The Language With The Least Words

[@NameExplain]

I wanted to leave a comment with the Toki Pona equivalent of subscribe but couldn't figure out what what to use. Here's a list of all Toki Pona words, let me know which one you think best fits subscribe. theotherwebsite.com/tokipona/

[@callabeth258]

Tawa kulupu sitelen - going to/moving forward, community/group, image/representation = subscribe

[@callabeth258]

That’s the best I could do

[@pyglik2296]

I'd say something like "o kama sona e ijo sin" (get knowledge/learn the new thing(s))

[@akye_tot1816]

Maybe "o kama kulupu!" Like in "come be a part of the community" or "unite with us"

[@tbodt]

o wile lukin e sitelen kama ale

[@robertwilloughby8050]

There is also a variant of English called Seaspeak, which only uses about 120 to 150 words. This is a semi-official language used by sailors to make sure that all instructions are totally clear.

[@mccookies3664]

this is a much better introduction to the language than i had expected from someone who doesn’t speak the language/interact with the community, nice job! a few minor nitpicks for anyone interested in learning more about the language: 1:36 Sonja’s name is spelled with a j, not a y 4:27 modifiers in toki pona come after the content word they’re modifying - “suli kili” would mean “fruity size”, whereas “large fruit” would be better translated as “kili suli” 4:56 i would also add a third note as to how meaning is derived in toki pona: context. a very common way to add specificity is to add additional phrases or sentences to explain it. and there’s also an overall note that toki pona is meant to be flexible and not have phrases become standardized. most proficient speakers will refer to the same concept in multiple different ways depending on context and personal preference, and they may have very different ideas about how the grammar functions or the semantic space of certain words.

[@pr0hobo]

also there's a widely used system for counting specific numbers that he sort of touched on but glossed over and claimed doesn't really exist: ali/ale = 100, mute = 20, luka = 5, tu = 2, wan = 1, ala = 0, so if you wanted to say 13 it would be luka luka tu wan, or if you needed 824 you could say ali ali ali ali ali ali ali ali mute tu tu. not elegant at scale i admit but for smaller numbers there absolutely is a way to say specific number, or at least integers.

[@IamSamys]

Oh hey, this video is actually not half bad as an introduction to the language! There are corrections to be made, but compared to other videos, Name Explain actually had a look at the language! So thank you =)

[@jantelakoman]

Twice As Interesting amirite? ;)

[@soIzec]

Is this the part where Jan Muesli gets summoned?

[@Somebodyherefornow]

@@soIzec Misali?

[@soIzec]

@@Somebodyherefornow yes

[@mrmimeisfunny]

@@jantelakoman This is very pakola.

[@insomni7535]

i love how toki pona's getting covered online a lot more recently, it's amazing that people are hearing about it!

[@ImXyper]

i think half as interestings video boosted it up a lot

[@jan-Pala]

​@@ImXyper gosh have you seen the video? kepeken namako keeps me up at night-

[@ImXyper]

@@jan-Pala yeah hai's video is just incorrect on like 99% of things but it was how i found out about it

[@Daleymop]

I come in contact with Toki Pona speakers often, as an Esperanto speaker. (We fall into the same circles of eccentrics). Weirdly enough, at 10:21 in the video I saw a familiar face, one of them video uploaders lives down the road from me! I love their language and have learnt a little, I enjoy it for the challenge and thought provoking in having to find or make words to fit. A similar concept of "make the word closest to the concept" exists within Esperanto also. However, more precise.

[@amadeosendiulo2137]

Saluton! Alia fakto estas, ke multaj Tokipon-parolantoj estas ankaŭ esperantistoj ☺️

[@beesinpyjamas9617]

💙🤝💚 io, ilo, la, li, multe, fari (pali), bona, sama, selo, suno, surfaco (supa), tenpo, domo

[@amadeosendiulo2137]

@@beesinpyjamas9617 moku /jk

[@AgmaSchwa]

Conlangs represent! (This was a much better summary of Toki Pona than others that have come out recently, great job❤)

[@mollof7893]

Hey ŋə! :o

[@AgmaSchwa]

@@mollof7893 Ayyy

[@kijete]

half as interesting /derogatory

[@menyatarigeny6833]

pona mute a! not many people actually get the goals and philosophy of toki pona right when trying to explain it. half the time they end up saying "its the easiest language" or "its good for computers" but you went into full depth on what the language is all about. amazing job!

