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What do you do to help you learn?

Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2016 11:27 pm
by natan
toki!

One of the things I like to do to help me understand toki pona better is to pick a grammar/sentence structure from pu (e.g. NOUN + li + VERB + e + NOUN, or NOUN + ADJECTIVE), choose some words (relatively) randomly (e.g. NOUNS: esun, kili, akesi, sina; VERBS: toki, moku) and see what sentences I can make that (using the definitions as per pu).

Or another thing is to choose two words, and write them out using the different forms, e.g.

jan n. person, human, somebody
wan nu. one; adj. unique, united

jan wan (N + N) — one person
wan jan (N + N) — person one
jan wan (N + A) — unique person / united people
jan li wan (N + li + N) — somebody (has) one / somebody is one
jan li wan (N + li + A) — The person is unique / People are united / People are unique

(I did this some time ago, just found it.)

This is how I have understood things.

Has anyone done this, or something similar? Do people have other such exercises they use to help expand their understanding and usage of toki pona?

Re: What do you do to help you learn?

Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2016 3:06 pm
by janKipo
This looks pretty good, though I don't know of anyone who has done exactly this. The other useful thing is to read a lot of tp by other people. This helps because they may come up with combinations you have not thought of and may look like nonsense until you see what they have done. This expands your range of possibilities (tough I must say you have done a pretty good job of reaching out into the breadth of some meanings already). You might also put your combinations out on line and see what others make of them, but remember: context is important in tp, so isolated sentences or phrases can take on very strange forms.