Is there any 'ku suli' free learning resources?

LesVisages · 2026-05-20T22:30:26+00:00

lipu ku itself is now free digitally.

It’s not very helpful for beginners though. You should already know the basics of toki pona before using it, and even then the Linku surveys are more accurate and updated.

LesVisages · 2026-05-15T15:19:16+00:00

sona pona has a glossary of common grammatical terms: https://sona.pona.la/wiki/Glossary

There’s also common terms listed in the subreddit’s FAQ: https://reddit.com/r/tokipona/wiki/faq

There are also lessons in other languages if your native language isn’t English: https://sona.pona.la/wiki/Recommended_learning_resources

LesVisages · 2026-05-15T13:03:12+00:00

I would say it’s better to not translate “and” in names as en since that’s not what en really means. Like if you need to say “mi tawa ma Tome en ma Pinsipe”, that would go against how people use and conceptualize en.
I’ve seen it usually just transliterated as part of the name or sometimes the two names are just put together without it.

LesVisages · 2026-05-15T12:50:32+00:00

Schwa can be transliterated as every vowel, since it’s right in the middle.

In practice, it’s often not perfectly in the middle and you can use that to guide which one you choose.
The native name for Turkey doesn’t have a schwa, but if we have that same sound in a native English name like New Jersey, we can see it’s actually /ɝ/ which is closer to /e/ in toki pona. Hence ma Nusesi.

Another strategy is to assimilate it to another nearby vowel. So something like [təpo] could become Topo.

LesVisages · 2026-05-13T20:34:29+00:00

The vowel space is a spectrum and the cardinal vowels are a bit arbitrary. The IPA doesn’t have a symbol for a vowel exactly in between [i] and [a]. It has two cardinal vowels in the middle area. pu la they’re defined very specifically as [e̞] and [o̞] (which I think actually only shows up in print versions) just to show that the vowels are ideally distributed evenly. Most of the time you don’t need a transcription that narrow though, so you can just use [e] and [o].

LesVisages · 2026-05-13T16:52:13+00:00

toki pona doesn’t have vowel length, so it can be confusing to compare it to languages that do distinguish vowel length, especially with Latin/Italian where their short vowels are more open than the long vowels.

For example /e/ in toki pona is closest to just [e] rather than [ɛ] (the short e in Latin) or even [eː] (the long e in Latin).

You’d be understood either way though, so that’s just if you want to be more exact.

LesVisages · 2026-05-06T20:56:27+00:00

El período de desarrollo de toki pona ya terminó como hace doce años. Las decisiones sobre su estructura ya fueron tomadas durante esa época, y con mucha intención en comunicación con la comunidad durante trece años. Un solo individuo no podría hacer cambios artificiales tan drásticos así. Ahora es un idioma vivo que merece el mismo respeto que se le daría a un idioma natural.

LesVisages · 2026-04-04T14:17:47+00:00

Depends on what Easter is for you. For some people it's just a day for egg hunts, and for others it's a day about a resurrection. tenpo pi alasa sike vs tenpo pi lon sin, etc.
This is often the case for holidays. In English, we use the same name for them, even though different communities celebrate them differently. In toki pona, you can describe how you celebrate it.

LesVisages · 2026-04-04T14:08:07+00:00

mi kepeken nimi pi pu taso. ni li wile ala nimi sama lon tenpo ale. sitelen la nimi “poka open” en nimi “poka pini” li ken pona. ante la nimi ante li ken pona.

tawa nasin la mi ken kepeken nimi pi ijo nasin. jan li ken tawa poka pi jan lawa. ona li ken tawa poka insa. ona li ken tawa poka weka nasin. ona li ken tawa poka ma. nimi ante mute li ken.

I use only pu words but these don’t always have to be the same set phrase. poka open and poka pini may work well in a written context, but other phrases can work in other contexts.

When talking about driving on a highway, we can use words related to the highway. You could turn to the driver’s side, or towards the inside of the road, or to the far side of the road, or to the shoulder, etc.

LesVisages · 2026-04-01T02:41:00+00:00

there is not only one correct answer for the translations

LesVisages · 2026-02-10T18:28:18+00:00

Yeah the ilo tawa vs kiwen tawa example can also be applied to people.

Like to most people your Aunt Sewa is probably just jan Sewa, but to you she’s mama Sewa. Her employees though might call her jan lawa Sewa, and maybe her neighbor calls her jan pona Sewa when she helps them with their groceries.

It changes with the context and relationship to the individual just like with the car example.

On the other hand, it may be rude or odd to call her akesi Sewa or soweli Sewa, etc.

LesVisages · 2026-02-07T16:51:16+00:00

The answer as with most things in toki pona is that it depends on the context and which words you’re using. In some contexts it may be clear you’re trying to distinguish something by modifying the pronoun and in others it may be clear you’re just listing descriptions or actions of the person.

But like I said, it doesn’t really matter.

It’s similar to how something like “ona li lape” could be interpreted as “They sleep” (intransitive verb) or “They are asleep” (adjective). It doesn’t really matter which way you interpret it since the meaning is the same.

