mi sona ala

[soweliPeka]

[janKipo]

pu has been less unifying than might have been hoped. It is useful to note that jan Sonja says explicitly that it is (just) how she uses tp. Since she started the language, her usage deserves respect. But she was absent from the community for large parts of a decade and has not acquainted herself with what happened in that period, so her usage does not always agree with that of those who worked through that period. Nor does her usage override that of the old hands, since she did not work through the problems that those hands solved. In short, pu is a good start with needs to be used carefully and tentatively in several places (starting with the vocabulary -- several words she leaves out are surely not going to disappear, several she combines will remain separate and one she adds will not catch on except, as here, as an English expression referring somewhat dismissively to the book).

I will not get into an argument with anyone about private philosophical/psychological terminology; that field is too littered with nonsense. I take it she is using 'kon' for some psycho-spiritual "reality", not particularly a biological one (although that would make sense, given the equation of breath with life), So she is comparing her inner experiences with the external (suprapersonal) aspects here. Seems a fair (at least, usual) game to play.

Everybody who speaks English uses 'olin' for "likes a lot" occasionally. I wish she hadn't done it in a definitive place, but she did, and it was a screw-up.

Thoughts are a big topic. Here she seems to be talking not so much about the general process but about the particular cases of formulating then into coherent systems, capable of outward expression, even if never so expressed. So, she uses the terminology of external expression but marks it as internal only. The simplification is linguistic in nature, so the linguitic nature of what is simplified is made explicit. But these are all pilin nonetheless.

You are welcome to rant about pu here all you want. I am not a great fan, as noted.

[soweliPeka]

[janKipo]

I don't think that pu will be divisive either. There are too many people from before forcing newbs kicking and screaming into the developed language. And, to be sure, there just isn't that much difference, mainly vocabulary and a few minor oddities of rules (no 'e' with kepeken', for one that turns up a lot). Or the 'olin' one, which is, of course, and English problem and we are getting more folk from other languages (though most know English as well, of course).
Philosophy is a bitch in tp, though actually Existentialism is easier than some -- analytic philosophies tend to hinge on fine shades of meaning and tp doesn't have any. But existentialist thought is fuzzier and so fit in better with tp (but it is also gloomier, which tp is supposed not to be).

I like some of the oldish words (mainly ones that came in after I did but didn't make the pu cut) like 'namako' and 'monsuta', but the ones that were gone before I came don't attract me in the same way (I have toyed with 'pake' and sort like a word for "square"), Some, like the next couple of numerals, I don't care for at all (the number problem needs a better solution than these band-aids). Ditto some of the other new ones that weren't around long, like 'apeja'. And, of course, there is 'pu' in its final incarnation. Yuck! Ptui! I liked it as a replacement for 'ni:' and didn't mind it as a word for texts. And I kinds like your suggested expansion on the notion, but it still seems too specific in a language of broadest possible generalizations.

I am, of course, going to continue using the words I like in the way I learned them -- or came to use them after a lot of wear and tear -- and ignore pu when it is inconvenient to follow it.

[jan_Anti]

After reading Pu last summer, I made a document with the new official dictionary and some observations about POS and syntax that I inferred from reading the texts. There is also a short list that highlights the differences between Pu Toki Pona and what I've dubbed Vernacular Toki Pona (i.e. Toki Pona as it has been used by the community for several years, c.f. ). Now that the forums are back, I can finally share it:

Now, don't start hatin' on me -- I personally disagree with most of the changes. Lukin and sona now meaning 'to try' and 'to know how to' is neat, but that's about it. This was just made for people who don't have the book and would like a quick summary of what changes Pu introduced.

[jan Wesi]

[janKipo]

a few notes on vernacular tp.
1 so far as I can see no words have fallen out of use since the appearance of pu, we need to keep the full array available.
2 POS give the basic form for the words but almost every word can perform in any role, it's meaning derived from its POS. Prepositions do keep their complements in every role, but they, too, can be transitive verbs as well.
3 'anpa' has always been a noun and need 'lon' to be part of a prepositional phrase. similarly, 'Lon' has always been a preposition.
4 'kepeken' is still permitted for languages.
5 'lukin' doesn't seem to be used as a modal, but 'alasa' is.
6 the use of broad quantifiers for specific numbers is maybe even a worse idea than 'pu'
7 prepositional phrases as modifiers of nouns have always been a part of tp, the only change has been to make them conform to the 'pi' rule.