toki! mi jan Misali. ni li sitelen tawa sin lon kulupu pi sitelen tawa ni: sina ken kama
sona e toki pona. sitelen tawa ni li jo e sona pi nimi “seme” e sona pi nimi “anu”.
this is the fourth video in a twelve-part series about the constructed language toki
pona. that’s right, after this lesson, we’re officially one-third of the way there! so
far, we’ve learned a lot of the basics of toki pona grammar. as usual, let’s start
with a refresher of last lesson’s concepts.
what would “mama o lukin e lipu” mean?
[pause]
yeah, it’d be something like “dad, read the book!” or “mom”, the distinction
doesn’t really matter here; mama is used for parents of any gender.
if you didn’t get that, don’t worry, you might just need to go back and rewatch the
previous lessons. which like, fair, it’s been a minute. but, the stuff we’re going
over in these early videos in this series is really important to remember, since these
are things that the entire language is built off of.
anyway, in this video, we’ll be learning about questions. that is, most types of questions.
you might expect the most obvious place to start to be asking yes-or-no questions, but
those are actually going to be given their own separate lesson after this one, because
they’re slightly more complicated. for now, we’ll be handling more basic questions,
using the word seme. seme is the fifth and final pronoun in toki
pona, and its function is forming questions. it generally means “what” or “which”,
in the question-asking sort of way. you can take any statement, and replace any of the
content words in it with “seme” to form a question.
oh, and by “content word” what I mean is a word that means something on its own,
as opposed to one of the grammatical particles like “li”, “e”, or “o”. let’s
use the sentence “telo lete li lili e lape” for some examples. actually, first, what does
this mean as a statement?
[pause]
okay, so we’re using “lili” as a verb with an object here, right? so it means that
the telo lete causes the lape to become lili, so it’s something like “cold water shortens
a rest”. cool, so now let’s replace some words in this sentence with “seme” to
form questions.
the content words here are telo, the head word of the subject, lete, an adjective modifying
the subject, lili, the verb, and lape, the object.
you can replace the subject with seme to get “seme li lili e lape”, “what shortens
a rest”. the question is asking what you can put in the place of seme to get a true
statement. you can do the same thing with the object of the sentence: “telo lete li
lili e seme”, “what does cold water shrink”.
another useful thing is using seme after li to ask “telo lete li seme”, “what is
cold water”. this is the opposite of the order you’d normally ask this type of question
in English, but “seme li telo lete” in this case means the same thing.
do note, however, that asking “what is” questions with “li seme” is often more
reliable than “seme li”, because a lot of words in toki pona can mean different things
as verbs than they do as nouns. “seme li moku” could mean either “what eats”
or “what is food”, but “moku li seme” unambiguously means “what is food”.
here, let’s introduce a few words that will be useful for these sorts of questions.
pilin means “feel”, as in emotions, but also sometimes as in physical touch. it’s
also sometimes used to mean “heart”, in the metaphorical sense.
using pilin to mean “emotion”, there’s a lot of really useful phrases you can form,
like pilin pona for positive emotions, or pilin ike for negative emotions. so, let’s
take the sentence sina pilin ike, “you feel bad”, “you are experiencing negative emotions”.
replacing ike, we can form the question “sina pilin seme?”. so, what do you think this
means?
[pause]
yeah, this is a normal way to say “how are you feeling?”, using seme as an adverb,
modifying the verb pilin. you could respond to this question with “mi pilin pona”,
or “mi pilin ike”, or whatever fits. you’ll also sometimes see “mi pona pilin”, “I’m
emotionally-good”, rather than “mi pilin pona”, “I’m feeling in a way which is
good”, either one works, it’s mostly just personal preference.
okay, now here’s a subtle one: what about “sina pilin e seme”?
[pause]
in this example, seme is being used as the object of pilin, not an adverb. this question
means “what are you feeling?” or “what are you touching?”. this is a slightly different
question!
as before, you can replace other content words in the original statement with seme to get
different questions. you get the idea, right? okay, so another useful verb is jo, which
means “have”. while we’re at it, here’s a couple more
vocabulary words. uh, suwi means “sweet” or “cute”.
and nasa means “strange” or “unusual”. anyway, examples! let’s say you wanted to
ask something like “who has candy?”, using what we just learned. how would you say that?
[pause]
as is often the case with toki pona, the exact way to translate this depends on how detailed
you want to be. something like “seme li jo e suwi?”, “what has sweetness?”,
could work here, but if you want to specifically say “who”, that means the same thing as
“which person”, so one reasonable option is to use seme as an adjective and say “jan
seme”. that said, this isn’t like, a requirement. just seme works just as well as jan seme as
a translation for “who” in a lot of situations.
using suwi on its own to mean candy is also not that specific, though depending on context
it could be enough. sticking to words we’ve already learned, “moku suwi” for “sweet
food” or “moku lili suwi” for “sweet little food” are decent options.
you might have come up with something else, and if it makes sense to you it’s probably
fine. just make sure you’ve got the noun-adjective order right; the first word in a phrase like
this should always be a general description of what you’re talking about, with every
additional word providing extra details.
