lesson 28: moo!

Just one more important word to learn, before we get to the silly part!

󱥨 taso can be a normal adjective meaning “only”, but it can also be put at the beginning of a sentence to mean “but”.

The silly!

󱦆 n is just 󱤀 a, but nasally:

󱤹 mu is the kind of sound an animal makes! Which animal? Well, any of them:

People often use 󱤹 mu for silly reasons, but it has got genuine uses too. If 󱤕 kalama is a description of a sound, then 󱤹 mu is an imitation of a sound:

More words?

We have looked over all the words you need to speak the language. But people use slightly more words than that. Why? Because words aren’t always about the most efficient design. They are also about having fun. And perhaps no word encapsulates having fun more than this one:

It’s so long! And so specific! This is because it was created by jan Sonja for the 2009 April fools. But people remembered it many years later, and loved it! It has become a bit of a mascot.

These two words also require a history note:

These words refer specifically to books made by jan Sonja, the creator of Toki Pona. They are good books! Why do they have specialised words? Probably because it’s funny. And also, we love to talk about what’s in the books, and what’s not in the books — so these words come in handy.

If you join a Toki Pona community, you will almost certainly see more words. When you do, think of them as cultural artefacts. They exist not to make the language work — you’ve seen all about how it works now! — but rather to experiment, to have fun, to be creative, to make in-jokes.

You might not know the word 󱦅 lanpan, but you can see the translation, and you know enough by now to think of a suitable replacement in common words (󱤖󱤓 kama jo)! It’s much the same for other words you might see in the wild.

See also

• Q: what is jan Sonja up to these days?
• Q: what other, uncommon words might I encounter?
• funny video: animal sounds are all 󱤹 mu