Wasona

lesson 12: requests

Requests

In Toki Pona, a sentence with 󱤧 li is a statement of fact. But sometimes instead of making statements of fact, we want to make requests. Requests are how we tell other people what we want to happen. In a request, instead of 󱤧 li, we use 󱥄 o:

󱥄
o
starts a request, command, instruction, wish
󱤎󱤧󱥠󱤉󱥑
ilo li sitelen e pipi.
The phone is showing a bug.
󱤎󱥄󱥠󱤉󱥴
ilo o sitelen e waso!
Oh phone, please show a bird!

Let’s let’s look at a few more commands:

󱤑󱥄󱤮󱤉󱤪󱥔
jan o lukin e lipu pona!
People, please read the good paper!
󱥢󱤴󱥄󱤶󱥔
soweli mi o moku pona!
My cat, please eat well!
󱤑󱤨󱥞󱥄󱤖󱥵
jan lili sina o kama wawa!
May your child become strong!
󱥔󱥄󱥩󱥞
pona o tawa sina!
May goodness go to you! (Blessings be upon you!)

You might notice that some of these sentences separate quite nicely in two parts:

  • The call for someone’s attention (before 󱥄 o)
  • The request itself (after 󱥄 o)

We can use those separately:

󱤑󱦐󱤉󱤶󱤂󱦑󱥄󱥐󱤉󱤯󱥭
jan Ema o pini e lupa tomo!
Emma, please close the door!
󱤑󱦐󱤉󱤶󱤂󱦑󱥄
jan Ema o!
Hey, Emma!
󱥄󱥐󱤉󱤯󱥭
o pini e lupa tomo!
Please close the door!

Translate the sentence

Emma, try to sleep!