The artist is at work! Letter names

[janMato]

It looks like the names of letters are proper modifiers.

http://en.tokipona.org/wiki/Alphabet

mi pana e pona tawa jan Sonja!

[Logomachist]

I wonder: what is the value of naming the letters, especially for such a minimalist language?

[jan musi pi len noka]

quoting jan Mato

I don't remember if we have directions but lemme list what we are lacking in terms of generally agreed upon word sets: numbers over 159, months, days of the week, names of the letters, directions of the compass, family relationship names beyond the nuclear family, units of measure--foot, mile, hour, minute--and the grammatical construction for expressing them (your vectors, tensors and the like) ...shoot I'm forgetting something. Is it really this peculiar set of items that cause depression?

tp is used by modern people on the internet. This will shape the language. Sometimes, one can say, "If tp doesn't have the means to say it, don't say it" and much of the rest of the time the gaps are significant barriers to talking about ordinary things. The circumlocutions for dealing with spelling are often vastly more complicated that just picking a convention and sticking with it, but as of the moment, only jan Sonja or jan Pije have the clout to establish a convention most people would follow.

- Military Alphabet
- Phonecian inspired names

tp also has some design goals we can infer from everything written about it-- to help with depression, to achieve a mental state where things feel simple again, etc.

There is another question here, "Is tp as simple as it can be?" No, most people figure it has about 75 words more than necessary, has more grammar than a pigden, and is massively complex compared to an animal communication system.

[jan Josan]

quoting jan Mato

Sina pana sin e toki pi jan sama sina?

[jan musi pi len noka]

quoting jan Mato

Sina pana sin e toki pi jan sama sina?

ni li lon. mi jan musi pi len noka.

[jan Josan]

a musi. All i could come up with was "pants-clown." But I knew it was you for sure by your second post when you used a period after ni instead of a colon in a "x ni: y" construction. Do you do that intentionally?

[jan musi pi len noka]

a musi. All i could come up with was "pants-clown." But I knew it was you for sure by your second post when you used a period after ni instead of a colon in a "x ni: y" construction. Do you do that intentionally?

Not really as an opinion on how things should be. English : implies we're in the same sentence and e ni: isn't merging two sentences into one. So : is an alternative to . that means these two sentences are related and . means, I'm at the end of the sentence (which I really am)

* mi lukin e ni: sowli li musi e ni: jan li pali e ni: kasi li kama suli. ( NP V e ni: S e ni: S e ni S)

I suppose it would be handy to use punctuation for reference switch particles, since : already is sort of a primative sort of reference switch thingy.

* jan li pali; jan li musi. This man works, the (same) man plays [So why not just use "ona"?]
jan li pali. jan li musi. This man works. This man or a different plays.
jan li pali. ona li musi. This man works. He plays (too). Fine, "ona" manages to pragmatically synch up with man instead of pali.

jan musi pi len noka li musi kepeken ilo sona. jan li wile ala pali. Sock puppet wants to play on the computer and this guy (or some other guy) wants not do his job.
vs
jan musi pi len noka li musi kepeken ilo sona. ona li wile ala pali. What was ona referring to? jan, len or ilo? Computers often don't want to work either.

[jan Josan]

Well all of that would go out the window as soon as toki pona is spoken, so I wouldn't try to encode any more than is already there. And playing with refernce switch particles sounds like a bad idea for a language that is already ambiguous.

jan li pali. jan li musi.
same man-->jan li pali li musi.
different man --> jan li pali. jan ante li musi.
no need to reinvent the wheel here.


...What was ona referring to? jan, len or ilo? Computers often don't want to work either...

This is why it is important to think about your reader; how many ways can what you write in tp be misconstrued? toki pona is so easy to write but not so easy to understand unless it is written carefully and written well.

[jan musi pi len noka]

Well all of that would go out the window as soon as toki pona is spoken, so I wouldn't try to encode any more than is already there.

That's also true for comma, period, colon, upper case on proper modifiers. Same story for quotes on direct speech.

And playing with refernce switch particles sounds like a bad idea for a language that is already ambiguous.

I agree, no feature should be added just for the hell of it, but why would reference switch particles make things more ambiguous?

This is why it is important to think about your reader; how many ways can what you write in tp be misconstrued? toki pona is so easy to write but not so easy to understand unless it is written carefully and written well.

Yup, I suppose a better counter example would be one with rather long sentences.

[jan Josan]

That's also true for comma, period, colon, upper case on proper modifiers. Same story for quotes on direct speech.

Commas and periods would naturally become pauses so I think they would be retained (but probably merge, no different than any other language). Colons might be lost or also become pauses, but I imagine they might translate through a stress or pitch change, hard to say. Quotes would be lost (as has been discussed before with "toki e ni:" vs. "toki e nimi ni:").

I agree, no feature should be added just for the hell of it, but why would reference switch particles make things more ambiguous?

I mean to say, specifically, trying to play around with the grammar or punctuation in order to add a level of meaning that isn't already there using cannon tp.