lesson 6: pronouns
Pronouns
You’re probably tired of long sentences and parts-of-speech shenanigans. Let’s take it down a notch, by pointing at things:
this, that
ni li soweli.
This is an animal.
ni li kasi.
This is a plant.
ni li moku suwi.
This is sweet food.
ni li suli.
This is important.
ni li pona wawa.
This is amazingly good.
These are our first sentences without an object, and so there is no e in these sentences!
You might wonder: li starts the verb. But where is the verb? In English, the verb is ‘to be’. In Toki Pona, there is no verb ‘to be’. Instead, when filling the role of the verb in the sentence, words automatically include ‘to be’ in their meaning: soweli ‘to be an animal’, suli ‘to be important’.
Now that we’ve looked at one pronoun, let’s get some more:
I, we; my, our
you; your
she, he, it, they; her, his, its, their
Let’s practice using mi, sina, ona, and ni in sentences:
kasi ni li suli.
This plant is big.
sona sina li wawa.
Your knowledge is amazing.
pipi ni li pipi mi.
This bug is my bug.
waso sina li lukin e mi.
Your bird sees me.
waso li moku e pipi ni.
The bird eats this bug.
soweli mi li moku e kasi ona.
My animal eats its plant.
You should already be familiar with sentences like these! In most positions in the sentence, pronouns behave just like normal nouns and adjectives. But something strange happens when mi or sina is the subject of the sentence:
mi wawa.
I am strong.
sina lukin e moku.
You see food.
mi sona e kasi suli.
I know the big plant.
sina sona e suli kasi.
You know the plant's size.
Toki Pona has a special rule: when mi or sina is the subject of the sentence, we remove the li that would normally follow the subject. This is because sentences starting with mi or sina are extremely common!