[@krjames203]

A graphic in the video shows clearly how the language encourages being in the present. In the graphic, one person holds out an apple and the other says "Kili!" In the immediate context of the conversation, it's clear what the person is referring to. It's like the language encourages you to stay focused on what's happening in the immediate vicinity.

[@chrisamies2141]

so the language would be assisted by a lot of pointing and showing - much as natural language probably started out?

[@chrisamies2141]

Also there would be a lot of asking for clarification. "Did you mean x?" "No, y."

[@deniselisboa1]

sounds horrible for visually impaired people lol

[@LanguageSimp]

mi toki pona

[@lipamanka]

tenpo pi pipi Sinpu Toki

[@jantemili]

ona li toki pona a

[@jan-seli]

Damn. This guy seems very attractive. I bet he's a hyperpolyglot gigachad.

[@dolorsitametconsectur]

pipi Sinpu Toki li kama lon

[@NotNochos]

sina li monsuta en jaki mute a!

[@victorreis8110]

this video made me realize something tricky about toki pona. with so few words, it’s strange adding names so often. i bet if it became an organic language we would end up with names carrying more meaning. culture is odd

[@theconqueringram5295]

I've been looking for a constructed language to learn and now I've found one that probably interests me the most. Toki Pona forever!

[@jan-Pala]

toki pona!!!

[@beansclox]

4:32 slight correction, adjectives in toki pona go after nouns so it would be kili suli

[@syro33]

suli kili - the fruity big thing

[@elliottsampson1454]

@@syro33 if i were to use or see "suli kili" in a sentence i would probably interpret it as "the size of a fruit"

[@jansepulon]

What... you don't think "pineapple" when you hear "fruity greatness"? ( o utala ala. mi toki musi taso)

[@greeblingg]

Dude I opened the comments to comment this exact thing when I saw it

[@janPolijan]

I learnt toki pona, it was quite easy, and it's just so fun, I use it very often, I make videos in it here on YT. Toki pona boosts my mood and creativity. Loving it. 💕

[@Trontotario]

Wow it’s actually true

[@HBon111]

Your name reminds me of Jean Valjean.

[@vecialesca3014]

"do we really need specific numbers that bad" If you listen closely you can hear the despair from STEM people.

[@alexanderlehigh]

This reminds me... "Me think, why waste time say lot word, when few word do trick." -Kevin Malone

[@k.umquat8604]

Toki Pona sounds like Kanzi the Chimp

[@benyendle2584]

I see toki pona as a really cool field language for people. Like if you're traveling overseas and don't speak the local language, people who deal with foreigners often could easily learn toki pina instead of English and you could get around a lot with it and for more serious conversation internationally people would keep learning English

[@chrisamies2141]

There's a curious coincidence around the 2001 start date of TP. In the same year, novelist Robert Rankin published "Web Site Story." In it, his ongoing character Hugo Rune devises a language containing only forty words, all with positive connotations, to bring about a better mindset and eventually world peace. Common origin, or just coincidence?

[@sehr.geheim]

I believe there's an even more simplified language that took tokipona as a base, called tuki tiki it has only 43 words

[@councilofknowledge]

I started my channel after watching your videos, I always loved them, cheers!

[@PentaSquares]

I think it's pretty good to have a lot of words in a language, but I think a lot of the extra words are fancier words or formal words. words that all mean the same thing, but won't make you lose points on an essay if you use them, since word variation is 'absolutely necessary' and whatever.

[@yotobianoacaso]

Nasa means also drunk Finally, i can tell everyone that i work at nasa

[@syntheticcelery]

I've read about this ages ago and have been trying to find it again for who knows how long! Thanks a bundle!

[@ID-107]

"What are you allergic to?" -"Seafood" "Watermelon, got it"

[@jownadel1526]

kala moku isn't a kili

[@CouldBeMathijs]

@@jownadel1526 tan ona li toki e ni: watermelon li kili telo, taso ona li kepeken e nimi kala.

[@Aexryus]

Name nerds unite!!

[@chu.u.u]

i think i angered the discord server by sending this there

[@lipamanka]

heh people who are getting mad at *this* video are cringe ngl I think it's very good

[@mrmimeisfunny]

2:22 This is kijetesantakalu erasure.

[@mskiptr]

Had to be done! The internet took it too far /s

[@realhawaii5o]

I like how I saw some resemblence to, for example: Moli - Morri (died) in Portuguese Tenpo - Tempo in Portuguese Kala - Kala in Estonian Two languages I speak and that are super far apart! Cool.

