Q: what other Toki Pona courses are there?

Learning resources for Toki Pona are abundant. You can certainly learn Toki Pona using some of those instead! I’d like to share the ones I think are good, what I particularly particularly like about them, and what I’ve tried to improve upon.

lipu pu by jan Sonja

lipu pu, also known as ‘Toki Pona: The Language of Good’, is the Official Toki Pona book. The first English edition came out in 2014, with a free update in 2021. It’s been translated to German, French, Esperanto, and Persian. A second English edition is expected some day soon. From what I know about the second edition, it is certainly going to be a wonderful teaching tool, and it explains many difficult areas! If you can afford it, go for it!

Alongside the official book, Toki Pona has had a long tradition of free online courses written by the community, and Wasona continues that tradition.

lipu sona pona by jan Lentan

lipu sona pona is a course written in 2020–2022. Compared to online courses before it, lipu sona pona has made great strides to show Toki Pona as it’s used today! It’s been translated to German, Spanish, Esperanto, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Chinese.

Compared to lipu sona pona, I’ve tried to focus less on variation among speakers, which was very interesting in 2020 (as the language was really coming into its own), but not too important for a first time learner today. I’ve tried to include a lot more sitelen pona, which hadn’t yet come into the spotlight in 2020, and so was relegated to an additional content page.

lipu sona by soweli Lote

lipu sona is a course written in 2022–2024. It’s been translated to French, Italian, Japanese, and Norwegian. It’s quite concise, and has sitelen pona throughout.

Compared to lipu sona, I’ve tried to avoid more jargon, like ‘modifier’ and ‘predicate’, and using colours for grouping together parts of a translation, which, while informative, can be tiring for the eye.

Learn Toki Pona! by mun Kekan San

Learn Toki Pona! is a course started in 2022, and continues to be refined today. It’s available both as a text course and as a video series. It puts sitelen pona in the spotlight, forcing you to memorise it more thoroughly. It goes quite in depth on many topics, and example sentences are non-trivial and make you think.

Compared to Learn Toki Pona!, I’m trying to keep lessons shorter, more focused, so that the learner doesn’t get lost or overwhelmed, which makes Wasona feel more similar to traditional courses than to Learn Toki Pona!. I’ve kept some other ideas, though, like the prominent role of sitelen pona, and showcasing dialogue.

o pilin e toki pona by jan Telakoman

o pilin e toki pona is a video course from 2023. Unlike others on this list, it teaches you purely via comprehensible input — a method of learning through exposure, without grammar explanations in your other language. I’ve personally not watched it, so I can’t say much more about it! I know some people have watched it and liked it.

Other resources

sona pona, the wiki about Toki Pona, curates its own list of recommended learning resources, complete with introductory videos, dictionaries, flashcards, and more. Most communities also have recommendations ready if you want to ask!