"In fact, there are fewer words in toki pona's core vocabulary than there are first generation Pokémon. This restrictive vocabulary means that" and then despite the fact that I know toki pona, I was prepared for this sentence to end with "you can use the first generation Pokémon as a logographic script."
@@JakeMiller2020 the easy canonical solution would be to alphabetize all of the core words, and then assign them pokemon in pokedex order. you could also pick a mnemonic assignment but that would probably only fit well for a very small number so the arbitrary ordering might be better
to those of you who are looking through comments for more perspective, here's a fun one: "jan pona" doesn't mean friend. it just means "any jan who is pona." in toki pona, instead of describing cultural concepts like friendship, we describe simple concepts, like behavior. There's no way to say friend in toki pona because if you think about it, a friend is a label that describes a complex relationship. toki pona teaches us to notice behavior and remove the biases of labels that are present in natlangs, so we have no commitment to people who no longer treat us well. the concept of a "bad friend" can't exist in toki pona because the concept of a "friend" can't either.
This sort of simplification kinda reminds me of Newspeak, a fictional language in 1984 (the book.) One example is the changing of the meaning of the word "free," you can talk about free food or free drinks, as in not having a price, but the semantic meaning of "free" as in without control or free from slavery was gone, you couldn't talk about political freedom, free speech, etc.
@@MrNerdHair Yes, though bad friend would be “jan pona ike” - unfortunately, that would have to be parsed as “bad ‘good person’ “ -> “bad friend” as opposed to “person that is good and bad” or “person that acts in a way that perverts good acts” or “person who is bad at being good”.
@@iantaakalla8180 not quite. I explained that a bad friend as a concept doesn't exist in toki pona. ALSO "jan pona ike" could be parsed as "person who is good and bad" or "good person who is bad," but either way it's hard to parse anyway. It's meaningless. If I wanted to describe (using toki pona) someone who I consider a bad friend (in english), I would just describe them as "jan ike." If they're not being pona then it doesn't make sense to describe them as such.
that isn't particularly odd! in most languages, "food" and "to eat" share root. moreover, in some languages like spanish and japanese, the word for "food" is usually a deformation, inflection or joint word meaning "thing that is eaten" (comer -> comida, taberu -> tabemono)
Mogla bi takođe raditi riječ «lupa» od uopšteslovenskoga «ljubov», tada bi rusi (kim sam i ja, zato mogu biti pomilki) tu riječ čitali kao «zalupa» (glava kuraca; neznam kako to južni sloveni zovu) 🙃
Very good that you're remaking this. I can see that you are very thoughtful about it as you tend to be. Good that you tackle the "What's THE noun phrase for this" misconception immediately for example. And going out of your way to really correct the ways the particles can be misunderstood. sina pali pona.
Did you translate this comment from Toki Pona? I'm not super familiar with it (hence watching this series) but the way you constructed the sentences reminds me of toki pona, was that on purpose?
@@nw2kr8bc3t I think their mind was just primed from thinking about speaking in toki pona, and it altered their word flow. I have had the same thing happen, including with French.
to be honest the last section felt so much like Blue's Clues because you were always like "hey you did it!" even when i did nothing, but it still felt so nice thank you for the free dopamine, sona jan misali :)
Actually kind of felt awful for me. Couldn't remember any of the words, and it just felt like they were mocking me when they said "Good job!" even though I was completely wrong. When they said "Look how much you learned!" even though I got almost all of it wrong, I cried. Good that you like it, though, must feel really good for those who actually have a good short term memory unlike my *ike* brain.
(Also, I totally beefed it on "I am your friend" - got mixed up trying to remember what you said about the meaning of pona in the translation of 'friend' and I think I ended up with "sina pona" as my guess.) (...granted, we would say that to pretty much all of our friends, but we would also say something similar of a number of people we don't know, so.)
Me too. Ambiguity: Uncertainty of mutually exclusive possibilities. Vagueness: Uncertainty of related possibilities. That's at least how I understood it.
@@rasmusn.e.m1064 So, this is something I've been mulling on and off for a long time, but deliberate vagueness can be very useful? A good example of this is baker's percentage: my bread recipe does not much care how much flour I use, but it cares quite a lot about the ratio between flour and water. I can make a 67% hydration dough with 300 g flour and 200 g water or with 450 g flour and 300 g water, and the biggest difference between the loaves will be how big they are. And everything I've heard about toki pona makes me feel like a perfect toki pona bread recipe would be deliberately vague in the way baker's percentages are vague. It specifies what needs to be known and leaves unstated what is unessential.
@@Packbat Yes, exactly. What I mean by 'related' is that the potential for all the possible outcomes is contained within the same known unresolved state, so like two future daughter languages of German. Whereas the idea with ambiguity is that there is an unknown resolved state with several possibilities that only overlap arbitrarily, so like something in a desert that is either a pool of water or a Fata Morgana/mirage. So yeah, it makes sense that vagueness is more constructive. It's inherent to the definition of ambiguity that the margin for error is absolute.
This remake is much better, I literally couldn't finish the original because the music started getting super loud and distracting. I couldn't concentrate on what he was saying because of my sensory issues. Plus there is more visual information and more elaboration, which also makes it easier for me to follow along.
Wow, this looks amazing! I love the fact that you casually drop new words in the middle of your explanation, instead of just listing them off. It’s such a small detail that makes learning monumentally easier!
0:00 intro 0:29 amount of words 0:47 meaning of toki pona 2:28 ike (evil) 2:47 consonants 3:01 jan (someone) 3:10 vowels 3:36 capitalization 3:55 li (verbifier) 4:31 ambiguity 5:13 lack of to be 5:58 simplification of li 6:02 moku (eat) 6:14 lape (rest) 6:18 olin (love) 6:27 ona (pronouns) 6:56 mi (me, us) (1st person) 7:06 sina (you) (2nd person) 7:39 practice 9:01 outro
I also am a bit excited. I think it's important to note that, while being very much not taken seriously and, at times, almost a joke, the old series is still an unironically good tutorial on toki pona. I have high hopes for this new series simply because it's the same, but crafted with much more care. mi olin e ni!
ooooh, this must be where the "jan" in "jan Misali" comes from. I always thought jan was your name, lol looking forward to learning this! I'm bilingual working on a third, but picking up something like this would be very cool as well
This reminded me of studying kanji where sometimes just the radicals but more often combinations of full kanji also kinda work like the general ideas behind their meaning to creat new words. 電 - electricity 車 - vehicle 電車 - train
The pronunciation only changes because kanji is a foreign import from China to Japan. In Chinese, there is no pronunciation change: 電 is diàn, 車 is chē, and 電車 is diànchē. (Though it actually means tram/trolley/streetcar in Chinese. Train is 火車, “fire vehicle”, which I always found kind of awesome.)
