otoke tokpon tenlil

[Tomaniki]

jan ali o, toki!
Or rather: janliko tok!

I have been working on an abbreviated toki pona or tokpon tenlil ("quick toki pona"). The idea is that it still rings true to toki pona syntax; along with that comes the simplicity and elegance of toki pona. However, three-syllable words in toki pona seemed to me redundant, so I began by collapsing every word into a monosyllabic morpheme, and the rest grew from there. In no way is this meant as reform or replacement of toki pona but rather a supplement for those who want to say things in a hurry or perhaps just prefer the sound of tenlil.

• Most of the original words are replaced by monosyllabic morphemes in the form of consonant-vowel-consonant (see full list below).
• The first syllable of a tenlil word is stressed and, if it is not a separator, takes the role of a noun.
• Adjectives adjoin their preceding nouns: jan pona becomes janpon. Adverbs act similarly.
• pi is omitted entirely. It is assumed a new word is a noun so jan pona pi toki pona becomes janpon tokpon. pi is unnecessary here.
• Double letters are combined. An example of this within a word is janat. (jan ante > jan nat > jannat > janat)
• Double letters are combined. An example of this between words is jana'teljol. (jan ante pi telo loje > jan nat pi tel jol > jannat teljol > jana'teljol). Note that stress is preserved in this case: JANa'TELjol. The apostrophe only serves to combine the sounds, but the words remain distinct. Otherwise, the meaning would change from a bloody stranger to a red, watery stranger (janateljol = jan ante telo loje).
• Proper nouns can be written in one of two ways. Since toki pona treats names as adjectives, you can join the name to its noun. For example, jan Sonja would become simply janSonja. However, this breaks the rule of stress slightly, so another way to demonstrate this would be as such: jansónja. This eliminates the need for majuscule letters, preserves the pronunciation, and notifies the reader of a foreign adjective. For these reasons, I prefer the latter suggestion, but, for the ease of typing, the former will also be made acceptable.
• Separators are a unique class of morphemes (reduced to simply one vowel) and are explained in fuller detail below.

The five separators (I am taking a liberty here by classifying taso as a separator) are as follows:

• la becomes a
• e remains as e
• li becomes i
• o remains as o
• taso becomes u

The separators adjoin to the ending of the previous word UNLESS the next word is a verb, in which case it adjoins to the beginning of the subsequent word.

Notice how a adjoins to the end of tenpin; but i, to the beginning of wat.
Also notice that, in tenlil, mi and sina are not exempt from i as with toki pona's li:
tenpo pini la mi tawa = tenpina mis iwat

Also, as an inadvertent bonus, this rule removes ambiguity of what part of speech follows li:
jan pona li sona = janpon ison ("Friend knows")
jan pona li sona = janpon lonson ("Friend is smart")
jan pona li sona = janponi son ("Friend is thought")

For commands and vocatives, follow the form below:
o toki! = otok!
jan o, pona! = jano pon!
jan o pona! = jan'opon!

A few last things to mention (and I hope that, after which, I will have covered all possible syntax issues with tenlil):

• Interjections are handled the same way in toki pona. pon! tok! muk! jap!, etc.
• Prepositions act as verbs or adverbs (mi lon insa sina = mis ijine sis), (mi toki kepeken lipu = mis itokepe lip), (mi toki tawa sina kepeken lipu = mis itokwate sis itokepe lip), (wile tawa mi li moli = wil iwate mi imol).
• Short conjunctions pose no problems: mi en sina li toki = mis jen sis itok.
• However, you should be careful with longer conjunctions. For example, the phrase jan mi pi ma suli en jan sina pi ma lili when translated into tenlil (because of the omission of pi) could be ambiguous to whether it was saying that "my people of great lands and of your people of small lands" or the intended "my people of great lands and your people of small lands." Note, to show this: janmis masul jenjansis maslil and janmis masul jen jansis maslil are used, respectively.
• Questions of the form x ala x will be handled via hyphens: sina moku ala moku? = sis imok-lak-mok?
• Some of these rules may be subject to change if they prove to be inefficient or confusing, but hopefully this gives an idea of how a shortened toki pona would behave.

