What is the Easiest Language?
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- Опубликовано: 9 фев 2025
- *LESSONS*
Textbook-like course: mun.la/sona/mi...
Immersion course: • 01 kili sin - o pilin ...
Lecture course: • You and I - Learn Toki...
Official book: www.amazon.com...
*COMMUNITIES*
Community & Event Server: / discord
Learning server: / discord
Immersion server: mun.la/ma
Quiet, comfy immersion server: / discord
Community on Telegram: t.me/kulupu_toki
Immersion on Telegram: t.me/tokiponataso
VRChat community: vrc.group/TOKI...
*OTHER GOOD LEARNING RESOURCES*
Cheat Sheet: naturl.link/tp...
Web dictionary: linku.la/
Memrise deck: naturl.link/tp...
Grammar Reference: github.com/kil...
Toki Pona website: tokipona.org/
Beginner-friendly reading: raacz.neocitie...
*FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS*
How long does it take to learn Toki Pona? It seems to take at least a month to be conversational, and you get there by working on it some every day! That said, don't worry about it- just hop in and start having fun!
Thanks to Cuymacu (jan Kuwimaku) for the thumbnail!
Thanks to pipi Kewapi, jan Tepo, and the crowd who came to the Chicago meetup for pushing me to put this video together!
this is going to be a video
The way you learn to intuitively break down concepts to their fundamentals in Toki Pona is a very useful skill that helped in pretty much everything in life that requires learning something complex. Definitely one of my favorite hobbies, it was hell of an adventure to learn it.
That's a bit optimistic: If only I could get one of my IRL friends to learn toki pona, let alone 29
lon! ni li ike tawa mi kin!
I am so surprised by how many people think it’s not worth their time - not a single friend or family member of mine has learned it! 😭 taso la - I was absolutely absorbed. Am I neurodivergent? Yeah, probably? 🤣
Yep I feel like this language definitely attracts neurodivergent people
3:21 i love how in the end he actually talks toki pona to a rock
i’m glad you actually followed through with the rock thing :)
The best part of this video, for me, was the sad Duo animation :) Really well done. As someone who has learned Toki Pona about a year ago, I can confirm that it's fun and provides useful skills. Highly recommended.
This video is the prequel we deserved!
Too funny. I had found your amazing channel a couple of months ago and had an intense hyperfixation to try and learn the basics of Toki Pona, especially due to how good and well put together your tutorials were, but then it got cut short because of work ramping up. Finally got around to returning to your channel, and lo and behold! You’d just posted your first video in three months! It’s a sign I suppose. :)
toki pona doesn't require capitalization.
Neurodivergent, thats me, thats me
Me too
Toki Pona is the easiest language to learn, but people should be aware that it still requires a significant effort to speak, and even more effort to read or listen to non-trivial texts. It took me quite a while to reach a reasonable speaking level, and my reading and listening skills are still not perfect. How well I understand something depends on how clearly I can figure out the context and how much effort the speaker makes to be understandable. I’ve found that more than in any other language, your ability to understand toki pona depends heavily on the speaker’s clarity of expression.
Don't get me wrong, I completely agree! I qualify that in the video too, when I say "it still takes time to be skilled."
But I stand by my statements in the video. And I'd say that toki pona is still "easy to learn", even if that extent is only "easier than all other languages."
The trouble is in communicating the full nuance of what it means for toki pona to be the "easiest language." I can't do that in 3 and a half minutes, ehe.
I'll note this: I believe and have observed that what makes toki pona "the easiest language" is its small size and relative simplicity- but not because of those things alone. The language is still complex, and even difficult at times. But those two facts give learners the confidence to approach the language and immerse in it. Or, put another way, if you had as much confidence approaching a natural language as you have with toki pona, you'd probably learn that natural language as easily as you could learn Toki Pona. But natural languages are much more intimidating, let alone how much harder it often is to find somebody to practice with.
That's my more nuanced take! toki pona is absolutely still a difficult language- but it *looks* easy, so learners are more willing to try.
@@gregdan3d totally agree. and I would add that based on my experience, Toki Pona is easier even compared to Esperanto, which I was messing with for a long period and my fluency of it is much less than I gained in few months of Toki Pona. Thank you so much for the reply. sina pona a!
Thank you jan Kekan San, sina pona tawa mi, toki pona mi li pona tan sina 💜
Thank you. I hope to learn toki pona as soon as I can to rewrite this sentence in toki pona!
I'm kinda at the point where I'm coming to understand the grammar and semantics of toki pona, but I'm still a bit slow when it comes to recalling specific words and forming full sentences, if I had 29 friends all interesting in speaking toki pona I would be using it ALL the time and become fluent in no time!
sitelen tawa ni li pana e pilin pona tawa mi! nasin seme la mi ken kama sona e toki pona?
a a a
mi sona e ni: sina musi
taso, o lukin e toki anpa!
Great video. It's interesting for me that you also recommended it as a secret language if nothing else. I've made a video for my channel (in Persian) to do the same. Not published yet.
sitelen tawa pona mute. mi olin e toki ni!
Love the end XD
"You can teach it to a rock!"
**me struggling with toki pona** T____ T
Ahahah, sorry, I just couldn't resist the bit. If you keep at it, you'll make it! Just be sure to keep practicing!
im a rock @@gregdan3d
Mi suli kiwen. Ken sina kon li mi pan seli?
