sin pi toki nanpa tan jan Sonja

Tinkerers Anonymous: Some people can't help making changes to "fix" Toki Pona. This is a playground for their ideas.
Tokiponidistoj: Iuj homoj nepre volas fari ŝanĝojn por "ripari" Tokiponon. Jen ludejo por iliaj ideoj.
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jan Ote
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Re: sin pi toki nanpa tan jan Sonja

Post by jan Ote »

jan-ante wrote:i provided this link (i) to confirm that it can be a noun and (ii) because you regreted that wiki replaced the old texts from tokipona.org
I see. Sorry, jan-ante.
jan-ante
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Re: sin pi toki nanpa tan jan Sonja

Post by jan-ante »

jak Ote wrote: I see. Sorry, jan-ante.
why? the discussion was poductive
janTe
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Re: sin pi toki nanpa tan jan Sonja

Post by janTe »

Hi everyone. I'm new to toki pona, but I think it's great, and I'm loving it more and more as time passes.

At first, I was puzzled by the lack of numeracy in toki pona. I wondered how I would live without large numbers. I thought that even primitive people needed to say their equivalent of "I'll buy 375mL of coke for $1.85".

But then I thought about it.

In the pre-metric days, you didn't have 375mL. You had 4 teaspoons to the tablespoon; 2 tablespoons to the ounce; 8 ounces to the cup; 4 cups to the quart; 4 quarts to the gallon. For length, you had 4 inches to the hand; 3 hands to the foot; 3 feet to the yard; 2 yards to the fathom. For larger distances, you had poles (about 5 yards); 4 poles to the chain; 10 chains to the furlong; 8 furlongs to the mile; and 3 miles to the league.

And for currency, you had 4 farthings to the penny; 6 pennies to the tanner; 2 tanners to the shilling; 5 shillings to the crown; 4 crowns to the pound.

Basically, you never needed to use large numbers! The only reason we have to use large numbers is because of the metric system and the decimal system. (As Grandpa Simpson said: "My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it".)

Maybe when I'm talking about currency, I should just describe the coins/notes, rather than give their denomination. If something costs $26.01, I could say it costs a penny (seke pimeja?), a loonie (seke waso?), a 5 dollar note (lipu laso telo), and 20 dollar note (lipu laso kasi). And instead of being 180cm, my height is 5' 11 (noka liku en liku liku wan?). Or maybe I'd just say I was "about six foot" (noka liku wan).

For addresses, I can just give directions, like 3 doors past Dundas Street (sina tawa nasin Dundas li tawa lipu tu wan).

As for age... why do I need to describe my age? For dating, let people judge from my appearance, not a number. (If you're worried if someone is of dateable age, as someone up-thread was, maybe ask if they can legally get married? Sina ken unpa?) For anything else, all that should matter is whether I'm an adult (suli) or not.

Basically, I think I could live quite fine without large numbers.

So, I thank Sonja for making me consider what life would be like without large numbers. And I think maybe that's what she wanted us to do.
janTe
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Re: sin pi toki nanpa tan jan Sonja

Post by janTe »

janTe wrote: For addresses, I can just give directions, like 3 doors past Dundas Street (sina tawa nasin Dundas li tawa lipu tu wan).
Oops, I mean "sina tawa nasin Dundas li tawa lupa tu wan".
janKipo
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Re: sin pi toki nanpa tan jan Sonja

Post by janKipo »

sina lon ma Kanata anu seme a?
jan Sonja li toki mute e ijo pi nimi 'mani'. o sine lukin e ni. ken la ni li kama: mani wan pi telo walo li sama mani tu pi linja len. mani wan pi linja len li sama mani tu wan pi ali moku. mani wan pi ali moku li sama waso luka pi moku sike. o awen sama. The real problems start when we get down to change, real chicken feed and we lack measures. I don't know if we can assume the steelyard and the laws of the lever in all this.

o sina lukin e toki ante pi kulupu ni. jan pi lon ni li toki mute e ijo pi nanpa suli.

The only real need for large numbers in a suitably simplified society are ages and phone numbers (and maybe we can simplify both of those away -- I'm for that).
janTe
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Re: sin pi toki nanpa tan jan Sonja

Post by janTe »

lon! mi lon ma Kanata :-)

I wasn't aware that Sonja has spoken before about money. I searched on google, but didn't find anything. Do you know where I should look?

Regarding ages and dates, has anyone suggested using something like the traditional Chinese calendar? The traditional Chinese calendar didn't number its years. The years were named things like "fire pig" or "water horse". The cycle consisted of five elements (fire, water, earth, metal, wood -- seli, telo, ma, kiwen, kasi) and twelve animals, so it repeated every 60 years, which didn't cause any problem in practice.

