Відео

Definitely! An interesting example lipamanka has said in the past: you're cooking, and a friend asks you "moku ni li tawa soweli anu seme?" - "this food is for an animal or what?"

mi kute e sina la, mi o moku ala e telo nasa tan ni: lawa mi li kama tawa sike tan toki sona

The meaning changes when you add "e"! The word after a pre-verb has two important properties that distinguish it from if "e" were used -- it acts as a syntactic verb rather than a noun, and it can take an object of its own. In "mi wile moku", "moku" is specifically a verb: "I want to eat". in "mi wile e moku", "moku" is in the position of the direct object, and it's syntactically a noun: "I want food". This matters if you want to add an object to the verb "moku"! "mi moku e telo" means "i drink water", so then "mi wile moku e telo" means "i want to drink water". Both "wile" and "moku" are verbs. "wile" is the pre-verb to the verb "moku", and the object of the verb "moku" is "telo". If you don't interpret "wile" as a pre-verb in that sentence, the statement means something like "I want water in a way related to food/eating". This still *could* mean the same thing, but it's a lot less specific and has many other interpretations. The meanings of most of the pre-predicate words also differ from their meanings as normal verbs. When you use "kama" with "e", as in "sina kama e pona", it means "you come-ify goodness", something like "you summon goodness" and "you make goodness arrive". You're applying the idea of "kama" to "pona". "sona" as a pre-predicate specifically means "to know *how to*". With "sona" as a pre-predicate, "mi sona toki" specifically means "I know how to speak". You can add an object to "toki" -- "mi sona toki e waso" means "I know how to talk about birds". On the other hand, "mi sona e toki" is more general, with "toki" as a syntactic noun: “I understand communication”

But instead we have wan, tu, and luka officially

"kulupu" descends from English "group", from the Tok Pisin word "gurupu"! I find that knowing more about a word helps me remember it better.

i am very fluent (mi sona toki pona mute)

@@Fensmiler i misread this as english "mute" and thought you meant you couldn't speak toki pona, lol

I know pi means of

taso... toki pona.. li *pona*... o kama sona e ona... :'(

great question! i’d say that both of your question constructions work- it’s like the difference between “can i eat sugar?” and “i cant eat sugar, right?” in english. as for using “sina,” you’re right in the observation that it’s not really used to refer to a hypothetical person rather than the audience. i might replace it with “jan li ken ala ken moku e ko suwi” or “mi ken ala ken moku e ko suwi” depending on the situation

@@iloTani Oh, thank you for clearing up the impersonal you bit! I had been wondering about that for quite awhile!

li is only omitted when the subject is *exactly* mi or sina and there's nothing else going on in this sentence, the subject is "nimi sina" - sina is a modifier for the word nimi and not the entire subject the same thing happens if you modify mi, as in "mi mute li pali" - we (many) are working and if you use 'en' to join multiple subjects, as in "mi en sina li pali" - you and i are working

"wouldn't it be more comfortable to speak the language i already know instead of learning a new one" not trying to strawman or anything. i see your point, but you're looking at a very specific case. in fact, i have found that toki pona often uses less characters than english.

by the way: yes, I AM criticizing this video the method that he uses to teach is proven to not work

i absolutely agree- i’d say even a mild level of conversational proficiency can only come after a month of learning and practice, and i never intended or believed that my video would bring someone to that level the reason i made this video is (1) to provide a reference for people to review or get an alternative perspective on the grammar, (2) provide an accurate cursory overview of all of the grammar in a video format, (3) to help introduce people to the language, and (4) because i thought it’d be fun to create

James, while John had had "had had", had had "had"; "had had" had had a better effect on the teacher.

@@salvit6024 I absolutely hate this. Why is English like this? 😭

"tomo mi" does mean "my house," but be careful! Although "pi" can often be translated as "of", all it does is regroup words. In "tomo telo nasa," both "telo" and "nasa" are specifically modifying "tomo", and in "tomo pi telo nasa," "nasa" first modifies "telo," and the whole phrase "telo nasa" modifies "tomo." This is similar in structure to what "of" does in English, so it's easy to translate as "building of unusual liquid," rather than "unusual-liquid building," but all "pi" is doing here is changing how the words are modified, not introducing "of." That means that "tomo pi mi" is ungrammatical since "pi" isn't regrouping anything. If you want to specify specifically that you built a house, a simple method is to introduce an explanatory sentence before or afterwards. To say, "Look at this house I built," you might say "o lukin e tomo ni! mi pali e ona." "Look at this house! I built it." If context was already established, a phrase like "tomo pi pali mi" might also work to refer to the house, meaning something like "house associated with my work."

@@iloTani mi sona e toki sina. pona a! (I hope I said that right, I'm learning while practising)