The Packbats' Weblog

We have been struck with a sudden inspiration.

In the past - for example, while writing and editing our guide "naming yourself in toki pona" - we've thought of nouns for speakers as a static thing: if someone's head noun is 'kulupu', then you call them 'kulupu', end of story. And it's important that we understand and conform to the nomenclature of the subject we're discussing.

...but in the style of lipu pu, "Toki Pona: The Language of Good", the first official Toki Pona book, words can be more fluid that that. jan Sonja might say "meli li lili" to talk about a woman being little, even though that meli is definitely also a jan. Provided there is no misgendering or other deliberate misidentifying going on, there doesn't seem to be anything hostile about that.

So, you know how, in resources like pronouns.page, there will be lists of words that can be marked with hearts or thumbs-up or thumbs-down or other such indicators of mood?

What if tokiponists did that for words about them? Like, if we add this to our profile:

sina toki e mi la, mi olin e nimi ni:

• kulupu
• poki
• tonsi

...nimi ni li pona:

• ijo
• jan
• meli
• nasa
• tomo

...nimi ni li musi:

• kijetesantakalu

...nimi ni li ike:

• mani
• mije
• pakala (mi ken pakala! taso, kon mi li kon pakala ala. nimi "pakala Pakapa" li ike a!)
• sewi

...would that be clearly understood? Would people know that they can say statements like "meli ni li kulupu Pakapa" and be polite and accurate?

I think it would be good if this is something they could check as needed. Obviously, most speakers would simply grab "kulupu" or "poki" off the top and use one of those, which works fantastically and requires very little memorization ... but I think it's good to have, and good to have thought about in case people ask, "mi wile ala wile kepeken nimi 'meli' lon sina?"

wile. mi meli tonsi. mi tonsi meli. pona, pona.

Okay - so you know how the new health care bill is supposed to charge people who voluntarily refuse health insurance (so as to encourage people to sign up)? And you know how emergency rooms have to provide care, even to the uninsured?

How about this: have insurers bid for their price to cover the costs of treating the uninsured in each state. The lowest bid gets their cost divided among the uninsured in that state. That way:

The cost to hospitals of emergency room care is paid, and

The cost to individuals of refusing health care is controlled by market forces.

Any obvious flaws?