I feel homed
I need to be more strict later in the community, but im trying
Please make a video where the rock actually speaks Toki Pona
I can't wait to see an update video wiþ þe rock speaking fluent Toki Pona 🧱🗣🗣🔥🔥🔥
mi kin wile la mi lukin kiwen toki e toki pona a!
wɪþ ðə
was was bro pali'ng for 3 months? 😭🙏
Rock
sitelen pi pona suli a!!
lon tenpo 1:36 la tawa ni li wawa li pona tawa lawa mi a a
kiwen suwi ! mi kama pona e toki pona
ni li pona mute a! mi olin e kiwen
sitelen pona
toki pona li pona tawa mi
pona! pini li musi a a a! mi wile e ni: jan ale li kama sona e toki pona. ken la ijo ale li ni 🤔 ni la mi ken toki tawa kiwen...
pona
kiwen li kama ala kama sona toki pona
kama a!!
mun li ken
pana ala e sona
tawa kiwen.
pini la sina alasa pana e sona tawa kiwen 🤣🤣🤣 mi pakala
pali seli
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
sina toki Inli la sina ike. mi wile moli e toki Inli ale 😤😡🤬 (/musi)
mu mu. seme li lon
pop
pona mute! pali wawa a
idk ask a linguist
Je ne connais aucune langue!
@gregdan3d không
“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” -George Bernard Shaw
Are Toki Pona users communicating? Or are they talking past each other, under the illusion that it has taken place? The broad meanings and tiny vocabulary makes me suspect that, without extensive contexts and shared conventions outside _pu_ and _ku,_ Toki Pona cannot be used for any sort of _specific_ communication.
In principle, toki pona isn't *as* good as natural languages for communicating complex or specific things- however, despite not having words for many such things, it is still more than capable of conveying them. I've seen this practice called circumlocution- the ability to talk around a subject without outright naming the subject. Toki Pona is essentially that, all the time- and this is one of the foundational skills of teaching.
Put another way, I'd argue that toki pona *has* to be enabling communication at least as well as a teacher can convey information to a class.
But if you'd prefer more concrete examples of toki pona being spoken:
- I have a video about simulation theory, and a parallel one in a simplified form of English which obeys essentially the same limitations as toki pona
- There is a video by jan Telakoman which teaches non-euclidean geometry
- There are a series of 30 videos by him which convey toki pona via immersion learning, including proof at the end of around a dozen who have successfully learned by that method!
- There are podcasts I've listened to in toki pona (kalama sin) which convey information I've learned only via toki pona, not any other languages
And I could go on like this for a while!
I think you're theorizing instead of practicing. Toki pona isn't much "simpler" grammatically than some natural languages out there, and I have a strong suspicion it was inspired by them. Basically it just has less vocabulary and forces you to make compound words.
Most of these compounds aren't more vague than the ones we're using right now by the way, but they're not "standardized".
It has a problem however, it's not allowed to evolve because it's a prescriptivist model. If it was put into the hands of a monolingual population, beside vocabulary which isn't strictly fixed and would expand easily, the grammar would become more precise. Like creoles, it would become a full fledged language in the next generation and complexify from there.
As it is, it's not only prescriptivist, it doesn't allow prescription of new best constructs people do come up with.
@
- re: theorizing instead of practicing, I've spoken toki pona for over three years. I can't convince you of what I've experienced through that, but I can at least relay those experiences in sincerity, and demonstrate corroborating information about my experiences.
- re: not allowed to evolve because it's a prescriptivist model, eh? You're misdiagnosing where the prescriptivism is coming from. It isn't the community, funny enough. All natural languages developed so long ago that they developed primarily as spoken languages with no formally stated rules. Even when writing systems were invented, most people were not literate, making the study of the language entirely dependent on immersing and hoping for the best. Frankly, toki pona is developing in a wholly new way compared to any natural language, because all of its documentation is on the internet in perpetuity. This, if anything, is where the "prescriptivism" is coming from: the rules of the language don't go through generations of playing telephone. And the result isn't a language that can't evolve- there are tons of innovations that occur within the rules of the language- it's a language which has reasonably static rules, because of the force of simple documentation. That is exactly how toki pona got its start, after all. Like, yeah, if you had a population of people who spoke toki pona and had no documentation of the language and no other forces but to live and be, they'd probably end up making new words- but even so, is this supposed to be a bad thing? Toki Pona is a fully functional language. That's what I set out to demonstrate, and if the existence of complex documents in the language does not do that for you, there's nothing else I can say to convince you.
Sorry!
@@gregdan3d I'm sorry, I was responding to the other person responding to you. I know you have good command of TP and the language is sufficient to convey more than it seems i.e. when you put it into use instead of theorizing like the other guy.
Sorry for the miscommunication there, thanks for your response anyway.
@@gregdan3d if I may, I'll respond to you this time 😛.
I've seen big guns of conlanging (like ŋə himself) kinda deriding TP on the grounds that it's just too poor to discuss serious topics. I don't agree with their criticism, though I think, from experience with some little studied languages that TP could be made explosively more expressive if it allowed for very few additional features. My regret is to see people keep working around shortcomings without a standard solution ever emerging. Natural languages tend to invent shortcuts for frequent nuances of meaning. Verb tenses appear spontaneously and quickly by grammaticalization of some words into particles and verb serialization for example. But I digress.
mi ike toki pona /musi
give me a discord server to learn it
There are a bunch in the description!