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Wanderlust voucher - toki pona | ||
Tags: Wanderlust | Conlang | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5796 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes  Studies: French | Message 1 of 9 02 May 2012 at 4:45am | IP Logged |
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toki pona - An exercise in minimalism, a “white canvas with scattered brushstrokes of primary colors.” (Los Angeles Times, 24/08/2007)
I have decided to cash in a recently-received Wanderlust Voucher (thanks Daragh!) by studying, for one week only, toki pona, which is a conlang chiselled into existence out of the shattered remains of a rogue glacier in the mysterious land north of the continental US by a multilingual translator and linguist, Sonja Elen Kisa. Day 1 – May the first Read some general articles on toki pona and poked around in a general way some more details descriptions of the language. Official site wikipedia article on toki pona wikibook book - toki pona Located and read over the accepted revised word list – 123 root words – just to get a general sense of how the root words are organized. Many of the root words function as a noun, adjective (or “modifier”) and verb, all without any morphological change. For example, “ante” stands for the noun “difference”, the adjective “different” the conjunctions “otherwise” and “or else” and the verbs “to change, to alter, to modify." Although there are 123 root words (some of which appear not to have meanings yet assigned), there looks to be something over 700 possible English definitions for the collection of toki pona root words toki pona word list Began memorizing chunks of the root word list. Divided many of the words into thematic categories to aid memorizing: for example, listed all the words for body parts together and memorized them as a group (leaving all sorts of gruesome schematic drawings of the human body and head lying around the place). Same for colours, etc. Nothing fancy, no use of mnemonics, just brute force at first, then started preparing an Anki deck for myself (breaking each toki pona root word into each of its various meanings or manifestations. Worked through the first three lessons of text-based series of lessons at this site: lessons - bknight There is also a youtube based series of lessons which I took a look at - will turn to that subsequently. Total time spent: approximately 147 minutes Impression so far: ee cummings would love it (no capitalization, even at the beginning of sentences). Paradise for those who hate the necessity of having to decline nouns, remember gender, conjugate verbs, figure out what the heck the subjunctive is. No apparent morphological changes so far, and vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar are all stripped down for extreme speed: if some wicked-quick cheetahs were ever inclined to speak with humans, their language of choice would undoubtedly be toki pona. I was planning on saying “See ya” or Goodbye” here in toki pona, but palaka, there does not appear to be a toki pona root word for it. Edited by Spanky on 02 May 2012 at 4:59am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5796 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 2 of 9 03 May 2012 at 7:19am | IP Logged |
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Day 2 - May the deuxième
"It is difficult to separate language from thought and community. With these come culture, values and filters on how to interpret reality." (Sonja Elen Kisa) I carried out some more general reading regarding the philosophy behind the conlang – a reformatting of one’s thinking through the stripped down simplicity and intentional ambiguity of the language. This is exactly the antithesis of what I have always sought, personally and professionally, in language, where increased precision in language use constitutes the greater good. I am prepared to embrace in an open manner the toki pona approach for the week, but anticipate that I will be keen on returning in due course to an embrace of the precision available in other languages (so far from my limited perspective: German over French over English in terms of precision). Worked today through lessons 4 and 5 of the bknight lessons, as well as some general vocabulary practice. Learned the following: - how to put together simple and compound phrases - the grammatical markers “e” and “li” - the significance of correct order of piled-up adjectives - given the considerable ambiguity inherent in the language, in which for example, mi moku means both “I am eating” and “I am food”, caution is particularly important if there are any hungry cheetahs in the vicinity who understand toki pona. - my first toki pona poem: mi jo e kili. ona li pona li lili. mi moku lili e kili lili. Something about eating a small fruit. Perhaps not as wide in scope as Paradise Lost or Canterbury Tales, but it is fun to read aloud (“j” pronounced like “y”; accent invariably on the first syllable of any multisyllabic words). Sounds almost Hawaiian. Also learned that in yesterday’s post, I completely pakala’ed the word ”pakala” by spelling it ”palaka” . How nasa (crazy, silly, stupid, spanky, weird) of me, though I do like the sound of palaka more than pakala, so perhaps at some point I will visit the jan sewi of this language in her snow fort out east and lobby for a change. Most importantly in terms of real life usage, I learned how to mutter mi wile pakala e sina (“I must destroy you”) in a menacing way to various work colleagues under my breath with impunity. Total time spent today: approximately 115 minutes Edited by Spanky on 04 May 2012 at 8:34am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| aikidave Newbie United States https://aiki.pbworks Joined 4916 days ago 2 posts - 4 votes Studies: Toki Pona | Message 3 of 9 03 May 2012 at 9:44pm | IP Logged |
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pakala is one of my favorite TP words!