like, I don’t know, say you appended nasa to the end of that three-word phrase, so now
it’s “moku lili suwi nasa”. toki pona speakers tend to avoid forming phrases this
long, because it can get kinda unwieldy, but in principle it should work. every new word
in the phrase makes what you’re talking about a little more specific. I know we’re
covering old ground here, but this concept is very important to toki pona. it’s one
of the main things that allows you to use this limited vocabulary to describe more specific
concepts.
and now we have some kind of cute transition which brings us to our next grammatical concept
for this lesson, that being the word anu. anu is pretty much equivalent to the English
conjunction “or,” usually considered a particle in toki pona, like “li” or “o.”
it’s one of the… fuzziest toki pona words in meaning, and doesn’t really have strict
conditions for where it can and can’t be used. generally speaking, it’s used to separate
two equivalent content words, with them both filling the same grammatical role within the
sentence.
for example, take the sentence “kulupu li pona anu ike.” it translates into something
like “the group is good or bad.” pona and ike are both functioning as verbs here,
with anu connecting them, as though this were one single verb meaning “to be good or bad”.
anu can also be used to contrast two nouns, just like in English. before we demonstrate
this though, let’s look at some more new vocab.
kili is a delightful word meaning either fruit or vegetable. toki pona makes no fundamental
distinction between these different edible parts of a plant.
there’s also the more general word kasi, used for plants of any kind, regardless of
edibility. and another food word, pan is used for grain-based
foods, like bread, pasta, rice, cereal, or corn.
okay, so using these words, what do you think “mama sina li jo e kili anu pan” would
mean?
[pause]
yeah, it’s something like “your parent has the fruit or the bread”.
and that’s basically all there is to explain for anu, outside of some edge cases that I
don’t think you’re ready for yet. it’s a very loosely defined word. and yes, for
those more familiar with how “or” works in other languages, it can be used for both
inclusive and exclusive or. it’s the same way in English, so if you don’t know what
that means don’t worry about it.
it is important to note though that it can’t really be used with modifiers like it can
with nouns or verbs. “tomo lili anu suli” wouldn't mean “the small or big house”,
it’d be something like “the small house or the bigness”, which doesn’t make very
much sense. and, of course, anu can also be used alongside
seme to form some questions, but that’s a topic that will be covered in the next lesson.
let’s try a few examples. what does “mi pali e telo kili anu pan suwi” mean?
[pause]
yeah, it’s something along the lines of “I will make fruit juice or cake.” naturally,
pan suwi could mean any kind of sweet carb, and telo kili could be any kind of drink made
from a fruit or vegetable.
let’s try a longer one. “I know that person. he is Tommy or Robby. which is his name?”
[pause]
it’d be something like, “mi sona e jan ni. ona li jan Tami anu jan Wapi. nimi ona
li seme?”
you could have done “seme li” there instead of “li seme”, and both work fine, but
just remember that “li seme” is generally a little easier to understand.
also, there’s a few different ways to tokiponize those names, and as always the actual best
way to refer to a person in toki pona depends on their own preference. you can rewatch the
last lesson if you need a refresher on that.
on another topic, one key feature of toki pona’s vocabulary that we haven’t really
gotten to see that much of yet is words that refer to things based on their general shape
and texture. for example, lipu, which we went over last time, is used for “document”,
but it also has the meaning of “flat, bendable object”, something shaped like a sheet of
paper.
so, yes, a book is lipu, but the leaves of a plant can also be called lipu, or maybe
“lipu kasi”, if you want to be more specific. this sort of thing has you describe things
in terms of what observable properties they have, which in some situations can be more
useful than the much harder question of what something really “is”.
so, here’s a few more of those. kiwen refers to any hard, solid object, like
a rock, or metal. and it’s important to keep in mind, this doesn’t literally mean
“mineral”, though most minerals can be described as kiwen. anything that’s solid
like a rock can be called kiwen, regardless of what material it’s actually made of.
palisa is also used for solid, inflexible objects, but specifically long things, like
a stick, or pole. as always, remember that the stress on these longer words should be
on the first syllable, so this is “pálisa”, rather than “palísa”.
then there’s linja, which is similar to palisa in that it refers to long things, but
unlike palisa, linja are things that are long and flexible, like a rope, or hair.
there are more of these sorts of words, and we’ll get to them when the time comes, but
the important thing for now is that these “shapewords” are a method of categorizing
things based on what they look and feel like, and a lot of them don’t have exact English
translations.
like, you could translate kiwen, palisa, and linja as “rock”, “stick”, and “rope”,
and in many cases that is what those words mean, but those English words are all way
more specific than these toki pona words. instead, I recommend thinking of these as
“something that feels like a rock”, “something that’s shaped like a stick”, or “something
that bends like a rope”.
to some extent, this idea can apply to like, all words in toki pona. words in toki pona
just tend to mean more things than corresponding words in natural languages, but crucially,
it’s not because there’s a lot of separate things they could mean and that you have no
way of knowing which one is correct, it’s that there is one single thing that the word
means, and that one single thing is just a very broad concept that’s applicable to
a lot of situations.
well, time to close off today’s lesson with some examples. now’s your chance to smash
that pause button and take notes from this lesson’s overview slide. we’ve covered
a lot of the basics at this point, so there’s already a lot of cool things you can do with
what you’ve learned already.
so, try to translate the sentence “ma kasi li jo e kili lili suwi”.
