explaining toki pona grammar with tea

[packbat]

imagine this: the weather is good today, so we want to take tea out onto our porch and sit in the fresh air. let's talk toki pona grammar.

this essay exists because we, while we've been learning, have been very frustrated about not being able to translate things, and we couldn't translate because we didn't know how the words went together. this probably isn't gonna solve that problem for you, but it hopefully means you've at least met all the constructions and you know they exist.

we are not as of this writing fluent, so many thanks to our beta readers, including Russ Sharek of The Circus Freaks, @f00fc7c8@kind.social, and various members of the kama sona Discord. any remaining errors and eccentricities are our own.

first line is in toki pona.

second line is a word-by-word gloss in english (spaces separate toki pona words) with grammatical particles in square brackets and prepositions in curly braces.
third line is a somewhat-literal english translation. (obvious example: singletons saying an unmodified 'mi' probably mean "me" - the actual toki pona word does not indicate number.)

the rest are commentary.

let's go.

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jan li moku e telo

person/human [verb:] consume [object:] liquid
someone drinks a beverage

toki pona uses subject-verb-object word order, with particles used to mark off each content word phrase. any regular content word can function as noun, verb, adjective, or adverb.

(incidentally, as one beta reader pointed out, there's technically nothing stopping you from reading 'telo' as 'soup' here, or indeed throughout. 'telo' is a very flexible word!)

mi moku e telo

me/us consume [object:] liquid
we drink a beverage

note that there's no 'li' here - when your subject is just 'mi', no modifiers, then the verb follows directly. this is a relic of 'li' having once been a third person marker, and therefore dropped after a bare 'mi' or—

sina lukin e toki

you/y'all look-at [object:] communication/language
y'all read

—a bare 'sina', the second person pronoun.

(note that our translation leans a little on context, here: many of y'all reading this essay are looking at our communication, but if we were talking to a linguist, the same words might mean "you are examining a language.")

ona li sitelen e toki

they/he/she/it/etc. [verb:] draw/write [object:] communication/language
they write

unmodified 'ona', the third person pronoun, keeps the verb marker 'li'.

mi moku

me/us consume
we eat

it is common in toki pona to omit the object of the sentence. in some cases, the most natural interpretation is that the object - what we eat - is unspecified.

mi jan

me/us person/human
we are people

in other cases, the verb ('jan' = person/human, here) acts as a description.

mi awen

me/us wait/continue
we are still

in yet other cases, the object of the verb - what, in this case, we are making wait/continue - is the subject - here, ourselves.

mi moku e telo seli

me/us consume [object:] liquid fire/hot
we drink a hot beverage

to build a multi-word content phrase, you begin with a word that represents the essence of what you refer to - a drink, in this case - and add additional content words after it to modify. this is the reverse of the usual English word order, where you say "hot beverage" and hot modifies beverage. "seli telo" would be liquid fire, which we do not want to consume.

mi mute li moku e telo seli

me/us many/much/twenty [verb:] consume [object:] liquid fire/hot
lots of us drink hot beverages

'mi' and 'sina' can be modified like any other words, including when they are the subjects. in this case, 'li' returns to mark that the verb is just the "moku" part and not the phrase "mute moku".

mi moku e telo seli jelo

me/us consume [object:] liquid fire/hot yellow-or-shade-thereof
we drink a hot amber beverage (or amber hot beverage, technically)

each additional modifier elaborates further on the concept the phrase started with. this is not a yellow-hot beverage (which we also do not want to consume), this is a hot beverage that is, additionally, some yellowish shade. (there is a word for brown, but most speakers don't use it.)

mi moku e telo pi lipu kasi

me/us consume [object:] liquid [modifying-phrase:] sheet/flexible-object/book/webpage plant
we drink a leaf beverage

if you want to build a modifier out of multiple content words, pi marks off a new phrase. "telo lipu kasi" would be plant paper water (yet another substance we do not want to consume); telo pi lipu kasi is plant-sheet water, and what is a leaf if not the sheet-like part of a plant? (*holds hand up to ear* wait, beta readers, you're saying "kasi lipu"? really? okay, we'll try it—)

mi moku e telo ni: ona seli li jo e kasi lipu

me/us consume [object:] liquid this/that: they/he/she/it/etc. hot [verb:] hold/contain [object] plant sheet/flexible-object/book/webpage
we drink a liquid that was hot and contained leaves

there are a couple ways to combine multiple sentences, and the most straightforward is to use 'ni', this, and then explain what this is. here, this thing that defines the liquid is that it was hot and had leaves in it. this is probably the least elegant of our increasingly inelegant series of translations of 'tea'.