@@gabrielbn I guess the Chinese coined the term when trains still ran on steam (and thus fire) while the Japanese assigned the kanji when electrical trains were already a thing. Interesting how you can learn something about the history of the languages just by comparing them to each other.
What do you mean jan li moku would just be a person is eating or people are eating To say a person is being eaten you would probably say mi moku jan i think at least
@@twiwatchesvocaloidstuff7159 if misali were to make one and someone were to do the lessons after they were posted, they wouldn't be able to do the quizlet without being bombarded with words they hadn't been taught yet
Heyyyy I got all questions right! I'm actually learning toki pona!!! I don't know why I got so excited, but I am! As a student of Philosophy, I'm already thinking about trying to translate some texts into toki pona once I get the hang of it, just to see what I come up with. I think trying to break the concepts into their constituent parts will make me have a stronger grasp of what I'm getting from the texts I read. Looking forward to the next lessons! mi olin toki pona
ive been studying toki pona on and off for a few months but i still got the last question wrong (i thought it was “mi jan pona” not “mi jan pona sina”) ive been having a lot of trouble with toki pona actually. im not sure im going to be able to be fluent in it
if you want to translate stuff, I think it's important to 1) share with proficient speakers 2) be okay with rewriting in the future 3) incorporate feedback over time generally people who are learning or have learned all the grammar and words still have a lot to learn about specific usage, semantic spaces, and how to use the language. It's a good idea to be aware of that while translating. but that's not to say you SHOULDN'T translate until later! You should, translation is great practice. I would save the texts you really care about for later though, because each new translation will be better than the last, and everyone's first translation is full of errors. enjoy your toki pona journey!
I finished the 12 days of sona pi toki pona just a few days ago, and ordered both books. This is a treat I did not expect. I'm looking forward to reviewing my knowledge over the coming months with this new series! jan Misali li kama sona e toki pona la mi pilin pona!
i love how there’s a list of all words in the lesson. That was my problem with the original, I didn’t see a list immediately so i switched to other places to learn
i got 2/3, getting the order wrong with "olin sina" which doesn't mean "you love" but "your love" if i understand right. I think learning german at school is to blame, because there's some emphasis that verbs go in unintuitive (to me, so far) places, and having two conflicting ideas from two languages can surely not be a great way to do this
i am reminded of the messaging app "yo" which was a "language" with one word. I find it amazing how much can be communicated with a single word. It would be super interesting to learn a language that is seeming built around this idea. Like communication is a cooperative effort, if you don't care to even try and understand me, there is nothing I can do to make you, so any effort put into increasing my clarity is pointless. If you don't want to even think about what I'm saying then why are we talking? I like how this is (seemingly) structured around the need for the listener to be so involved and thoughtful for communication to be successful.
In any language the communications gets gradually more successful the more involved the listener is. A language with only one word would only drag the practicality across the board so far down that you need to solve a complex puzzle to express even basic ideas. You can do it for fun, but if you want to use it to get the listener more involved and have a successful communication, it defeats the purpose by being so impractical.
My friend group used this as a pager for pub visits, because it also let you tag a location. So someone would send a "yo" with a nearby pub tagged near the end of the workday. If you had a better idea you'd reply with your own tagged "yo", if not you'd reply with just a plain "yo"
@@cheshire1 Well, its not like I'm advocating for a single word language or anything. It was just in stark contrast to english and was the first time I ever thought about these sorts of things.
@@QuantumJump451 so "yo" isn't just a word with any specific amount of meanings, but a word in which every usage of it has its own defined definition by the speaker?
tp: mi pilin pona tawa sitelen tawa ni. jan pi kama sona o, kama pona tawa kulupu pi toki pona a! en: I'm excited about these videos. New learners, welcome to the toki pona community!
Nice! I just started doing the original 12 days to learn before Christmas. I'm an Esperantist (the language with the largest con-langue community) but I look forward to translating Moby Dick into Toki Pono once I learn it (/s)
Your previous series I found interesting, but (at least judging from this first episode) this series seems so much better and more accessible, I reckon I could actually speak some toki pona by the end of it as long as I watch it through a few times. Thank you so much for your great content and your diligence.
Could you please leave a pdf with printable flashcards of all the vocabulary from that lesson in each lesson? I think that would be very useful for a lot of people
@@pangadajski7687 yeah but I though other people will find them nice with the roots of all the words and which languages they come from and stuff like that
@@smamy8861 and jan misali could just as easily make the flashcards and put them in the description, to save hundreds of people the work of making them?? im not saying he needs to do that but your argument is kinda silly lol
By coincidence I’ve been studying Japanese for like a year and a half and the sentiment is very similar. Context is really supposed to drive the conversation forward as opposed to specifying exact messages or intention.
Can I just say from my perspective as a Polish person I had a few laughs because "Jan" is a generic male Polish name. The equivalent of John. So jan Jan is a valid thing to say in toki pona. Also The pronoun ona is a feminine pronoun in Polish, so I already instinctively translated ona li lape as "she is sleeping" which like you said isn't bad but it put the information in my head about the gender of the person which doesn't exist in the sentence itself.
This video has the most contextless thumbnail and title, before watching I was like "umm is it music? Is it a book? Is it an instrument?". That's why I clicked this video
Trying to speak toki pona feels like returning to the core. I have been working on a conlang for the past few days and it has 9 cases, 3 numbers, and 3 noun classes. I also want to duck up the verbs. Languages like this are good at expressing clear complex thoughts. But returning to the scratch of my thinking and interpretation process feels refreshing. Simplicity is key in a day-to-day situation, and I think that is exactly what jan Sonja was trying to present us.
It's nice you said it's fun to learn, for some reason people like to pretend that conlangs are actually useful ways of communication, when they totally are not, conlangs are fun for language nerds, and for some reason lots of people seem to be ashamed of this
Ha! For me, the first things that come to mind are: - This is similar to Newspeak from 1984, which was made to suppress complex ideas by making it difficult to express them. - If English is C, this is like (RISC) Assembly language - it's extremely simple, but you need to use a lot of it to explain even the simplest concepts. Anyway I get that practicality isn't the point, and that Toki Pona is supposed to be kinda like Newspeak but for a more benevolent (meditative?) purpose. Maybe my engineer brain will benefit from it some day, but not yet.