[@kyh148]

Moli and tenpo come from Acadian French and Esperanto respectively, both romance languages. Kala comes from Finnish which is related to Estonian. It's not a coincidence!

[@harpermonohan]

Now it’ll be easier than ever to put bilingual on my resume.

[@pyglik2296]

sina pali e sitelen tawa pi toki pona la, mi wile toki! sitelen tawa sina li pona suli tawa mi... I mean, your video is very good! Learning Toki Pona and speaking it is very fun! Sometimes you spend some time wondering how to translate something into it, only to realize that this information is not relevant to what you really want to say. And you still can get more specific if you want, but it's more based on the context than set translations of words. In your example at 7:55 You can call both the apple and the carrot a kili, or you can distinguish them by kili sike (round fruit) and kili palisa (long fruit). And one minor correction. At 4:25 you changed the order of noun-adjective, suli kili would be fruity bigness :)

[@Invalid-user13k]

Toki Pona is great at getting ideas out without using so many

[@BinglesP]

Why say many word when few word do trick

[@yorgunsamuray]

Eat the wrong "kili" and die of anaphylactic shock. Sometimes you HAVE TO be specific.

[@rextanglr4056]

This Toki Pona video is fine. There are a few inaccuracies here and there, but all that is overshadowed by how well the video is made. That in mind, I'd say that Name Explain's video is better than Half as Interesting's, but not as good as jan Misali's, making it the 3rd best Toki Pona analysis video so far. Thanks for watching, and in the next episode, I'll be reviewing a video about an analysis of Esperanto that isn't jan Misali's.

[@mrelephant2283]

I miss Conlang Critic

[@jan-Pala]

you said "making it the 3rd best toki pona analysis video so far" and i nearly screeched- you cannot say things like this you're gonna get me in trouble

[@NourMostafa_Productions]

"Drunk Strange NASA" "NASA NASA NASA"

[@GwazaJuse]

suli kili doesn't mean big fruit, it means fruity enormity or whatever. kili suli means big fruit, the adjective always comes after

[@Kyropinesis]

ah, yes, suli kili, a fruity big thing (adjectives are after the noun in toki pona)

[@brianedwards7142]

The horror! lol I already think English is a clumsy and imprecise mode of communication and people constantly misunderstand each other. That's why I like etymology so much: it helps find the exact word for the idea I want to express. I think I would end up constructing pushed together words longer than that Welsh village.

[@terryjones573]

But, again, that’s the POINT. I share your sentiment of trying to be hyper-precise with my word choice, but like he says in the video, does any of the specificity really matter at the end of the day? I’d say the need (and our desire) to be so specific is a side-effect of the way broad “human culture” has become so alienated from our material and biological realities.

[@locomotivetrainstation6053]

English has to many words, lots of different words have the exact same meaning yet we don't have a word for "the day after tomorrow"

[@brianedwards7142]

@@locomotivetrainstation6053 Tuesday?

[@locomotivetrainstation6053]

@@brianedwards7142 no We say "tomorrow" not "monday" People often use "the day after tomorrow" in a sentence so it should have a word But then there's a bunch of useless words in english Think of all the synonymous for "happy", they mean the same thing

[@brianedwards7142]

@@locomotivetrainstation6053 Overmorrow means "day after tomorrow" but it's out of date and a bit pompous sounding.

[@hweiktomeyto]

It was 120, but the speakers added 3 more. Now it's 123.

[@jownadel1526]

How did you get exactly three? In the nimi ku suli, there are 17

[@JJ-si4qh]

Me: hey can you cook me some kili? They: cooks death cap mushrooms Me: moli

[@RichConnerGMN]

a good video about toki pona speaker from an outsider?? no way

[@chachasenri]

1:39 I think her name is spelt Sonja Lang

[@erionnetic1626]

Ironically, this is how I sound speaking in ANY other language 😂

[@orpezo]

This word doesn't let us be specific which is bad because learning words help us categorize and notice things a lot easily. You'd be surprised just how much it helps us notice things

[@56independent]

There are other languages for that. I will argue that having too many words makes a language difficult to learn when you can easily communicate with just 120.

[@thepianokid9378]

but what about baby language with 3 words; “goo”, “ga”, and *”waaaaaaaaaaaa”*

[@56independent]

It is not able to communicate much.

