The world's smallest language

[@RobWords]

Leave your tokiponized names below (rules in description). And remember to try Opera browser FOR FREE here: opr.as/Opera-browser-RobWords

[@ZennethmationTheCorfibs]

You just posted 3 secs but this Rob word comment is 10 mons

[@ZennethmationTheCorfibs]

Mins*

[@Kazarijyanainoyonamidawa]

Lisa -> jan Lisa 🥲

[@utha2665]

I did have some problems with the rules of translating my name, so I went to AI for help, it does know about the structures of toki pona and it gave me some suggestions. So, here it is: jan tawapi. telo! mi jan telo sina tomo. mi jan tawapi. I hope the AI got it right and I'm not being rude, haha.

[@anothersquid]

My name is almost unchanged: jan Talin, even my surname doesn't really change because it uses a Toki Pona friendly arrangement of consonants and vowels to begin with :)

[@MarkSheeres]

It’s like a jpg of language. You compress the thoughts, but then you kind of have to uncompress them in your head.

[@NeungView]

How does JPEG compress the thoughts?

[@humilulo]

​​@@NeungView jpg does not compress thoughts. that's not what was expressed. the person is who/what compresses the thoughts, for it to be expressed in toki pona.

[@lordcola-3324]

I like that you picked a lossy compression format instead of a lossless format like PNG because that's what the language feels like. So vague and imprecise that some of the original meaning will inevitably get lost when tring to express an idea through it.

[@j.d.4697]

And I love high fidelity.

[@AMPProf]

S kina lk Loz spak

[@vipnetworker]

Antlers Girl is EXACTLY the type of person I expected to speak Toki Pona.

[@javierhillier4252]

i was thinking the same lol

[@festo8885]

Same

[@Yvelluap]

and we all love her for it

[@krypt4226]

@@Yvelluap Do we?

[@Yvelluap]

@@krypt4226 i mean, i absolutely do. i don't know about you.

[@ae3qe27u3]

Toki Pona seems to be inherently dependent on the ability to ask clarifying questions. Good for everyday use, but not suited for a technical specification document for standardized lab procedures. It definitely has a niche, and it's a really fun perspective on what it means to communicate, and what the role of a language even is. This was very cool, thank you!

[@Doomchild2XL]

It's not even good for ordering a pizza on the phone.

[@lubricustheslippery5028]

If something have to be exact with no ambiguity at all then natural languages don't work. So an technical specification for example an computer language in an natural language don't work, two persons taking the same specification and write an compiler for it will end up with two incompatible compilers. One solution is to use an formal language, it instead have the problem that it have an tendency to be incomprehensible for humans. When we go into formal languages it can be even simpler/smaler the simplest is lambda calculus it's down to four symbols and is Turing compatible.

[@EMLtheViewer]

@@Doomchild2XL “toki, mi wile e ko walo e moku mani e ko kili loje lon pan sike suli wan. mi awen lon tomo nanpa 12345 lon nasin Main. sina pona.” I only needed non-toki pona for the address, but even that could be done with toki pona with the right system and effort.

[@romainsabou3475]

​@@EMLtheVieweryou use "e ko walo e moku mani e ko kili loje lon pan sike suli wan" to just say "pizza" and you didn't specify what pizza on the menu you wanted. I agree toki pona is usable but it takes an awful lot amount of words to convey information.

[@EMLtheViewer]

@@romainsabou3475 Well yeah that’s kinda the conceit of the language. Though if a menu has numbered items then I could more easily refer to which one. But I didn’t actually need all those words to convey “pizza”; I was specifying the ingredients as an order. I would translate it as, “Hi, I’d like a large pizza with mozzarella, beef, and red tomato sauce. I live on 12345 Main Street. Thanks.” If I can indicate that I’m talking about pizza through context or description, then I can just refer to it as “moku sike” or “pan supa” or whatever else I decide because you’ll know I’m talking about pizza. It’s the same for most other things; without context you might not know what I’m talking about, but with it you can follow. It’s a bit like declaring variables in a local scope, if you are familiar with programming (not a great analogy but it came to mind). No one’s going to argue that toki pona is the best language for communication. But the nature of the language and the unique challenge it provides are what people like about it.

[@shvarra]

Finally, a video about Toki Pona with proper research and that isn’t filled with mistakes and misinformation about the language! Well done!

[@Yvelluap]

_"[kʰø̈.ˈpɛ.kn̩ nə.ˈmɒ.koʊ]"_ ~Sam from HAI (this is probably very wrong as i did this from memory but oh well)

[@jan-Sopija]

Toki! Nimi mi li Sam

[@Nerdy1729]

@@jan-Sopija bad memories

[@Yvelluap]

why does my reply not show up and why do i still get reply notifications it was a transcription of hai's "kepeken namako" btw

[@Leonaise1652]

Mid language

[@CCABPSacsach]

Toki Pona is the language that everyone wanted to come up with when in 4th grade.

[@markzuckerbread1865]

This is such a fun way to put ngl

[@HueghMungus]

@@markzuckerbread1865 Not to put anyone's mood down, but this language seems bullshait. Yes I said it, Rob said it has 120 words, which then has been updated to 180 words. The point of the language was it's simplicity and vagueness. In doing so the language is inadequate, then people added more words (which put it up to 180 from 120). The big elefant in the room is that this makes the language moot, the point is then lost. I don't think this will be anything other than a fun niche for past time hobyists 😅

[@markzuckerbread1865]

@@HueghMungus I find it very interesting myself, I don't intend to even learn it, it's just interesting to me.

[@shvarra]

@@HueghMungus literally nobody uses all 180 words. there as still only 137 words considered "canon". but yes, i agree it is a niche language for hobbyists, lol. but so is any conlang, really.

[@Brib8888]

​@@shvarraand even if it were 180 words, that's still so much less than a natural language, meaning the language is still not moot

[@KarenSDR]

Well, you started something in my family. Three weeks ago I found this video and posted it on facebook. My adult son, who is a software engineer, fell in love with the idea, so we decided to study Toki Pona together. Since then we've read, books, watched instructional video series (I just today finished the 30 part series "o pilen e toki pona,") and searched out songs. I was able to read and understand "jan Osu pi wawa nasa" (The Wizard of Oz) after only a week, but we've both found the written glyphs of sitelen pona much easier than the spoken language. I've long a long way to go with that. Anyway, thanks for starting us on this journey!

[@gingerfreak01]

I'm a programmer and it definitely chimes with me, I think because of the way it uses words as qualifiers or modifiers to other words. In the IT world you see that in properties of objects, object-oriented programming, CSS, normalised databases, basically anything with a hierarchy where the child more specifically describes (qualifies) or changes (modifies) the parent. I also love the ambiguity of meaning which jan Usawi talked about. We get it in English of course: "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark" being the poster boy, but with toki pona it can be so open to interpretation that without context the language becomes subjective rather than objective. There's a real beauty in that, especially in art and expression. I really hope you all continue with it. The family that toki together stays together!

[@rockhopper_penguin]

This is utterly fascinating. Thank you Rob & thank you to the Toki Pona community for being so welcoming

[@amandaburnham8626]

And the words are adorable ❤ I had no clue this existed.

[@jukkasarilo7573]

No sense like primitives speakitng.

[@eboone]

@@jukkasarilo7573 wat

[@midston5843]

Toki Pona is absolutely a great example of how popular the conlang community has become, only behind Esperanto.

[@NeungView]

There are about 100 who speaks it fluently. Is that your definition of popular?

[@stickad_]

​@@NeungViewWhere did you get this info from?

[@TheFirstGhirn]

I really wish we has some punctuation to indicate sarcasm.

[@cool_guy87]

@@TheFirstGhirnThat’s sort of the point of sarcasm

[@northernsnow6982]

​@NeungView the popularity of the community, has nothing to do with how many people speak a language. Only one person can be president of the un-United States, but whoever it is sure does become popular. The community only needs to be liked or enjoyed by many people, for it to be popular. The Beatles are massively popular, however they only had 4 core band members, plus they haven't been a band for over 50 years. Spaceflight to Mars is a popular subject, yet not one person has come close to making it 1% of that distance away from Earth. As for this languages actual popularity, it was first published as a language in 2014 and is already used for software applications(Minecraft), and also as a therapeutic aid for patients to eliminate negativity from their lives. Sounds like more than 100 people know about this language, which makes it indeed popular. The 100 people who spoke the language, was a number reported in 2007, 7 years before the book was even published. They have thousands of followers on more than one site, today. Now add in all the people who watched this video and now like the language, and it has become very popular. So, not only did you not understand the original comment, you don't have enough knowledge about popularity to be weighing in.😊

[@_Thorondor]

Toki pona is like the pixel art of language

[@anthonymorris2276]

But not the world’s smallest language. An indigenous Australian language, now extinct, was recorded by linguists from the last surviving speakers. The entire dictionary runs to a total of seven (7) words. Four of them are the counting words, translated as “one”, “two”, “three” and “many”.

