> The way it forms questions is not like Enlgish (I don't know of any language that it's similar to). The "x ala x" pattern is directly modeled on the Chinese

> The way it forms questions is not like Enlgish (I don't know of any language that it's similar to). The "x ala x" pattern is directly modeled on the Chinese "x不x" (and "有没有") pattern, including the answer ("x" / "x ala" in toki pona, "x" / "不x" in Chinese). I think Sonja has mentioned this explicitly somewhere. For example, in Chinese I think you can ask "你可不可" 'you can not can?' with the possible answers "可" 'can' and "不可" 'cannot'. This corresponds directly to toki pona's "sina ken ala ken?" 'you can not can?' with the answers "ken" 'can' and "ken ala" 'cannot'. There's also the "anu seme?" pattern which is similar to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_question https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_question phenomenon in a number of languages; the one that I find it most similar to is German, with the "oder?" tags. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/oder#Particle https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/oder#Particle I understand the "oder?" to have a connotation of 'or what?' (like "are you coming or what?"), in which case "kommst du, oder?" should correspond literally to toki pona's "sina kama anu seme?" 'you come or what?'.