The initial reason forcing me to study Toki Pona was because of its minimal vocabulary with only 120 root words. [1] But as I started to approach the vocabulary, it turned out not easy at all. Because the number of words are so limited, each one represents not just one but many meanings related to each other. Take jo as an example. In Toki Pona, jo means to have, to own, ownership, possession, which are all concerned about the possession of something. Besides, there are no words for specific things but general words. For instance, there is a word for fruits, but there are no words for orange, pineapple, strawberry, etc. Therefore, if you want to talk about orange, you will have to describe as “a fruit which have orange peels and tastes sweet”. (I don’t know how other Toki Pona speakers delineate orange but I see it like that).
sorry, "kili jelo sike" that has to be ...
I find the intentional ambiguity refreshing, and encourages me to think about meaning from my perspective as well as the perspective of my audience when I'm communicating.
@jansegers
I'd expect an orange to be a kili jelo loje sike. Jelo sike sounds like a lemon to me.
The desire to provide circumlocutions to express a precise meaning is quite common for newbies to Toki Pona ...
"kasi jelo sike" will be quite enough in most contexts to point out an orange, in my humble opinion.
#TokiPona #compounds #nimi_wan #nimi #sona #jan_namako