5 ms·

I think your assumptions are correct (I haven't learnt it but have read quite a bit about this and other artificial languages). It's very cool! The people who h

by yiyus 7y ago

I think your assumptions are correct (I haven't learnt it but have read quite a bit about this and other artificial languages). It's very cool! The people who have learnt it talk wonders about it. However, I find it too limited to be practical. For example, it does not have words for numbers, or for left and right. Does anyone knows of some kind of slightly extended version of Toki Pona?

tomcooks 7y ago
Chinese. /s
jan_Inkepa 7y ago
>For example, it does not have words for numbers It has two official number systems (described in the official Toki Pona book - https://tokipona.org https://tokipona.org ). They're not practical for big numbers, and they are a bit cumbersome, but they're there. >left and right. I've never had it be necessary to use these words. Often "on my/your side" if I'm walking with someone, or "beside/towards X" if there's a feature there. (it has deficiencies, and can be cumbersome, but these aren't them) >Does anyone knows of some kind of slightly extended version of Toki Pona? certain people add/coin words to do certain things, and some people use obsolete/archaic ones, but nothing's caught on generally. More generally think there's a world of minlangs (minimalistic languages), but I don't know much about it, alas.
- jean- 7y ago
  >> left and right. > I've never had it be necessary to use these words. Often "on my/your side" if I'm walking with someone, or "beside/towards X" if there's a feature there. > (it has deficiencies, and can be cumbersome, but these aren't them) Surely the lack of words for left/right would make it pretty cumbersome to describe, say, the vehicle code, or to give driving directions, no?
  - jan_Inkepa 7y ago
    Yeah. Vehicle code is a good example. Having a limited vocabulary hits you hard when it comes to technical/legal texts, and when you don't have context to refer to (The text on the page linked to doesn't make sense when you can't see the pictures). If a very specific word isn't in the language, and can't be easily described using other words, it just gets very messy/unpleasant (even if you can technically do it, nobody's going to want to read it). You can often give directions in english pretty well in many places using landmarks "go to the crossing, you'll see a church - go there, then...etc." . But yes, not having left/right is a bit cumbersome for this application. If I was giving directions in Toki Pona to someone, I'd probably just draw a map if it was in any way complicated ... . On the other had, as you can see by the translation someone made in the comments here of my page, you can talk about some technical things just fine, like building a computer! (if you have enough photos to refer to). Edit: Oh, here's what the creator of the language had to say about it: "Toki Pona has a rather narrow range of functions. Although it is very easy to meditate and communicate honest thoughts and everyday activities in Toki Pona, it is impossible to translate a chemical textbook or legal document in the language without significant losses. Such texts are products of the complex, modern civilization we live in and are not suited for a cute, little language like Toki Pona. As an artistic language with limited means of expression, Toki Pona does not strive to convey every single facet and nuance of human communication. Nevertheless, the results we can achieve with so few elements prove to be very interesting, if not spiritually insightful."
    - sdenton4 7y ago
      It might be interesting to explore what a minimalistic language explicitly for technical concepts might look like. It's easy to imagine falling into 'import blocks' declaring what particular variable jargon placeholders will refer to... But probably there's a more elegant way to deal with the problem of an explosion of concepts as you get into the weeds of a technical area. Or to go full Sapir-Whorf, one could ask what it would look like to design a language where (say) linear algebra is intrinsic, and thus intuitive.
      - yiyus 7y ago
