Toki Pona Forums

A beginner here trying to get my head around some things.

1) Going multiple places. I know there’s no e after tawa, so does it work like this?

ona li tawa esun tawa tomo mi.

2) Going under, inside, around.

pipi li lon anpa kiwen. / the bug is under the rock.
pipi li tawa anpa kiwen. / the bug went under the rock. (or down the rock)
pipi li tawa anpa e kiwen. / the bug moved the rock down.

pipi li tawa poka kiwen. / the bug went around the rock.
pipi li lon poka kiwen. / the bug is next to the rock.

pipi li tawa insa ma poki. / the bug went inside the cave.
pipi li lon insa ma poki./ the bug is inside the cave.
(assuming inside needed to be specified).

Am I on the right track?

How about went through something?

Right track, just details mainly. Remember that ‘insa’ and ‘poka’ and the like are nouns and so what is attached to them is a modifier, which requires ‘pi’ if it is more than one word.
1. Here we have two predicates, ‘tawa esun’ and ‘tawa tomo mi’ Predicates are joined by putting a ‘li’ in front of each (special rules about ‘mi’ and ‘sina’, of course) so ‘ona li tawa esun li tawa tomo mi’. Depending on exactly what you mean and how rigorously you follow pu, you might also say there is just one going but to sucessive goals and thus ‘ona li tawa esun en tomo mi’

2 Okay but for ‘insa pi ma poki’ in the last two (other words for “cave” seem more natural but that is just habit)
‘poka’ is just ‘side’ not obviously “around” (which would prob be ‘sike’).
“through” is tricky often. some use ‘kepeken’ but I don’t quite see it in general.

Pona! Using "en" does feel neater to me, but it seems sensible to start out making sure I understand the strict rules before deciding what I'm willing to break

Well, the problem is that there is no strict rule. We are told to just add predicates one after the other. But what if the two predicates have the same DO: 'ona li pali e pan’ and ‘ona li moku e pan’ (with the same pan, but even putting it this way is suspicious, since there is never any mention of there being two sentences which are here combined; that is me writing grammars, not pu). Could we then say ‘ona li pali li moku e pan’? (maybe with an optional comma to let people know the ‘e pan’ doesn’t go with just the second verb)? pu says nothing about this; I say “sure, go ahead” and a bunch of other things as well. But, while my rules give all the pu cases, they also give things that pu doesn’t show, even if it also doesn’t prohibit them (it also gives some things that pu does prohibit, but those are about ‘mi and ‘sina’). But in practice you can use ‘en’ to join two DOs to the same verb (and even inside the ‘e’) or prepositional objects to the same preposition and so on. Running thrpugh all the cases is merely confusing.

janSali wrote:A beginner here trying to get my head around some things.

1) Going multiple places. I know there’s no e after tawa, so does it work like this?

ona li tawa esun tawa tomo mi.

toki, jan Sali o!

You can say: ona li tawa esun li tawa tomo mi.
And you can also say (why not?): ona li tawa esun, tawa tomo mi.
(I use a comma here in order to separate two prepositional phrases, but that doesn't seem mandatory.)

janSali wrote: 2) Going under, inside, around.

pipi li lon anpa kiwen. / the bug is under the rock.
pipi li tawa anpa kiwen. / the bug went under the rock. (or down the rock)
pipi li tawa anpa e kiwen. / the bug moved the rock down.

pipi li tawa poka kiwen. / the bug went around the rock.
pipi li lon poka kiwen. / the bug is next to the rock.

pipi li tawa insa ma poki. / the bug went inside the cave.
pipi li lon insa ma poki./ the bug is inside the cave.
(assuming inside needed to be specified).

Am I on the right track?

You're on the right track.

I would translate "pipi li tawa poka kiwen" though as "the bug went near the rock"/"the bug approached the rock".
You should also switch "ma poki" to "poki ma" (earthen pocket). I would probably try "lupa ma" (earthen hole). Plus, you need a "pi" before a noun phrase consisting of multiple words: "insa pi lupa ma". No "pi" is due if you just use "lupa": "insa lupa".
As you pointed out, "insa" may not be necessary after all. In this case "tawa lupa (ma)" and "lon lupa (ma)" would be enough.