lesson 5: parts of speech

Parts of speech

Some of you may have spotted that I introduced the word 󱥡 sona twice, first as a verb ‘to know’, then as an adjective ‘wise’. So which is it? And how do you know?

In reality, it can be either! If it follows a noun, it’s an adjective. If 󱤧 li introduces it as a verb, then it’s a verb. It’s all about word order in a sentence!

In fact, the same is true of all words: if something is a noun, verb, or adjective, it can become any of the three! Among the words we’ve already learned, let’s look at some examples:

I’ve only listed some words we’ve learned so far — just enough to see the patterns:

• When verbs become nouns, they usually mean an act of doing something (knowledge), or something that forms a crucial part of the act (food, eye).
• When verbs become adjectives, they mean those which do something: (wise people ~ people who know)
• When nouns become verbs, they usually mean to turn into or apply something to something (to turn into a bird).
• When nouns become adjectives, they mean possession or similarity (of a bird, bird-like)
• When adjectives become nouns, they mean a quality (goodness, size).
• When adjectives become verbs, they impart a quality (to make better, to make bigger).

But when talking, we Toki Pona speakers don’t even have to think about these patterns most of the time! They start to blend into each other. At some point you stop even thinking about whether something was originally a noun or a verb or an adjective. It becomes a coherent whole!

Let’s practice using these words as nouns, verbs, and adjectives:

Word order matters!

Since any noun can be an adjective, and any adjective can be a noun, word order really matters! Notice how these two phrases mean different things:

li and e matter, too!

Remember how li and e seemed a little unnecessary? Now that we know any meaningful word can be used anywhere, as a noun, verb, or adjective, we can finally see how important they are. Thanks to them, we can distinguish these three very different sentences:

If you are ever confused about how to read or write a sentence, start by asking: “Where is the subject? Where is the verb? Where is the object?”, and everything neatly separates into small phrases!