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% toki pona page 9 - complex adjectives and contexts % /dev/urandom % march 2020
The vocabulary for this page:
| word | meaning | derived from |
|---|---|---|
| pi | "of" (groups adjectives) | Tok Pisin "bilong" (of) |
| la | "if/when" (introduces context) | Esperanto "la" (definite article) |
| luka | hand, arm | Serbo-Croatian "ruka" (arm) |
| linja | long flexible object, hair | Finnish "linja" (line) |
| palisa | long solid object, branch, stick | Serbo-Croatian "palica" (rod) |
| selo | outer form, shell, skin, boundary | Esperanto "ŝelo" (skin) |
| sijelo | body, physical state, torso | Serbo-Croatian "tijelo" (body) |
| len | cloth, clothes, layer of privacy | Acadian French "linge" (clothing) |
| lete | cold, raw | Acadian French "frette" (cold) |
| musi | entertaining, artistic, fun, game | Esperanto "amuzi" (have fun) |
Time to introduce two another particles in this language: "pi" and "la".
pi
The word "pi" works by grouping several adjectives together. Normally, all adjectives in a phrase apply to the first word.
For example:
jan wawa -- strong person
jan wawa ala -- no strong people
If you need to say "weak people", you need to negate "wawa", but not "jan". That's where "pi" comes in handy:
jan pi wawa ala -- weak person/people ("of no strength")
It is also useful for phrases that use unofficial words.
ma tomo Wasintan li ma tomo lawa pi ma Mewika. -- (the city of) Washington is the capital ("main city") of the United States.
la
The word "la" allows to combine two sentences to form conditions and introduce context.
[sentence A] la [sentence B].
This translates to something like:
If [sentence A], then [sentence B].
Dialectal differences
%info% This part of the document describes how certain toki pona courses differ in explaining certain ideas.
The official book, the "o kama sona e toki pona!" course and my personal style differ on how to place punctuation in sentences that use "la".
The official book sometimes uses a comma before "la" and sometimes uses no punctuation.
The online course doesn't use any punctuation.
I personally prefer using the comma after "la".
Exercises
Now, try to figure out the meaning of these sentences.
And try to translate the following sentences into toki pona.
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