Appendix talk:Toki Pona

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The four variant forms[edit]

Hi LesVisages and whoever else is interested, while ale and ali a) are cross-referenced as alternative forms of one another and b) have identical definitions for c) identical parts of speech, this is not the case for a and kin, lukin and oko, nor sin and namako. My idea is that they all of these word pairs should be cross-referenced and have identical entries, as in Sonja Lang (2014). What do you think? —LiliCharlie (talk) 00:50, 17 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

P.S.: If some of them have/retain different definitions such usage shoud be marked as unofficial, informal or even obsolete, I think. —LiliCharlie (talk) 00:57, 17 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The alternative forms/synonyms all already have separate pages. Right now, the secondary words (kin, oko, namako) have references to the other words (a, lukin, sin) in a "Usage notes" section. Should the other words have a similar reference or should it be in a "See also" section or "Synonyms" section? LesVisages (talk) 01:03, 17 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I think they are not just synonyms like the English boy and lad, but are completely interchangeable. They should be cross-referenced as alternative forms, as are ale and ali. Well, as ali was until a few moments ago. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 01:21, 17 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
ale and ali are just alternate spellings whereas the other ones are different forms. Some people do distinguish them despite the book calling them "synonyms" so I don't think their entries should be completely identical or just redirecting to the other form like with ale and ali. LesVisages (talk) 02:38, 17 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
ale and ali are not just spelling variants like the English yoghurt and yogurt. They also reflect different pronunciations, and the difference is the same as that between ken and kin. This means they can develop different usages even in the spoken language (which linguists consider primary), and they probably have. Note that different usage not only refers to conceptual meaning, it also covers other levels of meaning, or "communicative values," such as stylistic meaning (for example, ali is preferred by Anglophones, I think, while there is probably no such preference among Francophones), connotative meaning, affective meaning, reflected meaning, collocative meaning, or thematic meaning. (This particular classification of meaning levels is from Geoffrey Leech (1974): Semantics, Chapter 1: Meanings of Meaning, and is the successor of Ogden & Richards (1923): The Meaning of Meaning.) Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 04:47, 17 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, ale and ali are different pronunciations and that difference in pronunciation is reflected in the spelling. However, they are not like ken and kin which have completely different meanings. ale and ali have always had the same meaning (unlike words like sin and namako which once had different meanings) and it is very likely they will continue to have the same meaning because ali is just a different pronunciation that Sonja created for people who have issues pronouncing ale differently from ala. LesVisages (talk) 16:08, 17 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Not quite. For example, here's someone who says they "really love that we have an ale/ ali distinction" and doesn't use the two words in the same situations. And I'm sure they're not the only one to exploit this distinction. This is something that language users permanantly do. As soon as you have word pairs with a different sequence of phonemes, like spelt and spelled, that difference starts to establish a meaning contrast to which hearers react and which changes the course of their conversation. "Nice to meet you." vs. "You don't seem to be from Nottingham, so leave me alone." — Never forget that the Balkans have seen wars fomented by such seemingly minor phonological differences between the Serbo-Croatian "languages" Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian. Differences in the choice of phonemes inevitably lead to differences in meaning, even if speakers (you?) don't realize what they do with their words. Interlocuters will. (Of course I know why ali was introduced, and for which group of speakers. That's why I assumed that ali is probably preferred by Anglophones. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 18:46, 17 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
~91% of the people interviewed in the survey you linked said that ale and ali mean the same thing. Differences in pronunciation do not always lead to differences in meaning (see literally any dialects of any language that pronounce words differently but still use them the same.) toki pona's pronunciation is flexible to accommodate speakers of all backgrounds. Many people use different pronunciations for words but they're still the same word with the same meaning. And the writer of the comment you linked says he uses them to represent dialectal differences of characters or fictional people groups. He does not say he uses them with distinct meanings. LesVisages (talk) 17:09, 18 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, dialectal differences, good point. Do you agree that the English aluminium and aluminum are different (though very similar) words because they are represented by different sequences of phonemes? If so, a difference in (conceptual) meaning is not essential. If not, we should end this discussion for now, as it leads to no result/no consensus, and we can only hope that someone else will help us come to an agreement sometime in the future. However I would really appreciate your answer to my question before we abandon this discussion, as it is instructive to observe how people with different cultural backgrounds interpret the ale~ali variation even if both have linguistic training. (I studied general linguistics but majored in phonetics. Ouside Wiktionary, the only dictionary I ever contributed to was a pronunciation dictionary where it was rarely important what exactly words are. Instead, dictionary entries, or lemmas, were simply determined by spellings differences, and by differences in pronunciation if spellings were identical.) Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 23:09, 18 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
oko, namako, and kin are *very* commonly distinguished between their counterparts. I do not think it would be fair to remove their separate definitions or call them "obsolete." L'homme des citrons (talk) 19:23, 19 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
When I wrote "or even obsolete" I didn't mean "and even obsolete". How about labelling definitions that are not in Sonja Lang's "Official Toki Pona Dictionary" unofficial or informal? Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 19:41, 19 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@L'homme des citrons P.S.: Of course we can also introduce frequency labels. If, for instance, some "official" usage is distincly rare, we can present it as such. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 19:56, 19 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's perfectly fine as it is. For instance, Appendix:Toki_Pona/oko says "This word is listed as a synonym of lukin ("see/eye") in the official book. However, some speakers use this word with a distinct meaning."
I feel like this reflects the reality of the situation accurately and impartially. Who claims the words to be synonyms? Sonja Lang, in the official book. Does everyone use these words as such? Not always. L'homme des citrons (talk) 20:05, 19 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Entry oko doesn't tell users what that "distinct meaning" is. All definitions given for oko are also given as definitions for lukin (though the reverse is not true). Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 20:16, 19 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the meanings should be kept and labeling them as "obsolete" is way too intense. Should they be labeled as "unofficial" like LiliCharlie mentioned or "nonstandard"? ("nonstandard" is included in Wiktionary's glossary whereas "unofficial" is not). I would also consider putting "dated" beside it because although people still use it today, the distinction originated from the use before the book was published. LesVisages (talk) 00:42, 21 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I believe we should label them as "nonstandard" and "dated". The former because there is no doubt they are, the latter to tell users they are not fashionable neologisms that are not yet part of the accepted standard. — If we don't restrict ourselves to standard usage anyway we should probably list nonstandard words like monsuta, kipisi, leko, pake, pata as well, though maybe on a separate list or in italics or *starred; after all an inherently limited lexicon is probably the key feature of the language, so an expanded vocabulary seems to run counter to the Toki Pona spirit. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 02:41, 21 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Add sitelen pona?[edit]

