Modern languages are cluttered with complex ways to express the simplest things. What is a geologist but a ‘person of earth knowledge’? Is there any useful difference between the words ‘big’, ‘large’ and ‘huge’?
Simplify your thoughts. Less is more.
Design
Toki Pona is semantically, lexically, and phonetically minimalist. The simplest and fewest parts are used to create the maximum effect. The entire language uses only 120 words and 14 letters of the alphabet.
Each word has been carefully selected to cover a broad range of meanings. For example, kili means any fruit or vegetable, which includes turnips, kumquats and even lingonberries. A lipu is any document, whether a printed book, postcard or clay tablet. A jan (pronounced ‘yan’) is any human being, regardless of whether they are Muslim or atheist, black or white, rich or poor.
In many ways, Toki Pona resembles a pidgin. When people from different cultures need to communicate, they must focus on the elements that are most universal to our human experience.
Toki Pona offers a path for semantic reduction. Just as we can rewrite a mathematical fraction like 4/8 as 1/2, we can distill our thoughts to their most fundamental units to discover what things really mean. We can understand complex ideas in terms of their smaller parts.
An inherent idea of goodness is transparent throughout the language. The expression for friend literally means ‘good person’. Happiness is ‘feel good’. Toki Pona itself means ‘good language’ or ‘simple language’.
Although the vocabulary and grammar are very simple, the language does contain a few essential syntax rules to keep a sentence together. For example, the particle li separates the subject from the verb.
Limitations
By being so general and vague, Toki Pona often lacks the ability to distinguish finer shades of meaning. For example, by grouping every possible bird species into the single word waso, we eliminate the need to learn hundreds of vocabulary items. However, we are also left incapable of distinguishing between eagles and chickens. The closest translations might be ‘strong bird’ (waso wawa) and ‘stupid bird’ (waso nasa).
Toki Pona has a rather narrow range of functions. Although it is very easy to meditate and communicate honest thoughts and everyday activities in Toki Pona, it is impossible to translate a chemical textbook or legal document in the language without significant losses. Such texts are products of the complex, modern civilization we live in and are not suited for a cute, little language like Toki Pona.
As an artistic language with limited means of expression, Toki Pona does not strive to convey every single facet and nuance of human communication. Nevertheless, the results we can achieve with so
few elements prove to be very interesting, if not spiritually insightful.
If English is a thick novel, then Toki Pona is a haiku.
Benefits
Training your mind to think in Toki Pona can lead to deeper insights. If many of life’s problems are created by our excess thoughts, then Toki Pona filters out the noise and points to the centre of things. Many of these principles were inspired by the Dao De Jing, which teaches, “Can you coax your mind from its wandering and keep to the original Oneness?”
For example, what is a ‘bad friend’? The Toki Pona expression for friend is jan pona, or literally ‘good person’. You quickly realize that a bad friend is a contradiction in itself. In another example, the word wile means both ‘to need’ and ‘to want’. This helps us bring our desires in alignment with our actual needs.
Toki Pona has a strong focus on context. From the perspective of a passenger, a car might be tomo tawa (an indoor compartment that moves). The driver might see it as ilo tawa (machine for going). If you’re crossing the street and — bam! — a car hits you, then it might be a kiwen tawa (hard object that moves).
The speaker and listener understand the meaning of a word through its context. Toki Pona promotes mindfulness. Become fully aware of the present moment.
Napoleon said: "A person who speaks two languages is worth two people."
If you have decided to learn Toki Pona Language, you should also look at articles Toki Pona Sign Language and Toki Pona Dictionary.