How to say: "We are humans and we are from Earth"

Language learning: How to speak Toki Pona, translation problems, advice, memory aids, tools and methods to learn Toki Pona and other languages faster
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janMato
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How to say: "We are humans and we are from Earth"

Post by janMato »

There is a discussion already going on at livejournal: http://tokipona.livejournal.com/70435.html

But not everyone visit livejournal everyday. I think the shortest is mi jan li tan ma. And there are lots of good options for a long form that actually has some information in it (i.e. could be understood without knowing in advance that the sentence is "we are humans and we are from Earth"
jan Akesimun
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Re: How to say: "We are humans and we are from Earth"

Post by jan Akesimun »

mi mute li jan li tan sike.. Tewa(?).

Didn't know anyone still used toki pona on LJ.
Yo estuve aquí.
janSilipu
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Re: How to say: "We are humans and we are from Earth"

Post by janSilipu »

I guess a planet is strictly a mun, but it is not clear how much we can rely on this apparently interplanetary message. For example, would not a speaking species on any planet claim that they are jan, persons? Even if we thought of them as akesi?
janMato
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Re: How to say: "We are humans and we are from Earth"

Post by janMato »

Good point. Xenobiology is unexplored in toki pona.

For example, is Spock soweli or jan? Vulcans seem to be able to interbreed with humans.
Jabba the Hut is clearly akesi.
Just about everyone in Star Gate is jan, even if they appear to be a different species or from a different galaxy.

The message, imho, is trying to make a distinction. We're people (you aren't). We're from earth (you aren't).

So if jan is all 2 legged creatures, and they are Vulcans, then we aren't making a very clear distinction-- as if we said "We're living beings"

Same thing goes for naming our planet. If we don't have a word that contrasts with what the aliens live on, then we'd get the vacuous observation "Hey alien, we are living beings from, some planet somewhere"

They will receive our radio transmission and be all so excited and then when they translate it they say, "They guys are boring-- nothing to say."
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jan Kapiwe
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Re: How to say: "We are humans and we are from Earth"

Post by jan Kapiwe »

Good to know aliens learned Toki Pona! But, seriously, that is just useful to books translations, and I don't think that TP was made to be informative.
mi mute o musi!
pakala
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Re: How to say: "We are humans and we are from Earth"

Post by pakala »

mi jan mute li kama tan ma Earth. :ugeek:
janKipo
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Re: How to say: "We are humans and we are from Earth"

Post by janKipo »

As noted frequently here, this is sort of tautologous and thus not very informative. And "Earth" become 'Elutu' or so. It is not clear what would be better; a physical description of us and Earth? a ecological description of us in Earth's biota and a positional description if the planet? The answer you give does have one virtue -- maybe enough -- in that it says we are sentient and capable of using language, which might be important information for aliens (whether to out advantage or not depends). Maybe also that we are not capable of direct mental communication.
janSilipu
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Re: How to say: "We are humans and we are from Earth"

Post by janSilipu »

In principle, any character with a speaking role is a jan. He/she/it may also be something else, whether something tp can express or not.
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janTali
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Re: How to say: "We are humans and we are from Earth"

Post by janTali »

The most interesting item in this thread is janMato's summary of the pi problem on LJ. Thank you for it.

As to wahawafe, it seems that almost no one has read the project guidelines. Most translations don’t care about the subtlety of “one sentence with two we are connected by an and” even when the target language allows it with no problem. But there is a bigger problem. The project guy says:
Because of the words "from Earth" in the sentence, some people have thought that this project is for aliens. However, I have chosen my sentence for purely linguistic reasons.
and
If there is a distinction between inclusive and exclusive forms of "we", please use the inclusive form. As I said above, this project is meant for humans, not aliens!
However, in several languages I can check, my native Italian for example, the translation is a sentence to introduce oneself to aliens when on another planet, not to assert common humanness and a common destiny for us all. In Italian, “we come from Earth” can only be said by someone not presently on Earth (and also the form chosen for “we are humans” is an English calque and not what one would say with no English model in sight.) The first Esperanto variant is acceptable, even if not the best one, while the second can only have been produced by someone with very little knowledge of the actual spoken Esperanto of the core community. In Arabic, the sentence given is what I would have written myself (this means it’s probably wrong :D ) Only German sounds OK to me...

A Toki Pona version is already there, and reads:

mi ale li jan soweli. mi ale li tan ma.

which means “We are all werewolves. We come from the countryside”. :?

FWIW, my translation is mi ale li jan li lon ma wan
janMato
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Re: How to say: "We are humans and we are from Earth"

Post by janMato »

>mi ale li jan soweli. mi ale li tan ma.
>We are all werewolves. We come from the countryside”.

Yes. It means that. It also means "we all are people of the human sort. We all are from the earth". It means a lot of other things, too.

>FWIW, my translation is mi ale li jan li lon ma wan.

That means, "We all are people on one land"
It also means "We are somebody on the first outdoor area"

This exercise can be done with any gloss of a toki pona sentence where you swap out translated words with one of the other possible definitions of a word.

telo nasa is also "foolish sauce" The language puts most of the burden of discarding unlikely meanings on the listener.
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