[@UFCMania155]

​@@anthonymorris2276even 7 is too much. Needs to be cut down to 2

[@UFCMania155]

​@@anthonymorris22767 is way too many words...it needs to be taken down to 2

[@UFCMania155]

120 words is too much. IT NEEDS TO BE 20

[@UFCMania155]

120 words is too much. IT NEEDS TO BE 10

[@alis.b.4631]

7:10 "Person of earth knowledge" is how we say geologist in Turkish too! Yerbilimci, geologist, literally means "earth knowledge-er." (yer = 'ground/earth/place' bilim = science, literally 'knowledge/knowing' -ci = -er)

[@snargleplax]

The same is true, of course, for "geologist" and many other English words as well. The distinction with Toki Pona, I would say, is that you're composing things on-the-fly rather than selecting from an existing, concretized vocabulary of compounded word roots.

[@alis.b.4631]

@@snargleplax ohh, i see!

[@LucasRodmo]

Geologist also mean "earth knowing person" Geo = Earth Log/Logos = Know/Knowledge Logist = person who knows

[@whatdoyousuppose]

Toki Pona approaches gender pronouns in a similar way to Turkish too! Third person singular isn’t broken up by gender, it’s all “o” with “onlar” for the plural, and Toki Pona has “ona” for third person singular and plural too

[@nowandrew4442]

Turkçe bilmiyurum :)

[@ancientremains1814]

You should also make a video about the Basque language (spoken in parts of Spain and France) which is one of the few isolated languages of the world (not related to any other known language). Absolutely fascinating!

[@litigioussociety4249]

He did a KZbin short on it.

[@RobWords]

@@litigioussociety4249 'tis true! I was in Basque country a few months back.

[@daveszutula2071]

Yeah. Done already

[@mjmeans7983]

@@litigioussociety4249 I don't watch shorts. Not even on channels that I enjoy and subscribe to. I hate shorts so much that I block channels that are substantially shorts content because the likelihood that the content is superficial is so extremely high.

[@litigioussociety4249]

@@mjmeans7983 I actually don't have them turned on either anymore. I was occasionally clicking on that tab when he was posting them, and it was shortly after that, that I stopped watching them altogether. There are two channels I will occasionally look for updates still, because they're all short animations, but I only check about once a month.

[@rabrojonel]

I learned about Toki Pona for the first time from this video, months ago when it first came out. The concept of this language was so intriguing to me that I dove in for a couple weeks before becoming too busy. Fast forward to a couple weeks ago, I decided to pick it up again. I am enjoying it so much and can see daily my progress with understanding and putting my own sentences together. I have also watched several other TP intro videos in this time, and yours is by far the best, most accurate, and comprehensive introduction I have seen. Thanks for covering this fascinating conlang!

[@dutchpropaganda558]

I have been learning toki pona recently. And so far I find it a deeply interesting language. There is this misconception that toki pona is a really easy language to learn, because of its small vocabulary and simple grammar. The difficulty comes from making sense of really broad words and those broad definitions acting in a different manner, depending on the function is has in the sentence. What I find so beautiful about the language is that it minimizes the amount of information conveyed. In English you can easily specify a dog, contrary to toki pona. In toki pona you can only specify the different properties of said dog. But that raises the question, when do you need to specify a dog anyway. That's right, if and only if you need to make a distinction between a certain property of a dog. That means when you convey the information of the concept of a dog in English, you superfluously convey the information of every property that a dog has, even though you only needed to make a distinction between one or two of its properties. In toki pona, you can only specify the properties of a dog, so you will always only say the properties that need to be distinguished. I hope some day to be fluent in toki pona, because I have been enamored with the way of thinking it provides. I also find extreme comfort in the community that surrounds it. jan Telan tawa!

[@zzzaphod8507]

Would it be easy to tell someone in toki pona that you're allergic to dogs (but not other animals)?

[@dutchpropaganda558]

@@zzzaphod8507 No, that would be quite hard.

[@zzzaphod8507]

@@dutchpropaganda558 Seems like a definite drawback of using that language

[@calum5975]

It's not really intended to replace language or the complexities that standard languages convey. It's effectively a very interesting thought experiment put to practice. No one considers it a realistic replacement, think more akin to it being poetry ​@@zzzaphod8507

[@snargleplax]

@@zzzaphod8507 sina sona e soweli ni: soweli li wile poka e jan. soweli li tawa wawa, li mu wawa, li nasa musi. soweli ni li pona tawa pilin mi la, ona li pakala e nena mi. mi ken ala kon nena. selo mi li pilin pakala pipi. soweli ante li pakala ala e sijelo mi. You know this animal: the animal likes to be around people. The animal runs fast and makes loud noises, and is playfully silly. This kind of animal is good for my heart, but messes up my nose. I can't breathe through my nose. My skin feels itchy (like bugs are on me). Other animals don't mess up my body.

[@gregdan3d]

This is phenomenal video. In fact, it hits a lot of points for a script I've had in the works, including the delightful coincidence of you using the same example of fruit to explain the vagueness of Toki Pona terms! Thank you for this. I hope this brings positive attention to our community. And I hope you keep speaking Toki Pona! sina pona wawa tan pali ni. mi o lukin e pali ante sina. kin la, mi o pana e sitelen ni tawa jan sin mute! a a a.

[@ETBCOR]

mu

[@mamusipipalisajelo5419]

mu

[@janPolijan]

mu

[@omekapo]

mu!!!!

[@casperdewith]

mu ·

[@laurasolero]

the commertial break right at 13:32 was HILARIOUS as a Spanish speaker. i completely got the intentionality. great video.

[@camembertdalembert6323]

same in french. Oh putain !

[@krjames203]

I really like how the language encourages speakers to attend to the immediate context (which includes both the “things” in the environment and what the other person in the conversation is thinking about). It pulls speakers closer to the present, and to each other. It’s not surprising to learn that Sonja Lang (the inventor of the language) is a linguist and translator - she knew exactly how to do the conlang thing right, and totally hit the bullseye.

[@rebeccamay6420]

And her name is amazingly appropriate too! This is too good, what's about to follow... so I'll do a quick cut & paste from "here" down. 😍🧠💃...

[@gcewing]

I suspect she rigged the rules of the language so that she wouldn't have to change her name...

[@falseprofit9801]

It’s incredibly enjoyable. :) I hardcore recommend that people look up any of the flash cards online and try to memorize the core vocab in a single weekend. (incredibly doable!) Two sessions of 30-90 minutes each is plenty to get most people there. Once you’ve got that, learning to construct your own sentences and express yourself is straightforward. If you go into jan Sonja or jan Lentan lessons with a lot of vocab already, grammar will be a breeze. When I’ve got the time for it, writing in toki pona is almost a meditative process for me. It’s a fun exercise to try to journal meaningfully while limiting yourself to just a couple hundred words. Forces you to think about yourself (and the world) in a completely different way. o musi! mi olin e ali ma la, sina pona

[@SchmulKrieger]

It is like a language where complex thinking is not only abolished but also forbidden, that is why this language is already a dead language, unable to evolve, because then it would lose its purpose.

[@falseprofit9801]

@@SchmulKrieger ok, George Orwell. mi pilin: jan li sona ala e nasin lon toki ona la, o pini e uta sina. pona li pona anu seme? tenpo la, mi pali e ijo pona kepeken ike. kon pi nimi toki pona li kama tan nimi mute en lipu. ni li kama ala tan nimi wan anu nimi tu.

[@ProximaCentauri88]

ESKAYAN, a conlang used liturgically by a contribe in Bohol Island, Philippines could be the only conlang whose contribe were given certificate of ancestral domain claim, meaning the Philippine government recognizes them as indigenous when they are basically Visayans who use Visayan language that was heavily relexified with invented words. Eskayan also has its own script which the group claimed to be inspired by the human anatomy.

[@juliamccoey7496]

oooh! let's have a video on that!

[@fawziekefli2273]

From a military point of view, you _really_ have to differentiate between an undeground bunker and, say, the basement of a hospital. Some people have been known to differ on the context.

[@berryesseen]

One thing that i realized about Toki Pona is that the word "ona" used for he/she/it is exactly to him/to her/to it in Turkish. Yes, in Turkish, there is a single third-person/object pronoun. The pronunciation of vowels also match that in Turkish. Thirdly, Turkish also has some rulesets to make a word. One example is that words cannot have doubled consonants. If you see one (e.g., millet = nation), it is an indicator that the word is borrowed from another language, usually Arabic. No word can start with back-to-back consonants. If you see one, the word is again borrowed (e.g., tren = train). No two vowels (same or different) can appear back-to-back. These sets of rules are what give Turkish its sound harmony. It seemed interesting that some of these ideas are also used in the creation of the simplest language. After all, consistent rules and regulations bring simplicity.

