Toki Pona is the world’s smallest language. It’s a constructed language and so should warm the cockles of many a geek’s heart. It was designed by Sonja Elen Kisa and has just 123 words. And you’d be surprised at how much you can express with these.
While Toki Pona is not necessarily meant to be a primary language, its minimalism is an exercise in getting to the very core of what you’re trying to say. It values good-natured simplicity over bureaucracy and obfuscation. In fact it’s somewhat influenced by Taoism and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (the discredited notion that linguistic categories determine the concepts we are able to think about). But you don’t have to buy into any of that to enjoy it!
There are just 14 sounds and the syllable structure is similar to Japanese to make it as easy as possible to pronounce no matter what your native language. Vocabulary is drawn from many languages: Tok Pisin (originally from English), Russian, Cantonese, Esperanto, Finnish and more. Grammar is very small. Compound words are made by combining basic words (eg. crazy + water = alcohol, house + mammal = pet).
If you have any interest in language I recommend you check it out. More on a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona”>Wikipedia and the official site. A few years ago I made 9 translations of classic works into Toki Pona and 6 original works — you can find them here.
4 comments ↓
I don’t doubt the ingenuity shown in putting Toki Pona together, and the energy put into the translations is impressive.
However, I would rather see more practical support given to Esperanto, a planned language which has stood the test of time.
That is fascinating. But I think Sapir & Whorf were right — I’m mean, heck, look how that language has twisted your mind over the years.
Now, on serious notes:
(1) Like you, after working in several other languages, I disagree with the “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis” but I hear that recently it is being revived — or at least a weaker version of it. Do you follow this stuff?
(2) I think constructed languages only succeed among geeks — as you allude. We don’t have an example of one that has take off, do we — Esperanto included.
I wonder if you put a poll up here that said:
Did you read any of my works and look up the words, you would get 100% that said “no”. It is a fantasy game — and you have to have time for games (especially ones where it takes lots of time to learn, there is no competition, and only a few players)! Smile
@ Bill -
How about Esperanto as the default international language … and Toki as the default programming language?
Bill: since Toki Pona’s aim is very different to Esperanto people who are into it might be completely against the goals and philosophy behind Esperanto. Of course if someone is into the philosophy of both languages and wants to make an impact it makes sense for them to focus on Esperanto.
Sabio: I read a bit of linguistics stuff but haven’t seen this revival (or maybe I have but didn’t interpret it as such), do you have a link to send? I did see some posts about experiments that were meant to show that colour vocabulary affects colour vision, is this what you mean?
Either way, I think a very weak form of SW is almost trivially true. Which I guess is common to many social sciences — for many claims there’s a version that’s weak and trivial and true and another that’s strong and revolutionary and false!
No, of course I’d only expect my works to be looked at by someone who’s already a TP fan or at least is a language geek etc. But someone else might click through for a glance.
You can look at modern Hebrew as a language that was resurrected in a slightly artificial way that resembles the artificialness of these languages somewhat. And there can be geek social movements, especially since geek culture is becoming more influential. So I’d say not impossible but am not counting on it either…
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