The World's TINIEST Language? (TOKI PONA)
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- čas přidán 22. 03. 2018
- This video is all about Toki Pona - a minimalist constructed language with only 123 words! The name of the language means "The language of good", "toki" meaning "language" (Like "talk"), and "pona" meaning "good". The idea of Toki Pona is to simplify thought and communication by cutting our communication down to the most important universal concepts, and expressing more complex concepts by combining simple ones. With only 123 words, translating a single English word into Toki Pona sometimes requires several words to "explain" or paraphrase the idea. The Toki Pona community, which uses Toki Pona to communicate online (and occasionally in person) has collectively developed a vocabulary of such phrases, and if you include them all, Toki Pona has a lot more than 123 vocabulary items. But its core vocabulary is still extremely small.
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Toki Pona inspires various reactions, including some people who say it reminds them of "Newspeak" in the George Orwell book 1984, but the intention behind it is much more positive than that. At the very least, it's a very interesting and unique conlang!
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Music
Body: "Time Illusionist" by Asher Fulero.
Outro: "Man" by Rondo Brothers.
![Eminem - Houdini [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/22tVWwmTie8/mqdefault.jpg)
Hey, guys! If you're into Toki Pona, there's a new Toki Pona dictionary (around 400 pages long). Check it out: www.amazon.com/Toki-Pona-Dictionary-Official/dp/0978292367/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=toki+pona&qid=1627425403&sr=8-1 (not an affiliate link).
Doesn’t it have like 100 words? How would they do a 400 page long dictionary then?
@@xx_skullgamer_xx2754 One of the schticks of the new dictionary ('ku') is that there's a very comprehensive dictionary of "phrases" that the community uses to describe concepts. So for example, "computer" is translated as "ilo sona, ilo nanpa, ilo, poki nanpa", which mean "knowledge tool, number tool, tool, number box". These translations aren't supposed to tell speakers how to speak but just offer a look into the state of the language as it is today.
@Unproductive Failure Yes, that's exactly it.
Both me and jan misali have a problem with numbers in toki pona.
@@xx_skullgamer_xx2754 afaik it also has translations of English words into tiki pona
It's kind of ironic how in trying to simplify things, Toki Pona can sometimes make very simple sentences more complex
this man gets a ❤ after 4 years and nobody else does. wow.
edit: stop liking this someone else has one
@@channelwithnotopic best comment
@@channelwithnotopic yeah
In a similar way to how a number in binary has a lot more digits than a regular number.
@@jaredf6205 But binary isnt meant to be simple, just blunt enough that we can represent it in 2 states, just being on and off.
In English: "I like bacon."
In Toki Pona: "Bacon is good for me."
In English: I like Smoking and Alcohol
In Toki Pona: Smoking and Alcohol is good for me
😂😂😂😂😂
Edit: Damn, 110 likes. Thanks y'all
to be fair, "good for me" in english is idiomatic to mean healthy, while in toki pona its idiomatic to mean liking something. so practically they mean different things despite being the same literal translation. funny tho
"is maith liom bagún" in irish is a similar construction lol
@@dungeness3224 yeah, for example in russia we use a phrase that can be translated "helpfull for health".
@@______608 telo nasa li pona tawa mi
kon ike li pona tawa mi
How can you NOT love a language that calls alcohol 'silly water'!?!?!?!?!?!?
Lol I just read this comment right at the moment it came up in the vid 😅
you mean "telo nasa"
mi olin e telo nasa
mi sona lili e toki pona
mi kama sona e toki pona
@@tonylovesmusic6806which means silly water
I have a feeling this is how early languages were formed. It's easy to see how compound words that are used often can become simplified into their own words.
Early language was
Run
Duck
Food
Fuck
And fuck off.
That was enough until we domesticated the dog.
Yeah it’s the step you make in a naturalistic language conlang which is the the proto language from here you add those words up to make prefixes suffixes affixes infixes and more
If there were native speakers, they would probably find it incredibly hard to learn another language due to their relatively extensive vocabularies.
If there were native speakers, their Toki Pona would immediately become a lot more complicated because in it's current form it's insufficient as a main communication language of a society
aounds like ethnocentric BS from a non-linguist but ok
@@Emile.gorgonZola I don't know if you are addressing xgokopx or breiten. But if it's xgokopx I need to inform you that basically all English words are composed of simpler words. The different between Toki Pona and English is that the simpler building blocks are apart of the standard vocabulary. While in English the smaller words are often not in use anymore.
Consider internet. Inter and net, inter meaning between.
Television. Tele and vision, tele meaning distant.
Metaphor, meta meaning with.
That's kinda like what learning Chinese is like.
No, as you could see in the video. The lack of words is entirely theorical. In effective use the language already has thousands of words, they are just made up of chains of the base words. So saying the language only has 123 words is already down right wrong, they are more like supersyllables.
cant wait to see quantum theory in Toki pona
We would need ten or more words for describing the word "quantum theory" in Toki Pona...
Would “sitelen sona pi ijo lili” (A sculpture of wisdom of small body) works?
Edit: sijelo -> ijo : yeah, completely forgot that ijo exists.
I'm not a expert of Toki Pona, but I think it can be just "toki ijo lili" (thought about small things), or even just "oko lili" (small eye), from the point of view of Toki Pona.