[@StamfordBridge]

Interesting. On a less interesting level, "ona" is "she" in Russian, and, I'd assume, other Slavic languages.

[@berryesseen]

@@StamfordBridge I wonder if there is a connection. I didn't know this.

[@notwithouttext]

@@StamfordBridge yes, ona* comes from serbocroatian "ona" or "она". (edit: *ona here refers to the toki pona word)

[@revimfadli4666]

So like the opposite of Polish (which gets its harmony from chained consonants)?

[@StamfordBridge]

@@notwithouttext I’m not for a second going to pretend I have the expertise to correct you, but a quick bit of poking around online got me a few sources that all said “Ona/она” in Russian and Serbo-Croatian both come from Proto-Slavic. 🤷‍♂️

[@sae2705]

Having played a little with Toki Pona, what I found interesting was the grammar felt like an Asian language, like Vietnamese, where it's actually really simple but logical (though Vietnamese pronouns are more complicated). The pronunciation is a lot more phonetic so it was quite easy to pronounce & clear to hear and has as few phonemes as it can & keep them distinct and I appreciate that it takes borrowings of words from around the world, so in this sense this does a good job of levelling the playing field for learners, which is an improvement of the criticisms Esperanto gets for being Eurocentric. The downside of course is that it has a limited use but not as limited as it seems, I don't see scientific journals being written in Toki Pona, but most day-to-day conversations don't need that kind of baggage. However, one reason I would kind of recommend it to language learners is that it teaches you a useful skill and that's circumlocution, which is super handy when you have a limited vocabulary and is a problem you're going to run into as a language learner. Because you may not know the right word (in the case of Toki Pona, that word doesn't exist) so you have to talk around it to be understood. Which I found useful when learning Vietnamese. I guess another is that it's a very approachable language to learn to go through the process of learning a language and understand it before you try something more complex. An option if you're intimidated by the idea of learning a language. And the Toki Pona people I've spoken to have all been super lovely and friendly and I am glad you found the same experience.

[@mamusipipalisajelo5419]

At least some of the grammar is straight from Mandarin, though "Asian language" is kind of broad. Like questions are in A-not-A form, which is nearly only found in Mandarin. nasin lili pi toki pona li tan toki Sonko. taso sina toki e toki ale pi ma Asija la ni li ken toki mute. pilin mi la ona li sama ala ni ale a. wile sona pi toki pona li sama toki Sonko lon nasin ni: jan li [ijo] ala [ijo].

[@sae2705]

@@mamusipipalisajelo5419 yeah "Asian" is pretty broad, the main one I was thinking of was Vietnamese because it's what I've studied & found parallels and know it shares similar parallels with languages it isn't related to in Asia, like Mandarin, so I didn't really have a try to point to. I didn't know Toki Pona grammar was based on Mandarin, however it sounds like that makes sense, based on what I've heard about Mandarin grammar although I don't have experience with it. But like how Toki Pona has modifiers, Vietnamese has classifiers, words can be used in combination to give a different meaning without compounding them, eg. "Sad sleep" is used to mean "sleepy", no words change their form (tenses are defined by a word), no words change based on their purpose in a sentence, no cases, no articles, and it's pretty stripped down in a similar way compared to other grammar systems, especially in the South, where I think they try to do more with less.

[@mamusipipalisajelo5419]

@@sae2705 oh neat! That makes sense sona pona. musi a

[@ripizhonubi7472]

maybe not scientific journals, but many formal texts need to define exactly what their terms mean, so in this sense it's somewhat what one does when writing in toki pona (giving context when needed)

[@twanmiaka]

What a beautiful & interesting video! The fact that you also included Toki Pona subtitles throughout has to be one of my favorite things about it too! 😊💙 It'll help even those who are only just starting to learn the language. Amazing!

[@-svet-ka-]

On the one hand, I, as someone with bad memory when it comes to languages, would welcome something simple. But on the other hand, as a technically minded IT person, I prefer precise meanings of words. Ambiguity is great for pans, jokes and texts with hidden meanings, but not so much in everyday situations, or when you want to give another person detailed instructions to follow precisely or quickly warn about particular danger to avoid until it is too late. Probably there is a way to describe things in toki pona but it looks like it would take a lot of words and time.

[@vlc-cosplayer]

Honestly I don't think natural languages are equipped to encode very specific information. Very technical documents that try to be as specific as possible become so convoluted, and so hard to understand, that it defeats the point of being specific. If you need precision, you should drop natural languages and just use something that's highly abstract and formalized. (But don't use Lojban, lmao, that's such a horrid thing. I don't think there's an universal highly-abstract/formal language either, you'll have to come up with DSLs best suited for the problem at hand.)

[@PhilBagels]

Agreed. The example I thought of was chess. The rules of chess can be written in English on a single page. It would probably take about 5-10 pages in toki pona. "Sixty-four squares" becomes "twenty-twenty-twenty-two-two place-small-shape-sides-two-two" or something like that.

[@PhilBagels]

@@TheSimzen Yep. The fewer nouns you have, the more adjectives you need. And if you're limited in both nouns and adjectives, you just need to make your phrases and sentences longer and longer. So your real estate agent doesn't try to sell you an underground bunker when you want a house.

[@vlc-cosplayer]

@@TheSimzen you don't need words for those concepts if you can (mostly unambiguously) refer to them in context. Imagine we're fighting in 'Nam: - If we're in the jungle, and I say the Toki Pona word for "room", I probably mean "underground bunker". - If we're in a village, I probably mean "building". - If we're inside a building I mean "room". - If we haven't been drafted yet, and we're walking by the Rockefeller Center, I probably mean "skyscraper". As long as you can understand each other, Toki Pona isn't an ineffective or bad language, even if it relies *really* heavily on contextual clues, and can pretty much only be used for real-time, face-to-face oral communication. It's like a really bare-bones version of sign language, except it can also be written down.

[@joex9865]

I predict if this language were to exist for a significant amount of time, the rules would be amended and the word count would expand exponentially. People love to use vocabulary others do not know, be it jargon, slang, or a made up language

[@abugidaiguess]

the most accurate toki pona video i've seen from an outsider to the kulupu pi toki pona pona tawa sina, jan Waputo o!

[@RobWords]

I'm thrilled to hear it!

[@alhspencer]

​@@RobWords​ and Google is not ready to translate.😉 it says, "see original (Translated by Google)" when you tap "Translate to English"

[@novaace2474]

lon, sitelen musi ni li pona mute. sitilen musi pi kulupu “half as interesting” li ike mute 💀.

[@piotrb4240]

toki! mi jan Pitapolesi. mi wile toki kepeken toki pona. toki pona li pona tawa mi!

[@novaace2474]

@@piotrb4240 toki a! kepeken seme la sina kama sona e toki pona? sina lon lipu Discord pi toki pona anu seme? sina wile e ona mi ken tawa ona e sina!

[@murphyshsu]

Such a FUN thought and language experiment!!! I love curious and creative minds.

[@Matzu-Music]

Toki Pona: A linguistic linear algebra problem in a 120 word trenchcoat.

[@KarenSDR]

It's like a basis for a vector space. Nice comparison.

[@scilamaccagno2206]

Just like algebra, this made my head hurt!

[@stylis666]

Well, speaking of maths, I think they missed the perfect opportunity to just count in binary. nan --------- 0 ---- 0 wan ------- 1 ----- 1 tu ---------2 ------ 10 tuwan --3 ------ 11 luka --- 4 ------ 100 lukawan --5 --101 lukatu ---- 6 -- 110 lukatuwan 7--111 byte :p 8------1000 (checks rule book... yep, that word breaks literally every single rule 🤣) But anyway, counting in binary actually works nicer in base 4, sort of. Or basically in 2^2. And we'd have to add a couple of words, for 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, etc., but still.

[@UFCMania155]

120 words is too much. IT NEEDS TO BE 20

[@Moon-Labs]

@@KarenSDR No, it's just caveman language. I sit chair

[@ijosakawi]

I'm in deep agreement with other tokiponists who've watched this: it's an amazing, informative, and correct video, something that's rare to see outside of the toki pona community. I especially applaud you for reaching out to people who've been involved with toki pona for a long time! I'm super excited for all the people who will watch this and who will finally see an interesting and accurate video about toki pona. Keep it up!

[@RobWords]

Thanks for the kind words. I'm thrilled you liked it.

[@ookap-orsc]

toki aaa, jan Sakawi o! mi pilin sama a.

[@ijosakawi]

​@@ookap-orsc wawa! toki sina li lon kin, mi lukin e ona. ona li pona mute a. mi o ante e toki mi tawa toki pona anu seme?

