5 ms·

> The point is simplicity. And in Toki Pona, simple is literally good. Both concepts are combined in a single word: pona. That's how you end up with words like

by yongjik 11y ago

> The point is simplicity. And in Toki Pona, simple is literally good. Both concepts are combined in a single word: pona. That's how you end up with words like English "cool", which means low(-ish) temperature, except when it's about people, or "blue", a particular color, except when it's about feelings. It's anything but simple, and honestly it doesn't sound good to me, either.

rosser 11y ago
What about the word "mai" in Thai? Depending on tone, it has at least five different meanings. "/Mai \mai ^mai vmai mai" (tone marks added) is literally a meaningful sentence in Thai — and not one that's obviously constructed for lulz like "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo".
- maaku 11y ago
  Words differing in tone are only the same from a linguistically chauvinistic perspective.
  - rosser 11y ago
    You don't think there are differences in tone between many homonyms in English? No, it's not a "tonal" language, but that absolutely doesn't mean they don't exist, or aren't widely used. Or is your assertion that "Buffalo buffalo..." is pronounced by repeating the exact same pattern of sound eight times?
    - peteretep 11y ago
      You're confusing stresses and tones. I think if you say the phrase "to buffalo" and "a buffalo", you'll pronounce those words in the same way. It's only when putting a sentence together that you'll stress them differently to indicate their usage in that sentence. In tonal languages, you always say the word with the given tone, regardless of context.
    - kybernetikos 11y ago
      People can often tell the difference between "vial" and "vile", even though I feel like I'm pronouncing them the exact same way.
      - marvy 11y ago
        I suddenly want to try this experiment
        oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
        Simply ask someone else, out loud to spell the word [...] and pick one or the other. Would be interesting if you get > 50% hit rate.
        pbhjpbhj 11y ago
        Vile is a more common word. Some adults probably don't know the word vial at all.
        kybernetikos 11y ago
        Yes, because of this, I always say them both and ask them which I said first.
      - rwj 11y ago
        Except that vial has 2 syllables, and vile has only 1 syllable.
        taejo 11y ago
        In your accent (and lots of other people's too, but not in mine, and apparently not in that of the person you're responding to). The sequence /aɪl/ never appears in my English dialect: there's always a schwa-ish sound before the /l/
        Houshalter 11y ago
        In what accent? They sound the same to me. "Vy-uhl". How do you pronounce them?
    - mrob 11y ago
      British English (and American English?) sometimes uses stress to distinguish between nouns and verbs written the same way, eg. "record a record", "permit a permit", "present a present". It's possible that "buffalo a buffalo" should ideally have this difference, but buffalo is so rare as a verb that the difference has been lost.
    - duaneb 11y ago
      > Or is your assertion that "Buffalo buffalo..." is pronounced by repeating the exact same pattern of sound eight times? English doesn't require semantic tone, its use just makes conversing easier.
- lgessler 11y ago
  To a Thai speaker, "/Mai" and "\Mai" sound as different as English "sit" and "seat", although much of the world would insist that the two in English sound nearly the same, just as English speakers insist that "/Mai" and "\Mai" sound nearly the same.
canjobear 11y ago
How often does that really lead to confusion though? I can't think of a time someone said "blue" meaning sad and I thought they meant "blue" the color. Humans are great at disambiguating things.
- mchaver 11y ago
  If context is missing (paper is torn, parts of conversation are missed) then "overloaded words" can easily be misinterpreted. People have various techniques for correcting these communication errors: make an assumption based on one's own knowledge of speaker, make an assumption based on one's own knowledge of the topic or beliefs or reconfirm the meaning with the speaker. I am sure there are a lot more. For non-native speakers overloaded words can be challenging to deal with. Overloaded words and close sounding words are also a common source of language games and art. All human languages have ambiguity at some level.
- yongjik 11y ago
  If you are a native speaker, rarely. Otherwise, all the freaking times (for the first ten years or so). E.g., consider the difference between a "cool guy" and a "cool attitude". If you think about it, they describe almost totally opposite situations. Or consider "No, it's cool." After all, "it's hot" means the temperature is high.
  - true_religion 11y ago
    > consider the difference between a "cool guy" and a "cool attitude" I always thought the ideas were conflated. That to be 'cool' originally meant to be unflappable in the face of adversity which was akin to having a cool attitude.
  - duaneb 11y ago
    > "cool attitude" Do you actually use this much, though? I had to double take because I'm not familiar with the phrase and I'm a native speaker. Typically you might use cool to in this way to describer an action or gerund, or with a prepositional phrase, or as an adverb. Heck, if anything, I'd say a "cool attitude" is a calm attitude—as in, the person played it cool.
kaoD 11y ago
The language is simple (a few words, even fewer grammar rules) but obviously communicating with it is _very_ complex. The problem with Toki Pona is it doesn't serve a purpose and journalists often can't convey exactly what it is because... it's nothing. If you try to explain Toki Pona in the context of natural languages, which are meant to communicate somewhat-precisely, of course it seems complex (because concepts are complex, no matter how much you try to simplify the language). I try to explain it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11157977 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11157977
VLM 11y ago
I have read the toki pona book. Its interesting but cheaty. You can't get rid of complexity by squeezing a balloon and pretending the enormous bulging out shared dictionary of nouns is "not really words". English only has 26 letters, its really simple to learn English! Well, sure, sometimes you have to string together quite a few of those 26 letters in the correct order to get the point across, but its not really hard to learn English. Likewise toki pona is an exercise in what amounts to stringing together long winded syllables. It was disappointing, I was interested in the language with the idea of fooling around with natural language processing, which is complex, so a simpler language should allow easier to write simple toys. Perhaps I've found a silver bullet? Yet its actually a very complicated language because of the balloon analogy, you can't squeeze the complexity somewhere else and declare victory. It requires all kinds of memorization and life experience and humor and creativity and judgment calls about stringing together it's sylableWords into what in English would mostly be one word. Even if its not a silver bullet, its still kind of cool. I ended up having more fun, while continuing to accomplish nothing, with a pidgin englishs. I ended up with a reasonable parser for butler english. I thought it would be funny to write a parser that turned butler english into coq and then replied back to me with what coq thought of my statements. Then I realized I was bored and moved on to something else. For at least awhile recreational natural language processing can be a lot of fun and is a wide open area where whatever you do, its probably a newly trodden path, at least if its weird enough. Here's a strange idea if I get back into the hobby. Can I make a butler english to toki pona automated translator? Hmm.
- sago 11y ago
  It's interesting that you're not the only person here who's approached toki pona from a NLP perspective. toki pona is about the worst case for an NLP language, I would think. It puts all the communication burden on the semantics and pragmatics of the language. It doesn't make human expression, feelings, interests, creativity or community simpler, just the language. There are other conlangs designed to be unambiguous. toki pona was designed to be the opposite: maximally general. On the specific point of having to learn a compound lexicon - that is true a little, but not as much as you'd think. Sure there are conventional compounds for saying certain things, but you are very welcome (and aesthetically encouraged) to find other ways of expressing the same thing. You might find 'ilo nanpa' defined as a computer in a compound lexicon, and I use that sometimes, but my 'ilo nanpa' is also my 'ilo musi' and my 'ilo pali' (and sometimes my 'ilo pakala'). The key insight is that the language doesn't have to describe what a thing is, but what it means to you. That changes, it cannot be properly documented, and is almost impossible to parse. I take that as a feature, not a bug. Part of the pleasure of toki pona is the endless poetry of it: the joy of finding curious and evocative ways of expressing yourself.