It's so interesting to think how every difficult term would be described in Toki Pona.
How does quantum theory differ from atomic theory?
I would add something like movement, I don't know any words, or even better unknown, to describe QT.
Well actually 'movement' would be more like heat.
oldcowbb! I think Mathematics works, to complement.
So it's basically a language based on descriptions formed from basic words. It's very interesting, it forces you to really think about stuff. I like it
Lobster: marine creature with strong sharp hands (kala pi luka kiki wawa)
I was thinking the same thing! You really need to think about what you want to convey, so using such a "limited" word pool to chose from, you are somewhat forced to think in a nuanced way, while also being pretty creative
im late but would a crab be sea spider?@@floot2sussy
@@kylesimone6140 you could call it a bug "fish" or a sea bug, good idea
yeah that’s actually really accurate!
This could be a good language for two people to learn who have very different native languages when they just want to have casual conversation, but it would suck for talking about anything particularly complicated or abstract.
actually toki pona is very good for abstract things
updating in february 2024: im pretty sure talking about more abstract things in toki pona is actually mostly limited by your skill in the language.
i think i have a better understanding of “abstract” now.
But in my opinion, if we will update toki pona, and add a lot of words, it will be less abstract, and a little more complex, but not stupid! Mama mije!
The average dog can learn 165 words.
Guess who's teaching their next dog Toki Pona?
YES! You can set up a talking board for your dog so it can press buttons to also say stuff too!
If only you could teach it grammar and context.
Did it work?
@@itsROMPERS... dogs will just learn that stuff automatically
@@zackbuildit88 FR?
Summary of the video
"There's no word for ___ in Toki Pona, but..."
kiyomi onuma ya having a stroke there?
@kiyomi onuma r/ihadastroke
what did he say
I realized that the word for left, “poka”, was the same as the word for right. If you tell someone to go “poka”, they will randomly go left or right.
@@xuly3129 as someone who fluently speaks toki pona, I can tell you this is not true. "poka" means "to the side," so there are two common ways tell someone to "go right" or "go left." The first, and easiest, is to just pick an object in the area that would require the user to go in the direction you want to reach (ex. "o tawa soweli" could mean "go right," if there is an animal to the person's right). The other, more complicated and sometimes conviluted way, used more in literature when there are no objects to refer to, is to say something like "luka sitelen mi la o tawa poka," which would be, "in the context of my writing hand, move to my side (my hand)." The problem then is that the reader needs to know which is my writing hand, so for generality it is often assumed to be the right, unless otherwise specified.
"Telo nasa"
"Silly water"
"Yeah, my uncle is a Silly-wateraholic."
💀💀
jan poka pi mama mi li jan pi wile telo nasa.
The “kalama musi” example is interesting because it is *exactly* the same as the Sinitic word for music, 音楽, literally “sound entertainment”. I wonder how many more such compounds are mirrored in Chinese/Japanese.
well sound entertainment is “musi kalama”
Also the TP word for person (jan) is literally identical to the Cantonese word for person minus tone (jan4).
or "telo kili" for juice is just "fruit water" and we use "meyve suyu" in Turkish for juice (meyve=fruit, su=water)
Except it's not, because the 樂 in 音樂 doesn't mean entertainment. It means "music." The 樂 meaning entertainment is pronounced differently in Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, and Japanese and should be considered as a separate word that happens to share the same character.
@@RadkeMaiden In Japanese it generally is used in words that mean fun/enjoyable, anticipation, comfort, etc. (as well as music)
Finally a language I can fully learn
Same
But can not fully use
edit: I no longer believe this statement I said a year ago
@@devonoknabo2582 i mean, technically you can
@@devonoknabo2582 You can, just hold on -
3:21 "Mi kute e kalama musi"
Hiragana: み くて え からま むし.
Katakana: ミ クテ エ カラマ ムシ.
I will now refer to music exclusively as "recreational sound"
Lol
This definition fits perfectly in the mind of three-years-old me slamming pot lids together for the enjoyment of my parents' ears.
It's actually the same in Mandarin! 音乐 can be teanslated as a "fun sound"
Me too!
@@qdaniele97 "enjoyment"
This seems like it would be EXTREMELY useful as a middle-ground lingua franca to explain concepts and teach other languages. If I, as an English speaker, dedicate myself to mastering the 126 words of Toki Pona, then I could learn another language somewhat easier from another Toki Pona speaker, even if their English is spotty. It could function as a linguistic band-aid of sorts.
Every public school in the world should have a 1 day class on it.
@@-whackdlike c'mon man it's just a hundred-sth words 😭
It's extremely unessesary. Most civilized countries learn English anyway.
Or just learn English, and thus know the international language of business, and the language of the internet, and the most common second language on Earth...
@@TotalWannabe English is extremely difficult for other languages. Long consonant clusters, completely unguessable spelling, insanely redundant tense system and completely incompatible phonology.
Friend directly translating to Good Person is so wholesome, I love it
What I like about this language, as someone who's never heard of it before, is that the linguist who made this language made it right here in my hometown of Toronto!
Yeah, she’s a fellow Canadian. And quite an interesting person, too!