[@ookap-orsc]

@@ijosakawi n sina wile la o ni • ken la jan li kama li toki e ni • "a toki pona li ike" • ni la ken la sina wile ni • taso o pali wile taso

[@ijosakawi]

​@@ookap-orsc a a a, mute la ijo li wile pona e toki pona mi tan pakala ona. taso mi awen ante e ona: (this is a translation of my original comment) ijo ante pi toki pona li toki e ni: mute la jan sin li wile pana e sona pi toki pona, taso ona li pakala tan ni: ona li lon ala kulupu pi toki pona. taso sitelen tawa ni li wawa li pana e sona lon. ni li sama pilin mi. pona tawa sina tan ni: sina toki tawa ijo ante pi toki pona. wawa a! jan sin li kama li lukin e ni la, ona li kama sona e sona lon. ni li pona mute tawa mi. o awen pali pona!

[@Nabium]

I don't think there's a need for the language to be precise, because it's a constructed language without any speakers who don't speak another language so whenever there's a need for precision - like say in an academic discussion on the qualities and climate impact of supercooled water in clouds - you wouldn't need to use this language. But when-ever you speak a different language, you sort of change. You become yourself differently. Because it affects the way you think and communicate, you think in other patterns. I've noticed this and yet I only speak English and Norwegian fluently, two closely related languages. Imagine then speaking such a simple and different language. It really could be a great experience in how cognition works, I imagine it could even make you see the world in a slightly different way. It sounds like it might be a great language for people with philosophical dispositions, but probably not for people who are more practical minded.

[@mister_i9245]

My name would probably be something like jan Musi because my actual name Isaac in hebrew is roughly "one who laughs/rejoices" and musi means like fun/amusing

[@RobWords]

nimi pona!

[@nataliebutler]

If that's how it works, my name would be whatever the word is for celebration is as Natalie means Christmas. Just looked it up... the word is Musi too! Although, I could also go with Birthday as an alternative translation i.e. Christmas = celebration of the Lord's birthday.

[@IsaacMyers1]

It’s not really how that works. I love the thought, as a fellow Isaac. However, you are essentially agreeing to being called clown, trickster, or goofball as opposed to actually having a name.

[@rebeccamay6420]

It makes sense that "person Laughter" = Clown or Comedian. Perhaps it's better to use a pronunciation similar to that of your given name, "jan Isak" or if you must, add an appropriate ending vowel -- maybe as "jan Isaku." Granted, this well-researched video is the first time I've encountered toki pona, so I don't know if there are rules to distinguish male names from female names. The community of toki pona would have better guidance on that. 🤓🤗

[@snargleplax]

@@rebeccamay6420 there aren't gender rules for names, no. "jan Isak" wouldn't fit the phonotactics (can't end a syllable on a consonant other than "n"), but "jan Isaku" works. I'd call someone named Rebecca "jan Wepeka".

[@jansepulon]

Wow. Congratulations, you did a lot of research and gave a fair description of our beloved language! And yes, everybody should absolutely check out jan Usawi's music even if they have no interest in the language! sina pali pona a. olin en pona tawa sina. mi wile e ni: jan mute li lukin e ni, li kute e kalama musi pi jan Usawi, li kama sona e toki pona, li kama lon ma pona pi toki pona...

[@ookap-orsc]

You speak well about jan Usawi's music, which is absolutely incredible, but anyone who sees this, you should also go listen to jan Sepulon's music! I believe he's one of the most prolific toki pona musicians of all! (a kin la toki a jan Sepulon o • tenpo la mi toki tawa sina lon ma pona a)

[@jansepulon]

@@ookap-orsc toki! sinpin lawa mi li kama loje a! toki sina li pana e pilin pona tawa mi. pona en olin tawa sina!

[@janPolijan]

mu

[@jansepulon]

@@janPolijan mu a

[@LemmyD_from_Germany]

toki pona seems like a bouillon cube. You could call it a 'soup' if you add hot water to it - but it doesn't taste as good as an individual, homemade fresh soup with fresh ingredients, spices and herbs... This is how I think about it philosophically as a chef... Greetings from northern germany ♥️🇩🇪

[@eekee6034]

I get a little bit of that from any conlang. At the other extreme, proper English makes me think, "Too many cooks spoil the broth." ;)

[@dolorsitametconsectur]

I've been learning toki pona for a couple years, & out of all the videos made by non tokiponists on it, this is by far the best. It's clear you've done plenty of research, thank you for that.

[@CiciEstIci]

This reminds me A LOT of American Sign Language. A "student" is a "learn-person," or "learning-person." Table and Desk are signed the exact same way, and clarification can be contextual or based on other signs in the sentence (small, round, metal, etc). We run into a lot of issues with technical/scientific vocabulary this way, but for the people who use it -- it serves its function.

[@_Mikarific_]

Did you know Toki Pona actually has its own sign language? It's called "luka pona", and jan Lakuse from the video is one of the speakers of it!

[@oasntet]

Yeah, the contextual emphasis reminded me of ASL, too. E.g. in TP and ASL you often have to add a bunch of clarification words to explain the subject you're talking about, but after that you can refer back to it with the simplest form of the word.

[@omekapo]

OMG AS A FLUENT TOKI PONA SPEAKER THIS VIDEO IS AMAZING!! its not uncommon for people to make these really cheap unresearched videos about toki pona and it really hurts the community but it seems like that trend is mostly ending now. its so nice to see a video like this. this actually does a good job at describing toki pona and how it works and its just honestly a good video in general. i was so excited when i saw jan Usawi and even more when i saw jan Lakuse!! thank you so much for actually doing research and speaking to toki pona speakers

[@minuteman4199]

Interesting video. At first I was thinking this is like Orwell's Newspeak, where words are eliminated from the language to make it simpler and smaller and less expressive. Then I thought, it's exactly the opposite. Instead of starting with a very rich language and "simplifying" it, you are starting with nothing and deciding on what the absolute essentials are. Of course if this develops over time you will end up with hundreds of thousands of words as you decide that more and more ideas are required to have accurate communications.

[@Ithirahad]

Actually I'd argue you probably don't need hundreds of thousands of individual words. If you're willing to let technical jargon be either heavily metaphorical or long and constructive, you aren't likely to need more than a few thousand or a few tens of thousands of words at worst. Or you could just have an agglutinative language where "words" are procedural anyway and you don't need that many morphemes to learn...

[@Vinemaple]

Exactly, Newspeak's words had very specific meanings, but were used to cover broad areas of thought and make them vague, like the line in the afterword about the best translation of the entire Declaration of Independence (or US Constitution?) being simply one word: "crimethink." Newspeak made it very difficult to be precise, except within desired ideological pathways. What's going to enrich Toki Pona is streamlined design. Much of this will come from having an active community of speakers, but some will come from people with a talent for intuiting better ways to express complex concepts with a limited vocabulary. As long as people are having actual conversations in the language, and trying to express themselves, this will probably happen naturally, unless someone with authority attempts to preserve a "pure" version of the language.

[@HollyOak]

Newspeak was about limiting the ability to think and therefore, become an activist. This sounds like it is more about simplifying speech in order to clarify communication and also, to encourage creativity of expression through interesting and unique uses of limited words.

[@pipipiwalopimeja]

I think ~130 are all thats necessary. What happens to almost all leaners (me included) is that they begin by using many rare words because they think the language needs them, but as they progress more they cut more and more words out. (After about a month of toki pona i used ~150 words. After about five months this had dropped to what it is now, 127) Also something worth noting is that about half of the new "essential words" are meme words like "kokosila" meaning "to speak a language other than toki pona in a toki pona community".

[@minuteman4199]

@@Ithirahad Say "metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor" for me in tokipona.

[@mzansime]

Brilliant! Such a fun and creative linguistic and mental exercise. I also like how kind and welcoming the speakers are. ❤

[@snargleplax]

sina toki pona lon toki pona la, sina jan pona. You speak nicely about Toki Pona, so you are a friend.

[@ETBCOR]

o kama toki pona a!

[@jeremy5602]

0:40 Somehow that is _exactly_ how I pictured the average speaker of this language

[@clout123]

Absolutely fantastic, Rob. I love that, not only are you bringing us insight into English and other known languages, but that you also bring up something like this and Shavian, neither of which I would heard of otherwise. Thank you!

[@fugithegreat]

I imagine that the first human languages were something like this. Probably started out as specific vocalizations and since humans are naturally curious and experimental, they probably started messing around with different sound combinations and over time gathered a collection of simple words that have been expanding in number and complexity ever since. I wonder how many different words have ever existed in all the languages that have ever existed? There must be at least a billion.

[@RobWords]

I hadn't thought of this, but you're right. I imagine we started with grunts about broad concepts, then gradually narrowed down and diversified.

[@blshouse]

In reality, it appears to be the other way around. Some of the earliest languages are the most complex known.

[@Homerow1]

​@@blshouse Though the earliest known languages weren't the earliest to exist. An untold number of languages existed and died out before agriculture was adopted.

[@JasonJrake]

Whenever I hear Japanese I imagine that a bunch of orphaned toddlers were dumped on the island with relatively few adult caretakers and the kids developed their own language. It’s apparently completely unrelated to Chinese, so that’s my theory until I hear a better one.

