lesson 13: elements
Okay, for this lesson, let’s take a break from grammar and instead get philosophical!
Since ancient times, people tried to find simpler stuff that all complex stuff consists of, or can be grouped into. The Chinese thought of wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. The Greeks — of fire, earth, air, and water. Some other systems also included heaven. Even today, as science answered many questions about the world, most things belong to one of ‘four states of matter’: gas, liquid, solid, plasma.
And of course, those elements, materials, states of matter don’t explain the entirely of our complex world. But they help us make sense of it. So let’s learn some Toki Pona words that are useful for describing them:
air, soul, essence, meaning
water, a thin liquid
a soft solid or thick liquid, like sand, clay, dough, glue
a hard solid, like stone, wood, metal
fire, hot, to burn
cold
sky; high, divine
Just like classical elements, Toki Pona words often feel broad, encompassing many ideas.
- sewi is not just ‘the above’, but also the reverence we have for something that’s always above us and always out of reach.
- kon is not just ‘gas’, it incorporates the idea of a meaningful soul as something you can’t see, as something related to breath.
- kiwen, ko, telo don’t tell you where the material came from, but they do describe how the material feels to the touch.
This course just shows you the basics of Toki Pona, so we list every word with a short translation. But the translation only hints at a rough outline of the semantic space of a word — the full range of situations where a word would make sense. Exploring that semantic space will mean exploring the situations! And that comes with time and practice.
Let’s learn to use these words in phrases and sentences:
the hard stuff of a plant, wood
cold fluff, snow
divine spirit
liquid that causes drunkenness, alcohol
lete li awen e moku.
Coldness preserves the food.
seli li moku e kiwen kasi.
The fire consumed the wood.
telo li kama tan sewi.
Water is falling from the sky.
(It's raining.)
o kama sona e kon toki!
Learn the meaning of the speech!