pali pi ante toki · binomech

Words used in pali pi ante toki

To avoid unnecessary bloat and make maintenance easier on myself, I'll link to the list of core and common toki pona terms on Linku, a community dictionary that formally polls the toki pona speakers periodically to gauge how widespread usage of each word is.

Disclaimer about jan

I will be using it to refer to agents and use modifiers if it requires clarification for the species or role. As a head noun, it will refer to human beings. I have a preference for contextual head nouns, though, so the emphasis is on the agency rather than the species.

Proper names in toki pona are usually made out of a head noun and a modifier. A head noun is a word that expresses what kind of thing the modifier is or what function it serves, while the modifier is the proper name as one would understand it in English. Usually the second part is phonetically transliterated into toki pona sounds, but I've decided to omit tokiponization in this project. In the following example, to showcase the usual format, I will tokiponize "America" as Mewika

ma Mewika: (land, space, territory) America = USA, the country
jan Mewika: (person, human) America = American, a person that lives in the US or that is a citizen of the US

There is an active debate among toki pona speakers on whether jan's original definition as bound to humans (as homo sapiens) is in line with the philosophy behind toki pona and the implications about personhood being equated to humanity both as anthropocentric and in conversation with the dehumanization certain groups of humans experience. I think it's a very important conversation, and in toki pona-speaking spaces I avoid defaulting to jan as a head noun unless explicitly requested and generalize the audience as ale, sina/ona, ijo.

For human fictional characters, unless their name in a specific sentence serves a purpose that would suit another head noun better, I will use a default jan for purely linguistic clarity.

Disclaimer about kili

While the standard widespread definition is simply "fruit," "mushroom," or the edible part of a plant, I find that the lack of terms to describe offspring without implying their youth or smallness in casual toki pona is a pain in the ass. I think kili as the child/product/creation of mama (whether that mama is a plant, an animal, an intellect, or a machine) is a solid alternative.

Words omitted in pali pi ante toki

pu/ku/su, meta words for interacting with the Toki Pona books: I'm not here to write about toki pona, I'm here to write in toki pona. Sorry, jan Sonja.
jelo/laso/loje, terms for colors with a saturation value (yellow-ish, blue-ish, red-ish): I'm keeping walo (white, bright) and pimeja (black, dark), but I want to challenge myself to write about color without combining words that may specify a shade to avoid cultural associations and to convey visual information verbally in a way that honors the medium of words over image. To think of translation as not mere localization, if you will.
tonsi, a term to express the concept of gender non-conformity or trans genders, as well as genders outside of the man/woman binary: To me, gender is constructed and performed; it's something that you do or is done to you rather than something you are, some essence you possess. I find value in talking about trans identities in terms that aren't easily flattened into a modifier, and I want to avoid this shortcut to do justice to my own understanding and experience of my trans existence.