[@vlc-cosplayer]

@@blshouse I've read that languages don't get any less complex over time. If they become simpler in one area, they'll become more complex somewhere else to balance things out (probably so they don't lose their expressiveness?). Then again, I also read that Latin was actually simpler than PIE, and that "only" having 5 declensions was actually an improvement over the older languages...

[@caribbeanman3379]

I think a good language would be one based on an "alphabet" of very simple, elemental concepts such as yes, no, great, size, up, across, forward, anti, positive, hard, past, light, time period, etc.. Then you use these concepts in combination to create your vocabulary and sentences. So for example, if you wanted to say "large" you could say "great-size". If you wanted to say "dark", you could "anti-light" or "no-light". If you wanted to say "night" you could say "anti-light-period" or "no-light-period", etc. You basically learn a much smaller vocabulary "alphabet" of elemental ideas and use them in combination to communicate more complex concepts. It's constructing words with multiple concepts.

[@eu_da_midas]

toki pona works like that but this "alphabet minimalistic language" remembered me *aUI*

[@_Mikarific_]

toki a! Toki Pona speaker with 3+ years of experience here! In all my years of watching KZbin (which is nearly 3/4ths of my life now), I have pressed the like button on like 4 videos. I've been watching Rob since he did an interview with Tom Scott on him running for parliament as a pirate in 2010. Every other video on Toki Pona from an established creator so far has been full of pure misinformation and factual errors. This information is so bad that a new word, "pakola", coming from a mispelling of "pakala" in an HAI video on the topic, was coined in Toki Pona that I now often use to mean "misinform" in my Toki Pona speech. This is the first time a video from an established creator has come out on Toki Pona that I feel I can actually recommend to someone. As mentioned before, I'm not one to press the like button on KZbin videos. This is the exception. PLEASE like this video, if nothing else but to beat out the other videos full of misinformation when someone searches "Toki Pona" in the KZbin search bar. I have not been this happy watching a KZbin video in *years*.

[@jan_Simiman]

I wholeheartedly agree. I wish I could give this video many likes. pilin mi li sama a. mi wile ken pana e luka pona mute tawa musi ni.

[@coffeeScryer]

kon pi nimi pakola li ni anu seme ꞏ 「o pakala sona e jan ante」

[@TheRavenir]

What do you think of Langfocus's video on Toki Pona? I remember that being the first time I actually heard about the language.

[@_Mikarific_]

@@TheRavenir That one is actually pretty good! But it’s just… rather outdated and has some small errors.

[@belphegor_dev]

Cringe.

[@janSa-tp]

Thank you so much for making this video! It's extremely refreshing to see such a well researched, up-to-date, and beautifully concise introduction to the language! The Toki Pona community thanks you!! sina pona mute tan pali suli sina a! pona o tawa sina tan jan Sa!

[@faranak777]

Dear Rob, I just came across to your videos a couple of weeks ago and I am binging since. Many thanks

[@garlicgalore]

I love the complexity of my native language and love playing with meaning. I also love toki pona and delved into Esperanto. I don't want to compare and judge - I simply enjoy it all!

[@snargleplax]

toki ale li toki pona. All languages are good languages. Or, "the universal language is Toki Pona." :)

[@yorkieandthechihuahua]

While it's definitely not my thing, this was fascinating and intriguing to learn about. Ingenious usage of language. I wish all toki pona speakers the best.

[@puppetaccess]

jan mute pi toki pona wile e ni: pona mute tawa sina! … and we speakers of toki pona likewise wish the best to you too ♥

[@yorkieandthechihuahua]

@@puppetaccess This is probably completely wrong, since I had to use ChatGPT. However, in respect for your response... mi wile ala e ni: mi kama sona e toki pona tan ni. sina ken toki e ni: mi suli ala li ike ala li pakala ala li ken toki pona. taso mi suli li ken toki pona la mi wile toki e ni: mi toki e ni: mi wile toki pona.

[@AlannaStarcrossed]

@@yorkieandthechihuahua back translating that as best I can, > I don't want to learn toki pona because: you might say that I'm not important and I'm not bad and I'm not hurt/mistaken and I can speak toki pona. But me-as-an-adult can speak toki pona, so I want to say that I say I want to speak well [speak toki pona] I'm pretty fluent but I'd struggle to really understand that in conversation, it's very disconnected and doesn't give enough context to have clear understanding No clue what you started with. LLMs super can't do toki pona once you get anywhere further than the kind of example sentences you see in the written lessons

[@yorkieandthechihuahua]

@@AlannaStarcrossed Yeah, that got badly mangled. Let's just leave it as I don't have the ability to speak toki pona, but I wish you well. I don't remember exactly what I said properly after all this time, sorry.

[@FrithonaHrududu02127]

You are absolutely my favorite channel right now. Theres plenty of people that have the information but you're one of the few that can get it across in such an enjoyable and retainable way.

[@RobWords]

That's very kind, thank you.

[@ahmedsaoudi2344]

"Why use lot word when few word do trick!" I bet Kevin Malone would've been proud had he learned about this language 😅 This is a fascinating subject. I only wonder what would a community experience the world around it if it had only a similarly tiny language.

[@terryhayward7905]

Some Amazonian tribes have similar language formats, as did the first humans to develop language. If all you need to do is tell someone where to go, "follow", or to hunt for food, then you do not need more than a simple language structure.

[@jossspear]

Hi Rob, you previously did a video on “lost positives”, but what about “lost nouns”? For example, you can be “happy” or “cosy” but we don’t say “I have a lot of hap” or “this jumper has plenty of cose”. Did we ever use those words? I’m sure there are lots of other examples.

[@Music-rd3xq]

Stumbled upon your channel just the other day and I find this video fascinating! Conlangs are amazing because they make us analyze our own languages and therefore ways of thinking. I’d never heard of Toki Pona- it’s a neat idea.

[@Lumintorious]

Toki Pona speakers, assemble! Big names covering the language means new speakers that will need our help!

[@Insightfill]

Any good online resources?

[@falkland_pinguin]

mi lon

[@Lumintorious]

you can watch the "Toki pona in 18 minutes" video for a short intro to the grammar and use "lipu Linku" (search on google for it) to learn the common words.

[@Lumintorious]

Reddit is helpful. Also jan Telakoman has a great series where he talks slowly with pictures to teach you the language

[@saiphrivas1437]

toki! mi lon! jan pona o, o kama!

[@annojance]

I love the back to basics idea of language. More words can add specificity, but that can broadly be done in two ways: with more vocabulary; or, with more a longer string of words (through modifiers, a relative clause or whatever means a language can use to indicate more specificity). Unfortunately, I don't have the time to watch this entire video before work. I'll definitely return to watch the rest because it's so interesting.

[@rambledogs2012]

Loved the fact you realised Oputa does indeed sound like something naughty in a few languages. That really made me laugh when I saw it being spelt out.

[@janPolijan]

toki a! Fantastic! You have explained Toki Pona brilliantly! I do sweet & cozy vlogs in easy spoken Toki Pona (travel, impromptu, etc. ... with subtitles for those who are learning this beautiful language). Toki Pona is such a fantastic mean of self-expression, so good for artistic endeavors, for deep thinking about the real meanings of words, for the applied study of linguistics, for playful introspection, or even for community building. Rob, you have made a brilliant introduction here, well done! Keep it up and enjoy this beautiful language! 💕

[@ETBCOR]

mu!

[@mamusipipalisajelo5419]

mu!

[@janPolijan]

mu!

[@josephdoss007]

Thank you Rob, I'm interested in languages and conlangs but always dismissed Toki Pona as a gimmicky experiment or as lacking the seriousness of a full language. Your explanation and showcasing the speakers opened my eyes to a potentially new linguistic study I might never have allowed myself the pleasure of experiencing. Thanks for the great content.

[@RobWords]

It's a lot of fun to work with and communicate with. And it encourages you to ask questions, which is almost always a good thing.

[@jansepulon]

There is a lot of very serious content made in Toki Pona. There's a video introduction to non-euclidean geometry, a calculus textbook, a lot of complex fiction works, dark and sad poetry and songs (ahem...), thought-provoking discussions, and much more. It's not only a bright funny toy, it truly helped me explore complex thoughts in a way other languages couldn't

[@LaPingvino]

What I found is that many people gave it a try just because it's so simple, nothing to lose, and then they discover that the common "wisdom" about conlangs is completely false. Like, if you already have this much depth in such a joke of a language, imagine what something like Esperanto is actually like.

[@ETBCOR]

wawa a!

[@mjmulenga3]

This is exactly how we use a limited vocabulary to express complex ideas in Zambian Sign Language. I don't know how many unique words the language has, but I certainly know fewer than a thousand. And I communicate just fine, including 30-minute public talks.