telo ni li weka anu weka ala e lape

liquid this/that [verb:] absent/away/eject [or] absent/away/eject not/none/zero [object:] sleep/rest
this liquid either removes or doesn't remove sleep

'anu' is the or-like particle. it's kinda basically like english 'or', I think. this is a part where we aren't very confident. anyway, we use the english word 'tea' for both tea-plant-based drinks and herbal tisanes, so in the example we're building, the liquid might be caffeinated (removing sleepiness) or not.

(and this example is a sentence, but 'anu' will show up again in a question context later.)

mi moku e telo seli lon tomo ma

me/us consume [object:] liquid fire/hot {on/in/at} building/room outdoor-place/country/land
we drink a hot beverage on the porch

'lon' is a preposition, one of a few. each preposition is followed by a content word or phrase. (also, note that "tomo ma" is not very specific - you could probably come up with other kinds of land-rooms than an ordinary screened porch.)

telo seli en ma li pona li pona e sijelo e pilin

liquid fire/hot [subject-combiner] outdoor-place/country/land [verb:] good/acceptable/nice [verb:] good/acceptable/nice [object:] body/physical-state [object:] feel
hot beverages and the outdoors are good and good for health and emotions.

this essay about grammar is not health advice. also, there is no word for 'and' in toki pona. if you want a sentence to have multiple subjects, you use 'en' to mark that. if you want a sentence to have multiple verbs, you have 'li' for each verb. (this interacts weirdly with the 'li'-dropping of 'mi' and 'sina', though! many speakers just use multiple sentences in that case.) finally, if you want to have multiple objects for a verb, use 'e' for each object.

(footnote: there may be ambiguity for some speakers about which verbs get the objects! this example assumes that each verb that has objects gets its own 'e'-phrase or phrases, but the official books do not specify.)

telo seli seme li pona tawa sina?

liquid hot/fire what/which [verb:] good/acceptable/nice {toward/for/according-to/move/push} you/y'all?
which hot drinks are good for you?

'seme' is the interrogative pronoun (a category name I think we stole from jan Misali). if you take an ordinary sentence (e.g. "telo seli suwi li pona tawa sina", which means "sweet hot drinks are good for you") and replace any word with 'seme', you ask what word should go there.

sina moku ala moku e telo seli?

you/y'all consume not/none/zero consume [object:] liquid hot/fire?
do you drink hot beverages?

there are two ways to ask yes-or-no questions in toki pona. one way is to take the verb and repeat it twice with 'ala' (not) in the middle. to say 'yes', repeat the verb; to say 'no', either say "[verb] ala" or just "ala".

toki mi li ante tan toki pi tenpo pini anu seme?

language/communication me/us [verb:] change/difference {from/because-of} language/communication [modifying-phrase:] time done/end/close [or] what/which?
our talk has gotten away from the previous subject, hasn't it?

the other way to ask a yes-or-no question is to write a sentence and hang "anu seme" ("or what?") on the end of it. there's probably a connotative difference to fluent speakers, but both constructions are considered normal and polite. also, to create a possessive, use the possessor as a modifier - hence 'mi' becoming 'our' here.

anyway, we'll stop asking questions now.

telo li lon poki laso

liquid [verb:] {on/in/at} container grue-or-shade-thereof
the drink is in a turquoise pot

this construction still feels strange to us. at present, we interpret it as dropping the verb phrase to skip to the preposition (hence no 'e'), but other speakers may think of it differently. also, toki pona has a five-color system, with 'laso' covering shades of green and blue; the other colors are 'loje' (reds), 'walo' (whites and bright colors), and 'pimeja' (blacks, dark colors, and also shade and shadow).

