If you want to be a polyglot, start with toki pona

How toki pona can teach you how language learning works.
Follow on twitter for updates: / seme_li_sin
Dictionary of tokiponised names used on this channel: docs.google.co...

[@etruscanetwork]

If language learning was a game, toki pona would be the tutorial

[@Picksle]

I love the kijetesantakalu profile picture

[@etruscanetwork]

@@Picksle mi pilin pona tan ni: kijetesantakalu li pona tawa sina

[@verdakorako4599]

my story with esperanto it basically the same. the process takes a year or two with esperanto and three or four months with toki pona. I and many other people learned about toki pona through esperanto.

[@semelisin]

toki Epelanto en toki pona li jan pona

[@user-jo3ee9je3h]

Would you recommend to study toki pona before esperanto?

[@verdakorako4599]

I'd say it doesn't really matter but two or three months of toki pona and then jumping into esperanto would be a good idea.

[@user-jo3ee9je3h]

@verdakorako4599 thanks! I was thinking the same due to the fact that toki pona requires less time to learn it

[@owenwopat773]

It doesn't matter how many attempts you make. I was on, what, my fourth attempt? Each previous attempt carried me further and I could remember vocabulary from last time, remember what I did wrong, and I repeatedly came to the conclusion that I was an idiot. I refused to give up and now I have come to the final conclusion that after having learnt Toki Pona, I am, indeed, rather stupid. Motto of the story: Eh, keep trying. You're not going to do worse than me.

[@blindknitter]

This was very helpful indeed. Also glad to know I'm not the only person learning Toki Pona in Ireland!

[@PlasticSinks]

wawa mute tawa sina!

[@Bahrta_sai]

If you're interested in learning a language like Japanese, toki pona can be written in multiple writing systems. Japanese: とき ぽな/言良, Arabic:تُوکي پُونا Greek:τοκι πονα.

[@Bahrta_sai]

I still don't think Esperanto would be a bad idea to learn for your first language, because it's a complete language, so you can easily say exactly what you want to say & people will understand you, but it's easier to learn than other languages. Mi ankoraŭ ne pensas ke Esperanto estus malbona ideo lerni por vian unuan lingvon, ĉar ĝi estas kompleta lingvoj, do vin povas facile diri ekzakte kio vin volas diri kaj homoj komprenos vin, sed ĝi estas pli facila lerni ol aliaj lingvoj.

[@tuluppampam]

Toki pona is probably the first language someone should learn due to its ridiculously small vocabulary and simple grammar, limiting a lot of work and only requiring to practice it Esperanto, as a constructed language, lacks the sheer amount of irregularities you find in natural languages, thus making it still easier to learn (if you already speak some European language, mostly romance ones) and allowing you to learn better The more languages you know, the easier it is to learn them (it was a pain for me to learn English, but I managed to get Mandarin Chinese going very quickly after English, and it was even quicker with German. On a side note I never learnt them entirely, but I had to mold my head around them and that's what matters)

[@tfan2222]

@@Bahrta_sai Problem with Esperanto: it’s highly European centric, and especially Romance language centric. Except for it’s phonology, which is more or less just Polish, meaning damn near no one who doesn’t speak a language without a wack ass phonology (like say, English) isn’t gonna have a good time, because they need to learn entirely new sounds. Toki Pona, uses almost universal sounds.

[@alanguages]

@@tfan2222 Esperanto has non-European features as well. The free word order, a person can use in another language. When I first learned it, for some reason I did not like using the SVO word order. It felt better in my case using the OSV word order. To my surprise out of all languages in the world, that particular word order is the least used and only to a few amount of languages, I never even heard of. I liked the agglutinating feature Esperanto had, which also would help in learning something like Japanese. I do agree though, that Toki Pona would be a great 1st 2nd language. A person could then do Esperanto afterwards if they were interested.

[@lycanrocmare6345]

@@Bahrta_saiI'd argue that Esperanto is a better first language than toki pona. It's just more functional and realistic. Whereas toki pona is confusing when it comes trying to understand others. I've even studied Toki pona myself, it's such a hassle to make large phrase words when you could just have a word for it.