[@thepianokid9378]

@@56independent that’s the point, babies have the communication skills of an alarm clock

[@NovaSaber]

Randall Munroe wrote a book ("Thing Explainer") using only the thousand most common English words...I mean, "the ten hundred words used the most", and while funny, it's also awkward enough to highlight the necessity of having thousands of words. I don't think the equivalent with under 200 words would even be comprehensible.

[@mccookies3664]

sina ken kama pilin sin! you could be surprised!

[@DeutscheDemokratischeRepublik]

its a great idea and would work amazingly among simplistic communities, like tribes or rural, self sufficient communities leading a simple lifestyle for example, but it probably would lead to actual politics being vague and dysfunctional

[@CouldBeMathijs]

There is a video which explains non-euclidean geometry in toki pona. toki pona li ken suli li ken mute

[@cathacker13]

Oh wow a video that actually understands the point of the language and doesn't assume that you need to say liquid the color of tree bark to express that you're talking about coffee? Now that's epiku mute

[@elinakangas571]

Kala is the Finnish language word for fish! Did she know about this or was it a coincidence? Edit: After watching the whole video she did know.

[@beesinpyjamas9617]

It's intentional! I think she admired and was inspired by Finnish simplicity with words like maa referring to country and territory as well as dirt, soil, earth etc theres also ilkeä-> ike kasvi -> kasi kin kiven -> kiwen linja lippu -> lipu maa -> ma mies -> mije nenä -> nena nimi panna -> pana pimeä -> pimeja sama sinä -> sina suuri -> suli valko -> walo vahva -> wawa and finally, the beloved april fools joke word, kijetesantakalu meaning Procynoid or Musteloidea (the family raccoons belong to), from kierteishäntäkarhu

[@teacupanimates]

finally, some nice introduction to toki pona, its a simple language but very few free introductions

[@tookiecar1]

i could see the toki pona logo at the bottom

[@alphabetlorefan436]

Kijesantakalu means any animal that is longer then kepeken

[@milabirch7356]

"you might not know which specific fruit someone's talking about, but do those specifics actually matter that much in the grand scheme of the world..." It is when you're trying to tell your waiter you're allergic to pineapples

[@CouldBeMathijs]

sina: mi wile li ken moku ala e kili jelo sike suli. ona li pilin pona lon uta. sina sona e ijo ni anu seme. ona: lon, mi sona, moku sina li kama sina: sina pona!

[@Kalakation_]

Great I’m hearing toki pona again

[@jorndebello7317]

If anyone can use this language, it'd be great for making a fantasy book. Use it for some ancient civilization

[@captainyulef5845]

It'd be better to make their own

[@jorndebello7317]

@captainyulef5845 it's always better to make your own. Building off others is good, too. SCPs are great, and they are just people building off others. I love it when I see an SCP or Lovecraft mention in non SCP/Lovecraft writing

[@Fennaixelphox]

My D&D character is canonically a tokiponist, though as he is a kitsune I have him call it "Fennec-ese" instead

[@shyfolium]

1:49 - the original book (lipu pu aka The Language of Good) has 120 core words, while the second book (lipu ku, the official dictionary) has two sets of new words; nimi ku suli (major) with 17 words, and nimi ku lili (minor) with 45 words (excluding reserved words) in total, the language has 182 words, but only the 120 core words + 17 nimi ku suli = 137 words are (usually) recognized as being part of the primary vocabulary of the language. most of the 45 nimi ku lili are spoken by

[@DwAboutItManFr]

Specifying frutis is really really important, i eat very few and specific fruits, actually i only eat 1 fruit sometimes and most of the few others i drink, so yeah it is very important.

[@nuberiffic]

Yeah, this is the big downfall of this language. What if someone offers you pineapple, but you're allergic, so you ask for mango. You'll both just be screaming "Big yellow fruit' at each other because there's no specific word for those things.

[@jan-seli]

@@nuberiffic kili suli jelo kiki

[@nuberiffic]

@@jan-seli ?

[@adrianblake8876]

@@jan-seli "bad yellow big fruit", means, well, that the sayer doesn't like melons...

[@jan-seli]

@@adrianblake8876kiki, not ike

[@The0Stroy]

5:36 NASA - foolish, drunk. Welp...

[@aer0a]

4:32 That'd mean 'fruit-like big thing', 'big fruit' would be kili suli

[@aer0a]

9:12 You can use multiple words for numbers

[@Invalid-user13k]

Hey, Name Explain can you please talk about Anglish? I'd really like to see your personal take on it.