(another note from a beta reader: 'lon' here can be modified with 'insa' - inside/center/internal-organs - to clarify that the pot is holding the tea, not just next to the tea on a shelf or something.)

supa li jo e poki tu

horizontal-surface [verb:] hold/contain [object] container two
there's two containers on the table

numbers go after the thing counted, like other modifiers. in the normal numbering system, these go 'ala', 'wan', 'tu', 'mute' - zero, one, two, many - but there's an optional precise number system, where you stack up number words from largest to smallest in a batch to make a number. for example, twenty-eight, the number of example sentences (and questions) here, would be "mute luka tu wan", with 'mute' now being interpreted as twenty and 'luka' (the word for hand or arm) as five. ('ale' - all/everything - is one hundred in the precise number system.)

(note that 'tu' by itself is sometimes used to mean 'divided'. something to be aware of when that could be ambiguous.)

poki nanpa tu li poki moku

container number two [verb] container consume
the second one is for drinking

for ordinal numbers, numbers used as labels to indicate which one you mean, you place 'nanpa' before the number. 'nanpa' is also used to mean 'number', if you're talking about math or something. (or trying to indicate that 'tu' means 'two' and not 'divided'.)

kon ma li pona la, mi moku e telo seli lon tomo ma

air/spirit/essence outdoor-place/country/land [verb:] good/acceptable/nice [in-context-of-prior:], me/us consume [object:] liquid fire/hot {on/in/at} building/room outdoor-place/country/land
because it's nice out, we drink a hot beverage on the porch

the other way to combine sentences is with 'la', the context-marking particle. in this case, the verb in the context is acting as a descriptor, but just about any sentence could go in there.

ma mi la, mi pilin pona

outdoor-place/country/land me/us [in-context-of-prior:], me/us feel good/nice
our neighborhood makes us feel comfortable

the context can also be a simple content phrase, instead of a full sentence. often this is synonymous with placing that content phrase after lon.

kon ma li pona la, mi wile moku e telo seli lon tomo ma

air/spirit/essence outdoor-place/country/land [verb:] good/acceptable/nice [in-context-of-prior:], me/us want/should consume [object:] liquid fire/hot {on/in/at} room outdoor-place/country/land
because it's nice out, we want to drink a hot beverage on the porch

normally, the first content word in each group is the head, which everything else modifies. the main exception to this is preverbs, like 'wile', which modify the verbs following them.

mi wile ala awen lon insa tomo

me/us want/should not/none/zero wait/continue {on/in/at} inside/center/internal-organs building/room
we don't want to stay inside

'ala' is the negation word we saw earlier. this and a few others can modify words which don't usually get their own modifiers, like preverbs and prepositions.

taso, mi pana sona e nasin nimi pi toki pona lon tenpo ni

[but], me/us emit/give knowledge/understanding [object:] path/method word/name [modifying-phrase:] communication/language good/simple {on/in/at} time this/that
but right now we are teaching toki pona grammar

'taso' feels like 'la' to us? it has that same kind of contexualizing role, although reversed: we're not teaching toki pona grammar /because/ we don't want to stay inside, we are teaching toki pona grammar even if that means staying inside.

...I don't know why we're explaining 'but', you know what 'but' means. anyway, 'taso' can also be used as a content word to mean 'only' or 'solely' or the like.

mi kulupu Pakapa

me/us group/community "Pakapa"
we are the Packbat system

toki pona is written in lowercase except for proper words - which we recently learned a good linguist definition of: proper words are specifically those words which do not describe, just name. because it is usual in toki pona to start with a word that says what something is before elaborating on that, most speakers choose names which start with a head noun, describing what they are. humans often use 'jan', a lot of furries use animal words like 'soweli', non-people may use 'ijo' (thing), and a lot of plural systems use 'kulupu', as we do. the proper words themselves can be attempts to render non-Toki Pona names in Toki Pona's phonology; can just be the unmodified names in those other languages; or can be something completely original, chosen by the speaker named.

mi tawa

me/us toward/for/according-to/move/push
we're off

the most usual farewells are, for the one departing, to say you are moving (implicitly: away), and for the one remaining, to wish good movement ("tawa pona"). but you can say anything. the world is your oyster. you can say "make the world your oyster" as a farewell. it might be "o kala selo sina e ale". no-one will understand you, but also no-one can stop you. we believe in your oyster dreams. and thank you for reading.

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2023-02-22: Footnote on 'taso': there is an uncommon usage, appearing in pu (the official book) and some other places, where 'taso' is used like 'la' to connect sentences - "[context], taso [statement]" instead of "[context]. taso [statement]".