number 3, triangle

[pisku]

Could be a way to get another number and also a geometric figure at the same time:

I choose and old toki pona word that never became a part of the language.
"tuli"

word origin (English: three: 3, German - "Dreieck": Triangle) also lots of languagues use the word tri, triez and similars.

So tuli could be:

(number 3) - nanpa tuli
(3 people, trinity, trio) - jan pi nanpa tuli
(3 fruits) - kili tuli
(triangle, 3 side figure) - tuli
*correct me if I´m wrong

What all of you think of this?

[janMato]

The 'obsolete' words raise the interesting question, "Is it really possible to make a word obsolete by decree?" There aren't many archaic words in tp, easy to memorize, only a few of them are problematic (i.e. have close minimal pairs... but hey, tp has lots of legit close minimal pairs-- they confuse me all the time). This compares with English and it's list of archaic words (1000s?). English always has a good alternative for archaic words, often a dozen. On the other hand, tp has 1 or 2 or more usually you need a phrase to express it.

My stylistic inclination is to use the archaic words to make something sound old, or to be avant garde, or to solve a phrase building problem that is would be ugly as a phrase but elegant if an archaic word were used.

iki and kan are the only archaic words that are grammatical, so resuming using the archaic words would be like the addition of monsuta -- not a big game changer because they're content words and mostly highly specific.

[janKipo]

Why 'jan pi nanpa tuli' rather than just 'jan tuli' for "three men"? Is it that 'tuli' really means "triangle" rather than "three"? I think that is a bad choice, if so, since the number is more useful than the figure ('selo pi poka tuli')> "Men of the Number Three" sounds like a mysterious organization of some sort.
As I have said several times, what tp needs is a way to read digits and letters, the need for more numbers is disputed/ And, if you want more shapes, a square seems more useful -- or at least as useful.

[janMato]

jan pi nanpa X is Xth person, ie. it's a ordinal number. This is per the the jan Pije lessons. Personally, I wish ordinals were expressed some other way because sometimes a number can be confused for the corresponding verb or noun and prefixing wan/tu/luka/ala with nanpa would fix that....if it wasn't for the rule that said nanpa X is Xth. I can't think of a good example though. (I tried).

[janKipo]

It seems to be a habit -- whatever the rules are -- that 'nanpa' and numbers don't need 'pi' but automatically group right.
Well there is "married man" vs. "1 man" 'jan wan' might work for either case, but I am not sure it really would for "married."

[pisku]

Why 'jan pi nanpa tuli' rather than just 'jan tuli' for "three men"? Is it that 'tuli' really means "triangle" rather than "three"? I think that is a bad choice, if so, since the number is more useful than the figure ('selo pi poka tuli')> "Men of the Number Three" sounds like a mysterious organization of some sort.
As I have said several times, what tp needs is a way to read digits and letters, the need for more numbers is disputed/ And, if you want more shapes, a square seems more useful -- or at least as useful.

Yep you are right is jan tuli = three people (my mistake)

about shapes well the idea of toki pona words is to have several meanings: wan - number one and unify tu - number two and split or divide, toki - speak, language, hello and so on. So I thought number 3 in toki pona could be as in the case of luka: hand and 5, it should have another meaning than just 3 what could be? a triangle or piramid has 3 sides, I don´t have any other ideas hahahaha!.

[janKipo]

Well, a pyramid has at least four sides (usually five) , but, that aside, your idea is quite reasonable, except that tp made the decision early on (witness the scrapped 'tul'i and 'po' and the negative feeling about 'luka' and so on) not to go above two. Efforts to get this rethought have not been very fruitful, to put it mildly.

[akesipalisa]

jan ali o, toki!
mi kepeken "selo pi nena (anu linja) tu wan" (triangle), "selo pi linja sama tu tu" (square), "selo palisa pi linja tu tu" (rectangle), "sike palisa" (ellipse). ni li pona ala pona?
The 1001th proposal for expressing larger numbers: "teka" as 10 lets you form "teka tu" = 20 and "teka tu en wan" = 21.
In this way, 2011 is "kilo tu en teka en wan". mi wile sona e pilin pi sina mute.

[janKipo]

ni li pona lili tawa mi. nasin selo li pona. nasin nanpa li pona pi mute ala. mi wile e nasin linja pi wawa pi nanpa 'lukaluka'

[janMato]

Re: triangle
Good solution, it maintains tp's ambivalence about 2d and 3d shapes. I wish I could remember what the prior art is. It's in jan Kipo's spreadsheet of tp words/phrases

re: numbers
I don't like solutions that rely on base vocabulary growth, either explicit (lower case words) or back-door (proper modifiers for things semantically a long way from people, places and unique things). But that is just my opinion.

Vocabulary growth is like the nuclear option. If you resort to it once, or a whole bunch of times, then tp's defining characteristic goes away, namely that there is a massively restricted set of morphemes and almost all lexical categories are closed.

re: base
@janKipo I thought he was describing a base 10 system?