I created a web page of my effort to learn toki pona here Older posts are at the bottom. I also created a blog of my toki pona writing. Most of it has been peer reviewed on the TP forum. Enjoy your TP learning experience. Dave 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5796 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 4 of 9 04 May 2012 at 4:45am | IP Logged |
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Thanks so much Dave! I am enjoying my toki pona learning experience quite a
bit. I read and thoroughly enjoyed your Adventures with Learning log (first link above), and while the toki pona material in the second link is beyond me for the moment, it did lead me to your awesome toki pona general page - nice work and I have to say, the best collection of toki pona links I have come across so far, so many thanks. awesome toki pona page with helpful links Spanky Edited by Spanky on 04 May 2012 at 7:49am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5796 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 5 of 9 04 May 2012 at 9:15am | IP Logged |
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Day 3 – le 3 mai
Kisa: “Toki Pona is semantically, lexically, and phonetically minimal. The simplest and fewest elements are used to create the maximum effect. In many ways, Toki Pona resembles a pidgin. When people from different cultures need to communicate, they must focus on the concrete, simple things that are most universal to humanity. Toki Pona follows the principles of Taoism, which advocates a simple, honest life and noninterference with the course of natural events. I have also been inspired by anthropological primitivists such as Sahlins and John Zerzan, whose writings critique the totality of modern civilization, recognising the superiority of natural, primitive cultures. Toki Pona can lead to an interesting game of semantic decomposition. Just as one can decompose a mathematical fraction such as 4/8 to 1/2, we can break down language to its most basic and tangible units of meaning and discover what things really mean. According to reductionism, complex ideas and systems can be completely understood in terms of their simpler parts or components. Since Toki Pona expresses things in their most natural and simple way, an inherent idea of goodness is transparent throughout the language. Health is good body. Happiness is feel good. Toki Pona itself means good language.” Today more reading of the philosophy behind the language, including some broader readings in anarcho-primitivism. Spent some time on the website and related sites mentioned above. Reviewing lesson 5 and working through lesson 6 of what I have been calling the bknight lessons (by Bryant Knight or Pije). so far a good set of lessons in terms of pacing, explanation, gradual introduction of vocabulary and useful exercises for translating toki poni into English and the reverse. Real world application: I had occasion to say the following today to a delicious pizza: sina kama e ni: mi wile moku. (You caused this: I want to eat. You made me hungry). toki pona li pona tawa mi! Total time spent today: approximately 65 minutes Edited by Spanky on 04 May 2012 at 9:18am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5796 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 6 of 9 05 May 2012 at 8:39am | IP Logged |
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Day 4 - May the 4th (be with you)
No studying today in honour of it being official Star Wars day (May the "fourth" be with you). Instead I spent much of today dressed in my Ewok costume and cavorting in the neighbour's treehouse, until the police came and told me not to. Will admit to having had a bit of a Star Trek (rather than Wars) moment the previous day when looking at some of the phrasing toki pona takes to reach certain points. For example, looking ahead a bit I saw the manner in which to ask someone's age: tenpo pi mute seme la sina sike e suno? (Times of what amount you circled the sun?). It brought to mind Star Trek (TNG naturally, not TOS), and the language seems ready made for Jean Luc to use when attempting to communicate with some newly- encountered alien (assuming that the universal translator is on the fritz and all your babelfish have died or gone on strike). Step by inevitable step, I continue on my preparation for space travel. I had previously acclimatized myself to the unpleasant taste of Tang (official orange juice of space travellers), and (this deserves a more detailed explanation, but I do not propose to provide one) I have taught myself how to use a toilet upside down in a near- zero gravity environment. With toki pona becoming ready to be my trusty communication ally, I just need some assistance in the backyard with my orbital re-entry vehicle (and also need to figure out where I can steal a whole bunch of solid-fuel rocket propellant) and I should be pretty much ready to go. Back to study tomorrow. Total study time today - zéro Edited by Spanky on 05 May 2012 at 7:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5796 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 7 of 9 06 May 2012 at 9:20pm | IP Logged |
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Day 5 – 5 MA 2012
”Unhappiness with contemporary life becomes distrust with the official lies that are told to legitimate that life, and a truer picture of human development emerges. Renunciation and subjugation in modern life have long been explained as necessary concomitants of "human nature." After all, our pre-civilized existence of deprivation, brutality, and ignorance made authority a benevolent gift that rescued us from savagery. "Cave man" and `Neanderthal' are still invoked to remind us where we would be without religion, government, and toil. This ideological view of our past has been radically overturned in recent decades, through the work of academics like Richard Lee and Marshall Sahlins. A nearly complete reversal in anthropological orthodoxy has come about, with important implications. Now we can see that life before domestication/agriculture was in fact largely one of leisure, intimacy with nature, sensual wisdom, sexual equality, and health. This was our human nature, for a couple of million years, prior to enslavement by priests, kings, and bosses.” John Zerzan ________________________________________________ RHPS: “We've got to get out of this trap, before this decadence saps our wills. I've got to be strong, und try to... hang on, or else, my mind may well snap!” Dr. Everett Scott Will read the writings, but must resist the seductive embrace of, the anarcho- primitivists. If I do wind up caught up in the philosophy, look for me in a poorly- constructed grass hut somewhere near Walden Pond. But approach with caution – I may have eschewed clothing altogether by that point in favour of mud or leaves. Reviewed past lessons, worked through lessons 7 and 8 of the jan Pije lessons and some miscellaneous reading. study and reading time - about 85 minutes Edited by Spanky on 08 May 2012 at 4:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5796 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 8 of 9 07 May 2012 at 9:27am | IP Logged |
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day 6 – may 6, 2012
Worked through lessons 9 through 13 inclusive, and poked around the toki pona forum a fair bit. It is a super fun language to learn and work through, and mildly hypnotic. study and reading time - about 130 minutes Edited by Spanky on 07 May 2012 at 4:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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