Jan Kala's Toki Pona Lessons

The words "toki pona" in the toki pona script "sitelen pona".

Introduction edit

Hello! Welcome to my (jKala) lesson series for learning the conlang[1] Toki Pona. Toki Pona combines aspects of minimalism, simplicity, taoism, neo-primativism, etc. It was created by Sonja Lang, approximately around 2001. Later, she published a book describing the grammar, vocabulary, and additional features of her language. However, this book was published demonstrating her way of speaking Toki Pona, and encourages others to form their own opinions/idiolects[2]. These lessons will show contradictions to that book, as well as the opinions of others. Don't let this bother you. This is how I, some close toki pona friends, and a few others, speak Toki Pona. In my opinion, it is a more colloquial register, and is a lot less loose in its boundaries, etc. You may follow the guidelines in this book exactly, or you can change it to better represent your ideas (be careful with this, though. It is most likely less straight forward than you think). I hope you enjoy these lessons and find them useful!

Thank You!

Footnotes edit

  1. short for constructed language
  2. a specific ideal for the way a particular speaks a language; a group of idiolects forms a dialect