by yongjik 11y ago

rosser 11y ago

What about the word "mai" in Thai? Depending on tone, it has at least five different meanings. "/Mai \mai ^mai vmai mai" (tone marks added) is literally a meaningful sentence in Thai — and not one that's obviously constructed for lulz like "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo".

maaku 11y ago
Words differing in tone are only the same from a linguistically chauvinistic perspective.
- rosser 11y ago
  You don't think there are differences in tone between many homonyms in English? No, it's not a "tonal" language, but that absolutely doesn't mean they don't exist, or aren't widely used. Or is your assertion that "Buffalo buffalo..." is pronounced by repeating the exact same pattern of sound eight times?
  - peteretep 11y ago
    You're confusing stresses and tones. I think if you say the phrase "to buffalo" and "a buffalo", you'll pronounce those words in the same way. It's only when putting a sentence together that you'll stress them differently to indicate their usage in that sentence. In tonal languages, you always say the word with the given tone, regardless of context.
  - kybernetikos 11y ago
    People can often tell the difference between "vial" and "vile", even though I feel like I'm pronouncing them the exact same way.
    - marvy 11y ago
      I suddenly want to try this experiment
      - oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
        Simply ask someone else, out loud to spell the word [...] and pick one or the other. Would be interesting if you get > 50% hit rate.
        pbhjpbhj 11y ago
        Vile is a more common word. Some adults probably don't know the word vial at all.
        kybernetikos 11y ago
        Yes, because of this, I always say them both and ask them which I said first.
    - rwj 11y ago
      Except that vial has 2 syllables, and vile has only 1 syllable.
      - taejo 11y ago
        In your accent (and lots of other people's too, but not in mine, and apparently not in that of the person you're responding to). The sequence /aɪl/ never appears in my English dialect: there's always a schwa-ish sound before the /l/
      - Houshalter 11y ago
        In what accent? They sound the same to me. "Vy-uhl". How do you pronounce them?
  - mrob 11y ago
    British English (and American English?) sometimes uses stress to distinguish between nouns and verbs written the same way, eg. "record a record", "permit a permit", "present a present". It's possible that "buffalo a buffalo" should ideally have this difference, but buffalo is so rare as a verb that the difference has been lost.
  - duaneb 11y ago
    > Or is your assertion that "Buffalo buffalo..." is pronounced by repeating the exact same pattern of sound eight times? English doesn't require semantic tone, its use just makes conversing easier.
lgessler 11y ago
To a Thai speaker, "/Mai" and "\Mai" sound as different as English "sit" and "seat", although much of the world would insist that the two in English sound nearly the same, just as English speakers insist that "/Mai" and "\Mai" sound nearly the same.

