en sina pilin seme?

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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jan Pina
Posts: 34
Joined: Thu Oct 20, 2016 10:55 pm

en sina pilin seme?

Post by jan Pina »

I'm writing toki pona translations for tatoeba sentences and come up with the phrase...
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mi pilin ike tawa pali e moku. en sina pilin seme?
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What do you think about it? Is it ok or not and if not how to make it better. the original phrase is
https://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/5101911
jan Soweli_elepanto says it would be better to say it like ...
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mi pali e moku. ni li ike tawa mi. sina pilin ala pilin e sama?
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but i'm hesitate. please advice
janSikisin
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Feb 15, 2018 6:37 am

Re: en sina pilin seme?

Post by janSikisin »

sina li seme tawa sina?

Is a more open question and one word shorter. (If it is incorrect I am open for corrections I am just a newcomer to toki pona)
janKipo
Posts: 3064
Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2009 2:20 pm

Re: en sina pilin seme?

Post by janKipo »

The original question was “I hate cooking. ... And you?”
Assuming hate is like love and only applies to sentient objects, we get ‘seli (or pali) moku li ike tawa mi.... sina?’ The second part might be more recognizable (since we don’t do fragments well) as ‘sina pilin seme? (or ‘seme pilin’)?’
The first suggestion above isn’t grammatical because it has an ‘e’ in a noun phrase (what comes after ‘tawa’), but is easily corrected to ‘mi pilin ike tawa pali moku’ which is another version of “hate”. It also starts a sentence with ‘en’, which is not allowed (also, no ‘en’ between sentences. I’m not sure either rule makes sense.)
The third solution is grammatical but strange “You are what to you?” It doesn’t get your feelings in play and doesn’t connect to the issue of cooking or hating.
The second solution is grammatically OK. It goes beyond the original a bit, since the original doesn’t say (though may imply) that I cook. It also opens the question of whether your objection is to my cooking or to your cooking or to cooking in general; interesting differences which might best not be raised.
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