I don't really know much toki pona, but I do know from your old video on questions that toki pona has no word for yes or no, so I've unofficially started using "toki" as a catch-all for "yes", "hello", and "language". I think it makes a lot of sense.
Watching this video has legitimately made me spent the rest of the day learning and writing in toki pona. Thank you for inspiring me so strongly! len unpa soweli
Super-excited about this! Have loved the concepts behind Toki Pona for nearly a decade but never found the teaching materials engaging enough to stick with it. sina jan pona
I've been meaning to learn toki pona for a while now, starting with your old videos on it, but this one has been the best and most useful. I feel like I have a better grasp of the language and how it works now, even though I had tried reading about it before. Thank you!
I am thrilled to see this. I've grown some interest and fondness for Toki Pona because of your videos, but never took the next step. This is exactly the sort of thing that might help me actually learn this language!
How did I just learn so much?! I’m blown away by your simplicity yet complete descriptions of words and “particles?” I’m not very fluent in these kinds of words 😅 ha. Anyway thanks Jan I’m looking forward to the rest! thank you jan pona mi
Just got the book as a gift after rewatching this series-in-progress for the last year. I really appreciate how you're taking your own path to explain toki pona rather than just repeating the order in the book. Fantastic work!
I’m in the middle of the older 12 days of toki pona series but I’m glad the remake is here! At least the start of it! Genuinely like your videos and toki pona (and your videos about toki pona). I am surprised how understandable all of this for me. And I’m excited to see how the remake is with the new canon words and corrections that were added since the old series.
Great timing! I've started pushing myself (and others) to learn toki pona now because minecraft of all things has reminded me of it's existence by translating the game into it.
I love that you're remaking this. I've wanted to learn for ages, and a friend just so happened to gift me the book for Christmas. Great timing! Thanks, jan Misali.
for some reason i read the title as “well this is just a toki problem” and i was like. you know what, you’re right, jan. we should really be working on a toki solution
So... recently discovered toki pona through another means, started learning, rediscovered jan Misali through his old tutorials, binged all of his content, and now find he's remaking the tutorial series? The stars have aligned, and they want me to learn toki pona.... pona tawa sina ali :)
You're a great teacher! I mean in classroom I'd be lost without that 0.75x playback speed to keep up but thanks to the holy algo(pbuh) you'll spread this conglanging far&wide.
@@seneca983 hmm.. interesting.. how about taking the approach of using "said" as a noun, instead of a verb. not like "you said well" but like "the _thing_ that has been said" i mean, in turkish, our verbs can work like nouns within similar contexts like this, thats why i thought it could also work in toki pona... but i'm not sure now... anyone with more knowledge? :D
@@AlannaStarcrossed i was thinking like "well played!" since we dont need to say that was a well play, in that situation, ahahahahah. but still, i got your point, this language is amazing... im pretty sure im going to learn everything about it
I like everything about Toki Pona except on the insistence of shunning standardization. The point of language is communication, and if there is no standardization there is no common ground for two disparate people to communicate, you have to rely on some shared human experience. Like, I could describe a mouse in toki pona as "the animal that likes cheese", and it would be understood in the context of American toki pona speakers, but this stereotype of mice is merely cultural, and other cultures simply don't have this stereotype. If they said it was "the small animal that destroys crops" I would have no idea if they meant mice, locusts, or any number of creatures.
@@franciscofernandez8183 Yes. I am saying I dislike (one of) the premise of toki poni. Language is the process of taking a set of ideas and turning them into concrete labels for the purpose of communucation. This is known as abstraction and it is a huge part of complex reasoning. It's better to have a single label "Freedom" for example than to explain the entire concept of Liberty every time you want to talk about it. In fact, the premise of toki pona was the same as Newspeak from 1984, that simplifying language simplifies thought, but in the context of 1984 it is seen as detrimental. I view toki pona in the same way.
@@ObjectsInMotion I had similar thoughts as you, but I also kind of really enjoy the fact that the relationship people have with the object or concept (in your example, the wide variety of pests are basically all just called "tiny food thief") is placed front and center. I like that it kind of directly tells you something about the speaker's relationship with the thing being referenced. A scientist might call a locust "segmented-limbed six-legged flying swarming tiny food thief" and that could get cumbersome, but it's great that I know what aspects of the thing are considered significant to the speaker just from how they refer to it.
as smone w autism i actually really like this feature because i often run into the exact opposite problem -- someone says "animal", for example, and im left desperately scrabbling to figure out if they mean "cats, dogs, and horses" or if they mean "mammals and birds" or if they mean "all vertebrates but not fish" or if they mean "everything that is an animal including bugs". the fact that someone needs to tell me what they MEAN instead of just what it's CALLED is very nice :)
It feels like an experiment, rather than a real language. A fun novelty, and an interesting challenge, but without a real language to help get everyone on the same page, useless for communication.
this is so good if youre czech because the pronounciation is literally the same and ona is actually the same as in croatian for us. cant wait for future videos
The simplified and collaborative nature of it combined with it coming from a variety of linguistic backgrounds makes it feel like a language of a future unified humanity.
Since I saw your review of toki pona a couple weeks ago it hasn't left my mind because I really enjoy the idea of it. can't wait for more lessons to be uploaded, I'll start putting the effort into learning once a couple more are up so there's a little more substance to start with
I'm curious. If "toki pona" means "communication that I think is good", then if I don't like the way this conlang works, can I call it "toki ike"? Genuine question.
You could, but (for obvious reasons) the actual name of the language is also toki pona, so there is a high chance everyone will think you're talking about another language
"toki" often translates to "language," and "toki pona" is a pona language. (there's no english word for pona, "something that I think is good" is a simplification of the core meaning and design of pona) you can use "toki ike" to describe any language you DON'T like, though describing natlangs as "toki ike" might not be a great idea in a lot of contexts. if you don't like the way toki pona works, then saying "toki ike" might be hard to understand, so it would probably take a few sentences to describe that you don't like it. "mi toki pona. taso... ona li pona ala tawa mi. ni la, ona li toki pona ala li toki ike. ni li pilin mi." Just using "toki ike" is confusing because just about everyone who learns how to use toki pona beyond a learner's level likes it, so it's never used.