[@DandoPorsaco-ho1zs]

I love how the one with the glasses uses tons of very precise words to explain why all these precise words are not needed. She uses 53 different words in just 25 seconds: "It's just a matter of shifting your perspective from English's hyper focus, or most world languages, if we're being honest, hyper focus on very specific things into a different schema. It's just a different schema. You're always talking with someone. And so the ability to ask clarifying questions, to constantly be checking in with your interlocutor, is super important to understanding what they mean." How do you say hyper focus, schema, clarify, interlocutor, etc. in Toki Pona? You don't! You can only express vague and simple ideas in a language without words.

[@janlakuse5199]

hi i'm the one with glasses. here's how i would translate my remarks. o lukin weka e nasin pi toki inli. o poki e sona ale ken lon nasin pi selo ante. sina toki pona la sina toki tawa jan. o wile sona e sona ona la sona li ken pona. "try to dispose of english's method. contain all possible knowledge in a method of a different shape. if you're speaking toki pona, you are talking to a person. ask about their knowledge to improve understanding." look how much smaller it got after cutting out so many jargony words! i personally dont believe there's information lost there but you do you

[@Ithirahad]

Hyperfocus is an Englishy and unnecessary choice of phrasing, interlocutor is like four words packed into one, clarify is... five?, schema is three or so. I don't know toki pona but surely there is a way to say something like "strong strong thought", "person [you] talk to", "make understanding [for both people]", and "shape of idea" respectively, that gets the same idea across if you need it. (big if)

[@aiocafea]

not the one with the glasses but still i don't think it contradicts the point after being a word-nerd, it's difficult to stop the flow of jargon when you try to convey simple ideas, especially difficult when you care deeply about some ideas i for one love toki pona exactly *because* it can put a break to my mind's thesaurus sometimes, and i'm sure i'm not alone in this, i periphrase my way out of being honest with myself sonja lang herself stated how the conlang helped her break down and simplify her internal dialogue in episodes of depression of course it's not bad to have a diverse vocabulary, and you can train yourself to state things in a simpler manner in english, but toki pona is a wonderful opportunity to first realise, to *feel* and to experiment that you don't need all the words, all of the time

[@DandoPorsaco-ho1zs]

@@Ithirahad You are already using too many words for Tok Pisin standards.

[@DandoPorsaco-ho1zs]

@@janlakuse5199 Sorry, I don't speak idiot.

[@the_neutral_container]

It's interesting to note that _geologist_ almost literally means _person with Earth knowledge_ - just not very transparently to most modern speakers. So in this case, Toki Pona becomes a clarifier as well as a simplifier.

[@aiocafea]

yeah, if one wants to experience a different reality where you don't just borrow new 'pre-cooked' words from greek and latin but toki pona scares you, try German! german prefers to bind together words you already know as opposed to english that swipes foreign words or ties together ancient ones

[@rebeccamay6420]

"Geologist" registers in my mind as "person of earth words/science," so "person with earth knowledge" is also an adequate expression.

[@PhilBagels]

But how would toki pona distinguish between "geologist" and "geographer"? Or "geologist" from "seismologist" or "vulcanologist"?

[@khanso9446]

⁠@PhilBagels this is just my take, but I’d say ‘jan pi sona ma’ (person of Earth knowledge) for geologist, and ‘jan pi sona pi jan en ma’ (person of humans and Earth knowledge) for geographer if you wanted to differientiate the two. Seismologist could be ‘jan pi sona pi tawa ma’ (person who knows movement of earth), and ‘jan pi sona pi ko seli lon ma’ (person who knows of hot malleable-substance in the earth) for ‘vulcanologist’. Of course, these can come to be extrememly lengthy phrases! In reality, almost all people would say something much more simpler, and specify if its truely important to the conversation at hand. Hope this helps!

[@falkland_pinguin]

​@@khanso9446 pi-en-phrases! That would be quite controversial on ma pona (but I love them) ;)

[@estrela3889]

Rob, such an amazing video!! It's truly wonderful how respectful and genuinely interested you approach all this!!!

[@Patralgan]

As a Finn, I'm intrigued by relatively many Finnish words in Toki Pona. For example: nimi = nimi (name), sina = sinä (you), kala = kala (fish), nena = nenä (nose), sama = sama (same)

[@svkusi]

exactly , im learning finnish, and thougt, ooh, the bits finnish simplifies, with no cases, simplified finnish??! at least we will be slightly ahead at the start. definately intrigued. i like that this has been created, as french and german do my head in!

[@Lisbonized]

I’m not Finnish but have been learning it for some time and thought it was very Finnish at first!

[@shirl6135]

Just commented the same .. I’ve been learning Finnish on Dio. Minä olen Shirl

[@Patralgan]

@@shirl6135 hei Shirl!

[@pc9434]

You did a great job covering the critical distinction between ambiguous and vague. It's one of the reasons why the counting system you described is my least favorite part of toki pona - it adds (needless IMO) ambiguity.

[@snargleplax]

nanpa li ike. Numbers are annoying.

[@jan_Masewin]

nanpa li ike, and it's practically a rite of passage to try invent a new counting system, so hey, go ahead

[@brucheweinberger6863]

​@@jan_MasewinThere was a reason Roman Numerals were simplified.

[@jan_Masewin]

@@brucheweinberger6863 I wold say there's clearly something more intuitive about additive counting systems, while our 'Arabic' multiplicative number system is a much simpler system overall

[@ChelleLlewes]

Back in the early sixties, a bunch of us school kids got together and invented our own alphabet so we could pass notes in class without the teacher's being able to understand them. In print instead of being spoken, the entire aim was to be private in public, and it worked! This takes our early efforts a whole bunch o' steps past that. Wow! 🥰

[@stlechamans]

a thing I like about toki pona names is that you don’t have to modify “jan”. I’ve seen many other people in the toki pona community modify words other than “jan” as a way of expressing themselves and or as a way of making their name more representative of their personality / identity

[@mamusipipalisajelo5419]

lon! mi palisa jelo Natan a

[@Yvelluap]

then there's lipamanka who made an officially recognized glyph just for his name

[@drbirtles]

Great video! Always a big fan of simplified Languages. Complexity is often more of a barrier than a benefit I believe. My favourite bit of this video was the "you're the language guy!" That interaction really made me smile.

[@tubabelle]

yes! it was adorable when he got recognized! 12:53

[@mc-not_escher]

Back in fifth or sixth grade my best friend and I made a conlang so we could pass notes back and forth without anyone but us two be able to decrypt the message. It was based on the Phoenician alphabet. Good times.

[@creepingequinox7359]

That’s so sick

[@belphegor_dev]

Today on things that never happened.

[@groofay]

What an interesting language! I'll be trying it out after this. The translation and compression of ideas sounds like a creative exercise in itself. Also, for those with Kindle Unlimited, the "Language of Good" book is free to read through that.

[@snargleplax]

o kama sona pona! Happy learning!

[@FLPhotoCatcher]

The title is a bit off-putting or creepy. "Language of Good"? Like other languages are not good? It's objectively not a 'good' language, as it's not so good for communicating meaning. It is an interesting 'toy' language, I guess.

[@snargleplax]

@@FLPhotoCatcher It's by no means intended to imply that other languages are not good. It's just a playful unpacking of the multi-layered meaning of the phrase "toki pona" in Toki Pona, with an emphasis on the philosophical bent toward being good/friendly/nice/simple. It doesn't have to be "good at" everything, and there's no attempt to say that. To me your take is a bit superficial and underinformed.

[@FLPhotoCatcher]

@@snargleplax I don't think my comment was superficial, but maybe a bit underinformed. I did watch the whole video first. I guess I was in a bit of a bad mood, and the video struck me as over-praising the language.

[@snargleplax]

@@FLPhotoCatcher oh, you only say that because you haven't joined the cult yet ;)

[@puppetaccess]

I have been genuinely excited to see you talk about this language… I knew it was coming!

[@noahnaugler7611]

I've been at toki pona for just over a week now. The really cool part is how quickly one can develop a sub-fluency

[@ookap-orsc]

As a proficient speaker, I applaud you for this! It's one of the most well thought-out videos on our language I've ever seen - certainly the best one I've seen from a non-speaker. 44,000 (current view count) is a lot of people, who will be exposed to the language and will receive information without any mistakes or inaccuracies. This is great for the community. Thank you! - jan Osuka

[@mamusipipalisajelo5419]

mu!

[@ookap-orsc]

@@mamusipipalisajelo5419 a toki kppj o

[@rexgoodheart3471]

So, here's a question for you: why didn't you respond in Toki Pona? I know the answer: you can't. It's utter silliness.

[@thomas4841]

@@rexgoodheart3471toki sina li powe. jan li ken kepeken e toki pona tawa ale, taso ona li pali e ni la, jan ante li sona ala e toki pona. mi wile sona e ni: tenpo ni la sina sona ala sona e toki mi?

[@matthewmitchell3457]

Gotta love KZbin's ever-so-helpful Translate to English button😂

[@alphaofficial6466]

sitelen tawa ni li pona mute mute tawa mi! definitely the best coverage on the language by far - unlike the mistake-riddled slop that Half As Interesting made.

