FWIW, "powe" has been removed from "official" toki pona. A more standard translation might be "sona ike lili".
The idea of Toki Pona is, to some degree, to force you to avoid using complicated concepts by making doing so unwieldy. But if I’m gonna talk about something anyways, using a slightly more expansive vocabulary to make it more elegant seems within the spirit of things - especially if it’s for a title of something.
Mostly I just like this better, even if it’s nonstandard.
Happy to take suggestions for other articles to translate - though preferably ones which are not particularly long. I’m not prepared to tackle The Simple Truth or anything like that.
It is famous for only having about 120 or so words, and yet still being able to express a wide variety of concepts.
It's a RISC!
Does it operate thru similar principles to Person Do Thing (a game wherein you have to get someone else to guess a randomly selected word by only using the 49 words on an approved list)?
Unlike Person Do Thing, Toki Pona has a nontrivial grammar. (Also, it's not too close to English grammar, or any one natural language grammar afaik. And the words are based on a variety of natural languages rather than just taken from English.)
Otherwise, yes, trying to explain things in the two languages is a similar process.
It feels a lot like "Person Do Thing: the language". In fact, the 49 words are close to a subset of toki pona's. But toki pona is more expressive. Obviously there are a bunch more words, but also every word can be used as every part of speech, and the grammar disambiguates which part of speech it is. That makes it suprisingly usable. Still, toki pona sentences do feel like puzzles to me.
I’m not too familiar with that game, but it sounds like they both revolve around identifying complicated concepts using only a small set of very basic ideas.
I'll repost my comment from Substack, with the better formatting from LessWrong.
Yay, Toki Pona and Rationalist Taboo. Thank you.
I don't know Toki Pona. I'm using Wiktionary and Google to understand the words, and mostly ignoring grammar.I think it would make more sense to Toki Ponise all the proper nouns, and use links or footnotes to clarify the weird ones.
Taboo -> musi Tapu, and Hasbro -> kulupu Asopo?Wiktionary says: "Using pi followed by one word is proscribed."
"ma ale en mun en kili telo li jo e selo sama."
I don't understand this sentence."tenpo suno" feels weird to me, like that should be the word for 'year' rather than 'day'. Google says it's the standard. I think 'period of the large fluctuation in sunlight' would translate very well ('jule' means 'vibrate'). It might not work out for the poles, though. Similar for "tenpo sike" later.
This was a really good choice of essay. Thank you."Awistote"
Not proper, because of the "st". 'Awitote' works. 'Ewitato' sounds like how I've heard it. 'Awitoteli' might be more like how he pronounced it. 'Awitotili' can sound like it has 'totally', which is funny to say."Sokatesi"
This one works, but is also weird. I think 'Sakati' sounds like how I've heard it. 'Sokati' is closer to the Greek."jan Awistote li toke e ni:"
I can't find 'toke'. Did you mean 'toki'?"Alebe"
Not proper, because of the "b". Maybe 'Alapa'?
I'd recommend making up new stock names rather than translating the old ones. Toki Pona's alphabet starts with a, then e. So maybe 'Ana' and 'Esa', from Frozen.
(I think this alphabet should be called 'ane'. 'Alphabet' comes from the first two Greek letters. Esperanto spells vowels with themselves, but 'ae' is illegal, so I add a no.)"kasi kiwen suli"
I think 'palisa' makes more sense here than "kiwen". Just 'kasi suli' would also work well."jan Alebe: 'kasi kiwen suli li kama anpa. ni li pali e kalama. jan Pewi: 'kasi kiwen suli li kama anpa. ni li pali ala e kalama.'"
I don't think this works without context. You forgot to say that the tree is alone."jan Alebe: 'ni li pali e kon tawa.'"
This could describe either interpretation. You could use 'jule' here too."nasin sewi mute li sama lukin"
Why'd you use 'sama'? 'Ante' makes more sense to me.I liked this post. Thank you.
Wow! Toki Pona is very easy to learn. Thank you.
Any feedback or responses for me?
Toki Pona is a language constructed by Sonja Lang, as foretold by linguistic determinism. It is famous for only having about 120 or so words, and yet still being able to express a wide variety of concepts. Today, I am announcing sona ike lili (lit. little bad knowledge), a blog where I will translate famous LessWrong articles into toki pona. Currently, there are two articles: Scope Insensitivity and Taboo Your Words.