I hope that you find abbreviated toki pona useful. With tenlil, the really long sentences that plague toki pona can be collapsed, without losing too much of the simplicity of toki pona. It changes pronunciation difficulty slightly and some tenlil grammar is different, but the core idea is that there are still the same minimal root words (or here, morphemes), while being quicker than toki pona. For example, see how syllables can be cut down in the following sentence:

English: The scientist never dreamed of having such enormous power. (16 syllables)
toki pona: tenpo pini ala la jan pi sona mute li tawa e ma lape ni: ona li jo e wawa suli. (30)
tokpon tenlil: tenpinlaka jan sonmut iwate maslapnis: jon ijose waksul. (19)

Please excuse any translation mistakes that I may have made; these examples were mainly for demonstration of grammar, so I was not focusing very much on the actual content. Excuse my mistakes but, of course, do not ignore them. I would still appreciate any corrections to my translations, if you find any errors. Thanks!

lipnis ipin.

[janMato]

Most of these changes sound like a writing system proposal (in terms of impact)-- a write system can be encoded and decode back without loss of anything-- lots of people have seen that it would be more useful to have a more concise way to write toki pona (and possible a more concise way to speak, but tp isn't a language of in person interaction, it's used by fans on the internet mostly). Personally I like speed writing/talking systems because the solve a problem.

I think I read in there at least one proposal to change grammar-- those are a different issue. When you change the grammar, anyone who is used to the old grammar will hear a different message. pi-chains disambiguate some things that aren't clear with just chains of words. If anything, tp is in need of more variations of "pi" to disambiguate more relationships. For example, most prep phrases could be pi phrases or "unmarked word chains", but there is no point because it would make the phrase even harder to understand.

I'm not particularly opposed to toki pona con dialects-- it's just recreational fun and if it attracts fan use, then super!, but I would quibble over which versions are backwards compatible, forwards compatible or completely compatible. A speaker that drops pi altogether will be unintelligible to a speaker that consintently uses pi. The lack of pi would also trigger the need for compensating strategies and you'd get a lot of very different texts.

Examples are worth a thousand words:
mi moku e kili kepeken ilo. I eat fruit with a fork. (I eat fruit with a machine)
mi moku e kili ilo. I eat forked fruit. (I eat machined fruit)
mi moku e kili kepeken ilo moku. I eat fruit with a eating machine (fork).
mi moku e kili pi ilo moku I eat fruit that somehow is related to a eating machine. Maybe it's the fork.
mi moku e kili ilo moku. I eat the mechanical, edible fruit. I eat fruit that is some how describable by the attributes of a machine and food, but in a way that I only hope that you can guess.

Now having defended pi, if I was going to create a small language, I wouldn't use pi. I would use something different. It's a difficult part of toki pona's grammar, I imagine there are other more creative, easier mechanism to do what pi does.

[Tomaniki]

pi-chains disambiguate some things that aren't clear with just chains of words. If anything, tp is in need of more variations of "pi" to disambiguate more relationships. For example, most prep phrases could be pi phrases or "unmarked word chains", but there is no point because it would make the phrase even harder to understand. [...] Now having defended pi, if I was going to create a small language, I wouldn't use pi. I would use something different. It's a difficult part of toki pona's grammar, I imagine there are other more creative, easier mechanism to do what pi does.

jan Mato, you bring up some valid points. I'm slightly confused about how the omission of pi might present a problem in tenlil.

