How many languages do you speak? Speaking more than just one language certainly comes in handy nowadays, regardless of where you live in the world. Whether you already have several mother tongues or you’ve studied hard to acquire a new one, it wouldn’t hurt to add one more linguistic skill to your CV, would it? Especially when it takes, on average, about 30 hours to become fluent.
1. The language of good
Toki pona is probably the simplest language in the world to learn. Its name derives from the English word “talk” and the Esperanto word “bona”, meaning good, so it literally translates to the language of good.
The constructed language was invented by Canadian linguist and translator Sonja Elen Kisa, now known as Sonja Lang, as a coping mechanism while suffering from depression in 2001. The simple minimalist structure and succinct vocabulary of just 120 words, which does not include any negative connotations, were developed based on the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, according to which the structure of a language influences its speakers’ worldview or cognition.
“It helps you see patterns, and how things are connected in different ways”, Lang told Canadian media The Globe and Mail, explaining how the simplicity of her language helps her see the underlying cause in a problem, by breaking it down to the essential components.
2. Speaking toki pona
Lang’s language quickly spread, especially among online communities that created groups especially dedicated to the language. After publishing the first guidelines in 2001, comprising of about 120 words, Lang wrote a book about Toki Pona: The Language of Good in 2014, better detailing her language. With a devoted online community making suggestions, Lang published a second book in 2021, Toki Pona Dictionary, enriching the vocabulary of toki pona with suggestions from worldwide speakers. After this publication, the toki pona vocabulary now comprises of 137 essential words and an additional less used ones.
So, what are the rules? The whole point of toki pona is to be as simple as possible. There are only 14 letters in the alphabet, 9 consonants (p, t, k, s, m, n, l, j, w) and 5 vowels (a, e, i, o, u), selected to be easily pronounced by everyone, regardless of their mother tongue. The sentence structure is also simple and already familiar to most people: subject + verb + object.
It’s not meant to write treatises on philosophy.
Sonja Lang told the Globe and Mail
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Nouns do not decline according to number, for example, jan can mean person, people, humanity or somebody, depending on the context. Moreover, having such a small root-word vocabulary, toki pona relies heavily on noun phrases, where a noun is modified by a following root, to make more complex meanings, for example, jan followed by utala – to fight, translates to fighter, soldier or warrior.
But simplicity can sometimes be confusing, the meaning of a sentence being heavily reliant on context. For example, moku means both to eat and food, so depending on the context mi moku could mean either I am eating or I am food. While, hopefully, you will not find yourself under circ*mstances where you are food, there are other shortcomings.
The only numbers in toki pona are wan – one, tu – two and mute – many, so if you want to say any specific number larger than two, you have to settle for many. When trying to order waffles with bananas and whipped cream during the Globe and Mail interview, Lang said “Mi wile jo e pan pi sike mama waso e kili suwi jelo e telo mama soweli kon.” But the literal translation could baffle anyone not acquainted with the language: for banana, Lang used kili suwi jelo, which literally translates to yellow fruit. For waffles, toki pona gets even trickier, pan pi sike mama waso literally translating to cereal-grain-product of bird maternal round-things, bird maternal round things referring to eggs.
3. Writing toki pona
Toki pona can be written using the 14 Latin alphabet letters, but to simplify things even more, Lang also invented a logographic writing systems writing system called sitelen pona. Using hieroglyphic like scribbles, sitelen pona is used to combine multiple words into one.
A single adjective can be written inside or above the word it modifies.
A single adjective can be written inside or above the word it modifies.
“When writing these proper names, you may creatively choose whichever glyphs you feel are appropriate. For example, to write the letter w in your name, you might use waso if you like birds, or wawa if you value strength”, Lang explained in her first book.
