Would a language with just 123 words be easy to learn?
Tuesday, 28 July, 2015
https://www.disassociated.com/2015/07/28/would-a-language-with-just-123-words-be-easy-to-learn/
#level123
Monday, November 16, 2009
simplify the language: Toki Pona
Toki Pona = simple language or good language, was created to say the maximum using the minimum: 123 words and 14 sounds.
Toki Pona is based on the spontaneous tradition of creating a common language by people who speak different languages.
It focuses on the universal elements of life: person, food, water, good, giving, sleeping, ... and eliminates all concepts that go beyond the basic needs of survival and communication.
The fundamental concept is Pona = good, simple.
It is a language that, instead of disconnecting from direct experience through abstract and complex concepts, reconnects speech to the environment in which it occurs, now to communication.
Its 123 words have very different origins .
Google Translate of the Portuguese blog article at
entitled:
simplificar a linguagem: Toki Pona
In A Language With Only 123 Words, Less Is More
ROMA PANGANIBAN | JULY 20, 2015
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/66403/language-only-123-words-less-more
What is Toki Pona?
Latest news (updated December 17, 2012)
Latest news will appear at the root site http://tokipona.org.
This subsite http://en.tokipona.org will be kept as an archive of old information.
I will try to be on IRC tomorrow if anyone needs me or wants to help with the current activities.
I don't really use the forums, but feel free to use them. I won't remove them.
jan Sonja
What is Toki Pona? (old page)
A simple language
Toki Pona is a simple language designed to express the most, using the least. The entire language has only 123 words and 14 sounds.
The grammar, although different from English, is very regular and easy to learn.
Universal building blocks
Historically, when people from different cultures came into contact, one approach to find common ground and share ideas was to develop a basic pidgin language.
Toki Pona continues in this tradition, focusing on universal elements of human life: person, food, water, good, give, sleep, etc.
Toki Pona eliminates all more advanced concepts that are not necessary for basic survival and communication.
To form a more complex meaning, you can easily combine more basic words.
alcohol "crazy water"
friend "good person"
geology "earth knowledge"
girl "little woman"
happy "feel good"
teach "give knowledge"
The name toki pona itself means "good language" or "simple language".
Philosophy of pona
Toki Pona's most fundamental value is pona or good, which goes hand in hand with the simple way of life behind the language. The language is designed to steer us towards positive and constructive thinking. Many expressions celebrate and focus on this good:
pona good, great, cool, thanks
suno pona good sun, good day
lape pona good sleep, good night, sweet dreams
ale li pona all is well, life is good, it's all good, everything will be OK
moku pona good food, bon appétit, enjoy your meal
tawa pona good going, good bye, have a good trip, farewell
mute pona good amount, enough
ante pona to change in a good way, adapt
Living in the now
Since Toki Pona reduces communication to its most basic units, Toki Pona words are often vague and can have many different translations in English.
The word toki, for example, can mean talk, speak, say, communication or language. Of course all these concepts go back to the same fundamental idea, and that is why they are united under one Toki Pona word.
Because of this, as a speaker, you rely a lot on context to interpret what is going on. You become connected to the world around you. Instead of detaching yourself from the direct experience of life with abstract and complex concepts, you learn to listen to people and directly connect to your surroundings.
Toki Pona is also an introspective language, in that many idioms focus on the self. For example, a statement like sina pona, literally "you are good", always recognizes the speaker's values first, i.e. "In my experience, you are good." or in plain English "I like you".
Meaning of life
A lot of life wisdom has been "built into" Toki Pona. Training your mind to think in Toki Pona can lead to many deeper insights about yourself or the world around you. In our modern times, we seem to make life so complicated, and it is easy to lose touch with our basic origins. Indeed, they say that most of life's problems we create ourselves, e.g. in our frenetic and always accelerating quest for "progress". When you break down a complex situation to its fundamental Toki Pona words, it can often become more clear, and you can check if are in a good direction.
Take for example the concept of a "bad friend". The Toki Pona word for friend is jan pona, or literally "good person". You quickly realize that a bad friend is a contradiction in itself. If this person is truly bad to you, perhaps it is time to help him come back to a positive and constructive life path, or maybe it is time to let go of this negative person in your life.
Honesty
A classic example of this can be seen when translating to plain English the doublespeak that large organizations use to manipulate and dehumanize people:
"downsizing" mass firing of employees
"collateral damage" killing of civilians
"pre-emptive war" invasion of a foreign country
Toki Pona eliminates this excess jargon or fluff and instead points to the centre and nature of things. It can become a sort of "yoga for the mind". Instead of getting caught in negative thoughts and anxiety, you learn to relax, meditate and explore your relationship to life itself. Many of these principles were inspired by Taoism, which values a simple, honest life and non-interference with the natural flow of things, as well as other spiritual paths.
#TokiPona #janSonja #nimi123 #selo123 #level123 #anno2012
NOTA BENE : jan Sonja used jan Sonja as #signature on this page
Would a language with just 123 words be easy to learn?