[@aneliab9842]

dam u speak toki pona

[@deaddead698]

Toki Pona’s probably one of the best languages to learn to dip your toes into something simple, then with that feeling of “I know two languages”, you can try something harder with a better mindset

[@undrhil]

And here I thought most people had a problem with English not being descriptive enough to prevent confusion

[@fipix6143]

The words you mention immediately rang my bells, they sound so similar to the finnish words with the same/similar meaning: sina - sinä = you kiwen - kivi = rock kasi - kasvi = plant wawa - vahva = strong lipu - lippu = flag ma - maa = country/earth/ground in addition the rules of the langauge sound also pretty similar in a way that makes it almost finnishlike to read in a

[@Yvelluap]

finnish is indeed one of the languages toki pona's lexicon is based on! some others include: apeja (unnoficial), ike, kala, kijetesantakalu (my beloved), kin, leko (debatably), linja, mije, nena, nimi, pana, pimeja, sama (debatable), suli, walo. see if you can guess the meanings!

[@janMajeka]

I speak Toki Pona and I swear like half of Toki Pona's words are Finnish

[@sneeds]

pakala always reminds me of perkele

[@NatickJill]

What fun! I am a long-time speaker of Esperanto. Esperanto's inventor (Ludwig Zamenhof in 1887) envisioned it as a simple language, but toki pona takes simplicity to new extremes. You have just given me a new rabbit hole to dive down into. Not sure if I thank you. :-D

[@mamusipipalisajelo5419]

aaa sitelen ni li pona mute a! pilin la jan mute pi toki pona ala li alasa toki e toki pona la ona li lukin e toki musi lili li pakala lon pana sona. ona li toki ala tawa kulupu pi toki pona li alasa ala pona tawa toki pona. taso sina ni a! This video was great! It sometimes feels like people who try to make videos on toki pona see a little cutesy language and don’t really care about it enough to do well. They don’t reach out to the community and aren’t being perfectly kind to the language. But this was exactly what we were missing!

[@SchmulKrieger]

Is this the only way to translate this as you did?

[@Isiloron]

@@SchmulKrieger My own translation that is more direct: Emphasis emphasis emphasis, picture this good very emphasis! Feeling context and people many Toki Pona not try speak Toki Pona context, they look language fun little and botch true give knowledge. They communicate not toward community Toki Pona and try not good toward Toki Pona. But you this emphasis!

[@SchmulKrieger]

@@Isiloron I don't know why you speak rubbish without proposition.

[@Isiloron]

@@SchmulKrieger Toki Pona is not an ideal language to use if you want to make propositions. The language is not made for that.

[@ImDayv27]

​@@SchmulKriegerif you're against this, why are you even here?

[@anemelo-tsourekaki]

And I was wondering if there's a number system worse than that of French 😂

[@snargleplax]

toki pona li wile ala toki mute lon nanpa. Toki Pona doesn't want to say much about numbers.

[@sortasurvival5482]

55555 in german is pretty horrific

[@johncloud3823]

Fascinating!! I thoroughly enjoyed learning about this!

[@cuprianlycoris]

I love how conlang creators have vastly different interpretations for what a language should be. Esperanto tries to be easy and natural, Toki Pona believes in leaving it up to to listener and being as vague as possible, and Ithkuil (which I wholly think you should make a video on) brings everything you can make with language together to be as precise as possible. Also speaks a lot for people who learn these languages. It'll be really interesting as people produce more text how the languages will evolve. Great video as always.

[@ambermarie211]

I recognized sina as meaning you in Finnish and ma (maa) which means land/country. So I thought it would be fun to search what Toki Pona means in Finnish (if anything) and it seems to mean "Sure Bro." 😂

[@Thrustmaster64]

No it doesn't. "Toki" = "sure", but pona is not a Finnish word. "Veli" = "brother". "Sina" is just one letter off "sinä", so that sure is a loan.

[@jan_Masewin]

nimi mute li tan toki Sumi! You might also recognise kasi, kiwen, kala, linja, lipu, nena, wawa, and a bunch others

[@ambermarie211]

@@jan_Masewin They really borrowed from Finnish, which is both surprising and interesting to me. I wonder if it is because of the way many Finnish words have the consonant, vowel pattern and because it is not closely related to many other languages.

[@jan_Masewin]

@@ambermarie211 If I had to guess, it'd be because yeah it's a really isolated language and also probably because mama Sonja was just knowledgeable and interested in Finnish at the time

[@vvodcod]

Wow... I haven't been in the tp community for awhile now, but it is really beautiful to me that you have brought so many familiar faces into this one place. Seeing outsiders show interest is really cool aswell. jan Waputo o sina pona. ❤️

[@Topy44]

dah-kah oo-nye noo-lah, ee-day ee-kah-noh-bah-ay-ay wah! (Thank you my friend, great video!) - Looks kind of similar, to Toki Pona, right? When I was in high school back in Switzerland around ~1998 my friend and I were fascinated by Furbish, the Furby language. Mind you neither of us owned or ever even saw a real Furby - we were ~15yo at the time and really were not the target market - we just discovered this fascinating minimalist language, and started communicating in it, extending it when necessary and building words in a similar way to Toki Pona by using the closest concept with a bunch of modifiers. If Toki Pona had been around at the time I think we would have become fluent speakers. :D

[@mamusipipalisajelo5419]

suwi a!!

[@EvelyntMild]

I don't talk a lot. When I do, I use every word I feel is necessary to clearly and precisely communicate my meaning. At first, I felt a little put off by the vaguery of Toki Pona. But now I'm thinking it would be interesting to learn and exercise the more interpretive side of my brain. Thanks for the vid Rob! You always find the coolest stuff! ❤

[@The_SOB_II]

Toki pona is cool, but unfortunately it doesn't have any new radio shows 😢 ah well....

[@salvatorecastellitto1375]

Not to discourage you, I think people learning any type of language is a positive, but: Toki Pona doesn't really serve laconicism if I'm being honest. While it does kind of pigeonhole you into saying only what's essential, more complicated or abstract thoughts that might only take a few words in English or otherwise become rather long because you have to recursively correct for non-specificity. You end up saying more for less, if you catch my drift, just fair warning :)

[@snargleplax]

toki pona li pona tawa ni: sina ken lili pona e sona ike suli kepeken kon pona. sina wile toki e lili suli la, toki pona li kama tan wile sama. sina lukin sona pona pi wile sona sin la, sina wile weka e kon ike pi toki ante la, pona li kama tawa sina. Toki Pona is wonderful for summing up a tangled mess of ideas into a simple principle. If you like to only speak what is essential, that's exactly what Toki Pona is designed for. If you explore it with a joyful and open mind, and are willing to unlearn things taught by other languages, it will reward you.

[@napoleonfeanor]

"unlearn"? Who also decides what is essential and not? ​@snargleplax

[@snargleplax]

@@napoleonfeanor Yes, unlearn in the sense of not limiting one's imagination to the familiar. Empty your cup before you can fill it, that kind of thing. And the persons communicating decide what is essential or not, based on context and what's important to them.

[@alexanderpallinger1944]

Finding a phenomenon as quirky as this and presenting it competently without any snark is half a miracle on this platform. Time to hit that subscribe button.

[@allmyhomieshatefreud5501]

7:10 This example really reminds me of Chinese. In Chinese, the word for “geologist” is 地质学家, literally “earth quality learning home,” i.e., someone who houses a lot of knowledge for the characteristics of earth. This is how Chinese gets away with less than 10,000 characters, of which only 3500 are considered frequently used

[@karphin1]

It’s funny, “you don’t need more words for….” , but the richness of English makes literature and conversation in general enjoyable. I love having a large vocabulary. If you just want to simplify communication, ok. But aren’t we going backwards? I always enjoy the Robwords videos!

[@StamfordBridge]

If expansiveness is a feast for expression, then minimalism is an imaginative leap in expressionism as well. The expressive mind, it seems to me, can see either direction as "forwards."

[@jan_Simiman]

@@StamfordBridge well said. toki pona.

[@KimRowden]

I quickly checked to see if this was posted on April 1st... then I saw the representation of "299" - which took more words than this entire post! Good luck kiddos.

[@jordonhoelzeman24]

Lol he must be running out of material 😅 sad day, because I just discovered robwords and have learned something worthwhile on every video except this one

[@jansepulon]

How dare people have fun without having a short and easy way of saying "two hundred ninety-nine"? We have been very fortunate, because we shared so many good moments despite the complexity of expressing this number (and other numbers as well, we're kinda inclusive, we don't discriminate)

[@mamusipipalisajelo5419]

There is a silly joke way to say it: "tu wan ale noka po" "tu ale mute mute mute mute luka luka luka tu tu" for it is often abbreviated like TAMMMMLLLTT though, which isn't bad

[@robertdibenedetto6445]

I've never heard of toki pona before; upon starting the video I immediately thought of Newspeak from Orwell's 1984, and the intended control of people's thoughts through a shrinking language. It's wonderful to see that toki pona has the opposite effect of creating multiple and expressive interpretations of ideas through a short list of words. Great video, Rob!