I'm glad to see more videos about Toki Pona on your channel! I recently wrote a paper describing the language for one of my last linguistics classes of my degree. I'm curious to see if I missed anything particularly interesting in your videos :)
Rewatching this almost a full year after I found this channel and this language. I'm a bit excited. tenpo ni la, mi ken kute e ni: kalama musi pi sitelen tawa ni li kalama musi Kijetesumikyoku. mi ken kin toki e ni ale! sina pona mute a, jan Misali o!
YOOOOOOOO THE 12 DAYS REMAKE legit got halfway through the original series and forgot about it but if this is coming out I might finally actually remember toki pona
3:39 Interesting stylistic choice. Personally, I find long paragraphs of text much more readable if the starts of sentences are always capitalised. though for short text it doesn't make much difference
No? I'd like to answer your question but I'm not really sure what you're getting at here. The example at 6:05 (jan li moku) is only to do with a person because it includes the word jan. Could you explain what you're thinking a bit more so I can clarify it for you?
Calling the language Toki Pona is a little odd, given that Pona means "good in my subjective opinion". Do I implicitly agree that Toki Pona is a good language, if I pronounce its name?
"In fact, there are fewer words in toki pona's core vocabulary than there are first generation Pokémon. This restrictive vocabulary means that" and then despite the fact that I know toki pona, I was prepared for this sentence to end with "you can use the first generation Pokémon as a logographic script."
I want this so badly now
@@JakeMiller2020 the easy canonical solution would be to alphabetize all of the core words, and then assign them pokemon in pokedex order. you could also pick a mnemonic assignment but that would probably only fit well for a very small number so the arbitrary ordering might be better
Use Ditto for sama, which is the equivalent to the English word ditto.
@@EnriqueLaberintico Fun fact, 'sama' is the Polish and Croatian word for 'alone' which is kind of the opposite
@@EnriqueLaberintico does sama come from indonesian? cuz i just recognised that word lol
the fact that toki pona has its own version of "let's eat grandma" is really funny to me
mi moku is similarly a common joke/meme in the community so it really is a close equivalent!
"mi moku" can mean "I am eating" or "I am food"
but "mi sitelen" can mean "I am writing" or "I am writing"
@@lipamanka authors with intricate tattoos be like:
@@lipamanka I thought that to write was pali nimi.
@@EnriqueLaberintico there's no "is" in toki pona, only "can be." sitelen can mean many things, so can "pali nimi"
to those of you who are looking through comments for more perspective, here's a fun one: "jan pona" doesn't mean friend. it just means "any jan who is pona." in toki pona, instead of describing cultural concepts like friendship, we describe simple concepts, like behavior. There's no way to say friend in toki pona because if you think about it, a friend is a label that describes a complex relationship. toki pona teaches us to notice behavior and remove the biases of labels that are present in natlangs, so we have no commitment to people who no longer treat us well. the concept of a "bad friend" can't exist in toki pona because the concept of a "friend" can't either.
So it's like saying someone's "good people"?
This sort of simplification kinda reminds me of Newspeak, a fictional language in 1984 (the book.) One example is the changing of the meaning of the word "free," you can talk about free food or free drinks, as in not having a price, but the semantic meaning of "free" as in without control or free from slavery was gone, you couldn't talk about political freedom, free speech, etc.
@@MrNerdHair Yes, though bad friend would be “jan pona ike” - unfortunately, that would have to be parsed as “bad ‘good person’ “ -> “bad friend” as opposed to “person that is good and bad” or “person that acts in a way that perverts good acts” or “person who is bad at being good”.
@@iantaakalla8180 not quite. I explained that a bad friend as a concept doesn't exist in toki pona. ALSO "jan pona ike" could be parsed as "person who is good and bad" or "good person who is bad," but either way it's hard to parse anyway. It's meaningless.
If I wanted to describe (using toki pona) someone who I consider a bad friend (in english), I would just describe them as "jan ike."
If they're not being pona then it doesn't make sense to describe them as such.
well said!
“jan li moku” meaning both “a person eats” and a person is food - you have the basis right there for the toki pona translation of “To Serve Man”
li pana e moku tawa mije.
li pana e moku mije.
that isn't particularly odd! in most languages, "food" and "to eat" share root. moreover, in some languages like spanish and japanese, the word for "food" is usually a deformation, inflection or joint word meaning "thing that is eaten" (comer -> comida, taberu -> tabemono)
@@maruseron Filipino. Kain - eat/to eat. Pagkain - food/literally the act of eating
you can think about it as instead of eating, you do some fooding
@@EnriqueLaberintico yt cant translate the simplest language. this is how be beat the machines lol
As a Bosnian i feel honored that olin comes from our language
Mogla bi takođe raditi riječ «lupa» od uopšteslovenskoga «ljubov», tada bi rusi (kim sam i ja, zato mogu biti pomilki) tu riječ čitali kao «zalupa»
(glava kuraca; neznam kako to južni sloveni zovu) 🙃
I was surprised how many words come from slavic languages. Also, have you heard of interslavic conlang?
My first impression that it sounded "all in" like in a strategy game when you gather everything you have and go win or loose :)
@@dimeswrth4021 lupa more like magnifier
mi olin e sina!
Very good that you're remaking this. I can see that you are very thoughtful about it as you tend to be. Good that you tackle the "What's THE noun phrase for this" misconception immediately for example. And going out of your way to really correct the ways the particles can be misunderstood. sina pali pona.
Did you translate this comment from Toki Pona? I'm not super familiar with it (hence watching this series) but the way you constructed the sentences reminds me of toki pona, was that on purpose?
@@nw2kr8bc3t I think their mind was just primed from thinking about speaking in toki pona, and it altered their word flow. I have had the same thing happen, including with French.
My guess is that pali means teacher?
@@inafridge8573 pali in this case actually means to do work. they are saying in their way "you did a great job"
@@inafridge8573 sina pali pona means 'you did well'/'good job'. word for word it's 'you worked well'.
to be honest the last section felt so much like Blue's Clues because you were always like "hey you did it!" even when i did nothing, but it still felt so nice thank you for the free dopamine, sona jan misali :)
Actually kind of felt awful for me. Couldn't remember any of the words, and it just felt like they were mocking me when they said "Good job!" even though I was completely wrong. When they said "Look how much you learned!" even though I got almost all of it wrong, I cried. Good that you like it, though, must feel really good for those who actually have a good short term memory unlike my *ike* brain.
you just unlocked a tunnel to the deepest recesses of my brain that lit up my neurons like a christmas tree
@@lexdoes :(
@@lexdoes Never let that stop you from trying again until you *do* get it right
It felt like I was cheating
I love your distinction between ambiguous and vague! That's a super useful concept. Looking forward to future lessons!