[@elinakangas571]

What is Anglish? :)

[@Invalid-user13k]

@@elinakangas571 Anglish is English but without all those pesky words of Norman/French influence that broke our tongue to speak very weirdly and have to search for words because they are weirdly worded and structured.

[@elinakangas571]

@@Invalid-user13k Norman/French influence came to the English language and England somewhere in medieval. How long has the English language been a thing? A language we could call English. Ancient Romans when went to the modern-day region of England and there were people what language those people spoke?

[@Invalid-user13k]

@@elinakangas571 Anglish is quite easier than you think. People are folks, nation is thede, dictionary is wordbook, vocabulary is wordcraft, lexicon is wordstock, and so much more.

[@georgeandrews1394]

You just lead me down a _wild_ bunny trail. Thank you. :)

[@humourlessjester3584]

As a writer who wants to write my own fictional language this is very interesting

[@Garfield_Minecraft]

Wow now have many people come learn toki pona wow! Thank thank I hope toki pona group will come big soon jan pona mi li isipin sitelen pi toki pona(sitelen pona) li suwi But they teach only why toki pona was made who made this language and blah blah blah but teach no talking 5:30 i love soweli and kijetesantakalu! But every toki pona word no capital letter except name "ma Amewika"(america land) moku(food, eat) jan Moku(Person with name Moku or something..) jan moku(the eater) 6:26 toki ponja(catlish?)

[@Kazuyuki33]

I like to say a slightly changed version of that quote in my native language written the same way i say it is "Prque prdê temm falann tods as letrs se mtad dels é mai rapdo?" Translating to english with correct writing is something like "Why waste time pronouncing all the letters if half of them is faster?"

[@MrPillowStudios]

Crazy how a language can be like that.

[@nApucco]

Reading the comments here, it seems this language attracts a certain type of people. I don‘t think I want to join that community. But hey, have fun.

[@mickeyrube6623]

Everyone in the comments section seem extremely confused. 1. Conlangs like this are just for fun, and mostly just thought experiments. 2. NOBODY in there right mind thinks Toki Pona, or any other conlangs will replace any, or all languages. 3. NOBODY is suggesting you should learn this language instead of learning a real language. Hell, idk if even the creator can actually speak it. There are people in the comments like "I'm monolingual, and have been studying French for 10 years and I still have a hard time understanding just a basic sentence. You expect me to just throw 10 years down the toilet to learn some fake Toni Pona thing now! Screw you!" 4. The simplicity is based on real languages with similar amounts of simplicity. These words are just "base" words. With them you can say ANYTHING you want. Do you see words like jumps, or jumped in the English dictionary? No, because they are the same word as jump, or at least they are two words with the same BASIS. 5. There in no reason words can't be ADDED to the lexicon, if NECESSARY. That's the point. Do you think English just started out with all these words? No. Teenager used to be two words: teen ager. Then it was teen-ager. Now it just one whole word: teenager. Even words as simple as alone, which was once "all one." German has words that are basically sentences. This language does the opposite. Your average sentence is just gonna have more words.

[@penwozhere]

sina sona pona ((: thanks for clearing this up, lots of toxic and plain misinformed comments

[@kulupu_ijo]

For 3, Sonja Lang can speak toki pona

[@syro33]

As for number 3, a lot of people do actually learn toki pona to a fairly good degree of fluency (though thats hard to measure for any language, really). And yes, jan Sonja can speak the language! I think you might be thinking more of languages like Ithkuil, that are complicated enough that nobody claims to speak them fluently.

[@ETBCOR]

Sonja definitely speaks it! :) mi kin li ken toki pona

[@lipamanka]

1) conlangs are for fun but they can be for more than that if you want them to 2) some people think this but ultimately that's a bad end goal for a language 3) i mean people can learn whatever languages they want. there are in fact a few thousand speakers as mentioned in the video and sonja lang is one of them 4) this is not true. toki pona's level of simplicity is not comparable to any natural langauges, and "jumped" and "jumps" are in a lot of dictionaries (including like wiktionary) with their own entries (that usually refer back to the uninflected form) 5) most toki pona speakers are against expanding the lexicon. toki pona doesn't compound at all like english and german hope this cleared up some misconceptions

[@Giraffinator]

God, I am 99% certain that Kevin's line came before from Oog the caveman in Aqua Teen Hunger Force, but I'm going absolutely insane because I can't find a clip of it