canjobear 11y ago

How often does that really lead to confusion though? I can't think of a time someone said "blue" meaning sad and I thought they meant "blue" the color. Humans are great at disambiguating things.

mchaver 11y ago
If context is missing (paper is torn, parts of conversation are missed) then "overloaded words" can easily be misinterpreted. People have various techniques for correcting these communication errors: make an assumption based on one's own knowledge of speaker, make an assumption based on one's own knowledge of the topic or beliefs or reconfirm the meaning with the speaker. I am sure there are a lot more. For non-native speakers overloaded words can be challenging to deal with. Overloaded words and close sounding words are also a common source of language games and art. All human languages have ambiguity at some level.
yongjik 11y ago
If you are a native speaker, rarely. Otherwise, all the freaking times (for the first ten years or so). E.g., consider the difference between a "cool guy" and a "cool attitude". If you think about it, they describe almost totally opposite situations. Or consider "No, it's cool." After all, "it's hot" means the temperature is high.
- true_religion 11y ago
  > consider the difference between a "cool guy" and a "cool attitude" I always thought the ideas were conflated. That to be 'cool' originally meant to be unflappable in the face of adversity which was akin to having a cool attitude.
- duaneb 11y ago
  > "cool attitude" Do you actually use this much, though? I had to double take because I'm not familiar with the phrase and I'm a native speaker. Typically you might use cool to in this way to describer an action or gerund, or with a prepositional phrase, or as an adverb. Heck, if anything, I'd say a "cool attitude" is a calm attitude—as in, the person played it cool.

kaoD 11y ago

The language is simple (a few words, even fewer grammar rules) but obviously communicating with it is _very_ complex. The problem with Toki Pona is it doesn't serve a purpose and journalists often can't convey exactly what it is because... it's nothing. If you try to explain Toki Pona in the context of natural languages, which are meant to communicate somewhat-precisely, of course it seems complex (because concepts are complex, no matter how much you try to simplify the language). I try to explain it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11157977 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11157977

VLM 11y ago

I have read the toki pona book. Its interesting but cheaty. You can't get rid of complexity by squeezing a balloon and pretending the enormous bulging out shared dictionary of nouns is "not really words". English only has 26 letters, its really simple to learn English! Well, sure, sometimes you have to string together quite a few of those 26 letters in the correct order to get the point across, but its not really hard to learn English. Likewise toki pona is an exercise in what amounts to stringing together long winded syllables. It was disappointing, I was interested in the language with the idea of fooling around with natural language processing, which is complex, so a simpler language should allow easier to write simple toys. Perhaps I've found a silver bullet? Yet its actually a very complicated language because of the balloon analogy, you can't squeeze the complexity somewhere else and declare victory. It requires all kinds of memorization and life experience and humor and creativity and judgment calls about stringing together it's sylableWords into what in English would mostly be one word. Even if its not a silver bullet, its still kind of cool. I ended up having more fun, while continuing to accomplish nothing, with a pidgin englishs. I ended up with a reasonable parser for butler english. I thought it would be funny to write a parser that turned butler english into coq and then replied back to me with what coq thought of my statements. Then I realized I was bored and moved on to something else. For at least awhile recreational natural language processing can be a lot of fun and is a wide open area where whatever you do, its probably a newly trodden path, at least if its weird enough. Here's a strange idea if I get back into the hobby. Can I make a butler english to toki pona automated translator? Hmm.

sago 11y ago
It's interesting that you're not the only person here who's approached toki pona from a NLP perspective. toki pona is about the worst case for an NLP language, I would think. It puts all the communication burden on the semantics and pragmatics of the language. It doesn't make human expression, feelings, interests, creativity or community simpler, just the language. There are other conlangs designed to be unambiguous. toki pona was designed to be the opposite: maximally general. On the specific point of having to learn a compound lexicon - that is true a little, but not as much as you'd think. Sure there are conventional compounds for saying certain things, but you are very welcome (and aesthetically encouraged) to find other ways of expressing the same thing. You might find 'ilo nanpa' defined as a computer in a compound lexicon, and I use that sometimes, but my 'ilo nanpa' is also my 'ilo musi' and my 'ilo pali' (and sometimes my 'ilo pakala'). The key insight is that the language doesn't have to describe what a thing is, but what it means to you. That changes, it cannot be properly documented, and is almost impossible to parse. I take that as a feature, not a bug. Part of the pleasure of toki pona is the endless poetry of it: the joy of finding curious and evocative ways of expressing yourself.