I have created the Commons category SVGs of sitelen pona in Sonja Lang's handwriting with 125 graphics. Should we add sitelen pona to our word entries? Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 21:52, 18 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I mean, I don't see why not. Theeddiebear888 (talk) 08:48, 27 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Post-Pu Words[edit]

Should we add post-pu words (words made official by either Sonja Lang or the Toki Pona Community after the writing of Toki Pona: The Language of Good) as a separate list from the pu words? Theeddiebear888 (talk) 08:51, 27 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Theeddiebear888, yes we should. I have redlinked all lemmas that don't have a page yet. I suggest we label pre-pu and post-pu lemmas as such, or maybe use language-independent labels like dated and neologism. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 10:45, 28 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

nimi ale pona 2nd ed. and deleting post-pu words[edit]

I'm wondering why we're not adding nimi ale pona 2nd ed. as a resource for many of the post-pu words in Toki Pona, since many of the words have begun integrating into Toki Pona alongside the words found in Sonja Lang's book, and I can find the post-pu words, such as mulapisu or yupekosi, in the ilo Salana bot on Discord. Although I know they're non-standard, that doesn't mean they're not words all of a sudden. I am finding people using many post-pu words in many of the different Toki Pona communities, so while they might not be standardized, that's part of the point of a language: it gains new words and new vocabulary as time goes on. Although nimi ale pona might not be the best resource to use, some of the post-pu words were made and originated from Sonja Lang herself, so I don't really understand why we're putting them up for deletion. All I'm saying is that I think we should leave the post-pu words be, and if not the post-pu words, at least the ones that Sonja Lang made herself. Theeddiebear888 (talk) 08:30, 13 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Edit: I also wanted to add that many of the Toki Ponists in the Discord community support and use nimi ale pona 2nd ed. as a primary dictionary for both post-pu and pre-pu words. It wasn't just some person making up words on the fly, it was a group of people who worked together, looking at common usage and speech habits of many Toki Ponists, compiling what they found into this dictionary; that's why is literally translates to "All Good Words" or "Good Vocabulary" Theeddiebear888 (talk) 08:43, 13 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

RFD discussion: November 2020–January 2021[edit]

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for deletion (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

Multiple entries in Appendix:Toki Pona

WT:ATTEST; All of these entries are not attested. Many are not older than a year and a lot of them are words made as a joke. The only source listed for these is a shared Google Doc. LesVisages (talk) 23:43, 4 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

 delete most of these originated (and, afaik, mostly stayed in) the ma pona pi toki pona discord server; definitely not global enough for inclusion
while a scarce few (such as sutopatikuna) were coined elsewhere, they too are jokes and used roughly never
yupekosi and a few others are listed as Word of Sonja which probably doesn't warrant inclusion but it is a thing i wanted to mention

Sobsz (talk) 14:17, 23 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]


Restoring redlinked pages[edit]

What exactly would be required to restore the deleted pages? It seems some of the deleted pages have already been brought back, though this doesn't seem to have been particularly coordinated.

The main thing seemed to be WT:ATTEST requiring 3 durable references (this doesn't seem to be actually fulfilled for any of the toki pona words i checked)

if those references could be found, would it be possible to restore the deleted pages (or at least re-create them)?

Binarycat64 (talk) 02:16, 15 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Sitelen pona for ku + nonstandard terms[edit]

There are non-official sitelen pona for the thirteen words in ku (you can see them in linku.la, an online toki pona dictionary). Should we include them? There are also some nonstandard terms that seem to have significant usage, much more than words like "pasila" and "teje" which are included in the nonstandard terms (again, you can see them in linku.la), and I'd like to know if we should include those as well, as well as their sitelen pona. PC36/jan Pisi (þ enjoyer) (talk) 23:19, 27 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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