[@callabeth258]

As someone who’s name often gets misspelled with a K instead of C I have an irrational dislike of this language’s alphabet because it’s missing C, aside from that it’s kinda cool

[@Rayz9989]

My name would need to be completely different in toki pona too there's no B either, so your name might have to replacesome otherletters

[@killianobrien2007]

jan Kalape

[@syro33]

toci pona li calama musi (im sorry, this just looks wrong for toki pona)

[@lp-xl9ld]

don't you mean "kinda kool"😉

[@SuviTuuliAllan]

C was a mistake

[@Chris_winthers]

Don't just ignore my boy kijetesantakalu

[@gubjorggisladottir3525]

why do I use 10-30 words were 5 words would actually suffice? Well there are reasons: 1) I do not want people (I don´t really know) "attach" me for what they think I meant when I did not even think about that (racist, nazi and more words like that have been used) 2) people get "hurt" and say I am being argumentative, "full of myself" and hateful when I am only stating "the facts as I see them" 3) people say I am lying. I never lie, because I always forget what I was lying about in ca. 10 minutes or so... so I stopped trying to lie a long time ago (some decades ago). 4. I am autistic and was over 30 years old when I received a official diagnosis.

[@Cinnapupz]

This language completely throws away the whole field of communication theory.

[@sherececocco]

I appreciate your energy ✨️

[@g-ray7121]

toki pona's logo looks like a biblically accurate roblox character

[@justfrankjustdank2538]

9:08 mute meant ten? i thought it meant 20, ah well im maybe wrong edit: when mute means a specific number it means 20, not 10, (assuming the wiki is correct) i worded the original comment wrong xP

[@jantemili]

technically does both a a

[@cabbage2329]

@@jantemili seme? ijo seme li toki e ni: nimi mute li sama e nimi "ten"?

[@elemenopi9239]

@@cabbage2329mute can mean 20, but it can also mean any number above 2

[@justfrankjustdank2538]

@@elemenopi9239 yep but i mean when it doesnt mean that and means a specific number, idk if that makes sense lol, also i just browsed the wiki and i was right, or the wikis wrong which isnt impossible, who knows lol

[@cabbage2329]

@@elemenopi9239 a, pona tawa sina!

[@mariodykstra6555]

We need to make an Entirely New Language for America. How do you say “Hello” in American (not even the same as English, but Different from ALL Languages)?

[@SteelSquid69]

huh

[@mariodykstra6555]

@@SteelSquid69 Why do you mean by “huh”?

[@CouldBeMathijs]

You've got so many languages over there, in stead of creating a new one, resurrect one of the many languages destroyed by colonization.

[@ShawnRavenfire]

This would be a great way to communicate internationally. If you can't find a person in another country who speaks your specific language, this language would take so much less time to learn, that it would be a good way to get across a general idea. Although, it does kind of remind me of Orwellian Newspeak.

[@Somebodyherefornow]

Mabye, I think it's at least better than dumfks like Esp*ranto or V*lapük

[@heidi5942]

Esperanto almost became the international language in the early 1900s. The Europe Union went as far as voting on it (unsuccessful) and China considered it during the cultural revolution. But it goes to show that ultimately, most people won't learn something if they don't have to. I started learning Esperanto as an English only speaker, and it has definitely made it easier to learn other languages. It got me stating to think different from English in a relatively simple space. Recently I stumbled upon toki pona and made it the goal to learn it in a week. It certainly is much easier to learn, but it required a very different way of thinking as there are rarely any direct word to word translations. But for it to become a truly universal language, it will be faced with the same problems as Esperanto. It's a very fun and enjoyable language but I doubt that it will become universal.

[@battleofthewillwhatilikela4650]

Interesting. This has been tried in the past with Esperanto, but it only got to about 100,000 speakers. This may be more successful because it is simpler and we have better means of distribution for learning it than we did when Esperanto was invented just prior to the 1900s.

[@eboone]

This language is awesome

[@Yvelluap]

11:32 that is horrifying

[@twinny643]

i want to learn this langaughe.. mainly to tell ppl i speak 3 langaughe's.. dutch, english & then toki (i forgot)

[@l0afu]

"laungaughe" is spelt as language, just saying

[@CouldBeMathijs]

Echt doen, toki pona is een aanrader.