#CanadaGang
Toronto is more like a collection of massive cities rather than a town 😋
uh Toronto is a state
@@tobuscusradiationfox9799 it's part of a province called Ontario
I'm teaching this to my friends so we can talk about people without them knowing
I decided to learn just to do same thing lol it can work quite well if you are in the same environment with your friends. But when you read toki pona its hard to make guess.
Yes, me and my friend are learning it together as well
My point exactly😹😹
i want to do this
I'ma force my friends to do it and then we can make our own slang versions
I remember hearing about this. The main problem is to convey complex thoughts in something that is made for simple thoughts, just like much more complicated languages tend to lack ways to convey simple thoughts. But it's always good to learn a language!
"There's no individual word for telephone..." technically, that's the case in English.
telephone
they should use this language for the gibberish-sounding dialogues in games like Zelda, SIms etc.
The Sims has it's own real (constructed) language, it's called simlish
@@michaelkochalka3251 oh cool, didn't know that
@@michaelkochalka3251 Yes but also no. It's a language but simlish has no structure at all so it's just gibberish.
so an NPC language?
@@AckzaTV That's what I was thinking, yes.
"I made yellow water "means I went pee.
"mi pali e telo jelo"
Lmao
"mi pana e telo jelo" is probably better
@Grace Slagle lmao thats way too funny
"I emit yellow water"
This seems like an interesting start for someone who wanted to start learning languages. A lot less memory intensive but still has you exercising ways of making sense of things that don't directly translate.
I appreciate the simplicity and I imagine it would be excellent exercise to spend time translating into this.
I would like to think that this is how language started. A small set of words and simple grammar that could still be used to communicate. And then people slowly invented more words, or blended together long compound words to form new unique words. But it's probably a lot more complicated than that.
It isn't though... However it's incredibly similar to how language must have started, because languages started of simple. However toki pona is far from naturalistic, it has words for good and ungood which are non-natural notions, hence completely unnatural due to being overly simplistic yet only using high notion terminology for it's word base.
@The Major Some might think the main purpose of language is transporting information. To make it short. It is not. There are many more effective forms of transmitting information, e.g. showing what you mean in deed. The main purpose of language is socializing. Therefor moral judgment and teaching values is a base function of language. Imagine two homi habilis. To transfer technology they showed the younger how to hit a stone. But to warn from dangers, language is perfect. „Mama good. Enemy dangerous (non good).“ Go bring wood for fire good. No fire, animal nogood will eat you, nonogood!
I believe if this language were to be taught in schools, maybe in about a century or two it would have undergone extensive elaboration, as any language would in developing a canon of literature.
that's basically how a pidgeon turns into a creole. native speakers learn the language of the dominator only enough to be able to communicate, and then their kids add more vocabulary and grammar structures to it
@@alfyryan6949
It wouldn't take a century, tho. Not even a generation. By the time those kids graduated from school, the language would have undergone considerable expansion.
What's up with the 2 dislikes the video got literally within 5 seconds of release? lol
Cuz they see you rollin
＼(^o^)／ I don’t know!
It's those rampant bots that see Toki Pona and immediately dogpile on that dislike
Probably it's because you haven't made a language profile or comparison video in a while.
Ili estas Volapukistoj !!!
In a hypothetical situation where we met intelligent aliens, I think Toki Pona would be the best language to communicate in because it is simple enough for them to learn and understand and also we wouldn’t have to choose a non conlang as the language used to communicate
For some reason I love the way you say “Toki Pona”
Paul: Well, you don't eat water...
Ice: Hold my bottle.
XD UNDERRATED
So you eat ice cubes?
@@jakubpociecha8819 who doesn't?
@@djsaidez271 I do...on accident
mi moku e telo kiwen
To the people who say that you could never use such a simple language to express all the difficult ideas needed everyday, you should read Randall Munroe's Thing Explainer. If he can go through nuclear fission reactors with only the 1000 most common English words, surely this language could work for 99% of normal communication.
The language toki pona will just become more complex. While simple languages can be used colloquially and even express complex theme, it is naturally that the speaker would developed more unique words and grammars to specified greater clarity.
I was totally thinking about that book the whole time I was watching the video!
@@blugaledoh2669 that is somewhat true, but is important to concider that (most) people who speak Toki Pona speak it because they are interested by the simplicity of the language. I think this will at least slow the increase of complexity significantly
That's not true.
Toki Pona is too simple to be used in normal conversations.
First of all, many basic things require more than 1 word.
So a toki pona speaker would need to say more just for simple everyday concepts.
Secondly, it can't represent advanced scientific vocabulary.
You just can't create many complex necessary advanced scientific words in Toki Pona and if you do it will be a waste to say sentences for that 1 thing.
Also 1000 is a lot bigger than 123.
This language cannot be used in a society, because if it does, it's vocabulary will increase.
It's very dumb to say Toki Pona can work.
It's not impossible to communicate but it's very inefficient.
It's just too simple
@@yourowndealer did you even watch the video? the whole point is they often put words together to mean another thing. it was also never intended to be the language for anything, it’s just fun
"weird to say you are food" toki pona speakers really must get caught off gaurd by cannibals
This is better than Esperanto for a universal, basic, AUXILIARY language that would be quick and easy for anyone to learn. The thing about a simplistic language such as this, it could be an effective bridge for teaching and learning the basics of other language vocabularies, when neither teacher nor student understands the other's respective language, as well as a simple mode of communication for travelers.
