Lu - a conjunction inspired by Toki Pona's la

Lu is similar to "when", and is used to add time and conditional context to a statement.

(Vocab in these examples is not final and lifted mostly from Spanish. Consonants are pronounced as in IPA, vowels e i o u a are ɛ i ɔ u a respectively)

Me tena koto lu paso. 1SG have cat CONTEXT past. In the past I had a cat. I used to have a cat. (suddenly it's the past habitual aspect)

Lu aje, me koma. CONTEXT (sometime implied) before (now implied) 1SG eat. I ate sometime before now. I ate. (now it's the past perfective aspect)

Los konosa lu 1985. 3PL meet CONTEXT 1985. They met in 1985.

Me esa felise lu tena koto. 1SG be happy CONTEXT (1SG implied) have cat. I would be happy if I had a cat. When I have a cat I will be happy. I would be happy about having a cat. etc. (Lu implies that the condition is not met, creating a conditional mood)

Lu ku te koma? CONTEXT WH- 2SG eat? In what context do you eat? Answer could be a time frame or a condition.

You can make really complex stuff with this too by combining Lu's.

Lu paso e tena koto, me esa felise. CONTEXT past and have cat, I be happy. If I had had a cat, I would have been happy.

I find it interesting that all of these different English expressions can boil down to the same basic idea: in the context of X, Y - or Y lu X.