[@adv3ntur3]

the biggest toki pona words are actually kijetesantakalu and sutopatikuna, however they arent too common, also descriptions of subjects come after the subject so ‘suli kili’ is wrong, it is ‘kili suli’ because then ‘suli modifies kili’

[@AtarahDerek]

Okay, but which natural language has the fewest words?

[@Misitan]

pirana

[@nataliemreow]

actually a nice video as an introduction to toki pona, compared to others on KZbin

[@mallow4715]

this is pretty good and surface level it's not got any inaccuracies at least which is something Half as Interesting couldn't manage to do :/

[@maxymaxter]

that sign thing looks like the McDonald's screen

[@minkazistherealone1828]

hehehehehe, the code in which computers speak doesn't have any words

[@JosueSantiagoG]

If people used this language in everyday speech, pretty soon a car would no longer be called a tomo Tawa, but a tomwa. A truck might be a tomwa suli and then quickly morph into maybe tomwasu-that new morphed word would refer specifically to a truck and not just to any larger vehicle. My point is not the specifics of my "prediction" but to say that people are gonna people and will naturally make things as complex as they need to keep on peopling. While a language might not need 40K words, human thoughts are too nuanced to respect Lang's dream of utter simplicity. Best intentions or not, this language would naturally become much more complex and acquire new words in short order. Not being a nay-sayer. I just think this experiment would do a great job at highlighting human needs and nature when it comes to communication.

[@jantelakoman]

Toki Pona is also a wonderful toy for applied linguistics. You can use it to to unpack complex concepts as a kind of next level Feynman technique. I did a video introduction to non-Euclidean geometry as a demonstration: kzbin.info/www/bejne/qn2UiHWLhNZ4apo I'm also currently releasing a comprehensible input video series for people to try out Automatic Language Growth on themselves 10 times faster than would be necessary for a natural language: kzbin.info/www/bejne/oJDEYaZmrNSqnqc

[@agorarcadon]

He said the whole alphabet while trying to say toke panyo 💀💀💀💀

[@sandybarnes887]

And to compare, our northern Inuit people have over 100 words for snow. 🇨🇦

[@mskiptr]

Oh, I didn't know that there's a PeerTube instance (ma Seka). Nice to learn about!

[@mina9e]

Turquoise is a shade of cyan

[@MyMy-tv7fd]

ok I listened until I laughed at the translation of Beatrix Potter - which automatically added two (tu) words to the language, Beatrix (nice name) and Potter, a good and sensible Anglo-Saxon craft name

[@atrumluminarium]

To be fair, a lot of things in many language are just pointless. Like verb conjugation, tenses and gender of objects which are the things I hated most when studying other languages

[@lots4]

how about we raise a child to learn just this language

[@elemenopi9239]

someone actually is raising their child to speak toki pona (granted they’re learning English too and tp is just a side thing but)

[@maryseflore7028]

I've started learning Toki Pona and, while I love the idea and concepts, my mind keeps connecting it to Newspeak... Darn, that's annoying.

[@crusaderanimation6967]

NGL i have a feeling that after a hour of conversation about something technical (like some form of engineering)where, you know, precision matters... a lot, i would either stab myself or person i speak with.

[@mayhalke6360]

This language just isnt for those kinds of conversation. Its just for fun :)

[@thetoycollectorofseville6428]

Are there any Toki Pona operas?

[@jan-seli]

I don't believe there are any operas in particular, but there is a fair bit of music. jan Usawi makes some excellent toki Pona music of you want to give her a search on here.

[@jan-seli]

I would recommend Tawa and Monsuta as good ones to listen to

[@janPolijan]

There's a lot of toki pona music videos here on YT

[@jansepulon]

@@janPolijan There is indeed

[@jantemili]

not yet ;D

[@jackiehuff7736]

Hated by mathematicians

[@jan-seli]

pona a! ni sitelen tawa li sona li musi!

[@axolotelUA]

J in Toki Pona is pronounced the same way as in Polish

[@mskiptr]

I'm pretty sure that for English speakers it's easier to think "pronounced like y before a vowel". (and ⟨j⟩ in toki pona appears only before vowels - just like any other consonant except ⟨n⟩)

[@alanguages]

There is another video about Toki Pona in Spanish, that put a picture up, which is suppose to be Sonya Lang. The channel is called: Descubriendo el Mundo and the title of the video is "What is TOKI PONA?: The language of good" Edit: Sonja Lang

[@alanguages]

@beesixteen7596 Okay. I will put an edit.