Wow ! that is some complex simplicity 😂😂
Ahmad Alyamour 😂 I wanted to write something like this... toki pona is simple but human thoughts are complex
He basically covered the entire language.
Adam Brown yep😂
one phrase to say a fruit D:
pona ike
Imagine a native speaker of Ithkuil learning toki pona!
Or a native speaker of toki pona learning Ithkuil! xD
@@MiMiBrokenbourgh I beg your pardon?
@@LLWN84 Or Lojban.
@@wish-keeper
It would probably be hard for an Ithkuil speaker because there would be too much ambiguity.
@@acutechicken5798 dealing with ambiguity should be easier than having to learn 96 cases though
this is unrelated but the idea behind this language.. makes me want to write a song about it. Pure simplicity. I like it.
Toki Pona reminds me of what pidgin languages look like in their early form. The vocabulary of pidgin languages are basic since their main purposes is used in trading/bartering context between different language speakers. But when pidgins become creolized, that's when numerous loan words are taken from various legitimate languages to overcome the basic nature of pidgin. Toki Pona however is like a pidgin language that wants to be a creole language so bad but refuses to go through the creolization process.
Interestingly, about 15% of the words used in Toki Pona come from Finnish, here are some examples:
ike - cruel (from Finnish "ilkeä")
kala - fish of other creature living in water (Finnish "kala")
kasi - plant, vegetable (Finnish "kasvi")
kin - English prefix "too" (in Finnish "-kin", like " _minuakin_ paleltaa", translates as "I'm freezing _too_ "
kiwen - rock, stone (Finnish "kivi")
linja - line (Finnish "linja")
lipu - flag/card (Finnish "lippu")
ma - land (Finnish "maa")
mije - man (Finnish "mies")
nena - nose, hill (Finnish "nenä")
nimi - name (Finnish "nimi")
pimeja -dark (Finnish pimeä)
sama - same (Finnish "sama")
sina - you (singular) (Finnish "sinä")
suli - big (Finnish "suuri")
walo - light (Finnish "valo")
wawa - strong/strength (Finnish "vahva")
Aika hyvin... vaikka osa näistä tuleeki alunperin enkusta ni kyl nää suomen kielen sanoiks voiaa laskee
Hente Hoo I find it interesting too! I've been teaching myself Finnish for a few weeks now and to me, the way of how Finnish words are structured seems very simple. Not saying that this is bad! But the spelling itself is already as simple as it can get. And obviously, this offers a great opportunity to take some vocabulary from :)
Linja and Nimi are from English Line and Name.
"Some." With such a small vocabulary, and the percentage being so small, this may be a complete list of Finnish-stemmed Toki Pona.
I like how the 1st word looks like IKEA, and it means cruel. :p
Writing a story with this sounds fun. Imagine all the wordplay possibilities.
mi moku, for one
Imagine they go to google translate, but google can't detect the words😂😂😂
@@qwertyuiop.lkjhgfdsa mi ni a. I did this. last year I wrote "o moku pona". It's a 'scary' story that made use of this ambiguity. It was fun indeed.
@@jan_Simiman mystery is the best part of horror! now i'm inspired lol
It doesn't seem fun to me at all because it would actually make it too complex and long winded to say simple things. The fact is that the reason for jargon and wide lexicon is actually to simplify language. This seems simple and might have worked in a primitive culture where there was less complex technology, culture etc, etc but I don't personally see how it would be fun to write long prose in this language or even to use it as an alien language as I was thinking when I first started watching the video. It seems a lot like Japanese. Probably better to just write in that, then at least the story would have a wider base or readers and people would definitely understand it.
i have a few things to say here as a tokiponist myself ^^
first, capital letters in toki pona only ever are used for proper nouns - "Seli suno li seli e tomo mi." would actually be "seli suno li seli e tomo mi"
also! the literal translation given of that sentence is incorrect; i'll break it sown here
"seli suno" - here, seli is a noun and suno is an adjective; seli that is in someway suno. suno means sun, light, or star, while seli means heat, warmth, or fire - so, light that is in some way warm - this is most accurately translated to english as warm sunlight
"tomo mi" - tomo that is in some way mi; structure that is in some way i/me/my/mine - best translated as house or home
so, the whole sentence would be "the sunlight warms my house", or similar
I am so impressed with how well this was presented. I found it so fascinating and easy to understand. Well done!!
It's crazy how much it looks inspired from Japanese. word order, subject and objects markers, optional markers for gender and plural, simple phonology, and even compound words.
Noticed that immediately as well! It's a really good system imo
Haha, I came to say the same thing :)
It might be that some of the traits you know from Japanese are common! I know very little about Japanese, but I think I could draw a lot of similarities between Toki Pona and Haitian Creole (a language I do speak). In relation to your comment, I would say that the use of separate devices to indicate gender, number, and tense stood out to me the most.
But then, he did say that there's some inspiration from Acadian French for Toki Pona, so that influence could be at play here.
It has pretty much the exact opposite word-order to Japanese though.
(And pretends not to have compounds xD)
My l name means food, I’m literally food the tree now, I’m edible :(
This language is astonishingly similar to Japanese, except for the fact that it's SVO instead of SOV.