        This is something I would be very interested in. I think that the combination of an array language (like APL or J, but smaller like K) which intrinsically incorporated geometric algebra so that concepts like complex and imaginary numbers or trigonometry are not essential, and a minimalist artificial language like Toki Pona, would make an excellent tool for communication of technical concepts.
  - Doxin 7y ago
    I'm sure you could go for something like "drivers side" and "the side the driver is not on". From a quick look at the toki pona dictionary that'd be something like "tawa ilo lawa" for drivers side and "ala tawa ilo lawa" for the not drivers side. It's not terribly compact but it works.
- yiyus 7y ago
  > not practical for big numbers Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I remember "big" was something like 20 or 30. So it's not possible to tell ages (at least not mine!), prices, or even the current year. That's fine, but I consider it a very serious deficiency for a language. I would find very useful to have some minimalistic international language, but if I cannot use it to buy something, ask for directions, or say the date, it's just a toy. Maybe a very nice one, I find fascinating how people can communicate with so few, but i don't feel compelled to learning it.
  - jan_Inkepa 7y ago
    toki pona has two number systems. One is "zero, one, two, many", the other lets you specify exact whole numbers by combining together words for 1,2,5,20,100 additively. (so 63 is 20,20,20,2,1). It's yeah a bit cumbersome, but works mostly tolerably for numbers up to, I don't know, 500. So your age can definitely be specified :) (OTOH, part of the philosophy is to keep things simple - it doesn't want to assist in representing big/complicated numbers). As the numbers get big though it gets increasingly cumbersome. I once tried to generate a text represntation of an isbn number in toki pona and ran out of disk space after many GBs.... Dates are tricky though. Buying groceries is ok, buying a house probably not. As for directions, it depends on how featurefull where you live is.
    - chongli 7y ago
      If you have the numbers zero, one, two, couldn’t you write ternary numbers? That would be a lot less cumbersome than an additive system. Plus it would still be fun!
      - jan_Inkepa 7y ago
        You'd still have to specify the system before you could use it, and that would probably require new syntax/grammar to be added to the language. ( Silly analogy: "C has latin character support; why can't it support Roman numerals?" )
        7y ago
schoen 7y ago
> does not have words for numbers, or for left and right Some people use "luka wawa" 'strong hand' for 'right', though as a left-hander I'm not totally thrilled about this.
- sergeykish 7y ago
  "right" has some connotation too
  - schoen 7y ago
    Yeah. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/laevus https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/laevus https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sinister#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sinister#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/scaevus#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/scaevus#Latin and so on in numerous languages.
b0rsuk 7y ago
I think people talking about extending Toki Pona may be missing the point. This is the Brainfuck of human languages. It's almost the simplest language imaginable. It's an experiment to see how simple a language can be and how many words do you really need for day to day activities. The area is poorly understood, but language has impact on how we think. The supposed advantages of Toki Pona - happiness through simplicity - may be a bit overstated, but it's interesting and probably harmless. Like PyPy, it may might* not have value on its own, but it gives food for thought and produces insight. * weasel words
- yiyus 7y ago
  I think Toki Pona is great, don't get me wrong. It's good to explore how small a language can get, and it looks to me like TP did a good work in that regard. The comparison with programming languages is interesting. I see Toki Pona as lambda calculus: pure, fundamental, very cool, and worth learning. I want something like Lisp: more practical to write programs, but still much simpler than for example Haskell (Esperanto).

