hello everyone welcome to the Laing
focus Channel and my name is Paul what
should I talk about today maybe I should
talk about a language spoken by tens of
millions of people maybe I should talk
about one of the world's major language
families or a country with stunning
linguistic diversity mmm no I think
today I'll talk about something a little
different
today's topic is Toki Epona Toki poni
what's that Toki poni is a constructed
language meaning that it did not arise
naturally but it was created by someone
in order to fulfill certain criteria or
a certain vision the most well-known
constructed language might be Esperanto
which I made a video about a couple of
years ago Toki poni is another
constructed language that I thought was
unique and interesting enough to make a
video about it's not spoken by very many
people but it's well known amongst fans
of constructed languages the name Toki
ponent means the language of good and as
a minimalist language the idea behind it
is extreme simplicity especially in its
core vocabulary the purpose of Toki poni
is not just to simplify communication
but to simplify your own thinking to
force yourself to eliminate unnecessary
information and ideas and focus on
what's really important Toki poni has a
core vocabulary of only 123 words yes
you heard that right
123 words you can learn those hundred
and twenty-three words in just a couple
of hours using an app like memorize or
unki I should point out that in its
original form Toki poni had just 120
words but it seems that since then a few
new words have come into common use
amongst the Toki Puna community Toki
Puna draws its vocabulary from a number
of languages including English Tok
piscine Finnish Georgian Dutch Acadian
French Esperanto Croatian and Mandarin
and Cantonese and it's intended to be
equally as easy to learn for people from
all cultures and linguistic backgrounds
the languages phonology is also very
simple there are just nine consonants
and there are five vowels there are no
diphthong and there are no consonant
clusters and every syllable ends in a
vowel or in a nasal sound if we look at
one Toki poni word we can see how the
simple phonology
determines how the words were formed the
word for sweet is Suey the consonant
cluster SW schwa is not allowed so while
vowel is inserted between the two
consonants and the final T consonant 2
is also not allowed
this might seem kind of strange but
having these limitations makes toki poni
words simple to pronounce now the big
question on everyone's mind is probably
how the heck do you communicate using
only 123 words
well those 123 words usually cover a
range of related meanings so there's
ambiguity context helps you understand
which meaning is being used for example
the word coûte means ear but it also
means to hear listen pay attention to or
obey Makuta a Kalama mu c the sentence
means on listening to music here we know
coûte is a verb because it comes after a
pronoun which seems like the subject and
it's followed by a direct object marker
a which itself is one of the 123 words
of Toki Bona and out of the several
possible meanings for this verb listen
makes the most sense in this context as
for the word meaning music we'll come
back to that in a minute another example
the word moku means food or eat or drink
I guess eat and drink can together be
thought of as consumed sina moku Otello
sina means you in the singular
Tayloe means water and we know moku as a
verb because it would be weird to say
you are food and also we see the direct
object marker yeah so does the verb mean
eat or drink
well you don't eat water so obviously it
means drink so the sentence means you
are drinking water or you drink water
another example the word
Celie means warm as an adjective but
also warmth or heat as a noun and also
warm or heat as a verb Sally sue no Lisa
Lea Tomomi the warmth of the Sun heats
my home word for word this sentences
warmth son subject marker heats direct
object marker house my in the first case
here Celie is a noun because it comes
before another noun you can imagine the
word of between them if Sally came after
the
suno then it would be the adjective warm
this word Li is a subject marker and
I'll talk more about that in a minute
here Celie is a verb because it's
followed by the direct object marker
this word Tomo is used for house but
also has the more general meaning of
structure and can mean building etc so
the subject marker Li is placed after
subjects aside from me meaning I and
Sina the singular form of you without
that word Li to clearly mark the subject
sentences could get confusing like in
this case the verb cellie might be heard
as an adjective if it comes directly
after the word Sunol so you can see that
context both in situation and in syntax
helps us to deal with ambiguity and
understand which meaning is intended
second another way that we communicate
using only 123 words is that words are
combined to form compound words and
phrases that represent more specific
meanings for example there's no
individual word for music but before we
saw this phrase Kalama mu c which is
used to mean music Kalama means sound or
noise as a noun or to produce a sound to
recite or to utter aloud as a verb mu c
is an adjective meaning artistic
entertaining frivolous playful or
recreational so the phrase Kalama mu c
means something like entertaining sound
which seems to describe music quite
nicely there's no separate word for
friend in tokyo poni but we can say yan
pona
literally good person or friendly person
to mean friend there's no individual
word for God either but Yong say we
represents that meaning literally divine
person or maybe we could say being
instead of person and notice all the
shades of meaning for the word say we
the core meaning uniting them all is
perhaps high or up there's also no
individual word for car but we can say
Tomo tawa Tomo is the same word used for
house and building as well as room and
you could think of it as a structure so
car is something like a moving room
there's no individual word for telephone
but you can say Allah Toki which
literally means something like talking
tool or communication device there's no