Also, interestingly, the English word orange referred to the fruit first, and the color second. Prior to that connection, we used the term 'yellow-red'
check out Māori you will be surprised how similar it is to Japanese
my understanding is most shades of orange were considered shades of red. There's some artifacts of this left in the language, for example people with naturally orange hair are described as having red hair.
both japonic and austronesian languages have a penchant for simple consonant-vowel syllabled words
Japanese isn't SOV though it's just XV. You can use OSV just as well as SOV depending on context of the sentence.
Actually Toki Pona can help you learn Chinese because they are similar .
This is so simple that it ends up being more complicated.
3:44
Finally a solution to whether we eat or drink soup
we *consume* it.
Due to the sounds of Toki Pona, you can actually write it in Japanese kana.
For example: トキポナ
Note: this is a transliteration, not an “exact” or “perfect” transcription with kana, though toki pona’s phonology and phonotactics are close to Japanese as to not have to make too many changes.
1. L in toki pona becomes the similar-sounding R in kana; e.g. /la/ becomes ラ;
2. For /je/, /we/, /wi/, there is the non-native イェ, ウェ, and ウィ;
3. シ and ツ work for /si/ and /tu/ if you ignore the Japanese sound shifts to “shi” and “tsu”.
トキポナ語
トキポナ語
တိုကီ ပိုနာ
トキポナ
What does it say?
amazing! I wish it was on Duolingo!
The shortest course ever
@@minicineastemovies "here are the 123 base words, descriptive words go after object words, congratulations you now speak toki pona"
bruh you could learn this in a week or even days, or seriously one day if you have enough time
watch 12 days of toki pona by jan Misali
@@isaachorgan or learning toki pona in a fortnight
Yoooo! I recently met a person who talked to me about it! He was completely obsessed with it! Nice to see a more in-depth video about it!
This video came out of nowhere and now I gotta go learn this.
Thank you!
Toki Pona sounds quite a bit like a Polynesian language, I think it might be the way that there are a limited amount of letters in the alphabet and that every word must be made of alternating consonants and vowels, a pattern seen in Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian and Marquesan, so I quite like the sound of it because of that.
jan Sonja has said she thinks of toki pona as being spoken by people on a small island, living on a beach. that's why there are different words for fish, reptiles, land animals, and people, but all technology is indicated with "ilo" - tool.
Doesn't have diphthongs or long vowels though, to me the liberal use of both is one of the most distinctive features of Polynesian languages. No glottal stop either, although not all Polynesian languages have the glottal stop
אה ישראלי
@@drx5226 שלום, אני לא ישראלי, אבל אתה כן?
@@AvrahamYairStern where are you from than Avram?
When you try to make a language simpler, it actually becomes ambiguous and thus more complex, Some indian languages tried to make their scripts simpler by removing alphabets , but they actually became more complex as two different sounds would have same spelling, Which was not the case earlier when they used to read exactly as it is written …
Tamil?
@@38-jishjilson89 yes Tamil script
@@VishalVNavekar Removing the letters backfired though. The letters that were removed came back and are still popular except one : ஶ (श).
on a general note removing many symbols to make things simpletr will create ambiguity yes but not with tamizh. reasoning being, tamizh is pretty phonetically consistent; if the k comes at the start it is always a k (except in sanskrit or arabic loans) and medially it is G/X/h/' . this applies to most symbols in tamizh; the purpose of keeping around seperate symbols for p and b or th and dh are lost when you have phonetic consistency as this.
but if you use a lot of sanskrit words this can get problematic and that is why we have grantha characters.
malayalam has k kh g gh symbols seperately but the kh g and gh letters are only used in sanskrit
for eg. pohudhal(to go ) is written poku using the symbol for k in place of g just like in tamizh but only in sanskrit words like gruham and gambhiram are the g or gh letters used.
@@38-jishjilson89 which letters were removed? the grantha ones? didn't we always use them even at the height of EV naicker's time?
Nice, a whole language dedicated to speaking in riddles!
This is actually so interesting. Like just listening to you talk makes me feel happy 🥳
I find it interesting to realize through etymology how much we already do some things like this language in our natural languages. Like the word "language" itself, which basically means "tonguing". You know, that thing you do with your tongue, to make noises, to communicate with. Tonguing. Language.
in Russian these two words - tongue and language - are absolutely identical
@@yossarian_had_a_sister In English, languages can be called tongues when speaking about them. This is a very regular translation that's used in the Bible
the tongue/language thing seems to be a widespread Indoeuropean thing
@@jan_Masewin in some dravidian languages the word tongue can replace language but only if it comes after the name of the language itself or in explicit reference to it like:
"itthamiź ńávil"
(in this tamizh tongue)
where 'ńa' is the root word for tongue
geography = earth charting
It's good that you are doing vdeos about languages that you find interesting and peculiar, rather than those sugested by the comment section .
Keep up te good work!
Thanks! Yes, that's really the only way I can keep doing this, and I'm sure the videos are better when my heart is in them.
That's a really good answer. Don't bother what others are saying and just keep doing what you love!
Ya... what he finds interesting...
EXCEPT THAT ONE OF HIS TOP PATREAON’S NAME IS LITERALLY “TOKI PONA“. HE’S BEEN BRIBED!!!!