Let's say you have five words: a, b, c, d. They could be configured as such:

a b c d
a pi b c d e
a b pi c d e
a b c pi d e

Which demonstrates the following, respectively:

a b c d e -- e describes d describes a b c, where c describes a b, where b describes a: a is the only noun here
(a)(b c d e) -- b c d e describes a: a and b are nouns here
(a b)(c d e) -- c d e describes a b: a and c are nouns here
(a b c)(d e) -- d e describes a b c: a and d are nouns here

Couldn't in these cases, you simply remove pi if you grouped nouns and adjectives like how tenlil does? In written tenlil, the space "acts" as the pi and, in spoken tenlil, the stress would indicate this. Let's say a b c d e are telo jelo jan pona nasa. The configurations would be:

telo jalo jan pona nasa = teljenjanponas = strange, good, human urine
telo pi jalo jan pona nasa = tel jenjanponas = water of strange, good, human-like yellow
telo jalo pi jan pona nasa = teljen janponas = urine of strange friends
telo jalo jan pi pona nasa = human urine of strange goodness (or strangely good human urine)

tenlil does not lose the disambiguation that pi has - it simply loses pi as such a disambiguator.
Please correct me if I am mistaken.

[janSilipu]

Pedant that I am, I have to note a pi bc pi de and ab pi c pi de and a pi b pi c pide and a pi b pi dce. As well as the ambiguity of the cases where th is a third item after the pi. But the gap/stress recode is no worse than pi for any of these.

[Tomaniki]

jan Silupu o, pona! (jansílupuo, pon!)

I did not even think of multiple pis, but yes, the idea remains that the gap/stress should still accommodate for pi.

As for 'pi' being confusing with three terms: I've always seen it like a distributive property:

a b c d e = (((ab)c)d)e
a b pi c d e = (ab)((cd)e)
a pi b c pi d e = (a(bc))(de) = in my last example: strangely good human-like yellow water

I suppose one could use "en" if they wanted to differentiate between what the pi modifies:
a pi b c en pi d e = a(bc)(de) = so, strangely good, human-like yellow water, or more literally: water of human yellow and of strange goodness

If we wanted to say a(bc(de)), that seems more complicated. My guess is that we can't really say that in toki pona unless we broke it into different sentences. "a li pi ni: ni li b c pi d e." Then that makes it tricky, because, by the time you finish, three sentences might be needed to get the full idea across.

And by this, wouldn't "a pi b pi c d e" be unnecessary. (a(b))(cde) is the same as (ab)(cde) or "a b pi c d e"? Or is there a difference between "jan pona" and "jan pi pona"?

Hmm, I feel like an entire book can be written just about the word pi.

[janMato]

If your scheme encodes pi into the pronunciation, then I'm confused-- pi is still there, just not with p and i. But you said that pi can be dropped. So anyhow. Like I said, if the shortening scheme is round trip-able, then it is a lot like a writing scheme with no impact to grammar.

Okay, in logic, I'm fighting unarmed. I never really groked the pi as sort of a grouping thing. I know that there are several smart people who like to say that pi is just grouping (like parenthesis in algebra or something), but I tend to understand pi as sort of a many-faces-of-pi thing. There are phrases where pi seems to trigger a noun. But not always,eg jan pi lili mute. There are phrases where pi triggers a feeling of some sort of possessive construction, but not always. There is the pi that acts like the English proposition "of". And then there is pi trying to deal with what is modifying what, sort of the way we have to slow down and think about what the sentence "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" might mean. The buffalo sentence can be diagrammed and someone thinks it is a valid sentence-- I don't actually understand it. I would need to add some articles and adjectives and adverbs to help trigger in my mind what the part of speech is for all the parts.

I wish there was an easy way to put up sentence diagrams, it would help with pi-chain discussions.

And there is pi as the preposition of last resort, when none of the 6 preps will do so you do a pi phrase and add a filler 2nd word-- mi toki pi ijo mute-- I talk about many things. And there is pi as the universal relationship. And there is the post verb pi, which is either an adverb or an incorporated direct noun (similar to morphologically incorporated direct objects or sometimes those post verb pi phrases actually signal a transformative statement, e.g. jan li soweli pi tomo insa e jan ante. The one guy domesticated the other guy.

[jan Seloki]

where is 'pan'? There is a 'pana', but no 'pan'? I don't see 'olin' either.

[janKipo]

Many problems with this system, in addition to those you note. Basically, it is designed to fit tp.

[jan Seloki]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1U1urFx5AvMXbz6Gb-e_81cJWhz66H03C/view?usp=sharing

I'm not the OP, but since the original link doesn't seem to work anymore, here's a new link.