[@mamusipipalisajelo5419]

❤totally agree! They just happened to share the characteristics of a smaller or "simpler" vocabulary than English. To speak toki pona to me is to remove jargon and surface level speech, and to think more about the real meaning of what is coming out of your mouth, while Newspeak is more like jargon taking over the whole language until you only repeat Goodthink because that's the only words you have. toki pona makes you think about what you want to say, while Newspeak makes you think about what the party wants you to think. I'm surprised by the number of people who think they're similar. I personally think of toki pona as a tool of self reflection and understanding because of how you have to break things down to them speak the meaning out, but maybe others use the language differently. pilin mi la sina toki lon a! toki pona en toki sin pi lawa Owe li ante suli a. ijo wan taso li sama lon ona: ona tu la mute nimi li lili tawa toki Inli. jan li toki pona la jan li weka e nimi pi kon ala li taso e kon wile pi toki ona. taso jan li toki sin pi lawa Owe la jan li weka e kon wile pi toki ona li taso e nimi pi kon ala. ni la jan li weka e wile ona tan toki li toki tan wile pi lawa Owe taso. nasa a tawa mi la jan sin mute la toki pona en toki pi lawa Owe li ken sama. toki pona li sama ilo tawa mi. kepeken ona la jan li alasa e ijo toki e kon pi toki ona e wile ona e pilin ona. taso ken la jan ante li ante lon tan kepeken.

[@Sonicgott]

Toki Pona might arguably be the world’s cutest language. ❤

[@snargleplax]

jan seme li toki suwi lon nasin mi? Who talks cute like us?

[@africankidd3642]

@@snargleplaxSomalis

[@MrZajebali]

😎banana 🍌

[@carcharoclesmegalodon6904]

Emphasis on “arguably”.

[@MrZajebali]

@@carcharoclesmegalodon6904 "Arguabliest"🤔

[@bradensorensen966]

Seems like a solution in search of a problem.

[@timurshahauthor]

I've heard a little about Toki Pona now and then over the past year or so, and this video made me fall in love not only with the linguistic features its made up, of, but with the community that feel so motivated and passionate about using it as another means of expression - because of, not in spite of, its semantic limitations. Sorry for the run-on sentence there - I love the video!

[@snargleplax]

pilin pilin wawa sina li pona! The powerful feeling in your heart is good!

[@BinglesP]

Toki Pona is amazing. I love how it's constructed and pronounced as simply as possible, while not being confusing or sounding stupid. I'm thinking of learning it myself.

[@snargleplax]

sina ken! ona li lili taso. You can do it! It's only little.

[@thierrypauwels]

09:11. Imagine laws being written in toki pona and then lawyers arguing whether a certain act was legal or illegal...

[@linuxophile]

There are hypothesis that the use of language actually modifies (physically) the brain (different connectivities of synapses). It is actually an important distinction between humans and other high performing animals. By this token, simplifying the language would change how brain functions. I can’t see how it would be beneficial (but interesting experiment).

[@swiftlymurmurs]

This is commonly known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, but it's sadly a heavily disputed idea. In a romantic sense, I think it's really cool and it can be the basis of some really poetic ideas, like the plot of the movie Arrival, but practically it doesn't really seem to be true.

[@berbold]

After almost 120 seconds of internet research, I would like to announce that Toki Pona also appears to mean "Laptop Axe" in Te Reo Maori. After that significant contribution to world culture, I'm going reward myself with a coffee. mi moku musi telo ma?

[@dodolulupepe]

mi moku musi e* telo ma :p

[@cinnamonbeardstud]

A language in which context is even MORE vague than modern languages? That's not a recipe for disaster! Functionally, it's a great language, and it would be cool if we could adopt some of its concept word categories, but I don't think the size of this language could stay small over time. If it became adopted by a culture as a default native language, that culture would eventually change, like splitting into two, over time, and cultural changes make new contexts. New contexts mean that some concepts are no longer universals for all the speakers, so it would likely just continue to grow to compensate for any semantic and syntax barriers forming between any subcultures that form or whole new cultures that evolve separately. The language is still very interesting and worthwhile, though, because it's like a living experiment that I think is a type of reenactment of one of the ways human language evolved. Knowing that there are already several new/proposed words that speakers disagree about is evidence to me that this is exactly what's happening and we're getting a peek at this evolution right before us.

[@rebeccamay6420]

(Adding to my previous comment...) It also occurred to me that Sonya Lang's name is amazingly appropriate too! In Latin-based languages, "Lang" means "tongue" or "speak," and "Son-" equates to "sound." If I'm not mistaken, word endings of -ya, -ye, and -yer mean "person-who." Therefore, "Son-Ya Lang" is the "person who (used simplified) sound (to make this) language." 🤩🧠💃 Pardon me while my Language-Nerd Brain does an Ecstatic Happy Dance inside my head!

[@AgentSmith324]

I'm a computer science prof, so naturally I see things through that lens (have hammer, every problem is a nail!). I was immediately reminded of the CISC/RISC debate in computer CPU design: is it better to have a large, complex instruction set (complex instruction set computers, CISC, like Intel chips) or a small number of instructions that can be highly optimized and combined to do the same thing (reduced instruction set computers, RISC, like the ARM processors in Mac products). English is "CISC", Toki Pona is "RISC". As we recently saw (as we have in the past, too, with other processors), the M1, M2, and M3 processors that Apple uses (and their mobile counterparts) blow CISC processors out of the water in terms of speed and power consumption. So maybe we should all "optimize" and learn Toki Pona? 🙂

[@_Mikarific_]

toki a! Toki Pona speaker of 3+ years, and software developer here! I often find myself, when thinking about simpler topics, *thinking* in toki pona because it's just... much easier for me to break down what I'm actually thinking. When trying to explain more complicated topics (including computer science!) to people in English I also tend to just think "well how would I say that in toki pona" because it makes me break down what I'm actually saying into words that... yknow... people *understand* . The reason I give people to learn toki pona isn't in order to speak to other people or even use it as something for communication at all, but rather just to simplify your own thought process and give yourself a method of breaking concepts down into their parts. It does *wonders* in that use case for me.

[@SeanHoulihane]

Although modern CPUs all have a more RISC like core, regardless of their language. This debate is now more of a teaching tool than anything very substantial.

[@JosephF.]

Apple chips don't really blow CISC processors out of the water in terms of speed. They definitely did at release, but I think that more spoke to failure to innovate by Intel, as they were in the dominant position and AMD wasn't making good chips yet. Now, while certainly less efficient, CISC processors are definitely more performant than Apple's m-series processors. Besides, modern ARM is really only RISC in that you need to load things into registers before operating on them, and there's tons of registers. It has many domain specific instructions, such as cryptography instructions, and it even has a (better implemented) version of variable instruction length through the Thumb modes. I don't really think ARM's alleged "simplicity" is analogous to toki pona, whose philosophy would probably oppose domain specific instructions and make a much less useful CPU as a result.

[@wilburnh]

“Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?” - Kevin Malone, The Office

[@AlannaStarcrossed]

seme la nimi mute li pona? [In what context are a lot of words good?]

[@carcharoclesmegalodon6904]

Toki Pona is literally the exact opposite of this - because there are so few words in the vocabulary, you need to use a lot of them in every sentence if you want it to be unambiguous.

[@janLewi]

after HAI's video on toki pona, seeing something like this is like a breath of fresh air. tawa mi la this might be the best toki pona video made by a non toki pona centric channel. pona a :>

[@jan_Simiman]

looon. mi open lukin e musi ni la mi pilin e ni: "jan Waputo li pona. pilin la sona ona li pona." mi awen lukin la ona li toki e jan Usawi e jan Lakuse la mi kama sona a e ni: ni li musi sona nanpa wan.

[@noellestakenn]

@@jan_Simiman ni a • lukin open la mi pilin e ni: "ni li sitelen tawa sama kulupu Half As Interesting anu seme" • lukin mi li pini la mi musi li wawa mute •

[@Roope00]

Toki Pona is an interesting language to me partly because it uses a lot of words derived from my native language of Finnish, it's fun to see how the derivatives are used!

[@jomitchell6711]

Having to explain Toki Pona in english every time you use it is exactly why it won't take off. Vague is an understatement and I can only guess how boring The Three Little Pigs was.

[@gregdan3d]

- It already has thousands of speakers! - There is a dictionary for the language which is already written in Toki Pona. You just would never know of it because you don't already speak the language. Most of the educational materials for toki pona exist in English purely because of demographics, not because they can't be done in Toki Pona.

[@murkotron]

@@gregdan3d oooh, thousands of speakers, wow.