"New" toki pona?

Language learning: How to speak Toki Pona, translation problems, advice, memory aids, tools and methods to learn Toki Pona and other languages faster
Lingva lernado: Kiel paroli Tokiponon, tradukproblemoj, konsiloj, memoraj helpiloj, iloj kaj metodoj por pli rapide lerni Tokiponon kaj aliajn lingvojn
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janAetherStar
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"New" toki pona?

Post by janAetherStar »

Is there a list of the changes to toki pona by the community? Because, to be honest, I can't figure them out, other than 'la' turning into a sort of topic marker in some cases. Is it pretty much the same as in the lessons? Please tell me any differences and what this community has done. I don't interact with people in toki pona that much so I don't know at the time of writing this. Thanks!
ale li pona. :)
sina o sona e ni.
Kuti
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Re: "New" toki pona?

Post by Kuti »

ni li lon turned into lon as "true"

some people in Skype use "en la" because they want to force English grammar into toki pona
en la is unneeded and makes them type 4 more letters, while the tokiponian way just need to start a new sentence :roll:

i think this is the main problem with tokiponians, they just read the word list and use the language as is; i don't know if all read the lessons and the grammar and the full dictionnary

olin means love, when someone have sentimental feelings towards another person. But some use olin in the sense of "like". I like this, i love this etc... while the correct way would be "ni li pona mute tawa mi"

I saw somebody using "monsi" as "back". Well it's the THE back, or the butt, but it don't work in the sense of "come back" !
"mi kama monsi" puzzled me for minutes, i swear that if i didn't knew some English i wouldn't had got that at all... "i come on the butt" ? :roll: :lol:

mostly there are misuses of TP, not improvments

also i popularised the word "mu" :lol: :arrow:
janKipo
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Re: "New" toki pona?

Post by janKipo »

'kama sin'
Some of the newer words are starting to get fixed meanings, though some uncertainties remain.
janMato
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Re: "New" toki pona?

Post by janMato »

Seems like this topic has been visited before, but here's what I can think of off the top of my head:

X la Sentence. (where X is a sentence fragment that acts like an adverb or time marker) This seems to be community innovation, but so long ago, it's lost in time as to who did it first. Maybe jan Sonja or jan Pije, who knows.

Giving new meanings to old words. This happens nonstop. selo was used once to mean "coast", i.e .the skin of the land when viewed on a map. It's philosophical hairsplitting to decide if a word is similar enough to pre-existing ones to call it polysemy (many similar meanings) or homonymy (essentially unrelated meanings)

pu as some sort of clause particle. Community innovation, but has a whiff of canonical support.

Systems. Number, writing, calendar, logic, math, so on. There are tons of these. It fills a fans need to add to the language, without actually changing the core.

Alternatives to toki pona/better toki pona. Lots of these-- many just use toki pona's word list as a starting point. Other try to get by with fewer words, fix technical flaws/annoyances, etc.

"mistakes-repeated-enough-are-rules"
- near-prepositions used alone, e.g. mi tawa noka sike tomo mute. I walked around (a circle) the city. lon sike, though is not controversial
- compound-prepositions. mi tawa noka lon sike tomo mute. compared to a hyperconservative, "mi tawa noka lon sike pi tomo mute"
- for a few months I kept misspelling tenpo as tempo. I hope no one copied me.

Stuff-that-is-surprising-enough-to-look-like-an-innovation
- predicates of motion. mi tawa tomo mute. I go to the city. (no e, it's a bare predicate-- many language, esp creoles, do this)
- serial verbs. This trick was poorly described, so it's under used. toki pona was inspired by tok pisin and so it should have creole like features. The peculiar strings of tawa, kama are serial verbs. Serial verbs alleviate the need for certain prepositional phrases. HOWEVER, there are so few good descriptions of how serial verbs work, few people expanded on tawa, kama as serial verbs. We tend to analyze them as modals, same as ken, wile, etc.
- transformatives. mi sule e mi. I made myself big.
More surprising when the middle phrase is a big one. mi jan pali pi telo pona e mi. I became a doctor.
- transformative of location. mi lon kasi suli e sike kule musi. I put the ornaments on the Christmas tree.

POS innovations
- Everyone moves content words from adjective to noun to verb and so on. Few people try to use content words as particles, prepositions, modals, etc.
- The modal list grew from the original jan Pije/jan Sonja list

Suggests from the "crazy-people-want-to-change-toki-pona"
- Actually very few (none?) of these have caught on. I think it's because they never get into the training material.
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janAetherStar
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Re: "New" toki pona?

Post by janAetherStar »

Wow, that's a lot...
Thanks guys!
ale li pona. :)
sina o sona e ni.
Kuti
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Joined: Sun Feb 28, 2010 3:48 pm

Re: "New" toki pona?

Post by Kuti »

there is the "li pi" rule made up by Pije, wich is unneeded and untokiponish.

People always forgot the "verb ala verb" way to make questions, and put an affirmative sentence + a question mark.
( Even Sonja did this ! )
And we don't have words for "yes" and "no", so how are we supposed to answer those questions ?
( i always try to make awkward answers if the question is not grammatical :twisted: :lol: :mrgreen: )
janMato wrote: - for a few months I kept misspelling tenpo as tempo. I hope no one copied me.
That is unlikely, lot of people seems to do this too
janMato wrote: mi jan pali pi telo pona e mi. I became a doctor.
i'm my self plumber ? :?
janMato wrote: I put the ornaments on the Christmas tree.
mi pana e namako lon kasi suli ;)
janSilipu
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Re: "New" toki pona?

Post by janSilipu »

Negative answer to v ala v questions is 'ala', affirmative is v.
Or true reflexive: 'mi jan Pali pi telo pona e sama'. A urologist, maybe?
Or, for the sheer horror of it 'mi Lon kasi suli e namako'
janMato
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Re: "New" toki pona?

Post by janMato »

oops jan pi sijelo pona.

Been speaking a lot of Russian, so the false cognate is tripping me up. (telo = body in russian). And toki pona trips me up when I speak Russian (I keep saying oko instead of glaza-- I guess my brain thinks it's a plausible russian word derived from ochki- glasses)
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