Toki Pona
Why learn Toki Pona?
Toki Pona is the second most spoken constructed language - one that is not natural and was created artificially. With a vocabulary of no more than 200 words and simple grammar, it's very easy to learn and a great addition to the list of languages you can speak.
Where is Toki Pona spoken?
Toki Pona is primarily spoken in dedicated Internet communities, such as the r/tokipona subreddit or the ma pona Discord server.
What will you learn in this lesson?
In this lesson you will learn the entire grammar of Toki Pona as well some vocabulary. The entire process will be complete in 8 steps described in 8 sections.
Useful tools
telo misikeke
Wikipesija
nimi.li
lipu nimi
Pronunciation
Toki Pona pronunciation is entirely phonetic and based on the International Phonetic Alphabet. Every letter in the alphabet is pronounced the same way as its corresponding IPA symbol in every word. This means that A is always pronounced as /a/, J is always pronounced as /j/ and so on.
The letter Y appears in one joke word (yupekosi). It is the only exception to the pronunciation rules as it is not pronounced at all.
Word obscurity
Toki Pona does not have a fixed number of words. There are about 131 words used and understood by more than 70% of speakers - the core and common words, however there are also uncommon and obscure - they are rare, but generally understood by most fluent speakers. Lastly, there are proposed words - understood by less than 5% of all speakers.
You have to decide yourself whether you want to use the uncommon, obscure or proposed words alongside those in the standard dictionary. While some of them may bring benefits such as more precise meanings and easier use of the language, they won't be understood by a majority of speakers and Tokiponists generally recommend not to use them.
This course will use words and grammatical features up to the obscure level, therefore words like jume, ka, or molusa will not be discussed.
Ambiguity
There are no actual parts of speech in Toki Pona. Any word in the dictionary can be understood as a noun, verb, adjective, adverb, interjection or particle depending on context and its placement in a sentence.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Toki_Pona/toki
Here you can see an example with the word toki. It can convey the meaning of "a conversation", "to speak", "hello", or "something verbal".
There will be more information on how to tell which meaning is being used by the speaker in the Forming a sentence section.
Numerals
Toki Pona uses two number systems - simple and advanced. Any numbers from both systems can be placed next to each other to add them up.
The simple system uses only three words - wan, tu and mute. Wan means "one", tu means "two" and mute means anything above two. Those are the only numbers in the system and the only way to count.
The advanced system keeps the meanings of wan, and tu, but specifies that mute means 20. There are also new number words added in this system - ale, meaning 100, and luka, meaning 5. They aren't actually completely new words, rather numerical interpretations added to the words for "universe" and "hand".
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Toki_pona_-_b%E1%BA%A3ng_s%E1%BB%91_t%E1%BB%AB_0_%C4%91%E1%BA%BFn_9.jpg
There are more numbers in the advanced number system if uncommon and obscure words are included. The obscure word for three is san and the obscure word for four is po.
The word ale is often used for years as a modifier that adds two zeros to the base number. For example, the year 2000 would be expressed as mute ale (lit. 20 + 100 or "twenty hundred").
Forming a sentence
Sentences in Toki Pona require careful construction using several auxiliary words to specify which word is used as which part of speech. The general word order in Toki Pona is subject-verb-object, just like in English, however this can change.
I love plants.
mi olin e kasi.
Here you can see a basic example sentence. One auxiliary word is used here - that is e. E specifies the object of a sentence, marking the word after it as a noun. This is why we know that kasi in this context means "plants" and not "to plant".
It has to be used before all objects and after all verbs, unless there are no objects.
He is nice.
ona li pona.
A human made this.
jan li pali e ni.
Here are two basic sentences with the auxiliary word li. Li introduces predicates in a sentence. It is placed after the subject and before the predicate that applies to that subject.
Li is never used when the only subject is mi or sina, those being the first person and second person pronouns in Toki Pona. This often creates ambiguity, for example the phrase meaning "I eat" could also be interpreted as "I am food".
The word itself is often translated simply as "be" or "is" because it functions similarly to how those words work in English, however this translation is discouraged by fluent Tokiponists as it can make it more difficult to understand more complex Toki Pona sentences where li serves a different purpose.
Bad clothes
len ike
Adjectives, adverbs and any words that are intended to describe something are grouped into one category of descriptors in Toki Pona.
Descriptors are always placed after the word they describe. You can see an example here with the phrase "bad clothes".
Me and you are together.
mi en sina li wan.
This person is weird and evil.
jan ni li nasa li ike.
She has a fruit and water.
ona jo e kili e telo.
En is an auxiliary that is most often translated as "and", however it does not have all of the same functions as "and" in English. By definition, it separates multiple subjects of the same sentences. You can see this in the first example.
Separating multiple objects and predicates is not done using en. As you know, predicates are introduced using li and objects are marked with e. To include multiple objects or predicates in the same sentence, simply include multiple uses of li or e, one after the other, with a new object or predicate after each. You can see this in action in the second and third examples.
I like cute animals.
mi la, soweli suwi li pona.
(lit. In the context of myself, cute animals are good.)
I slept before.
tenpo pini la, mi lape.
(lit. In the context of the past, I sleep.)
Here you can see examples with the auxiliary la. La is used to provide context to the sentence. Anything placed before la is context to anything placed after la.
This word is often used to provide tense to verbs. You can see this in the second example.
Eat up!
o moku!
The imperative mood can be formed by placing o before a word intended to be a verb. You can see an example here. The imperative marks the word after o as a verb in almost all sentences.
I know how to build houses.
mi sona pali e tomo.
Two words intended to be verbs can be placed next to each other. This will make the first word in the verb sequence a "pre-verb".
For example the word sona means "knowledge" or "to know", but when used as a pre-verb, it means "to know how to do X", with X being the verb that follows it.
Negation
All negation in the language is done via the word ala. It always negates any word before it. Here is an example with noun and verb negation.
This is not an animal.
ni li soweli ala.
She is not eating the fruit.
ona li moku ala e kili.
Questions
There are two types of questions that can be expressed in Toki Pona - yes/no questions and information questions.
Do you need food?
sina wile moku anu seme?
Do you need food?
sina wile ala wile moku?
Yes/no questions can be expressed by either adding "anu seme?" to an affirmative sentence or doubling the verb in that same sentence and placing ala between the double verbs.
To respond to yes/no questions, you repeat the verb that was used in the question. Alternatively, you can respond with either lon or ala for "yes" and "no" respectively, however this is not very common.
You use this tool.
sina kepeken e ilo ni.
(lit. you use tool this.)
Which tool do you use?
sina kepeken e ilo seme?
(lit. you use tool which?)
Information questions primarily use the question word seme, which literally translated to "what?" or "which?". Seme is used as an adjective or adverb that describes the word you ask about in your standard sentence. Here you can see an example with an affirmative sentence and the same sentence turned into a question.
Other question words such as "where?" or "when?" are formed by attaching seme to words that the question asks about. For example tenpo seme is translated as "when?" and literally means "what time?".
Finished 26/10/25.