derivative of toki pona and Esperanto.

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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Raphaël
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derivative of toki pona and Esperanto.

Post by Raphaël »

I would like to create a derivative of toki pona and Esperanto. It will must be precise like Esperanto, and as beautiful as toki pona. I think Esperanto sounds very bad, because there's prefix and suffix in the words who mess up the words in question, for example: la malbela instruistoj mangxas la malbonan kukojn: the ugly teachers are eating the bad cakes. If someone has an idea he'll be welcome.
janKipo
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Re: derivative of toki pona and Esperanto.

Post by janKipo »

A look at the DNA suggests that such a cross would either be stillborn or sterile: tp has a very restricted vocabulary, Eo a practically unlimitedly open one; tp has no cases or tenses, Eo several of each; tp has a rigid word order, Eo (in principle, at least) a relatively free one; tp has no word building, Eo a mass of affixes for derivations and some flatout combination technique; tp has a small phoneme set, Eo a large one by most standards; tp has fairly rigid word structure, Eo has few easily described restrictions on word structure;tp is a language aimed at getting by, Eo is about doing it right.
All that being said, however, I wonder what you envision this hybrid to be like.
janMato
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Re: derivative of toki pona and Esperanto.

Post by janMato »

Then relex Esperanto with the phonotactics of toki pona. A relex of course is just replacing all the words of one language while leaving the word order, syntax, etc in place. The advantage of a relex is that you could probably write a machine transliterator/translator to translate from Esperanto to toki-eo.

What wouldn't be quick is picking out suitable words for each Esperanto word. I suppose one could use the foreign word transliteration rules, but that is a bit pointless because I can't usually recognize words after they've been boiled down to the letters available in toki pona.

The result would be a language definition as a final product, and would be unlikely to attract fans. There are tons of better Esperantos, all failures because languages are like malls and markets, no one wants to go to the smallest one. For a new language to take hold, it has to have a marketing angle that is significantly different from existing ones.
Tomaniki
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Re: derivative of toki pona and Esperanto.

Post by Tomaniki »

I would like to create a derivative of toki pona and Esperanto. It will must be precise like Esperanto, and as beautiful as toki pona. I think Esperanto sounds very bad, because there's prefix and suffix in the words who mess up the words in question, for example: la malbela instruistoj mangxas la malbonan kukojn: the ugly teachers are eating the bad cakes. If someone has an idea he'll be welcome.
I will try to be less pessimistic than jan Kipo and jan Mato. So, it sounds like you like the grammar of Esperanto, but the vocabulary of toki pona. So, first we'd decide to follow the -o is always a noun, -a is always an adjective, and similar rules from esperanto. If we did that, "toki" would become toko (language), toka (verbal), toki (to talk), tokis (talked), tokos (will talk), etc.

The word for "hope" (espero), does not exist in the toki pona root words. You would have to combine pilin and pona. ponpilo works best, treating pon- as a prefix and pilo as "feeling". Thus espero:ponpilo::Esperanto:ponpilanto

Now, to combine suffixes and prefixes. Instead of mal-, we could use ik- (from ike). So, "bad" would be "ikpona" and cold would be "iksela" (ike + seli + -a). Whether the stress goes on the first or the penultimate syllable would be of personal preference. Either rule can be adopted into ponpilanto.

Extrapolating these ideas, to say "The ugly teachers are eating the bad cakes", you would probably get something like: li pansonoj iklukaj mukas li suwo ikpona. If you wanted to say, "You will have a new house by the ocean", vi jos wan tomo sina pok li sultelo. In my opinion, these words seem just as disgusting as Esperanto ones; however, perhaps you could pick and choose which words and grammatical structures you will cross over, so that you get the most beautiful words from both toki pona and Esperanto.
janSilipu
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Re: derivative of toki pona and Esperanto.

Post by janSilipu »

I would have supposed that tp, if it got affixed, would put the adjectival ones as suffixes (so pilpono, ponika) and thenominalizing ones as prefixes, following the habits for word combinations. But I don't know if that is the way things usually go in languages.
Tomaniki
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Re: derivative of toki pona and Esperanto.

Post by Tomaniki »

janSilipu wrote:I would have supposed that tp, if it got affixed, would put the adjectival ones as suffixes (so pilpono, ponika) and thenominalizing ones as prefixes, following the habits for word combinations. But I don't know if that is the way things usually go in languages.
That actually sounds better. I was trying to think in Esperanto and write in toki pona, so I might have gotten confused.

In that case that sentence would be: li sonpanoj lukikaj mukas li suwo ponika. It looks a little better in pilponanto than ponpilanto. One would just have to realize that a word like sonpanoj is a combination of sonoj (knower) and pana (giving), not pano (giver) and sonaj (knowing). A knower that gives (a teacher) might have a different connatation than a giver who knows (a manipulator?).

Hmm, the ambiguity between mixing the two languages would be very high. One would need to standardize the meaning of each word (like they've done for Esperanto) in order for Pilponanto to work.
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