mirror of
https://github.com/mrrpnya/lipu-sona.git
synced 2025-02-18 18:40:30 +00:00
114 lines
4.4 KiB
Markdown
114 lines
4.4 KiB
Markdown
% toki pona extra page 2 - other writing systems
|
||
% /dev/urandom
|
||
% april 2020
|
||
|
||
<style>
|
||
@font-face {
|
||
font-family: "sitelen pona";
|
||
src: url("linjapimeja1.4.otf")
|
||
}
|
||
|
||
.sp {
|
||
font-size:3em;
|
||
font-family:"sitelen pona";
|
||
font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures;
|
||
}
|
||
</style>
|
||
|
||
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
|
||
|
||
With toki pona only using 5 vowel and 9 consonant sounds, converting another
|
||
language's writing system to toki pona can become rather easy. For example,
|
||
here's how they can be converted to Greek and Cyrillic:
|
||
|
||
|Latin |a|e|i|j|k|l|m|n|o|p|s|t|u|w|
|
||
|--------|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|
|
||
|Greek |α|ε|ι|γ|κ|λ|μ|ν|ο|π|σ|τ|υ|β|
|
||
|Cyrillic|а|е|и|й|к|л|м|н|о|п|с|т|у|в|
|
||
|
||
With some relatively small changes in sounds, it can also be written with the
|
||
Japanese Hiragana system, as proposed
|
||
[here](https://www.deviantart.com/derroflcopter/journal/Hiragana-for-Toki-Pona-339541633).
|
||
|
||
## 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.
|
||
|
||
> %info%
|
||
> The part of the book describing sitelen pona was published with a
|
||
> non-commercial [CC-BY-NC 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
|
||
> license. Hence, it's easily available online in other courses,
|
||
> such as ["o kama sona e toki pona!"'s
|
||
> page](http://tokipona.net/tp/janpije/hieroglyphs.php) on the system, which
|
||
> describes it almost exactly the same as the official book.
|
||
>
|
||
|
||
Much like the Latin alphabet, it is written left-to-right and top-to-bottom.
|
||
Each character represents one word (or sometimes even a phrase), or one letter
|
||
in a proper name.
|
||
|
||
Since toki pona's basic dictionary only uses 120 words, there are only 120
|
||
characters one needs to learn. And most of these characters are, in one way or
|
||
another, direct representations of the words they mean.
|
||
|
||
For example, "lawa", meaning "head", is literally a symbol of a head with a cap
|
||
on. "nanpa", meaning "number", is based on the "#" number sign, etc.
|
||
|
||
An adjective character can be put inside or over/under a noun character to
|
||
represent a noun phrase.
|
||
|
||
> %info%
|
||
> You might notice that toki pona's "logo", used on the cover of the official
|
||
> book and on most websites to represent it, is, in fact, sitelen pona's
|
||
> composite character for "toki pona", with the "pona" symbol written inside the
|
||
> "toki" symbol.
|
||
|
||
Unofficial words are written inside a "cartouche" symbol, with characters for
|
||
words that start with their first letters. For the example linked above (and
|
||
used in the official book), "ma Kanata" is written as "ma [kasi alasa nasin awen
|
||
telo a]".
|
||
|
||
Since the question mark is used as the character for "seme", question sentences
|
||
may be ended with a period (or a smaller question mark) instead, depending on
|
||
the text.
|
||
|
||
Here's some basic text written in sitelen pona. (If your browser is unable to
|
||
load the ["linja pimeja" font](https://github.com/increpare/linja_pimeja), it
|
||
should just show up in Latin alphabet instead.)
|
||
|
||
> %sp%
|
||
> wan ni pi lipu ni li sitelen kepeken sitelen pona. sina ken ala ken sona e ni.
|
||
>
|
||
|
||
<a name="answers" href="#answers" onclick="revealSpoilers();">Reveal translation</a>
|
||
|
||
> %spoiler%
|
||
> This part of this document is written using sitelen pona. Can you understand
|
||
> it?
|
||
|
||
For some other texts written in sitelen pona, including a page that tries to
|
||
teach someone to read it without using any other writing system, check out the
|
||
website ["tomo pi sitelen pona"](https://davidar.github.io/tp/) by jan Tepu.
|
||
|
||
## 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.
|
||
|
||
[Top page](index.html)
|
||
|