lesson 2: two writing systems
Two writing systems
You’ve already seen how Toki Pona uses the Latin alphabet, which we call sitelen Lasina. But many of us also use our own unique script called sitelen pona, meaning good writing. It is a logography: every word in Toki Pona gets its own little character. It’s a lot of fun to use, and also helps you memorise words!
Let’s take a look at a short poem and compare sitelen Lasina and sitelen pona:
sina olin e utala.You love conflict.
taso sina sona ala:But you don’t understand
utala li ike e sina.that conflict makes you worse.
(from utala by jan Ateneja, 2020)
Here are some things to notice here:
- Sentences in sitelen Lasina start with lowercase letters, unlike English!
- sitelen Lasina uses punctuation like English, but sitelen pona doesn’t.
- sitelen pona is very intuitive! The glyph for “love” is hearts. The glyph for “conflict” is swords. The glyph for “make worse” is a frown.