Sunday 30 September 2007

mi sona e toki pona!

Well, I've now completed my second pass of the Toki Pona lessons and I think I have now cracked the grammar, as well as cementing my knowledge of the vocab. So as I hoped, I have basically succeeded in learning Toki Pona in 2 weeks. That is to say, I know the vocab and the grammar rules - active use will require a lot of reading and translation practice, which is what I plan to do next. I plan to identify some appropriate texts to translate into Toki Pona. I think these texts need to be: short, simple and not too serious..

So what are my impressions of Toki Pona, having learnt the language? I would say it is a mixture of Tok Pisin, Chinese and Hawaiian. The lack of specificity in the vocab is the biggest challenge in using this language; on the other hand, only having 118 words to learn is a big advantage.

There are a couple of points in the grammar that could still give me problems. I had to go over lesson 11 on pi twice (three times in total) before it clicked into place: the pattern is always N pi N A where A qualifies only the second N, and that holds also for examples like tomo pi jan Lisa, if you think about it..

The various ways of saying "and" will also take some getting used to. This phrase from lesson 4 is very hard for me to parse: mi moku li pakala. This makes me wonder whether it might not be a better to simply generalize the use of li.

2 comments:

Matthew said...

re: "li" as a conjuction for verbal phrases-- Hmm, interesting--this is interesting when the modifier to the pronoun *could* be a verb. I'll have to think up an example.

"pi" is a particle that is still awaiting a really good explanation. Other than the rule that a "pi" phrase ends in two words without "pi" inbetween-- the optimal usage eludes me.

Bryce Wesley Merkl said...

This is a very interesting blog. It's great to see how you track your progress in learning this new language.

Here's a great site in Toki Pona that I think you might enjoy:

Toki Pona wiki browser