lesson two: toki!

vocabulary

grammatical vocabulary

li

li is one of the most important words in toki pona.

li is responsible for marking the predicate. the word after li is the predicate of a sentence. for example, in the sentence

jan li moku

“moku” is the predicate. this means that “jan” is doing something related to food. either “jan” is food, or “jan” is eat(ing). context is important for determining the meaning of a sentence. generally, it’s easy to distinguish whether something is the thing being eaten or the thing eating just by what it is. people generally don’t get eaten, they normally eat things.

mi and sina

mi and sina have an invisible “li” after them.

these two sentences are the same:

mi pona

sina li moku

and these two sentences are the same:

sina pona

sina li pona

e

e is also a very important word in toki pona, as it indicates who’s on the other end of the predicate. this can be roughly translated as “to.”

jan li pona

this means that a person is doing something related to being good. since they’re not doing it to anything in particular, they’re just being good in general. but when you add an e to the sentence, it means that the person is being good to someone in particular.

jan li pona e ona

this means that the person is “good-ing” someone or something. this can mean that they’re healing them, or that they’re reparing a thing. in loose terms, “jan” is making “ona” become “pona.”

this applies to other concepts as well.

mi moku e ona

since “mi” is making “ona” become “moku”, this probably means that “mi” is eating “ona” or “mi” is making “ona” into food. as stated before, context is imporant to determining the meaning of sentences.