Q: do I have to memorise language and country names?

(For convenience, let’s only use the Latin alphabet here. The lesson on names shows everything you need for sitelen pona!)

Do you need to memorise language and country names? Well… yes and no.

Names for languages and countries in Toki Pona are only approximations of their name in the relevant language. For example, ma tomo Towano is an approximation of how someone living in Toronto pronounces Toronto. But a British person visiting Toronto might call it ma tomo Tolonto, and that’s fine. The name isn’t set in stone.

But keep in mind that we want to use endonyms (local names) for things, because it’s the nice thing to do. But for many languages and countries, you might not always know the self-name. Here are a few examples:

• ma Sonko — zhōngguó — China
• ma Palata — bhārat — India
• toki Maja — magyar — Hungarian
• toki Sumi — suomi — Finnish
• toki Kipe — shqipe — Albanian

If you didn’t know about these endonyms before, it’s a good idea to remember them! You don’t need to memorise the Toki Pona version — ideally, you’ll be able to come up with it on the spot, just by remembering the endonym.

What if your conversation partner said the name of a language or a place, and you don’t know what it is? The easy way is to switch to English and ask for clarification. But this is no fun! It’s way more fun to explain a country in Toki Pona:

jan A: mi wile tawa ma Lowasi.
jan U: ma Lowasi? ona li seme?
jan A: ona li lon ma Elopa.
jan A: n…
jan U: jan Nikola Tesa li tan ma ni.
jan A: aaa. sona.