Toki Pona

It may be helpful to reference the vocabulary sheet for this section.

Toki pona has this basic sentence structure:

(person you are speaking to) o (context) la (subject) li (verb) e (object)

Any part not necessary can be omitted and li can be omitted if your subject is mi or sina.

To use "is" you omit the object.

telo li jelo - The water is yellow

mi tawa - I am going

It follows noun adjective order so a blue whale would be described as a whale blue. This can also be used for "to want" and other similar words for instance:

mi wani tawa e tomo - I want to go home

Prepositions are used similar to English for instance:

mi tawa kepeken tomo tawa - I move using a vehicle

Questions are done using seme to replace the unknown for instance:

sina toki tawa seme - You are talking to who? / Who are you talking to?

To reduce ambiguity toki pona uses of(pi) as a way of grouping descriptors for instance:

tomo pi telo nasa - Bar - literally building of crazy liquid/building of alcohol

vs.

tomo telo nasa - Maybe a silly water filtration plant?

As is clear of(pi) makes these distinctions easy.

Numbers:

It is recomended that you don't use numbers in toki pona.

If you have to here they are:

• nanpa wan - one
• nanpa tu - two
• nanpa luka - five
• nanpa mute - twenty
• nanpa ali - 100

As is clear some numbers are missing to make it more clear you can use addition ex:

• nanpa tu wan - three
• nanpa tu tu - four
• nanpa ali mute luka - 125

This is inconvenient so it is best to just avoid numbers.

Toki Pona was designed so that you would communicate only the necessary information and nothing more.

Toki pona's primary strategy in being oligoisolating is to have many different definitions for words and have people figure out what you are trying to say based on context. For instance telo(liquid) can mean water, lake, river, or milk depending on context. When more context is required you can use adjectives.

Toki pona's morpheme combination can make a lot of sense for instance "tomo tawa" means moving structure or vehicle. However there are some combinations that make less sense like "telo nasa" literally silly liquid meaning alcohol. Toki pona is however somewhat consistent as "kasi nasa" meaning silly plant means cannabis. As such there is a certain level of consistency to it but it does make it harder to memorize as you have to remember these combinations of words.

Source - http://tokipona.net/tp/janpije/dictionary.php