lipu-sona/pages/x2.md

% toki pona extra page 2 - other writing systems
% /dev/urandom
% 2020-04-09

While the most common writing system for toki pona by far is the Latin alphabet,
there have been others adapted, or created specifically, for toki pona.

## Adapted writing systems

Toki pona only uses 5 vowel and 9 consonant sounds. This means that adapting
toki pona for an alphabet only requires picking 14 letters (or sequences of
letters) that would correspond to the same or similar sounds. For example,
here's how they can be converted to Greek and Cyrillic:

| Latin | Greek | Cyrillic |
|:-----:|:-----:|:--------:|
| a | α | а |
| e | ε | е |
| i | ι | и |
| j | γ | й |
| k | κ | к |
| l | λ | л |
| m | μ | м |
| n | ν | н |
| o | ο | о |
| p | π | п |
| s | σ | с |
| t | τ | т |
| u | υ | у |
| w | β | в |

> %note%
> These alphabets are not fully phonetically compatible with Greek and Russian
> sounds. Some of the letters in toki pona are pronounced differently from their
> corresponding letters.

It's a little harder to adapt toki pona for an abugida or an abjad -- a writing
system where consonant sounds have specific letters, and vowels are written as
diacritics or additional symbols next to them. The most famous abjad is the
Arabic writing system, and the most famous abugida is Devanagari (which is used
for many languages in India).

* ["ARABI PONA - Arabic Script for Toki Pona | sitelen musi" video][arabic]
* ["Toki Pona in Devanāgarī" (archived)][devanagari]

[arabic]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh9Wypm6pXs
[devanagari]:https://web.archive.org/web/20060727115116/http://www.deadlybrain.org/projects/tokipona/deva_guja.php

The language also only has 92 possible syllables (47 if "-n" is treated as a
separate syllable). This means it can also be adapted for many syllabic writing
systems as well.

For example, here are some suggestions for a way to write toki pona using
Hangul, the writing system of Korean. (While in features symbols representing
individual sounds much like an alphabet, they're arranged in syllabic blocks.)

* ["Writing Toki Pona with Korean Hangul" (archived)][hangularch]
* ["Hangul for Toki Pona" on Reddit][hangulred]

[hangularch]:https://web.archive.org/web/20070313181500/http://www.tokipona.bravehost.com/korean.html
[hangulred]:https://www.reddit.com/r/tokipona/comments/8mx951/hangul_for_toki_pona/

With some relatively small changes in sounds, it can also be written with the
Japanese Hiragana system, as proposed here:

* ["Hiragana for Toki Pona"][hiragana1]
* ["sitelen Hiragana (ひらがな)" on Reddit][hiragana_red]

[hiragana1]:https://www.deviantart.com/derroflcopter/journal/Hiragana-for-Toki-Pona-339541633
[hiragana_red]:https://www.reddit.com/r/tokipona/comments/e7g91u/sitelen_hiragana_%E3%81%B2%E3%82%89%E3%81%8C%E3%81%AA/

## sitelen pona

The most common writing system created for toki pona is the logographic *sitelen
pona* ("simple writing"), created by Sonja Lang herself and published in the
official book.

Much like the Latin alphabet, it's written left-to-right and top-to-bottom, but
each character represents an entire word instead of just one sound (or even more
if "composite characters" are used). Unofficial words are written inside
cartouches (long shapes that surround a bunch of characters), with characters
for each letter added inside.

* **[Full description, fonts and examples](sitelen_pona.html)**

## sitelen sitelen

Jonathan Gabel's ["sitelen sitelen"](https://jonathangabel.com/toki-pona/)
writing system was designed as a more aesthetically pleasant method to write texts in
toki pona. It's a non-linear system visually inspired by the Mayan script.

Compared to writing toki pona in Latin alphabet or sitelen pona, sitelen sitelen
is significantly more difficult to understand, and therefore is only used rarely
by the community. However, the impressive visual style of texts written in it --
such as [this
contract](https://www.jonathangabel.com/archive/2012/artworks_lipu-lawa-pi-esun-kama.html)
or the toki pona
[proverbs](https://jonathangabel.com/toki-pona/dictionaries/gallery/) -- many of
which are also used in the official book -- cannot be denied.

## sitelen telo

The ["sitelen
telo"](https://twitter.com/aarontoponce/status/1316350094598459392?lang=en)
system is another community-created writing system for toki pona. It's styled
after the kana and kanji writing systems used for Japanese, with characters
written using straight strokes and smooth curving shapes. It consists of "linja
telo", a logographic script where all official words (and some popular
community-created ones) have a character, and of "linja sin", a Hangul-like
syllabary for unofficial words.

![table of sitelen telo characters](/sitelen_telo.gif)
![table of linja sin syllable characters](/sitelen_telo_2.gif)

[Top page](index.html)