, etc.) language forums and wikis ...

- Quite a few LinkedIn profiles indicate a (basic) knowledge of Toki Pona

- The official book ('pu') by Sonja Lang ('jan Sonja') is available in English and French.

- Toki Pona questions were found on different editions of the Language Olympiads.