Dialogue between Tony and Sonja

Toki Pona news: new website, upcoming book, announcements from the language's creator
Tokiponaj novaĵoj: nova TTT-ejo, venonta libro, aperonta libro, anoncoj de la kreinto de la lingvo
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Sonja
Posts: 22
Joined: Thu Jul 02, 2009 1:17 pm

Dialogue between Tony and Sonja

Post by Sonja »

Random chat in #learnanylanguage on IRC Freenode

[13:48] <Amikeco> hello Sonja, and welcome to our channel! :)
[13:48] <Amikeco> where are you from?
[13:49] <Sonja> Kanado
[13:49] <Sonja> land of salmon
[13:49] <Sonja> and muslims
[13:49] <Sonja> and Inuit
[13:51] <Amikeco> so you are a muslim salmon? :p
[13:51] <Sonja> naw
[13:51] <Sonja> but i like to eat salmon
[13:51] <Sonja> and i like to befriend muslims
[13:52] <Sonja> or at least try to understand islam
[13:52] <Amikeco> be careful, a bear might be grumpy because you steal te salmons
[13:53] <Amikeco> for me the abrahamitic religions are like the romance language family: the same base, many common principles but also quite a few distinct differences ;)
[13:53] <Amikeco> i don't adhere to any of those, though
[13:55] <Expug> haha a religions' family like there are language families
[13:57] <Amikeco> Expug: but that's what they are!
[13:58] <Amikeco> you also have uncountable dialects, they just call it "denominations"
[13:58] <Expug> i knew that, but somehow I hadn't realized that
[13:58] <Expug> there are some pidgins and creoles too
[13:58] <Sonja> like toki poner?
[13:59] <Amikeco> this is a completely unrelated experiment which had been developed for art and recreational purposes
[14:00] * Amikeco offers mashed potatoes to Sonja for her salmon :D
[14:01] <Sonja> what experiment Amikeco?
[14:02] <Amikeco> toki pona is neither a language nor a pidgin, it is not even meant to be a full-flegded language, the creator just made it up for fun, you are not supposed to be able to express everything with it
[14:02] <Sonja> ohhh, teach me more
[14:02] <Sonja> you seem to know a lot about it
[14:03] <Amikeco> it is a kind of meditation, you can learn to think in new ways
[14:03] <Amikeco> oh, i'm sorry, but i can't help you with that but there are numerous pages of fans
[14:03] <Amikeco> i think the author has everything online
[14:03] <Sonja> cool :P
[14:04] <Sonja> does the author ever come in here?
[14:04] <Amikeco> no, and i don't recall her name right now but wikipedia surely knows it :D
[14:04] <Sonja> i see :) thank you for sharing your knowledge
[14:08] <Amikeco> Sonja: in theory you could express everything in toki pona but you'd need to make very long descriptions and you only have a few roots compared to more developed languages, so it is very likely that the other person won't be able to follow your train of thought once it gets too complicated ;)
[14:09] <Sonja> so in a sense it's a failed project if you can only talk about very rudimentary ideas
[14:09] <Amikeco> no, it is not failed, this is the purpose of it
[14:09] <Amikeco> you are not supposed to express complicated things
[14:09] <Sonja> ahh
[14:10] <Amikeco> it's like juggling for your brain cells
[14:10] <Sonja> so it's a form of exercise to balance your brain
[14:10] <Amikeco> or like a mandala
[14:10] <Sonja> mandalas are beautiful. a model for the universe. microcosm.
[14:10] <Amikeco> that's at least my opinion, others might think differently
[14:11] <Sonja> i never heard toki pona compared to a mandala before, and i find that analogy very beautiful
[14:11] <Sonja> thanks for the compliment
[14:12] <Sonja> Amikeco: may i post our chat log in the toki pona forums?
[14:13] <Sonja> it was interesting for me to hear your description of my language
[14:13] <Amikeco> Sonja: oh, are you actually the creator? O_O
[14:13] <Sonja> :P
[14:15] <Amikeco> Sonja: feel free, i don't have said anything i should be ashamed for :D well, except for the part of the bear wanting to steal your salmon :p
[14:18] <Sonja> hehe
[14:23] <Sonja> amikeco what is your full name? or do you prefer i just call you Amikeco?
[14:23] <Amikeco> Sonja: oh, i'm Tony on Abavagada's board
[14:23] <Sonja> what board is that
[14:24] <Amikeco> Sonja: Abavagada is building a language website with lots of addons like tv, radio, exercises, vocabulary games and so on: http://www.parleremo.org/
[14:26] <Fivesheep> toki pona is fun.. it could only count from 1 to 10?
[14:27] <Amikeco> Fivesheep: some fully developed languages can't do that :p
janMato
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Re: Dialogue between Tony and Sonja

Post by janMato »

I think he got the current zeitgeist of toki pona right.

re: did toki pona fail at anything
Well, tp didn't have a clear cut goal like Esperanto (world peace and lots of Esperanto users) or like Lojban (no more ambiguity). Without knowing what the specific goal is, it isn't really meaningful to say it failed or succeeded. Or did you have a specific, testable goal in mind?

re: toki pona for complex concepts
There are a couple of characteristic features of toki pona, and if any of them were relaxed, then toki pona could be a general purpose language for concepts of any level of complexity.

Loan words via proper modifiers - but then the word could be really high.
Numbers- the proposals are in place, but it seems even modern people don't need numbers much on discussion forums.
Compound words and other phrases that just require memorization- I think this is what people are using to deal with complex concepts. If one isn't allowed to think first than telo nasa is booze (as is it were a compound word), and then think of peculiar ketchup secondary possibility (as if this wasn't a well recognized set phrase), then it truly would be hard to discuss much complicated without in person context. One persons transparent compound is another gibberish.
Kuti
Posts: 358
Joined: Sun Feb 28, 2010 3:48 pm

Re: Dialogue between Tony and Sonja

Post by Kuti »

MESSAGE DELETED
Last edited by Kuti on Thu Feb 01, 2018 4:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
janLuka
Posts: 19
Joined: Wed Dec 08, 2010 11:42 am

Re: Dialogue between Tony and Sonja

Post by janLuka »

mi pilin e ni: jan ken toki e lili kepeken toki pona kepeken ilo nanpa taso. taso, jan ken toki kepeken toki luka en kalama toki Intonation la jan ken toki e mute kepeken toki pona.

mi ken toki kepeken toki pona lon ilo Internet taso. ni li ike tawa mi.

How unfortunate that the one language that needs context is mostly used in situations with limited context. ike a!

ni li musi tawa mi: jan Expug en jan Amikeco li pilin e ni: jan Sonja li jan seme?...mi sona e ni: jan wan li pali e toki pona...jan ni li jan seme? :lol:
janKipo
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Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2009 2:20 pm

Re: Dialogue between Tony and Sonja

Post by janKipo »

ike a! ni li lon. kapisi la ni li kama tan ni: mi mute li sitelen e toki lili, mi mute li sitelen e toki suli la kama sike li kama. tan ni la mi mute li ken sitelen e toki pi ijo mute mute.
rdmiller3
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Location: Muskego, Wisconsin US
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Re: Dialogue between Tony and Sonja

Post by rdmiller3 »

a a a a!
jan Sonja li nasa.
"o pana e sona pi toki pona tawa mi."
a a a a!
Kuti
Posts: 358
Joined: Sun Feb 28, 2010 3:48 pm

Re: Dialogue between Tony and Sonja

Post by Kuti »

ni li musi mute tawa mi kin :lol:
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