(Also, I totally beefed it on "I am your friend" - got mixed up trying to remember what you said about the meaning of pona in the translation of 'friend' and I think I ended up with "sina pona" as my guess.)
(...granted, we would say that to pretty much all of our friends, but we would also say something similar of a number of people we don't know, so.)
Me too. Ambiguity: Uncertainty of mutually exclusive possibilities. Vagueness: Uncertainty of related possibilities. That's at least how I understood it.
@@rasmusn.e.m1064 So, this is something I've been mulling on and off for a long time, but deliberate vagueness can be very useful? A good example of this is baker's percentage: my bread recipe does not much care how much flour I use, but it cares quite a lot about the ratio between flour and water. I can make a 67% hydration dough with 300 g flour and 200 g water or with 450 g flour and 300 g water, and the biggest difference between the loaves will be how big they are.
And everything I've heard about toki pona makes me feel like a perfect toki pona bread recipe would be deliberately vague in the way baker's percentages are vague. It specifies what needs to be known and leaves unstated what is unessential.
@@Packbat Yes, exactly. What I mean by 'related' is that the potential for all the possible outcomes is contained within the same known unresolved state, so like two future daughter languages of German. Whereas the idea with ambiguity is that there is an unknown resolved state with several possibilities that only overlap arbitrarily, so like something in a desert that is either a pool of water or a Fata Morgana/mirage.
So yeah, it makes sense that vagueness is more constructive. It's inherent to the definition of ambiguity that the margin for error is absolute.
@@rasmusn.e.m1064 Ahh - I think I didn't quite understand your point. I agree fully!
This remake is much better, I literally couldn't finish the original because the music started getting super loud and distracting. I couldn't concentrate on what he was saying because of my sensory issues. Plus there is more visual information and more elaboration, which also makes it easier for me to follow along.
Wow, this looks amazing! I love the fact that you casually drop new words in the middle of your explanation, instead of just listing them off. It’s such a small detail that makes learning monumentally easier!
0:00 intro
0:29 amount of words
0:47 meaning of toki pona
2:28 ike (evil)
2:47 consonants
3:01 jan (someone)
3:10 vowels
3:36 capitalization
3:55 li (verbifier)
4:31 ambiguity
5:13 lack of to be
5:58 simplification of li
6:02 moku (eat)
6:14 lape (rest)
6:18 olin (love)
6:27 ona (pronouns)
6:56 mi (me, us) (1st person)
7:06 sina (you) (2nd person)
7:39 practice
9:01 outro
ありがとう！
Thanks!
Why on earth did Jan remake the sona pi toki pona
This is so much better than your old series and even most language learning guides out there. Very excited for the rest of this series
I feel like its pretty easy to be better than most language learning guides out there when the language is designed to be easy to learn.
@@henryjones3232 Riolm il holt di il tizukmit balod nuz romkeoki ada diot haw?
I also am a bit excited. I think it's important to note that, while being very much not taken seriously and, at times, almost a joke, the old series is still an unironically good tutorial on toki pona. I have high hopes for this new series simply because it's the same, but crafted with much more care. mi olin e ni!
ooooh, this must be where the "jan" in "jan Misali" comes from. I always thought jan was your name, lol
looking forward to learning this! I'm bilingual working on a third, but picking up something like this would be very cool as well
@@MonBean17-tu5os english, spanish, and I've been learning some japanese
me like 4 days ago "ok guess i'll start learning toki pona" and now he brings out new lessons
aaaaa
yeah lol i was just gonna watch 12 days of toki pona but this is so much better
@Valentino B9PL who says he isnt going to upload these every day
@@MINECRAFTLOVER4000 He did? Did you not watch to the end?
This reminded me of studying kanji where sometimes just the radicals but more often combinations of full kanji also kinda work like the general ideas behind their meaning to creat new words.
電 - electricity
車 - vehicle
電車 - train
Toki Pona also has Sitelen Pona, which is a symbol given to represent each word. I use it a lot when writing notes in Toki Pona.
Thats kind the point of using kanji...
The pronunciation only changes because kanji is a foreign import from China to Japan. In Chinese, there is no pronunciation change: 電 is diàn, 車 is chē, and 電車 is diànchē. (Though it actually means tram/trolley/streetcar in Chinese. Train is 火車, “fire vehicle”, which I always found kind of awesome.)
@@gabrielbn I guess the Chinese coined the term when trains still ran on steam (and thus fire) while the Japanese assigned the kanji when electrical trains were already a thing. Interesting how you can learn something about the history of the languages just by comparing them to each other.
In Japanese, 電車 is specific to electric trains. 列車 (ressha) is more directly equivalent to "train".
"jan li moku" is no worse than "I had some people for dinner", which literally can mean the exact same two things.
Like Hannibal Lector, "I'm having an old friend for dinner."
What do you mean jan li moku would just be a person is eating or people are eating
To say a person is being eaten you would probably say
mi moku jan i think at least
@@linuxramblingproductions8554 Moku means both food and eat, so you could be calling the person food. Kili li moku, jan li moku, Moku li moku e moku
@@linuxramblingproductions8554 I'd say mi moku e jan, but yea
@@linuxramblingproductions8554 this is more like "i eat like a human", you were probably thinking of "mi moku e jan"
The wave of sadness that washed over me when you said "at least once a month" goes to show how much I enjoyed learning toki pona.
You should make a quizlet with all of the vocab as this series goes on, that's how I got good at vocab in Latin.
you'll remember it way better if you start by making this Quizlet yourself
Just listen to the tokirap
screws over anyone even a single day late
@@egon3705 ?
