lesson 26: love and identity
You’ve already seen that … li pona tawa mi is a common way to say ‘i like …’. And, of course, we can say pona mute to talk about really liking someone. But that’s not the same as loving someone! So let’s look at words for love, and what to call people you love:
to love
to have sex
parent
man, masculine person, husband; male
woman, feminine person, wife; female
non-binary, gender-nonconforming; trans
Many language courses start with words for “man, woman, girl, boy, mother, father” and so on. In Toki Pona, gender is not so important. You won’t see mije, meli, tonsi in every sentence. They mostly come up when talking about social expectations about gender, and relationships in particular.
mi olin e mije mi.
I love my boyfriend.
mama o!
Mom! (or) Dad!
mi olin e meli.
I'm into girls.
tonsi mostly means non-binary, but when used as an adjective it can talk about transness more broadly:
ona li tonsi.
They are non-binary.
mi tonsi e sijelo mi kepeken misikeke.
I medically transition.
multiple subjects
We’ve already seen how ‘e … e …’ can be used to introduce several objects to the sentence, and how ‘li … li …’ can be used to introduce several verbs. But we can’t just put two subjects next to each other, because you wouldn’t know where one subject ends and another begins. To solve this problem, we use a new particle in between:
joins subjects
mi en ona li toki.
Me and her are chatting.
soweli en waso li utala.
The animal and the bird are fighting.
meli en mije li unpa.
The woman and the man have sex.