Word for "Complicated"

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.
Post Reply
jan Son
Posts: 14
Joined: Mon Jul 15, 2019 3:42 am

Word for "Complicated"

Post by jan Son »

While looking through the book of toki pona I noticed that pona means simple, but there is no word for complex. I wouldn't put it on ike because something being complex is not necessarilly bad always. So I want to invent a word.

monimu - from the Finnish monimutkainen.

If there is a better word for this please bring it up.

And just a note this is my first post so I'm a bit new here and on forums in general.
janKipo
Posts: 3064
Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2009 2:20 pm

Re: Word for "Complicated"

Post by janKipo »

Yes, but something being simple is not good always either. tp just joins together two semantic fields we hold more or less separate. But in those joined fields ‘pona' occupies the “simple" and “good" areas and ‘ike’ the “bad" and “complex”. If you want to be more careful, you would, in tp, go to a compound expression for “complex” like ‘ike nasin’, “systematically bad”, say. Introducing a new word is a last resort solution usually (but Finnish is a good place to look). I don’t think that we are even close to a last resort case with “complex”, though there are probably better solutions than ‘ike nasin’, maybe esecially for particular cases.
jan Son
Posts: 14
Joined: Mon Jul 15, 2019 3:42 am

Re: Word for "Complicated"

Post by jan Son »

Yes, but something being simple is not good always either. tp just joins together two semantic fields we hold more or less separate. But in those joined fields ‘pona' occupies the “simple" and “good" areas and ‘ike’ the “bad" and “complex”. If you want to be more careful, you would, in tp, go to a compound expression for “complex” like ‘ike nasin’, “systematically bad”, say. Introducing a new word is a last resort solution usually (but Finnish is a good place to look). I don’t think that we are even close to a last resort case with “complex”, though there are probably better solutions than ‘ike nasin’, maybe esecially for particular cases.
But doesn't that mean simple could just be "pona nasin". Even though we can just make it 2 words I feel like we need to stop doing that, because it seems to me that people always wanna find ways to say new words but not ways to not use old words.
janKipo
Posts: 3064
Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2009 2:20 pm

Re: Word for "Complicated"

Post by janKipo »

Right, but my response was exactly to your desire to not use ‘ike’ to mean”complex”. If you continue old usage here there is no need for even a phrase let alone a new word.
jan Son
Posts: 14
Joined: Mon Jul 15, 2019 3:42 am

Re: Word for "Complicated"

Post by jan Son »

Sorry for not reading full to the end. I guess I just overreacted...

I have a new idea though - complex could also mean mechanical, as we have no way to talk about some mechanical things other than saying its useful or its moving.
janKipo
Posts: 3064
Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2009 2:20 pm

Re: Word for "Complicated"

Post by janKipo »

Do you mean that we don’t have a way to describe various kinds of mechanical devices? This is true of any kind of thing generally (animals, say)or plants or rocks or weather) so not peculiar to mechanical things. In short, it is the problem of trying to be precise in toki pona, a problem to which there is no solution. Or do you have a specific issue with ‘ilo’?
jan Son
Posts: 14
Joined: Mon Jul 15, 2019 3:42 am

Re: Word for "Complicated"

Post by jan Son »

I just really want more words to be honest. Even though I have to make sure they dont overlap
janKipo
Posts: 3064
Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2009 2:20 pm

Re: Word for "Complicated"

Post by janKipo »

Alas, more words—beyond a very small limit — mean that you no longer have to, There are a number of conlangs which are grammatically not more than an order of magnitude harder than to and which have plenty of words — and the tools for making as many more as you could want. Esperanto as a good example.
Post Reply