(i just made one so this knowledge would be useful)
@@twiwatchesvocaloidstuff7159 if misali were to make one and someone were to do the lessons after they were posted, they wouldn't be able to do the quizlet without being bombarded with words they hadn't been taught yet
Heyyyy I got all questions right! I'm actually learning toki pona!!! I don't know why I got so excited, but I am! As a student of Philosophy, I'm already thinking about trying to translate some texts into toki pona once I get the hang of it, just to see what I come up with. I think trying to break the concepts into their constituent parts will make me have a stronger grasp of what I'm getting from the texts I read. Looking forward to the next lessons! mi olin toki pona
ive been studying toki pona on and off for a few months but i still got the last question wrong (i thought it was “mi jan pona” not “mi jan pona sina”)
ive been having a lot of trouble with toki pona actually. im not sure im going to be able to be fluent in it
if you want to translate stuff, I think it's important to
1) share with proficient speakers
2) be okay with rewriting in the future
3) incorporate feedback over time
generally people who are learning or have learned all the grammar and words still have a lot to learn about specific usage, semantic spaces, and how to use the language. It's a good idea to be aware of that while translating. but that's not to say you SHOULDN'T translate until later! You should, translation is great practice. I would save the texts you really care about for later though, because each new translation will be better than the last, and everyone's first translation is full of errors.
enjoy your toki pona journey!
Myth of Sisyphus please! I like jan Camus with his cool ciggy and fast car.
there is no biunivocal correspondence between
person deleuze and person guattari: split head knowledge when
Because philosophy is lacking in generality 😂
I really liked how you gave the etymology of the words. Good work!
I finished the 12 days of sona pi toki pona just a few days ago, and ordered both books. This is a treat I did not expect. I'm looking forward to reviewing my knowledge over the coming months with this new series! jan Misali li kama sona e toki pona la mi pilin pona!
I feel the same! I think you accidentally typed kama instead of pana there. Or the word kama has more meanings than I thought. I'm new to it too haha
@@Pleeze it indeed translates to "when Mitch learns toki pona, i feel good."
i love how there’s a list of all words in the lesson. That was my problem with the original, I didn’t see a list immediately so i switched to other places to learn
homestuck?
I actually got each of the practices right, wow. That's it, I'm in.
i got 2/3, getting the order wrong with "olin sina" which doesn't mean "you love" but "your love" if i understand right. I think learning german at school is to blame, because there's some emphasis that verbs go in unintuitive (to me, so far) places, and having two conflicting ideas from two languages can surely not be a great way to do this
I just mixed up `ona` with `sina` on the last one, you're on a roll!
i am reminded of the messaging app "yo" which was a "language" with one word. I find it amazing how much can be communicated with a single word. It would be super interesting to learn a language that is seeming built around this idea. Like communication is a cooperative effort, if you don't care to even try and understand me, there is nothing I can do to make you, so any effort put into increasing my clarity is pointless. If you don't want to even think about what I'm saying then why are we talking? I like how this is (seemingly) structured around the need for the listener to be so involved and thoughtful for communication to be successful.
In any language the communications gets gradually more successful the more involved the listener is. A language with only one word would only drag the practicality across the board so far down that you need to solve a complex puzzle to express even basic ideas. You can do it for fun, but if you want to use it to get the listener more involved and have a successful communication, it defeats the purpose by being so impractical.
My friend group used this as a pager for pub visits, because it also let you tag a location. So someone would send a "yo" with a nearby pub tagged near the end of the workday. If you had a better idea you'd reply with your own tagged "yo", if not you'd reply with just a plain "yo"
@@cheshire1 Well, its not like I'm advocating for a single word language or anything. It was just in stark contrast to english and was the first time I ever thought about these sorts of things.
@@QuantumJump451 so "yo" isn't just a word with any specific amount of meanings, but a word in which every usage of it has its own defined definition by the speaker?
@@isavedtheuniverse You're right, it's interesting to think about.
tp: mi pilin pona tawa sitelen tawa ni. jan pi kama sona o, kama pona tawa kulupu pi toki pona a!
en: I'm excited about these videos. New learners, welcome to the toki pona community!
Nice! I just started doing the original 12 days to learn before Christmas. I'm an Esperantist (the language with the largest con-langue community) but I look forward to translating Moby Dick into Toki Pono once I learn it (/s)
Zeredez tomxumek vuvdiim avav il kofi rafi dlei ny xehluzdnoez aprei toy vulzed aez keur!
Damn Daniel
@@alvinsinanbegovic6873 Wuzh yael balod nuz zho hirr aprei budez fi il zu tonm
@@migarsormrapophis2755 when I learn toki pona I will come back here and read all of this 👍
@@migarsormrapophis2755 what
I love how the word for eat comes from もぐもぐ that’s definitely my favorite little detail so far
You finally showed Anthony the bibliography. I'm so proud
This is the second time Mr. Misali has made a video that I desperately wanted but have never asked for
This content is ON POINT
Your previous series I found interesting, but (at least judging from this first episode) this series seems so much better and more accessible, I reckon I could actually speak some toki pona by the end of it as long as I watch it through a few times. Thank you so much for your great content and your diligence.
Could you please leave a pdf with printable flashcards of all the vocabulary from that lesson in each lesson? I think that would be very useful for a lot of people
You can literally create those in 3 minutes with a piece of paper and a pen
@@pangadajski7687 yeah but I though other people will find them nice with the roots of all the words and which languages they come from and stuff like that
@@smorcrux426 then they can find the root languages themselves and put them on the flashcard? it's really not that hard
@@smamy8861 and jan misali could just as easily make the flashcards and put them in the description, to save hundreds of people the work of making them?? im not saying he needs to do that but your argument is kinda silly lol
By coincidence I’ve been studying Japanese for like a year and a half and the sentiment is very similar. Context is really supposed to drive the conversation forward as opposed to specifying exact messages or intention.
Can I just say from my perspective as a Polish person I had a few laughs because "Jan" is a generic male Polish name. The equivalent of John. So jan Jan is a valid thing to say in toki pona. Also The pronoun ona is a feminine pronoun in Polish, so I already instinctively translated ona li lape as "she is sleeping" which like you said isn't bad but it put the information in my head about the gender of the person which doesn't exist in the sentence itself.
I have a sort of similar thing with one, it's pronounced the same as the Japanese word for woman (女, onna)
I have a sort of similar thing with one, it's pronounced the same as the Japanese word for woman (女, onna)
In Dutch, Jan is a very common name too.
This video has the most contextless thumbnail and title, before watching I was like "umm is it music? Is it a book? Is it an instrument?". That's why I clicked this video
This would be perfect for introducing children to linguistic concepts. I am pleased and excited for more!
