Toki Pona: A Biased Introduction
Toki Pona has been a little obsession of mine since early 2021, though it's only recently that I've been
really committed to it. I now know a few tokiponists at my university, and I'm even hoping to start up a
Toki Pona club there!
But what even is it, and why should you care? Toki Pona is a constructed language, meaning it was developed intentionally by someone instead of naturally over generations. It was created to be as minimalist as possible, currently having only around 140 words! The first Toki Pona book says this was done as a way of decluttering thought, cutting out the unnecessary things in one's thoughts. While this is certainly true, one other thing that I feel is not talked about enough is how the language's size is itself an artistic statement. As I type this, and (likely) as you read this, there are plenty of people using Toki Pona’s miniscule vocabulary to have meaningful conversations! Isn’t it interesting? This could be a lesson on how overstuffed other languages are, or maybe on how adaptive the human mind can be for the sake of communication. Either way, the implications of this are fun to think about.
What I find most interesting about Toki Pona is how creative it forces you to be. Most languages I speak or (try to) learn have separate words for many different concepts. For example, the concepts of bikes and scooters are extremely similar, and their uses are identical, but the words are nothing alike. In toki pona, “ilo tawa” (moving tool) could cover both! If they must be differentiated between, then perhaps bike could be “ilo tawa pi sike noka” (foot-circle moving tool), and scooter could be “ilo tawa pi noka kepeken ma” (foot-uses-ground moving tool). Or maybe something else entirely! The beauty of Toki Pona lies in its reliance on context. What I’m trying to say is that one must consider the purpose of any object they wish to describe instead of remembering the word for it.
If any of this interested you, please consider learning Toki Pona, and thank you for reading!