[pause]
yeah, so a more literal translation would be something like “the plant-land has sweet,
small fruit-or-vegetables”. ma kasi could refer to any ma which is defined in some way
by kasi, like a forest, or garden. an outdoorsy place with plants. kili lili suwi is a three-word
phrase, which can be translated one word at a time. “kili” is any fruit or vegetable.
lili means “small”, so we’re talking about a small fruit or vegetable, like a berry.
then finally suwi means “sweet”, so in full this is “the forest has sweet berries”,
or something along those lines.
alright, how about the question “musi seme li jo e palisa musi?”
[pause]
okay, this question is asking “which musi has palisa musi”. “musi”, as you recall,
means “fun”, “game”, “entertainment”, and so forth. palisa musi is referring to
some sort of stick-shaped object that’s in some way associated with entertainment.
there are a lot of objects that fit that description, like a baseball bat, a bowling pin, a pool
cue, a Wii Remote, you know, any fun-stick you can think of.
so, this question is something like “which game (or “which forms of entertainment”)
have fun-sticks?”, with palisa musi being a descriptor for all of these different palisa
which are musi. this is another fun example of the sort of thing that toki pona makes
easier to say than it would be in English.
anyway, here’s a simpler one. how about “seli li pona anu ike”?
[pause]
exactly, this is just “heat is good or bad”, or maybe you went with “fire” instead
of “heat”. fortunately, “anu” is similar enough to the English conjunction “or”
that we don’t need to worry about what exactly is meant by this any further than this basic
one-to-one translation.
now then, here’s a longer example. “telo nasa kili ona li jo e kiwen lete. ni li nasa!”
[pause]
remember, when you’re translating long phrases like this, start from the left, and then every
additional word adds extra detail from there.
[pause]
got it? okay, so let’s go one word at a time. “telo” is just any liquid. “nasa”
means “strange” or “unusual”, so “telo nasa” is an unusual liquid. this is a common
way to describe alcoholic beverages, as in “a liquid that stranges”, but in principle
any sufficiently strange liquid can be called “telo nasa”.
“telo nasa kili”, then, is a stranging liquid which in some way is defined by kili,
a fruit or vegetable. in context, this is most likely referring to a strange liquid
that’s made out of fruits or vegetables. like wine, for instance, a stranging liquid
that’s made of grapes.
then of course “ona” is the third person pronoun, which, like all personal pronouns
in toki pona, works like a possessive pronoun when it modifies a noun like this, so all
together, this is something like “their wine”, or whatever fruit-weird-liquid this
happens to be.
then we reach li, indicating that we have made it to the end of the subject of the sentence,
and the next part is a verb. “jo” means have, and after that is the object of the
sentence, “kiwen lete”. “kiwen”, as we’ve learned, refers to any hard, solid
object, and “lete” means “cold”, or “frozen”, so together this is some sort
of cold and solid thing, like, say, a block of ice.
as a whole, then, this first sentence means something like “their wine has ice cubes”,
and the second sentence can be straightforwardly translated as “this is unusual!”
okay, let’s try a few into toki pona. first a simple one. how would you say “what is
your language?”
[pause]
yeah, it’s “toki sina li seme.” and again, “seme li toki sina” would work
just as well, but it’s a bit less clear of a structure in some cases.
alright, now how would you say “the tree branch has many leaves”?
[pause]
well, a tree branch could be a palisa kasi, or a plant stick. you could also just say
palisa on its own, depending on context. then remember, “leaves” are one of the many
flat bendy things that can be lipu. therefore, we can say something like “palisa kasi li
jo e lipu mute.” in other contexts, you might want to use lipu kasi for leaves, but
the rest of the sentence makes it clear enough that it’s fine to leave it implied. toki
pona translations are always more contextual than they are exact.
okay, now imagine you see a small group of tokipon-ese children acting bored. how would
you say “kids, go work or take a nap!”?
[pause]
well, you could say “jan lili o pali anu lape!” you could also say “lape lili”
instead, to make it clear that this is just a small rest.
and one last one for this lesson. how would you say “the grandmother sees the jump rope”?
[pause]
one option would be “mama mama li lukin e linja musi.” linja musi is a fun rope,
basically exactly what a jump rope is. grandmother could be mama mama, the parent of a parent,
but something like mama suli, a mother who is grand, could work just as well. but we
can all agree that mama mama is more fun, right?
well, that’s all for today’s lesson. if you’ve been following along and practicing
the material, you should now have a solid foundation, and a good grasp of the most essential
concepts of toki pona grammar. as this series continues, we’ll keep building on these
ideas, and you’ll see some of the more advanced things you can do with these building blocks.
as I said before, in the next video in this series we’ll learn about yes-or-no questions,
as well as how negation works. just remember, every time someone asks me when the next part
of a series is coming, I delay it by another month. mi tawa!