janKipo wrote:pu has been less unifying than might have been hoped. It is useful to note that jan Sonja says explicitly that it is (just) how she uses tp. Since she started the language, her usage deserves respect. But she was absent from the community for large parts of a decade and has not acquainted herself with what happened in that period, so her usage does not always agree with that of those who worked through that period. Nor does her usage override that of the old hands, since she did not work through the problems that those hands solved. In short, pu is a good start with needs to be used carefully and tentatively in several places (starting with the vocabulary -- several words she leaves out are surely not going to disappear, several she combines will remain separate and one she adds will not catch on except, as here, as an English expression referring somewhat dismissively to the book).
That's a good analysis and something I will take to heart. My biggest worry with the toki pona book is that new people take it as word and law, and disregard the progress and work done by the community over the past 10-15 years.
janKipo wrote:Everybody who speaks English uses 'olin' for "likes a lot" occasionally. I wish she hadn't done it in a definitive place, but she did, and it was a screw-up.
I'm sure I've done this by mistake before, but I've tried hard to pound into my consciousness that 'olin' is far more profound than we English-speaking natives use 'love'. Something more akin to the Greek 'agape' or 'storge'. It just through me for a loop when mama pi toki pona used the word that way.
janKipo wrote:Thoughts are a big topic. Here she seems to be talking not so much about the general process but about the particular cases of formulating then into coherent systems, capable of outward expression, even if never so expressed. So, she uses the terminology of external expression but marks it as internal only. The simplification is linguistic in nature, so the linguitic nature of what is simplified is made explicit. But these are all pilin nonetheless.
Just a random thought - how hard would discoursing on philosophy, existentialism in particular, be in toki pona? I could try my hand at it, but that might be too ultracrepidarian, to use a fun word I just learned.
janKipo wrote:You are welcome to rant about pu here all you want. I am not a great fan, as noted.
I may be alone in this, but I love the 14-or-so missing/obsolete/apocryphal words. 'majuna', 'kan', 'pake', etc. I sometimes use these in my personal writing or day to day talking. I don't have all of them memorized, but I love them. They add so much more color and 'roundness' to this language. They make it feel more alive for me. It is so much more enjoyable for me, for whatever reason, when I use these words. But, I don't use them online simply because not everyone agrees with this viewpoint.
That said, I loathe the word 'pu'. Absolutely loathe it. When I found out its meaning, almost totally ruined the language for me. It made the language feel trivial or commercial. It's a word built-in to the language to artificially elevate the status of a book about the language, and the book isn't even in the language itself. To me, it is as narrow-defined and useful as 'kijetesantakalu'. If it's meaning was expanded to something more like 'reference the body of knowledge and wisdom that the community has brought forth', it would be SO much more meaningful and deep. But, as it stands, it is shallow and I will use all the forces within me to never again use the word 'pu' as it is currently presented to the community.