toki! mi jan Matali

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janMatali
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun May 06, 2018 1:27 am

toki! mi jan Matali

Post by janMatali »

mi jan sina. mi wile li kama sona e toki pona. jan li wile li kama sona lon mi? o mi mute tawa li moku e telo pimeja.
mi lon ma tomo Seattle.
I've just started learning toki pona and would like to be able to practice verbally with a human being. My family has adapted to me speaking various natural languages at them, but I'm afraid a conlang would try their patience. I recognize this is the internet and agreeing to meet IRL is fraught, as such I will name the location, you may suggest a time. Anyone who wants to see what happens next can come.
tomo nimi: Wayward Coffeehouse
o tempo ni, la mi mute pu a!

P.S. Please, correct my grammar
P.P.S. I am aware of the Discord et al. I need to connect a voice to a mouth to comprehend.
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janTepanNetaPelin
Posts: 224
Joined: Mon Nov 16, 2015 5:14 pm
Location: Berlin

Re: toki! mi jan Matali

Post by janTepanNetaPelin »

janMatali wrote:mi jan sina. mi wile li kama sona e toki pona. jan li wile li kama sona lon mi? o mi mute tawa li moku e telo pimeja.
mi lon ma tomo Seattle.
I've just started learning toki pona and would like to be able to practice verbally with a human being. My family has adapted to me speaking various natural languages at them, but I'm afraid a conlang would try their patience. I recognize this is the internet and agreeing to meet IRL is fraught, as such I will name the location, you may suggest a time. Anyone who wants to see what happens next can come.
tomo nimi: Wayward Coffeehouse
o tempo ni, la mi mute pu a!

P.S. Please, correct my grammar
P.P.S. I am aware of the Discord et al. I need to connect a voice to a mouth to comprehend.
toki, jan Matali o!

mi jan Tepan. mi tan ma Tosi. mi ken ala kama lon tomo Wayward, taso mi ken lukin e nasin toki sina.
  • mi jan sina. → mi jan sin.
    mi wile li kama sona → mi wile kama sona
    jan li wile li kama sona → jan li wile kama sona
    (lon mi → lon poka mi)
    ? → anu seme?
    o mi mute → mi mute o
    tawa moku e telo pimeja → moku e telo pimeja / tawa tomo pi telo pimeja
    (telo pimeja → telo wawa (pimeja))
    (Seattle → ?)
    tempo → tenpo
    tenpo ni, la → tenpo ni la
    mi mute pu a! → mi mute li pu a!
    o ... mi mute li pu a! → mi mute o pu a!
    → tenpo ni la mi mute o pu a!
So as a rule of thumb "o" is a particle like "li" and behaves just like it (e.g. "ona li moku e telo" → "ona o moku e telo" = "she should drink"). The only difference is that "sina o ..." ("you should ...") can become "o ..." (i.e. an imperative), whereas "sina li" (and "mi li") will always turn into "sina" (and "mi"). (Some jan nasa might try and unnecessarily complicate "o" in order to sell their grammar to you. If you have the official book, you're safe though.

"tenpo ni la" doesn't have a comma. With a comma, "tenpo ni, la" it would seem that "tenpo ni" is an if-clause, like "if so, i.e. if it is now, then". Cf. the official book page 51/52.

There are other jan pu in Facebook groups "Toki Pona", "Toki Pona Taso" and "Learn Toki Pona". :)
https://github.com/stefichjo/toki-pona (mi sitelen e lipu ni pi toki pona)
mi jan Tepan. mi pu. mi weka e jan nasa Kipo e jan nasa Lope.
janKipo
Posts: 3064
Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2009 2:20 pm

Re: toki! mi jan Matali

Post by janKipo »

Generally, there is little to object to Tepan’s corrections.
I would say just ‘poka mi’ rather than ‘lon poka mi’ but that is dialectic within pu (Sonja has supported both expressions).
coffee is variously ‘telo wawa’.’telo pimeja’ or ‘telo pimeja wawa, etc. (also ‘telo pi lape ala’)
There is nothing about commas on pp 51-2, or anywhere else in pu. People have all sorts of habits with commas but none are “official” (remember, nothing inn. tp is official as there is no governing body). Sonja, in pu, regularly uses a comma before ‘la’ after a sentence and not otherwise, but when describing the structure, she omits the comma. Commas are never *needed* with ‘la’ (any more than with ‘li’ or ‘e’), but are occasionally useful (as they are elsewhere) to block wrongheaded parses. (And they naturally go after the ‘la’ -- but that is just opinion with no grounds for either view).
The bit about ‘o’ goes to page 41, where Sonja manages to do the right thing while totally muddying the previous decade of usage. She says 'jan o pali’ is to express wishes or desires, an optative, in short “Would that the man acted” or some such. But this pattern already is used in tp for a fusion of a vocative and imperative: a short form of ‘jan o, o pali’ (that is one comma that does seem to be required, though there is no rule about it). All of the eamples given are either clearly or most likely cases of this sort, not optatives at all. The old optative form is to put ‘o’ in front of a declarative sentence ‘o jan li pali’, but this is unmentioned.
On the positive side, I think what you want is an imperative with ‘mi mute’ as the audience (hortatory imperative) “Let’s get together and drink coffee” ‘mi mute o kulupu li moku e telo pimeja'
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