Toki Pona

Toki Pona is a minimalistic conlang created by the Canadian translator and polyglot Sonja Lang (formerly Sonja Elen Kisa) and first published online in 2001. It'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 (inflectional 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 object 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)[1]

- 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's wordlist are available in even more languages (including conlangs)

- Toki Pona's 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.

[1]

SAMUEL BRENNER, ESP Teacher Grow a Gab: Constructing Languages in Splash Fall 14 (Nov. 08, 2014) Students will learn a brief history of constructed (consciously made and artificial) languages such as Esperanto, Volapuk, Lojban, and Toki Pona. Students will learn what goes into creating a language and then begin to construct their own.

https://yale.learningu.org/teach/teachers/samuelbrenner/bio.html


 * 1) TokiPona #Academia #Yale #anno2014 #SamuelBrenner #uniwesita #leson #sona

Offline References
The first ever book about Toki Pona ... wasn't by its creatrix jan Sonja :

toki pona en 76 ilustritaj lecionoj (ISBN 978-80-89366-20-0) written in Spanish by a Mexican, translated into Esperanto by a Czech and published by a Slovak (E@I)

The official book (in English) :

Toki Pona: The Language of GoodMay 25, 2014

by Sonja Lang, May 25, 2014, Publisher: Tawhid

ISBN-10: 0978292308

ISBN-13: 978-0978292300

The official book (in French):

Toki Pona: la langue du bien

Sonja Lang, April 24, 2016, Publisher: Tawhid

ISBN-10: 9780978292355

ISBN-13: 978-0978292355

Online References

 * English

jan Pije's lessons

A Toki Pona language course written by Bryant Knight (a.k.a. "Pije"), first published circa 2003, revised 2015

http://tokipona.net/tp/janpije/okamasona.php

jan Mato's Twitter lessons

https://aiki.pbworks.com/w/page/68298965/jan%20Mato%27s%20Twitter%20lessons

Toki Pona in 76 illustrated lessons

https://aiki.pbworks.com/f/tp+in+76+lessons+English.pdf

Learn Toki Pona

https://archive.is/KH7n0

Lessons of Toki Pona

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Kb1ppS0H6-5z8HcFtVsNI0j_vRNRmJpBNFYR6Vv4Bm0/edit

Toki Pona

https://github.com/Ahemmetter/toki-pona/blob/master/tokipona.pdf
 * Spanish

Toki Pona - en 76 lecciones ilustradas - elzr

http://elzr.com/tokipona/

Toki Pona en castellano

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B0ana8tNOZh3N29Nc0w5emYyRGM?fbclid=IwAR3-MDq6u-2mDTbVFvPfvflrFe5lGw2v-PFrXNP40FE5UPw2_Sk6Dea8VMs Leçons de toki pona
 * French

http://lvogel.free.fr/tokipona/

Leçons de toki pona

https://github.com/brunobord/toki-pona/blob/gh-pages/markdown/index.md

Leçons de toki pona (texte de Laurent Vogel, mis en pdf par Philippe Tromeur)

http://web.archive.org/web/20070624111719/http://pokipitokipona.free.fr/img/toki%20pona.pdf

Enseignement du toki pona

https://fr.wikibooks.org/wiki/Enseignement_du_toki_pona

Enseignement du toki pona

http://correzeelab.recovery.free.fr/mediawiki-1.16.0/images/Enseignement_du_toki_pona.pdf

toki pona complet

https://documentfr.com/the-philosophy-of-money.html?utm_source=tokipona-complet-doc

TiddlyWiki sur le toki pona

https://web.archive.org/web/20070624112137/http://pokipitokipona.free.fr/ilo.html

Tout savoir sur le toki pona

https://dominuscarnufex.github.io/cours/toki-pona/

toki pona en 76 leçons illustrées (traduction partielle)

https://w.esperanto-jeunes.org/fichiers/tokipona/manuel-de-toki-pona-fr.pdf

Le toki pona, langue minimaliste

https://www.jchr.be/tokipona/index.htm
 * Esperanto

Baza Lecionaro de Tokipono

http://jimhenry.conlang.org/conlang/tokipona/lecionoj/lecionoj.htm

toki pona en 76 ilustritaj lecionoj

http://tokipona.info/
 * Russian

sona pi toki pona.pdf ( токипона, токи пона , toki pona )

http://rgho.st/87fNpQLCC
 * Japanese

このサイトの作者のJosukeの知識を公開するサイトです.

"Toki Pona"とはトキポナ語で"良い話"(Toki = talk + Pona = good)という意味です.

http://www.geocities.jp/josuke_token_naito/tokipona/lesson/index.html

toki pona

南無外記補奈考 (本筋には無関係. 精神汚染注意: ご自身の覚悟と責任の上で興味ある人だけ目を通されたい)

https://archive.fo/tgyJK
 * Persian

توکی پونا

ساده ترین زبان دنیا

https://tokipona.blog.ir/
 * Dutch

https://nl.wikibooks.org/wiki/Toki_Pona
 * Polish

http://tokipl.wikidot.com/podrecznik
 * Korean

https://cafe.naver.com/tokipona/2
 * Catalan

https://ca.wikibooks.org/wiki/Toki_pona

Curs de toki pona

http://vicerveza.homeunix.net/~viric/tokipona/curs-tokipona.pdf
 * Slovak

http://prekladatelia.info/tokipona/
 * Chinese

http://blog.sina.com.cn/koliuen

toki pona道本语中文教程L12-17

http://www.doc88.com/p-4983561493317.html

道本语(Toki Pona，意为“好语言”)，又称人工皮钦语.

https://tieba.baidu.com/p/1394372392
 * Vietnamese

https://codepen.io/tiensuitie/pen/dpzvgj
 * Lingua Franca Nova

[//lfn.wikia.com/wiki/Curso_de_tocipona http://lfn.wikia.com/wiki/Curso_de_tocipona]
 * German

http://docplayer.org/17857134-Toki-pona-die-einfachste-sprache-der-welt.html?fbclid=IwAR2bdMdAdNd_4CKz3J3omYqSiRTJmQnFV69cN5YIM864GEmfGagKHpPiEto https://archive.fo/bOAKQ
 * Italian (partial archive)

articles about Toki Pona
Marek Blahuš: Toki Pona - eine minimalistische Plansprache Interlinguistische Informationen. Beiheft 18 (2011)

http://www.interlinguistik-gil.de/wb/media/beihefte/18/heft18-blahus.pdf [pp.51-55]

How to Say (Almost) Everything in a Hundred-Word Language

Those who speak Toki Pona say linguistic simplicity can enable a more profound form of communication

ROC MORIN | JUL 15, 2015

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/07/toki-pona-smallest-language/398363/