[@iiliq-yt]

First language I learnt, English, then came Irish coz I am Irish, then came Spanish in high school. Then I get the virus goin' around and I decide to try learn a language to be productive. And my language-learning-ness clicked in. (I learnt Norwegian, stopped and learnt Russian, stopped and went to Latin, stopped and went to Czech, stopped and back to Russian, stopped and went to Arabic, stopped and went to Korean, then Toki Pona, back to Russian, then Korean, and now I am here learning Toki Pona.)

[@FunAfter52]

Great video! This will be my third attempt of how to wrap my head around learning another language and what works for me. So I decided to look into Toki Pona again (I have the book) and work it out. Like you, I hope that working with a small language will give me the tools to take into learning larger languages. I'm interested in Russian, Spanish, ASL, and others. I'm glad I ran into this video. It gives me hope.

[@semelisin]

I was the same as you before I learned toki pona. Just do some experimenting and don't put too much pressure on yourself, you'll do grand. You can do it!

[@archniki_]

Check polish too. It's has some latinism . So exist can be like existue in pl so it can be easier at some point.

[@robertgibbs6698]

There is an adaptation of toki pona into a sign languages, may be a good way to lead into ASL and other sign type languages. Also yes I do know I'm responding to a 1 year old comment lol

[@yoursleepparalysisdemon1828]

my man, why is everyone else learning russian and spanish like me???

[@jantelakoman]

Toki Pona is also great to try out ALG on yourself because it takes a much shorter time to get results. I made a video series for this purpose on my channel.

[@danielg4900]

I am currently enjoying your series. Thank you for making it

[@supremechaosbeing2696]

what I did was watch the first 3 new improved toki pona lessons by jan Misali, then I got impatient and found and printed out the "toki pona cheat sheet" (which i now know to be a bit outdated) and went on the toki pona subreddit and translated every sentence I found. I guess it worked, somehow

[@saltyhiggins4525]

Currently on my 5th day streak on Memrise with toki pona! Wish me luck!

[@semelisin]

o kama sona pona!

[@kireitonsi]

I had a 9 day streak, but fell off. This video got me to keep going. I hope you did end up learning toki pona

[@Curvyfeets]

Which course did you use

[@zalambdalestes7394]

tenpo pini la, mi pilin e ni: toki pona li nasa. tenpo ni la, mi sona e toki pona li pilin e ni: ona li pona.

[@water594]

lon la, toki pona li toki pona!

[@davialves5264]

sama. mi sona e toki Inli e toki Potuke, taso, mi toki mute e toki pona lon ma Internet. toki pona li pona mute a. mi sona e ona tan "suno tenpo luka luka tu pi sona pi toki pona" pi jan Misali I really hope i said that right lmao

[@notmyfirstlanguage]

@@davialves5264 mi pilin e ni: sina toki pona e toki sina. mi kin li ken toki kepeken toki Inli li ken toki kepeken toki Potuke (li ken toki lili kepeken toki pona). pilin mi li sama pilin sina! :-)

[@Al-bm6bd]

sama! tenpo ni la, mi kama sona e toki pona. mi pilin ike la, mi sitelen e ijo mute kepeken sitelen pona. mi kama pilin pona tan toki ni:)

[@mathiaslist6705]

so Tokipona is around for let's say 20 years and Esperanto more than 6times that time. Probably Tokipona's strength isn't in being a written language but in being a spoken one and thus videos would be the optimal way to boost and promote the language. However there aren't any serials, shows etc. in Tokipona and I even did not find a single video in Tokipona on KZbin. Probably Tiktok and short videos targeting young speakers would really give the language a boost as specially young speakers and kids have the highest level of creativity etc. and that's probably needed for such an unusual "minimalistic" language to develop its full strength.

[@Ken.-]

There are lots of toki pona videos. How could you not find one?

[@kijetesantakalu]

Kalama sin is a great podcast which helped me a lot.

[@alanguages]

What would Toki Pona be considered as far as an easy musical instrument? Esperanto is normally promoted as the recorder of languages in their promotion as a bridge language. The only musical instruments, I can think Toki Pona could be is either a kazoo or tin whistle.