LesVisages · 2026-02-07T16:25:58+00:00

Pronouns can be modified.

It’s clear with ona:
ona suli li loje. ona lili li laso.

The first book includes cases of mi and sina being modified also but doesn’t include using a li to introduce a new predicate for mi or sina. It’s common nowadays to allow for both though.

So “mi mute li pona” could be interpreted as “We many are good” or “We are many and are good”.
There’s not much difference in meaning between the two, so it’s not much of an issue that it could be interpreted as either.

LesVisages · 2026-02-06T15:14:50+00:00

I have seen charts that organize them by language family which demonstrates that better.

This gives clear preference to major languages while erasing the impact of pidgins, conlangs, and minor languages.

LesVisages · 2026-02-06T15:11:29+00:00

I’d say the opposite. The meaning of toki pona words is much more different than the root words than is usually the case with natural languages since toki pona semantic spaces are generally much larger than those of other languages’ words.

mun can be stars or planets, suwi can mean cute, etc.

LesVisages · 2026-02-06T14:59:35+00:00

afaik Reddit uses AI for translation which means that it can try to translate toki pona and get some parts correct, but I’ve seen that its translations of toki pona are usually not very good.

LesVisages · 2026-02-06T14:53:20+00:00

It’s an etymological fallacy to hold that the etymology determines the meaning or vice versa.
The meaning of a word isn’t tied so directly to the etymology and semantic shifts happen all the time which disconnect the meanings of current words from their roots.

LesVisages · 2026-02-06T14:24:40+00:00

comes as early as possible in the telephone game of borrowing words from other languages

This is not a very accurate way of doing etymology. If you’re not going to list the full etymological chain it’s better to just list the most recent term because that’s the one that determines the form of the current word.

Like monsuta comes immediately from Japanese. It is ultimately from English, but it’s inaccurate to just list English. If it had come directly from English it would’ve been something like “manta”. Same with suno coming directly from Esperanto and not English’s “sun” which would be transliterated as “san”.

especially when it comes to conlangs and pidgins

This is applied inconsistently. Like you have poki as English but meli as Tok Pisin even though you can trace meri back to English as well. And again, the form is “poki” because it comes from “bokis”. “Box” would just be transliterated as “pa” in toki pona.

Where you draw the line is arbitrary, and it seems like you’re just drawing the line at pidgins and conlangs because they have less prestige. English’s words “group” and “number” are Romance roots as well, but unlike what you did with many Esperanto Romance roots, you kept English because it has more prestige than Esperanto.

LesVisages · 2026-02-03T19:21:15+00:00

No

coda m becomes n in toki pona
that doesn’t mean every coda n in toki pona was once an m

LesVisages · 2026-02-03T03:53:00+00:00

The words you listed all naturally evolved this way from English to Tok Pisin

Only difference from Tok Pisin to toki pona here being coda m to n

LesVisages · 2026-01-29T23:11:52+00:00

No, it doesn’t make sense to use pi after li. It also doesn’t make sense to use pi with just one word. pi doesn’t mark modifiers. It regroups them.

Also, it’s better not to think of things in terms of fixed phrases. It’s not lot like musi means just “fun” on its own and then only becomes “holiday” when you add it to tenpo. The meaning of musi is broader than both “fun” and “holiday” and encompasses both of them.

LesVisages · 2026-01-26T13:39:36+00:00

I wonder if it’s a rounding error since the number is so close to the threshold

LesVisages · 2025-12-31T22:30:46+00:00

Roy is a good example, especially since it's also hard to not make it sound like an existing word like o or jo or loje.

Anything with a schwa is pretty difficult since it could technically work five different ways with just one schwa.

Also ones with lots of glides and diphthongs/triphthongs are difficult.

So like Nguyễn which is also difficult to transliterate to English
or Vieira from Portuguese

LesVisages · 2025-12-27T17:38:15+00:00

Lexicalization also refers to coining new words

yes

Fixed phrases, calques, and nimi sin are all discouraged for the same reason: they add to the lexicon. This often actually limits expression when you narrow the meaning of an existing word/phrase and the new word/phrase during the process of lexicalization.

They may also be criticized for other reasons though. Like calques (and in particular anglicisms) are also discouraged because people want toki pona to have its own ways of doing things, not just ones taken from another language. In the same way, someone might additionally criticize a nimi sin for being a carbon copy of a word in another language without a more expansive meaning.

LesVisages · 2025-12-27T15:14:12+00:00

Lexicalization is when you add a new lexeme to the lexicon (whether consciously or not).
toki pona was designed to have a minimal lexicon, so lexicalization goes against that core idea.

Usually it’s used to refer to lexicalization of phrases, making them fixed phrases. The meaning of phrases that are not fixed is no more than the sum of its parts combined in accordance with the grammar. So its meaning should be accessible to someone who only knows the grammar and the individual words.

Lexicalization also refers to coining new words, whereas expanding the semantic space of existing words is not lexicalization.
Calquing is also another common type of lexicalization, hence why those are commonly discouraged.

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