(If neccesary, the cycles could be numbered. That way, historians could say something like "the fire pig year of the third cycle of the Ming dynasty" or something.)

I'd suggest using the Chinese calendar, except I don't think we have words for all 12 animals, do we?

By the way, I'm very happy to learn that we have a word for "week" -- tenpo esun. Now if I want to say my birthday is on October 31, I can say it's on the second day of the fifth week of October (tenpo suno tu en tenpo esun luka tan kama di tenpo mun di nampa luka luka). I like that I don't have to resort to using big numbers.
janKipo
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Re: sin pi toki nanpa tan jan Sonja

Post by janKipo »

janTe wrote:lon! mi lon ma Kanata :-)

I wasn't aware that Sonja has spoken before about money. I searched on google, but didn't find anything. Do you know where I should look?
Check at 'mani' in the tp words section on this site and look at the draft pages if there is nothing new on the published ones.
jan Te wrote:Regarding ages and dates, has anyone suggested using something like the traditional Chinese calendar? The traditional Chinese calendar didn't number its years. The years were named things like "fire pig" or "water horse". The cycle consisted of five elements (fire, water, earth, metal, wood -- seli, telo, ma, kiwen, kasi) and twelve animals, so it repeated every 60 years, which didn't cause any problem in practice.

(If neccesary, the cycles could be numbered. That way, historians could say something like "the fire pig year of the third cycle of the Ming dynasty" or something.)

I'd suggest using the Chinese calendar, except I don't think we have words for all 12 animals, do we?
Not simple ones. We might get close with all the biota words taken together, but some of them are not very Chinesy (of course, being a Rat myself, I might welcome the change). This is, btw, good suggestion for dealing with ages, in line with your (?) earlier bits about reducing numbers by increasing units.

How about the uudz kale katunob, which never goes above 20 -- with a lot of 13, as I remember -- and covers a goodly number more years (enough, surely to take in growing longevity for a while). Mayan
jan Te wrote:By the way, I'm very happy to learn that we have a word for "week" -- tenpo esun. Now if I want to say my birthday is on October 31, I can say it's on the second day of the fifth week of October (tenpo suno tu en tenpo esun luka tan kama di tenpo mun di nampa luka luka). I like that I don't have to resort to using big numbers.
Well, 'en' doesn't mean "in" (an odd feature of tp) but I'm getting a pattern here, as noted above, which is a useful one -- except for the need for a bunch of unit words, which are not at all likely to be forthcoming. 'tan kama pi tenpo mun pi nanpa luka luka' (and maybe 'open' instead of 'kama' -- but the whole needs some looking at).
janTe
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Re: sin pi toki nanpa tan jan Sonja

Post by janTe »

Oops, I was trying to say "two days and five weeks from the start of October", but maybe that doesn't work with the order of grouping in tp. And I don't know why I said "di" instead of "pi". I think my brain was getting confused by my knowledge of French.
janKipo
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Re: sin pi toki nanpa tan jan Sonja

Post by janKipo »

Yeah, how to deal with 'en' in anything but 'word en word' constructions (assuming that 'en' can be used between modifiers, say) needs some work, as does using prep phrases to modify nouns phrases. And the whole notion of counting days -- in any way -- is not yet a part of the sharply defined systems in the language.
janTe
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Re: sin pi toki nanpa tan jan Sonja

Post by janTe »

You know what? It's probably just easier to say that my birthday was one day before November.

If dates were given that way, we'd never have to use a number greater than 15.

For example, don't say Christmas is the 25th day of December; say Christmas is 7 days before January. (tenpo Kolisumasu li tenpo suno luka tu tawa tenpo mun pi nampa wan.)

People used to do this with time. They'd say it was 10 minutes to 2 o'clock. It's only in the digital age that we've started saying it's 1:50.

Hey, I just realised TP has no words for telling the time, does it?
janKipo wrote:but I'm getting a pattern here, as noted above, which is a useful one -- except for the need for a bunch of unit words, which are not at all likely to be forthcoming.
For units, I'd be happy to use loan words, since units are a culture-specific thing anyway. (e.g. A "gallon" isn't even the same between the U.S. and Canada.) So I'd say "suli Insu" for inch, "suli Futo" for foot, "mute Pundo" for pound, "mute Onso" for ounce, "tenpo Ora" for hour, "tenpo Minuto" for minute, etc. And maybe "mute telo Kalon Mewika" for American gallon, and "mute telo Kalon Inli" for an English gallon.

But, I might make an exception for household measures like cup, teaspoon, and tablespoon. It's so tempting to say "poki", "ilo moku lili" and "ilo moku suli".
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