This should absolutely be taught in schools as at the very least a choice for foreign language. You would likely be conversative after only a semester, unlike with other FL classes. Communication is probably pretty slow and not particularly suited for complex communication, but would be incredible as an “in case of emergency” language if enough people worldwide picked it up.
Very nice video! My only two criticism would be that "li" is a predicate marker, "en" is the subject marker but is not used when there is only one subject. This is important because "ona li wile moku li wile lape" meaning "they want to eat and want to sleep" would mean "they and food-desires want to sleep" ("en" is used like this: "mi en sina li wile moku" = "me and you want to sleep")
"Breaking thoughts down into simpler parts" is a tool I use when interpreting, that is, when I don't know the vocabulary I need in the receptor language. One time I needed to ask if a person who was sick was jaundiced. But I didn't know how to say "jaundiced" in the other language, so I broke it down to ask "have your eyes or skin been yellow?" So, breaking things down into simpler language is something you can use anytime. And, Paul, keep us the good work! I enjoyed this video on Toki Pona and now want to learn it.
i do it all the time on my own language when i forget words
@@Victorsandergamer same! my school in wales actually taught us to do this because it was welsh medium and 99% of us were first language english speakers, whenever we had to read/write/speak welsh it was in this supper simplified low vocab version, our secondry school was mortified at our shite welsh skills... ahh good times
This is mandatory English usage on the Bulgarian seaside. Don't try to inquire in correct English about what kind of "soft drinks" they may have on sell. Just say "one Pepsi," like a considerate tourist. And stay away from "currency," just say "money."
It looks like a Polynesian language in terms of how the words are spelled
Doctor Craft Channel And it sounds a lot like one too imo
Except that Hawaiian doesn't have the S sound.
Also seeing how there are minimal consonant clusters and a vowel as every other letter. Kind of reminded me of Indonesian.
Selamat Malam
Prof. Redwood also the phonology
There are more likes on this comment than the number of words in Toki Pona. (effective November 2018)
this level of simplicity is actually genius for creating your own language in order to avoid the confusing complexity of english
this is a joke right😭
@@synkronized bro what do u think 🤦♀️
So glad to find this channel etymology is my favorite subject
Imagine if everybody in the world (uneducated and illiterate included) would learn the 123 words, we would all be able to talk with each other. Okay, not about complicated or sciency stuff, but we would be able to communicate with anybody from anywhere ❤
This would be good for survival stuff yanno. Like getting around or asking for help or looking for the water closet. Langauge doesn't have to be complex. It just need to get the main point across.
...provided that we could all figure out what the necessary long-winded constructs mean. I suspect that the chance for wrong inferences or just plain incomprehension are pretty great.
After all, Esperanto was constructed to be an easily-learned second language, though I believe that it's considered Eurocentric. And it has a rich vocabulary with clear rules for building words with well-defined modifiers. But it has several competitors in that arena, and I'm likely to get into a religious war here...
Its called a lingua franca, what you're referring to.
But sadly in a world of elitism. Someone must be a leader, so idk if the humanitarian aspects of language's utility would be overshadowed by the association of poor people using it.
The over population of 3rd worlders, the poor people of any given nation, and so on...
It would be like Latin but the opposite. The language of the poor rather than the language of the elite.
Also literacy and phonics would need to be kept CONSTANT. Which sadly it wont.
There needs to be a unifying body that would keep the regional speakers from branching off.
Toe may toe, toe mah toe (US/UK)
Al ooh men um, al ooh men ee un, (US/UK)
And we're both literate nations with a literacy rate over 70%. (Idk the actual figure so I'm lowballing it)
(Per google, USA is 88% and UK is 99% but I call that Bullocks)
What would you then expect from isolated nations, with lower literacy.
Matter of fact lets only use USA and its regional accents and word choice.
Soda, coke, pop. Or crawfish/crayfish.
Or how the valley girls of California FORCIBLY RUIN WORDS by intentionally putting an accent on the wrong syllable.
Or doing that inflection thing for a sentence. Or the country twang. Or the heavy accent of People from Bah'Stahn.
Best case scenario it would halfway unify us. But sadly unless we FREEZE THE LANGUAGE and make it only a business language, it will evolve.
No you can’t. This language by trying to be simple in its vocabulary has created a needlessly complex and long nightmare of compound words
It won't work.
Even basic conversations would be lengthy.
Toki Pona is not suitable for conversation because of which in real life, it's vocabulary will increase.
So nobody is going to communicate with just 123 words.
And learning some couple hundred words is never going to hurt even a little.
I've loved languages since I was a teenager (many years ago) and I have to admit that I'd never heard of Toki Pona before this video. It's fascinating. Thanks for introducing it!
O kama pona lon kulupu pi toki pona!
This is so cool!!
I had no idea this existed!
Du hast Dich da echt super reingefuchst!!
Super Video
The simplicity is intriguing
As a native Indonesian speaker, minimal tenses means we used to always guess the context of our sentences
It also similar to Japanese, which we weebs already familiar with
So, yeah, I might try to learn Toki Pona
It would be amazing to see how toki pona would have developed further as a 'living' language. Imagine (as a thought experiment) a community that would decide to speak tokipona only in their daily life. Inevitably, more complexe lexical and grammatical structures would emerge over time. When passed to children, it would change even further, developing some irregularities, idioms, etc.