by yiyus 7y ago

tomcooks 7y ago

Chinese. /s

jan_Inkepa 7y ago

>For example, it does not have words for numbers It has two official number systems (described in the official Toki Pona book - https://tokipona.org https://tokipona.org ). They're not practical for big numbers, and they are a bit cumbersome, but they're there. >left and right. I've never had it be necessary to use these words. Often "on my/your side" if I'm walking with someone, or "beside/towards X" if there's a feature there. (it has deficiencies, and can be cumbersome, but these aren't them) >Does anyone knows of some kind of slightly extended version of Toki Pona? certain people add/coin words to do certain things, and some people use obsolete/archaic ones, but nothing's caught on generally. More generally think there's a world of minlangs (minimalistic languages), but I don't know much about it, alas.

jean- 7y ago
>> left and right. > I've never had it be necessary to use these words. Often "on my/your side" if I'm walking with someone, or "beside/towards X" if there's a feature there. > (it has deficiencies, and can be cumbersome, but these aren't them) Surely the lack of words for left/right would make it pretty cumbersome to describe, say, the vehicle code, or to give driving directions, no?
- jan_Inkepa 7y ago
  Yeah. Vehicle code is a good example. Having a limited vocabulary hits you hard when it comes to technical/legal texts, and when you don't have context to refer to (The text on the page linked to doesn't make sense when you can't see the pictures). If a very specific word isn't in the language, and can't be easily described using other words, it just gets very messy/unpleasant (even if you can technically do it, nobody's going to want to read it). You can often give directions in english pretty well in many places using landmarks "go to the crossing, you'll see a church - go there, then...etc." . But yes, not having left/right is a bit cumbersome for this application. If I was giving directions in Toki Pona to someone, I'd probably just draw a map if it was in any way complicated ... . On the other had, as you can see by the translation someone made in the comments here of my page, you can talk about some technical things just fine, like building a computer! (if you have enough photos to refer to). Edit: Oh, here's what the creator of the language had to say about it: "Toki Pona has a rather narrow range of functions. Although it is very easy to meditate and communicate honest thoughts and everyday activities in Toki Pona, it is impossible to translate a chemical textbook or legal document in the language without significant losses. Such texts are products of the complex, modern civilization we live in and are not suited for a cute, little language like Toki Pona. As an artistic language with limited means of expression, Toki Pona does not strive to convey every single facet and nuance of human communication. Nevertheless, the results we can achieve with so few elements prove to be very interesting, if not spiritually insightful."
  - sdenton4 7y ago
    It might be interesting to explore what a minimalistic language explicitly for technical concepts might look like. It's easy to imagine falling into 'import blocks' declaring what particular variable jargon placeholders will refer to... But probably there's a more elegant way to deal with the problem of an explosion of concepts as you get into the weeds of a technical area. Or to go full Sapir-Whorf, one could ask what it would look like to design a language where (say) linear algebra is intrinsic, and thus intuitive.
    - yiyus 7y ago
      This is something I would be very interested in. I think that the combination of an array language (like APL or J, but smaller like K) which intrinsically incorporated geometric algebra so that concepts like complex and imaginary numbers or trigonometry are not essential, and a minimalist artificial language like Toki Pona, would make an excellent tool for communication of technical concepts.
- Doxin 7y ago
  I'm sure you could go for something like "drivers side" and "the side the driver is not on". From a quick look at the toki pona dictionary that'd be something like "tawa ilo lawa" for drivers side and "ala tawa ilo lawa" for the not drivers side. It's not terribly compact but it works.
yiyus 7y ago
> not practical for big numbers Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I remember "big" was something like 20 or 30. So it's not possible to tell ages (at least not mine!), prices, or even the current year. That's fine, but I consider it a very serious deficiency for a language. I would find very useful to have some minimalistic international language, but if I cannot use it to buy something, ask for directions, or say the date, it's just a toy. Maybe a very nice one, I find fascinating how people can communicate with so few, but i don't feel compelled to learning it.
- jan_Inkepa 7y ago
  toki pona has two number systems. One is "zero, one, two, many", the other lets you specify exact whole numbers by combining together words for 1,2,5,20,100 additively. (so 63 is 20,20,20,2,1). It's yeah a bit cumbersome, but works mostly tolerably for numbers up to, I don't know, 500. So your age can definitely be specified :) (OTOH, part of the philosophy is to keep things simple - it doesn't want to assist in representing big/complicated numbers). As the numbers get big though it gets increasingly cumbersome. I once tried to generate a text represntation of an isbn number in toki pona and ran out of disk space after many GBs.... Dates are tricky though. Buying groceries is ok, buying a house probably not. As for directions, it depends on how featurefull where you live is.
  - chongli 7y ago
    If you have the numbers zero, one, two, couldn’t you write ternary numbers? That would be a lot less cumbersome than an additive system. Plus it would still be fun!
    - jan_Inkepa 7y ago
      You'd still have to specify the system before you could use it, and that would probably require new syntax/grammar to be added to the language. ( Silly analogy: "C has latin character support; why can't it support Roman numerals?" )
      - 7y ago

schoen 7y ago

> does not have words for numbers, or for left and right Some people use "luka wawa" 'strong hand' for 'right', though as a left-hander I'm not totally thrilled about this.

sergeykish 7y ago
"right" has some connotation too
- schoen 7y ago
  Yeah. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/laevus https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/laevus https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sinister#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sinister#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/scaevus#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/scaevus#Latin and so on in numerous languages.

b0rsuk 7y ago

I think people talking about extending Toki Pona may be missing the point. This is the Brainfuck of human languages. It's almost the simplest language imaginable. It's an experiment to see how simple a language can be and how many words do you really need for day to day activities. The area is poorly understood, but language has impact on how we think. The supposed advantages of Toki Pona - happiness through simplicity - may be a bit overstated, but it's interesting and probably harmless. Like PyPy, it may might* not have value on its own, but it gives food for thought and produces insight. * weasel words

yiyus 7y ago
I think Toki Pona is great, don't get me wrong. It's good to explore how small a language can get, and it looks to me like TP did a good work in that regard. The comparison with programming languages is interesting. I see Toki Pona as lambda calculus: pure, fundamental, very cool, and worth learning. I want something like Lisp: more practical to write programs, but still much simpler than for example Haskell (Esperanto).