Tuesday, 28 July, 2015
Made up of just one hundred and twenty three words, Toki Pona, created by Toronto based linguist Sonja Lang, sounds exactly like the minimal sort of language I could get into. While communicating clearly through a language with so few words might sound like it is fraught with peril, it is still possible to express just about any concept:
"While the Oxford English Dictionary contains a quarter of a million entries, and even Koko the gorilla communicates with over 1,000 gestures in American Sign Language, the total vocabulary of Toki Pona is a mere 123 words. Yet, as the creator Sonja Lang and many other Toki Pona speakers insist, it is enough to express almost any idea. This economy of form is accomplished by reducing symbolic thought to its most basic elements, merging related concepts, and having single words perform multiple functions of speech."
https://www.disassociated.com/2015/07/28/would-a-language-with-just-123-words-be-easy-to-learn/
Some prepositions can be used as a subclass of main verbs. For example, tawa means "to" as a preposition or "to go" or "to go to" as a verb; lon means "in" or "at" as a preposition or "exist, be in/at" as a verb; kepeken means "with" (in the sense of the instrumental case) as a preposition or "to use" as a verb. lon and tawa (but not kepeken) omit the direct object marker e before their objects: mi tawa tomo mi "I'm going to my house".[15]
http://self.gutenberg.org/articles/Toki_Pona
#TokiPona #encyclopaedia #article #puku_sona #level123 #selo123 #sona
Toki Pona and Scrabble
Is it possible to play Scrabble in a language with only 123 words?
The ScrabbleGuy
A simple language
Toki Pona is a simple language designed to express the most, using the least. The entire language has only 123 words and 14 sounds. The grammar, although different from English, is very regular and easy to learn.
July 23, 2015: Can a language survive with just 123 words?
Bobbie Johnson | Jul 23, 2015
Roc Morin
[...]
“In addition, the simplicity of the language itself seems capable of becoming a credible lingua franca allowing people from different countries to communicate in a meaningful way. Other attempts at similar international auxiliary languages, most notably Esperanto, require a large investment from the learner, which seems to be the primary barrier to wider adoption." [...]
https://medium.com/ifyouonly/ifyouonly-can-a-language-survive-with-just-123-words-a5a31eee7c21
Sonja Lang with "le toki pona" is mentioned in :
Le Dictionnaire universel des créatrices
Antoinette Fouque, Mireille Calle-Gruber, Béatrice Didier
Éditions des femmes - 5022 pp.
#TokiPona #mention #créatrice #SonjaElenKisa #123words #nimi123 #level123 #selo123
Après les années 1980
Uropi (1986), langue de synthèse créée par Joël Landais, un enseignant français, dans le but de servir de langue auxiliaire pour l'Europe
lojban (1987), dissidence du loglan, basée sur les mêmes principes mais possédant un vocabulaire différent
eurolang (1995), langue artificielle créée par Philip Hunt entre 1995 et 1998 pour servir de langue à l'Union européenne, ce projet fut abandonné
Lingua Franca Nova ou elefen (1998), fondée sur le français, l'italien, le portugais, l'espagnol et le catalan.
toki pona (2001), langue de 123 mots à peine, dotée d'une grammaire très réduite
slovianski ou interslave (2006), basée sur le slave commun pour faciliter la communication entre les nations slaves
pandunia (2007), dont les emprunts lexicaux, toujours invariables, proviennent de deux douzaines de langues, y compris asiatiques.
Living in the now
Since Toki Pona reduces communication to its most basic units, Toki Pona words are often vague and can have many different translations in English. The word toki, for example, can mean talk, speak, say, communication or language. Of course all these concepts go back to the same fundamental idea, and that is why they are united under one Toki Pona word.
Because of this, as a speaker, you rely a lot on context to interpret what is going on. You become connected to the world around you. Instead of detaching yourself from the direct experience of life with abstract and complex concepts, you learn to listen to people and directly connect to your surroundings.
[...]
#TokiPona #site #word #level123 #sito #nimi #selo123 #sona #anno2013
Philosophy of pona
Toki Pona's most fundamental value is pona or good, which goes hand in hand with the simple way of life behind the language. The language is designed to steer us towards positive and constructive thinking. Many expressions celebrate and focus on this good:
pona good, great, cool, thanks
suno pona good sun, good day
lape pona good sleep, good night, sweet dreams
ale li pona all is well, life is good, it's all good, everything will be OK
moku pona good food, bon appétit, enjoy your meal
tawa pona good going, good bye, have a good trip, farewell
mute pona good amount, enough
ante pona to change in a good way, adapt
#TokiPona #site #word #level123 #sito #nimi #selo123 #sona #anno2013
A simple language
Toki Pona is a simple language designed to express the most, using the least. The entire language has only 123 words and 14 sounds. The grammar, although different from English, is very regular and easy to learn.
Universal building blocks
Historically, when people from different cultures came into contact, one approach to find common ground and share ideas was to develop a basic pidgin language.
Toki Pona continues in this tradition, focusing on universal elements of human life: person, food, water, good, give, sleep, etc. Toki Pona eliminates all more advanced concepts that are not necessary for basic survival and communication.
To form a more complex meaning, you can easily combine more basic words.
alcohol "crazy water"
friend "good person"
geology "earth knowledge"
girl "little woman"
happy "feel good"
teach "give knowledge"
The name toki pona itself means "good language" or "simple language".
#TokiPona #site #word #level123 #sito #nimi #selo123 #sona #anno2013
Toki Pona
Toki Pona is a constructed language, created in 2011 by the Canadian linguist Sonja Elen Kisa. Her aim was the language to be a minimal language, undervaluing the empty and abstract communication such as the ones of politicians and bureaucrats and pointing more directly to the concrete human life experiences. Therefore, the language makes use of only 123 words, with roots coming from different language families.
To make up for that, we’ve had to create an entire visual vocabulary of emojis. At the last count, there were nearly 2,700 of them, if you can believe that. For comparison, it only takes knowing about 3,000 words to be conversationally functional in a language — unless that language is the invented one called Toki Pona, which only has 123 words.
🐘
https://www.cesarsway.com/cesar-millan/cesars-blog/Louder-than-words
#TokiPona #mention #words #level123 #nimi #selo123 #sona #anno2017
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