individual word meaning thirsty
you can say we lay moku Otello want to
drink water and the word Taillow is also
flexible enough to include other types
of liquids not only water this type of
formation of compound words is common in
many languages around the world so it's
really not that strange it reminds me of
some pidgin and Creole languages but it
also reminds me of the way compound
words are formed using kanji in Japanese
but tokeep onna takes it to an extreme
going back to taillow the word for water
for a second how can you specify a
different kind of drink a different kind
of liquid there's no word for alcohol
but Taillow NASA literally silly water
is used to mean alcohol if you want to
say juice you can say Taillow Kili
which means fruit water or vegetable
water so how could we get more specific
and say orange juice well here it starts
to get a little complicated there's no
word for orange in Tokyo poni either the
fruit or the color we can create the
color by combining red and yellow low
yellow something like reddish yellow
so we could say tell Akili below a
yellow fruit water that's yellowish red
yeah maybe that would work of course
that could also describe mango juice or
carrot juice or some other orange
colored juice from mango maybe I could
just be descriptive and say something
like Keeley Pinot a yellow Pima Tawi
fruit that is yellowish red of Thailand
hey in context maybe that would make
sense but remember that part of the idea
behind Toki Puna is to avoid too much
complexity in too much detail and to
simplify your own thoughts and only
focus on basic information some other
features of Toki poni there's basically
no gender distinction in Tokyo poni but
if you want to specify the gender of a
noun you can attach the word medley for
female or me a for male ona Mele leap
ona tawa me this sentence means I like
her literally it's more like she is good
for me here we see the word ona
which means he she or it but here I want
to specify female so I added Mele
if I took away Mellie this sentence
could mean I like it or even I like him
depending on what the listener thought I
was referring to another interesting
thing to note here is the way like is
expressed there's no word for like in
Toki Bona
so it's paraphrased by saying good for
me Bona tawa me
another example there's no individual
word for mother or father there is one
word mama
which means mother or father in other
words parent so if I want to say my
father is a teacher and clearly specify
father rather than mother I can say mama
mia me lianca panettone long Tomo Sona
mama mia me means my father then young
peope an asana literally means person of
giving knowledge this is the phrase used
to mean teacher loan means in on or at
and Tomo Sona means school literally
house of knowledge okay so we've seen
that there's no gender and there's also
no need to specify singular or plural
but if necessary you can use the word
Mutai as an adjective meaning many young
li comma can mean a person is coming or
people are coming but if you need to
specify plural you can say young Mutiny
comma which is like saying multiple
people are coming how about verb tenses
as you may have guessed there are no
actual verb tenses in Tokyo poni this
sentence yanli poly can mean a person is
working a person worked or a person will
work but if you want a time phrase can
be added tempo nila yung lee poly a
person is working or more literally in
this time a person works la is a word
that's used to mark one part of the
sentence as context for the rest of the
sentence so it can be used for a time
clause like above or an if or when
clause tempo P nila yung lee poly a
person worked more literally in the
finished time a person works tempo
Kamala Yan Li poly a person will work
more literally in the coming time a
person works let's check out one or two
more tokeep ona sentences and see what
we find
malate Mutola maple in pune this
sentence means when I sleep a lot
I feel good which is definitely true for
me word for word it's I sleep much when
I feel good we can see that within each
clause the basic word order is SVO or
rather SVC subject verb complement since
there's no object here the most notable
thing is that la is placed at the end of
the time clause rather than at the
beginning of it were
as an English when comes at the
beginning another sentence Ken la Yan Li
Li Li Panna Attila Oh Co tan Leona Li
will a moku Otello this means maybe the
baby is crying because it's thirsty word
for word it may be baby
subject marker cries because it subject
marker thirsty but some of those words
can be broken down further into their
components first we have Ken la which
means maybe and is a combination of ken
which means can and the contextual
particle la then we have young Lily
which means little person here we have
the phrase Panna it a loco meaning to
cry Panna means to release or to emit
taillow is water and OCO is i so more
literally it's like emit water of the
eye and tani meaning because can be
broken down into from and this again
here we see will a moku Otello meaning
thirsty literally wants to drink water
remember that taillow can be used for
liquids in general so I guess it can be
understood as milk in this context so as
you can see tokeep ona is very simple at
its core but expressing more specific or
complex ideas might present more of a
challenge than you would expect
or at least require some practice like
any language but this brings us back to
the purpose of tokeep ona which is to
avoid indulging in overly complex and
detailed thought and to allow yourself
to focus on the most basic information
it's sort of a way to avoid the mental
hamster wheel of modern life and it can
be fun to see just how much you can
communicate using such a simple set of
core vocabulary and grammatical rules
the flip side is that tokeep ona is
obviously limited in its application
communicating in detail on topics like
science technology politics and so on is
probably impossible to do at least
without a lot of ambiguity but as a
language of daily communication that
chat or just for fun it's an interesting
language to experiment with and try out
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