Proposed reconstructed history of proto-toki-pona.

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janMato
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Proposed reconstructed history of proto-toki-pona.

Post by janMato »

Is toki pona a language from the distant past, the present or distant future? I haven't ruled out that Jan Sonya is in contact with a lost tribe or is a time traveler from beyond the future apocalypse. For the moment, I think the data best supports a toki pona homeland in the Pacific, possibly a decendent of proto-polynesian. The low number of polynesian loan words make me think the resemblance is accidental and this language is that of an entirely new language family brough about by feral humans who spontaneously created their own language.

Toki pona must have originally had it's own vocabulary, probably made up by feral teenagers who lived on a tropical island. The language has some novel coinages which probably represent vocabulary from proto-toki-pona: unpa, tan, e. The grammar is vaguely Polynesian-- it is still possible that the feral toki pona children had contact with kindly Hawaiian speaking surfer dudes. So probably the pre-invasion tp people talked about sex, but not much else. The feral toki pona children were at least 14 years old before their first contact with non-feral humans, or else they'd mostly be talking about candy and who has cooties. If they were older, the Swadesh words wouldn't have been so completely over-run by loan words.

This vocabulary washed out by rampant borrowing from 20th century languages, mostly IE , Uralic and Kartvelian. I think a series of cruise ships came by and stayed just long enough to learn to talk to the natives before they moved on. The entire Swadesh list appears to be loan words including basic things like pronouns. The toki ponas held the visitors in such regard and awe that they emulated their speech to the near complete loss of proto-toki-ponan.

The locals probably set up esun and sold len for mani. They had to speak the language of a great variety of tourists, or in this case, they had to teach the tourist their language. This forced the toki ponas to use only the smallest number of words and grammatical constructions so that they could get through simple commercial transactions with Chinese, Eastern European and African tourists.

One would expect a richly developed cargo cult culture and root words to support it. Us not seeing it, means to me that missionaries got there first, either from Berkley, California or maybe even from Taiwan.
janKipo
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Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2009 2:20 pm

Re: Proposed reconstructed history of proto-toki-pona.

Post by janKipo »

A much funnier story than the the sanctuary form global disaster one. But I would have expected more (some) Polynesian to survive.
Don't put too much faith in the Swadesh list (or in anything by Swadesh, for that matter).
The thought of Berkeley missionaries is the capstone.
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