Trying to speak toki pona feels like returning to the core. I have been working on a conlang for the past few days and it has 9 cases, 3 numbers, and 3 noun classes. I also want to duck up the verbs. Languages like this are good at expressing clear complex thoughts. But returning to the scratch of my thinking and interpretation process feels refreshing. Simplicity is key in a day-to-day situation, and I think that is exactly what jan Sonja was trying to present us.
My friend and I were putting off learning the language together when we heard you were revamping this series, so happy it's finally here!
It's nice you said it's fun to learn, for some reason people like to pretend that conlangs are actually useful ways of communication, when they totally are not, conlangs are fun for language nerds, and for some reason lots of people seem to be ashamed of this
what an amazingly intuitive way of guiding someone through a learning process. massive kudos and respects
"look at how much you learned in such a short time!"
> had to look up every single answer i got right
im so happy you believe in me ;.)
Ha! For me, the first things that come to mind are:
- This is similar to Newspeak from 1984, which was made to suppress complex ideas by making it difficult to express them.
- If English is C, this is like (RISC) Assembly language - it's extremely simple, but you need to use a lot of it to explain even the simplest concepts.
Anyway I get that practicality isn't the point, and that Toki Pona is supposed to be kinda like Newspeak but for a more benevolent (meditative?) purpose. Maybe my engineer brain will benefit from it some day, but not yet.
I don't really know much toki pona, but I do know from your old video on questions that toki pona has no word for yes or no, so I've unofficially started using "toki" as a catch-all for "yes", "hello", and "language". I think it makes a lot of sense.
Watching this video has legitimately made me spent the rest of the day learning and writing in toki pona. Thank you for inspiring me so strongly! len unpa soweli
Super-excited about this! Have loved the concepts behind Toki Pona for nearly a decade but never found the teaching materials engaging enough to stick with it.
sina jan pona
I've been meaning to learn toki pona for a while now, starting with your old videos on it, but this one has been the best and most useful. I feel like I have a better grasp of the language and how it works now, even though I had tried reading about it before. Thank you!
Terrific remake
Watching it again clarified so many things for me
I am thrilled to see this. I've grown some interest and fondness for Toki Pona because of your videos, but never took the next step. This is exactly the sort of thing that might help me actually learn this language!
4:26 I love your distinction between ambiguous and vague here
why did I laugh so hard at "'A person goods' or 'A person is gooding'"
This is the most fascinating thing youtube has shown on my home page in AGES, I'm learning toki pona now 😂
How did I just learn so much?! I’m blown away by your simplicity yet complete descriptions of words and “particles?” I’m not very fluent in these kinds of words 😅 ha. Anyway thanks Jan I’m looking forward to the rest! thank you jan pona mi
Just got the book as a gift after rewatching this series-in-progress for the last year. I really appreciate how you're taking your own path to explain toki pona rather than just repeating the order in the book. Fantastic work!
I’m in the middle of the older 12 days of toki pona series but I’m glad the remake is here! At least the start of it!
Genuinely like your videos and toki pona (and your videos about toki pona). I am surprised how understandable all of this for me. And I’m excited to see how the remake is with the new canon words and corrections that were added since the old series.
learning a language thats so different from what we're used to is kinda mindblowing.
Great timing! I've started pushing myself (and others) to learn toki pona now because minecraft of all things has reminded me of it's existence by translating the game into it.
I literally cannot wait for more episodes on toki pona. I’ve already started learning it after I saw this yesterday.
oh lol just noticed the words cut out at the example at 7:50 and the song I did plays really loudly
I love that you're remaking this. I've wanted to learn for ages, and a friend just so happened to gift me the book for Christmas.
Great timing! Thanks, jan Misali.
"that's right" "exactly!" "Look at how much you've learned"
Why must you taunt me so
for some reason i read the title as “well this is just a toki problem” and i was like. you know what, you’re right, jan. we should really be working on a toki solution
YES!!!! So exited you're remaking this series finally! :)
Also, the "I'm a bit exited" at the end was incredible.
So... recently discovered toki pona through another means, started learning, rediscovered jan Misali through his old tutorials, binged all of his content, and now find he's remaking the tutorial series?
The stars have aligned, and they want me to learn toki pona....
pona tawa sina ali :)
You're a great teacher! I mean in classroom I'd be lost without that 0.75x playback speed to keep up but thanks to the holy algo(pbuh) you'll spread this conglanging far&wide.
Woo!
Twelve days of TP, much better than the original so far.
Indeed, I am a bit excited.
i was just thinking of going through the old series today since i was interested in learning toki pona and then this comes out, nice
I am so glad they are using serbo-croatian words since it's my native language and it's rarely talked about.
so, can "toki pona" also mean "well said!"? i think im going to love this thing... if yes, toki pona jan Misali! really nice video!
But "toki" isn't a verb. Maybe you should say something like "li toki pona"?
@@seneca983 hmm.. interesting.. how about taking the approach of using "said" as a noun, instead of a verb. not like "you said well" but like "the _thing_ that has been said" i mean, in turkish, our verbs can work like nouns within similar contexts like this, thats why i thought it could also work in toki pona... but i'm not sure now... anyone with more knowledge? :D
As an interjection, sure! In a full sentence you might say "ni li toki pona", that was good speech
@@AlannaStarcrossed i was thinking like "well played!" since we dont need to say that was a well play, in that situation, ahahahahah. but still, i got your point, this language is amazing... im pretty sure im going to learn everything about it
Biliyorsan söyle, Türkiye'de kaç tane Toki Pona konuşan var?
this is honestly a great way to end 2021
I like everything about Toki Pona except on the insistence of shunning standardization. The point of language is communication, and if there is no standardization there is no common ground for two disparate people to communicate, you have to rely on some shared human experience. Like, I could describe a mouse in toki pona as "the animal that likes cheese", and it would be understood in the context of American toki pona speakers, but this stereotype of mice is merely cultural, and other cultures simply don't have this stereotype. If they said it was "the small animal that destroys crops" I would have no idea if they meant mice, locusts, or any number of creatures.
Isn't the fact of focusing on the qualities and behavior of something over its label like a big part of toki pona?
@@franciscofernandez8183 Yes. I am saying I dislike (one of) the premise of toki poni. Language is the process of taking a set of ideas and turning them into concrete labels for the purpose of communucation. This is known as abstraction and it is a huge part of complex reasoning. It's better to have a single label "Freedom" for example than to explain the entire concept of Liberty every time you want to talk about it. In fact, the premise of toki pona was the same as Newspeak from 1984, that simplifying language simplifies thought, but in the context of 1984 it is seen as detrimental. I view toki pona in the same way.