Or have I just described the development of a creole language?
you might be interested in seeing "viossa"
Considering the structure mirrors a few languages I am familiar with, I don't see complexity arising. Japanese and Korean have both been around for a very long time with similar structure, that is, using particles to define the structure of sentences. I do see the importation of technical words from other languages to avoid long and complex descriptions of simple commonly used items. If my "moving room" (car) has a problem that I need to explain to the mechanic, an imported word would point to the problem quicker than spending an hour of his time explaining with the limited vocabulary. If I wanted to see the baseball game rather than basket ball, football, American football, cricket, volleyball, or any other kind of ball, the Japanese have solved this with the imported word, "besuboru".
@@memyname1771 ارى انه يوجد لدي حل وسط وهو اختراع لغة جديدة لديها مفردات كثيرة وتكون سهلة مثل الإسبرنتو لكن على عكس الاسبرنتو لن تكون اوربية تماما
بل ستكون عالمية لانني سوف استخدم اللغات
العربية الفارسية التركية السنسكريتية اليابانية الملايو السواحلية الهوسية اللاتينية والالمانية والبولندية الايرلندية
هذه القائمة ليست دائمة ويمكنني تبديلها بلغات اخرى
القواعد
الصوتيات
A E I O U Y W B P F T D R L M N H K Z J
ترتيب الجملة: SVO
الجمع: يكون بتكرار الكلمة
التصريف:يكون باضافة بادئات لدلالة على الزمن وهي
Ya: للماضي
ta: للحاضر
ay: للمستقبل
فيكون التصريف كالتالي: S +(ya -ta-ay) V + C
I'm probably gonna learn this language before new year :D
absolutely love this language. this was a great video. thx.
i got really excited after hearing the word 'sina' since its most likely derived from the finnish word 'sinä' what also means 'you' (im finnish)
Yeah, toki pona has a lot of finnish vocab. Another one is "kala" which means "fish".
I noticed that, too. I'm learning Estonian and they have sina.
There's actually quite a few words from Finnish. For example:
ilkeä → ike (bad, wrong)
kala → kala (fish, water creature)
lippu → lipu (flat object, card, book, text, document)
pimeä → pimeja (black, dark)
suuri → suli (big, large, long)
vahva → wawa (strong, powerful, energetic)
kierteishäntäkarhu → kijetesantakalu (any animal from the Procyonidae family, such as raccoons, coatis,
kinkajous, olingos, ringtails and cacomistles)
and more!
The last one was an April fool's joke from the creator of the language. :P
Tämä oli mielellänikin :)
mara553 same
I can only imagine how terribly-tasting mistakes can happen very often when using recipes made in this language 😅
just get some "temporary blocks", "attack balls", "liquid" and "earth apples" and you got a soup
@@yargolocus4853 😂 🤣
moku li moku
@@turnipsociety706 is that like, a whole recipe? 😉
a sort of funny mix up thats common is “anpa” meaning under and “unpa” meaning sex.
it's too bad this isn't used or seen anywhere that I know. this video is the only way I learned about this. how neat.
Wow, this sounds kind of fun. Always tricky to try to learn obscure languages, as you really need to practice with other speakers.
Thinking about toki pona and it's origins, it's something ascetics might use. To them, many things don't matter. Orange vs mango is irrelevant. Fruit water is good either way. They try to eliminate such distinctions, and focus elsewhere
Until you try to make a cake.
Or do any complex task of engineering.
this is a perfect example of toki ponas philosophy.
@@rogerwilco2 hey thats a good idea. ill try making a cake in toki pona only with my brother. :>
The natural language with the smallest vocabulary is Sranan, an English-derived creole language used as the lingua franca of Suriname. It has ~340 words, which cover a multitude of different topics in a way that's easy and convenient. Toki Pona has roughly a third of that, and doesn't.
Coming from someone that used to use Toki Pona on a regular basis, it needs to have at least twice the word count to be practical as an everyday language.
Sranan dictionaries have much more than 340 words!
The language has about 357 words and some of those words can be simplified.
you no knowledge what you say, language good be most good language life
you no man think enough for speak good language, you no say true
If you use quadruple chains you can make ~100^4 "words"
@@bigyeet18 Using an unncessary number of words to convey basic ideas doesn't seem very minimalist to me.
They should add a word for "enjoy" to this language to help simplify sentences. "is good for me" can be easily taken out of context even if you see the context directly in front of you
I found this very interesting! Subscribed!
"Telo" is a slang word in Argentina to refer to hotels, specifically those to go a couple of hours with your mate.
Mama mije that is a spicy meatball
"Mama mije..." is on Serbo-croat "My mother is..."
Oh no... o moku ala e sike soweli pi mama mije mi!
+AWSMcube Ahahahaha
*dad meat🅱️all too hot*
Now I know how you know so much about languages!
0:53 Actually it has a lot of meanings, another one is “Simple language,” or “Good speaking.”
6:27 this is really funny to me bc the first thing i thought of is that if you were to translate howl’s moving castle into toki pona you could technically call it howl’s car
Draws its vocabulary from English, Tok Pisin, Finnish, Georgian, Dutch, Acadian French, Esperanto, Croatian, Mandarin and Cantonese wow what a wonderfully random list of languages to absorb vocabulary from.