[@semelisin]

I think the kazoo is a good metaphor. It takes certain key mechanics out of the equation, but if you learn to play it really well, that flair that you pick up will probably enhance how you use other instruments.

[@10idiomax]

mi olin e sina🥳

[@MilanStojanovic9]

So did toki pona change the way you see the world ?

[@janLilin]

toki pona speaker here, it did. I find myself thinking about objects not in terms of what they are but what their uses are, which is quite helpful.

[@tacitozetticci9308]

Nah, I've always been rather good at learning languages and I noticed it when I was still a kid.

[@Nompass]

Whilst I see the philosophical idea behind this, it’s too impractical to communicate nuanced ideas for my personal use. Still interesting concept.

[@semelisin]

It's often less difficult to communicate nuance than people think, once you gain some experience with it.

[@water594]

toki pi 'seme li sin' li lon. jan li ken toki e ijo mute lon toki pona

[@notmyfirstlanguage]

@@water594 lon mi kin la, ni li lon! mi pilin e ni: jan mute li toki insa e ante, li lukin ala kama sona e toki pona. ni li ike lili...

[@robinpound7825]

i agree

[@Fensmiler]

i guess i am a polyglot

[@tristunalekzander5608]

Ha I made a little console app in C++ that just used a CSV file from the internet to make what was basically flashcards for Toki Pona. I made it two days ago, didn't really even practice it that much yesterday, but just today I can already go through all the words in a random order with 100% correctness, so now I just need to learn the grammar taso jan kin sona pi mi toki haha right?

[@larrywancanary3103]

I need more news

[@mollof7893]

I tried to learn it but... mi jaki :(

[@Deibi078]

sina gej

[@cabbage2329]

Toki! Have you tried jan Misali's 12 Days of Toki Pona series? It's helped me out quite a bit, so maybe you can learn from it too! mi tawa!!

[@Deibi078]

no, i started with toki ma

[@RiayToons]

And bullying people ruined Christopher Weston's Chandler's attempt of poliglocy... From your video I knew he is on the cooking of the method to learn spanish and though his trolling bullies make it sound lame and pathetically foolish, if left alone, Christopher could be able to improve his Spanish skills, even if slowly progressed.

[@saharadessert8917]

mi toki e toki pona e English e 日本語 e Español. toki pona li pona e mi. toki pona li pona mute lili.

[@VaibhavShewale]

how to start?

[@gregorei]

i am definitely too dumb for toki pona

[@semelisin]

Impossible

[@gregorei]

@@semelisin pain

[@Benjamslikestrains]

You speak English, if you can do that despite the mass amount of irregularities and one of the biggest vocabularies of any language you can learn Toki Pona for sure, I promise :P

[@harobaen2017]

mi e nasin nimi ike lon e toki pona

[@archniki_]

should i learn new "update" with 70 new words?

[@semelisin]

The toki pona dictionary isn't an "update", it's more a study on the different ways people already use Toki Pona in different online spaces. I don't think anyone uses all of the new words in it, different people just use different selections. If you interact with the TP community, a few new words will naturally enter your lexicon, depending on who you're talking to. It's a bit like slang. But only you can decide what you "should" learn.

[@Deibi078]

actually i started with english as a second language lol

[@Rolando_Cueva]

Hard. The language is too ambiguous.

[@semelisin]

It's contextual, personal. It's perfectly clear if you're willing to use it a little differently to a typical language.

[@notmyfirstlanguage]

I felt the same way at first, but the more I've practiced and the more I've used it, I've been very surprised by how little ambiguity there really is. I've come to think that it's actually a lot more ambiguous on paper than in practice. It would be like someone learning that the word "letter" in English could refer to either a small symbol or to a piece of paper sent over the mail. It would be understandable for them to think, "Oh, then how can you ever tell what you're talking about in English!" And yet, in my experience, I think that apparent ambiguity has just about NEVER been a problem in real life for me. I've been surprised by how, in practice, something pretty similar seems to be true in toki pona!