@@ObjectsInMotion I had similar thoughts as you, but I also kind of really enjoy the fact that the relationship people have with the object or concept (in your example, the wide variety of pests are basically all just called "tiny food thief") is placed front and center.
I like that it kind of directly tells you something about the speaker's relationship with the thing being referenced. A scientist might call a locust "segmented-limbed six-legged flying swarming tiny food thief" and that could get cumbersome, but it's great that I know what aspects of the thing are considered significant to the speaker just from how they refer to it.
as smone w autism i actually really like this feature because i often run into the exact opposite problem -- someone says "animal", for example, and im left desperately scrabbling to figure out if they mean "cats, dogs, and horses" or if they mean "mammals and birds" or if they mean "all vertebrates but not fish" or if they mean "everything that is an animal including bugs". the fact that someone needs to tell me what they MEAN instead of just what it's CALLED is very nice :)
It feels like an experiment, rather than a real language. A fun novelty, and an interesting challenge, but without a real language to help get everyone on the same page, useless for communication.
i learnt this from the video
mi olin lape. lape li pona.
i love sleep. sleep is good.
I liked your video so much that I have started learning toki pona! Mi olin e toki pona.
I'm excited to learn a language for the first time in like 4 years. This is fun!
this is so good if youre czech because the pronounciation is literally the same and ona is actually the same as in croatian for us. cant wait for future videos
Imagine writing a scientific paper in this language
10000 words long
How to inflate page count
bet
As someone with the book on this i am excited for this series!@@!@@!!!!
I'm really excited to be able to learn my first conlang with this series! Toki Pona is definitely a great one to start with.
you were right: learning toki pona is a lot of fun! can't wait for the next video.
jan Misali saying “I’m a bit exited” makes me think they actually hate this language and its excessive vowels
The simplified and collaborative nature of it combined with it coming from a variety of linguistic backgrounds makes it feel like a language of a future unified humanity.
very excited for this series! i hope im able to pick up on it and end up writing paragraphs in toki pona in my books just as i do japanese :D
This is so cool! im gonna email this to my college linguistics teacher
You almost make me want to learn this language.
Edit: You made me learn this language, thanks!
Since I saw your review of toki pona a couple weeks ago it hasn't left my mind because I really enjoy the idea of it. can't wait for more lessons to be uploaded, I'll start putting the effort into learning once a couple more are up so there's a little more substance to start with
I'm curious. If "toki pona" means "communication that I think is good", then if I don't like the way this conlang works, can I call it "toki ike"? Genuine question.
No, "toki ike" is Ithkuil.
You could, but (for obvious reasons) the actual name of the language is also toki pona, so there is a high chance everyone will think you're talking about another language
@@glowstonelovepad9294 toki nasa is Kay(f)Bop(t).
"toki" often translates to "language," and "toki pona" is a pona language. (there's no english word for pona, "something that I think is good" is a simplification of the core meaning and design of pona)
you can use "toki ike" to describe any language you DON'T like, though describing natlangs as "toki ike" might not be a great idea in a lot of contexts.
if you don't like the way toki pona works, then saying "toki ike" might be hard to understand, so it would probably take a few sentences to describe that you don't like it. "mi toki pona. taso... ona li pona ala tawa mi. ni la, ona li toki pona ala li toki ike. ni li pilin mi." Just using "toki ike" is confusing because just about everyone who learns how to use toki pona beyond a learner's level likes it, so it's never used.
It would certainly be scathing, if the meaning gets across.
thanks, now I can slowly mix toki pona words into my speech and watch the look on my friends face grow more and more confused
I'm glad to see more videos about Toki Pona on your channel! I recently wrote a paper describing the language for one of my last linguistics classes of my degree. I'm curious to see if I missed anything particularly interesting in your videos :)
Rewatching this almost a full year after I found this channel and this language. I'm a bit excited.
tenpo ni la, mi ken kute e ni: kalama musi pi sitelen tawa ni li kalama musi Kijetesumikyoku. mi ken kin toki e ni ale! sina pona mute a, jan Misali o!
great video! i think i'll finally commit to learning a conlang with this series :)
this video kickstarted my learning journey, and now i get to hand it to friends who i've gotten curious. thank you so much :)
Been learning toki pona for 3-4 years now and I still translated "olin li pona" as "good is love" and "I am your friend" as "mi jan pona pi sina"
commenting for the engagement because i love this and want it to succeed as much as possible
everyone always asks "what is toki pona", but no one ever asks "how is toki pona"
i love learning languages and the bad apple playing in the background made it better
it did!
"jan li moku" is the toki pona equivalent of "I want to have you for dinner"
YOOOOOOOO
THE 12 DAYS REMAKE
legit got halfway through the original series and forgot about it but if this is coming out I might finally actually remember toki pona
3:39 Interesting stylistic choice. Personally, I find long paragraphs of text much more readable if the starts of sentences are always capitalised.
though for short text it doesn't make much difference
It also must be a pain to have to change the autocorrect from an uppercase letter back into a lowercase for every new sentence
@@numburger imagine having autocorrect on
@@thezipcreator mocking people for using accessibility tools is kind of a jerk move
@@thezipcreator 100% isn't me...
@@numburger not much of an issue with autocaps off
Nothing better than learning a language in a language that isn't your mother language 😌
6:05: So, toki pona makes "To Serve Man" a core part of its grammatical stucture?
No? I'd like to answer your question but I'm not really sure what you're getting at here. The example at 6:05 (jan li moku) is only to do with a person because it includes the word jan. Could you explain what you're thinking a bit more so I can clarify it for you?
seme
I love how toki pona has to be the most restrictive language, by some online consensus
Calling the language Toki Pona is a little odd, given that Pona means "good in my subjective opinion". Do I implicitly agree that Toki Pona is a good language, if I pronounce its name?
if you hate it just say the classic “toki ike” or bad language
@@bananacat3109 would kay(f)bop(t) be "toki ike pona", then? a language so bad it's good
I heard somewhere that Ithkuil should be called "toki ike"
pona can also mean simple, so that could be a more objective description
@@galvinn Uza abix, ekry piumek keur voxi yael umzered git abix uza luiz?