Love constructed languages, thank you for doing videos like this
Maurilio Junior I have over 20 conlangs. (:
Check out Nao then, it's also a minimalistic language but unlike tokipona it builds the words logically and does not have an actual restriction on the number of words.
this is so cool! and so interesting and inspiring as someone who's obsessed with fictional languages, I might look into the rules of toki pona to try develop the language I'm making! I intended my language to be pretty simple, mostly so I can actually create it before I get bored/unmotivated, and the way toki pona works will definitely help me
I suspect if you make it so simple it won't be usable, you'll also lose interest in it rather quickly.
@@carcharoclesmegalodon6904 I mean it's just a fun thing I'm doing for myself, doesn't really matter how usable it is. I do want to make it usable, but it doesn't need to be complex
nice pfp
I have the Latin AP test tomorrow, and I’m getting quite tempted to try to learn this language when it’s over!
this language reminds me of 'Newspeak' from 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' by George Orwell. for anyone unfamiliar with the story, Newspeak was a minimalistic language designed to reduce the population's ability to reason, thus their ability to challenge the government's authority. a terrifying concept.
David Guy oh, I'm gonna do the opposite then. I'll make a language that makes us have working direct democracy, but is it also possible to make a language that makes communism work?
@@parthiancapitalist2733 Why is that people with political compass profile pictures are always the most insufferable?
WTF toki pona is not meant to be a native language! AKA you have to think in your native language and then translate it. People like me who support it becoming an international auxiliary language only want it to be used in certain contexts, like tourism and small talk. That's what it's practical for, and it's loads simpler and easier to learn than its competition.
Chan R it's not usable in any situation, it's hardly efficient at what it does, it's too ambiguous. Friend is literally good person, and as such it's really limited already, and that's just a 2 component word it has no cases, it has no affixes, nothing at all that makes information compact and understandable at a higher level. If you want to make a sentence that has complexity, then you need to make it extremely long just to fit the meaning of a single word in another language.
I understand the concept, but newspeak was meant to eventually completely replace all other language, whereas toki pona is meant to complement it. This is a key difference. Toki Pona could also be used to practice non linguistic thought.
This is crazy thank you man
Thank you for the new obsession!! sina jan pona, ni li musi!! (If I did this right, I said ‘You are a good/kind person, this is fun!!’. 30 minutes of learning and here I am :D )
This language is mind-blowing!! This channel has expanded my knowledge of languages to a next level. Thanks, Paul!
I can’t speak for other languages but , as a native Mandarin speaker, I can really see where some of the inspiration came from for this language. In Mandarin, it’s all about a character being multiple parts of grammar and constructing them to build larger words.
I wanted to create this language when I was little! I used to spend hours and hours thinking about exactly this same thing. Very few words that can mean a lot of things, and then some keywords to indicate syntax stuff just like in this language. Wow.
this video is great! its how i was introduced to toki pona! i cant thank you enough!
It's my pleasure! I'm glad it was helpful. :)
the only criticism i have for this video is that you capitalised the sentences. In toki pona capitals are used for non-toki pona words
😳ナイス
@@AllisonGhost アイ ノ カタ ツ
@@lpnp9477 「アイノカタチ」？
@@AllisonGhost Ai no Katatsu? Ai no Katachi? What does random katakana have to do with toki pona??? (Bear in mind that I don't speak/hold a strong interest in toki pona, but I do speak Japanese)
@@fuwayuru The first comment I wrote is just saying "nice" in Japanese, which is just a joke on how toki pona uses capitals for loanwords in a similar way to how katakana is used.
The LPNP person I assume saw me say that and referenced the name of a song or an anime or something I am not familiar with, so I looked it up to see what they are referencing, but I think they spelled it wrong so I was trying to ask if they meant Katachi rather than Katatsu because i have no idea what they meant by either one, but nothing comes up for the カタツ spelling...
(and i noticed they used spaces, so I dont assume they have a strong grasp on Japanese and probably just swapped a character or something.)
I would love to see a slightly broader version of this.
I feel like increasing it to only about 500 words would make it totally useable.
If the proposal is implemented, it resembles the language of a 3-year-old child
بكل بساطة يمكننا جعلها لغة كاملة لشخص بسيط يعيش في الريف دون تطور التقني
I didn't know this existed, but I had been daydreaming with the posibility of creating something similar. I had tought that 500 words would do the trick, but didn't imagine you could communicate with only 123... great video.
This video is very good! As an efficient toki pona speaker it’s nice to see good videos about it. One thing though: sentences are never capitalized.
Christiano Ronaldo 2:17
Beat me to it 😂
3:45 "Well you don't eat water"
Actually in Bengali, we _do_ eat water.
Those who can't speak proper bangla says it. It always pisses me off.
শুদ্ধ বাংলা যারা বলতে পারেনা তারাই বলে জল/পানি খাই। এটা সবসময় বিরক্তিকর লাগে।
In Shanghainese also
In Brazil, we usually drink water, but when we eat 'water', it's actually a ton of alcohol!
I have the urge to put this on my lists of languages I want to be able to speak/write and understand
This is one of the more beautiful sounding languages. I wish it could cover more technical or complex scientific explanations simply as well.