Q: how did community perception of new words change over time?
⚠ I’m currently discussing this page with proofreaders, so please be aware some statements I make may not be polished, and might need further context! ⚠
different perspectives
In 2001-2017, Toki Pona was mostly seen through the lens of authorial intent. The way jan Sonja speaks was seen as canonical, and if other people speak differently, it’s a bit like a fan interpretation. You see occasional proposals for new words from the community, but they never gain traction.
In 2017-2020, a Discord community of speakers starts growing, and people begin to experiment — both with words from older drafts by jan Sonja that were still in use, like monsuta, and with entirely new words, like tonsi. This reached a peak in 2020-2022, where new word proposals were seen almost every week. Toki Pona was seen as a language to experiment with.
From 2022 onwards, community attention slowly moved on from coining new words. Toki Pona was increasingly seen as a living language, where common patterns of speech have already formed and settled. Newcomers are recommended to focus on learning how people already speak of complicated ideas, instead of coming up with new, incompatible solutions.
kijetesantakalu
raccoon; raccoon-like animal, like a cacomistle, red panda, kinkajou (75%)
jan Sonja coined kijetesantakalu on April Fools 2009. kijetesantakalu is long and very specific, which contrasts nicely how genuine Toki Pona words are shorter and more broad.
For a long time, it was just a joke in passing. The experimentation wave of 2017-2020 brought it back, gave it a glyph, and through that, made it a beloved mascot.
Today, despite it originally being a joke, it appears in the living language almost like a normal word.
yupekosi
to behave like George Lucas and revise your old creative works and actually make them worse (13%)
yupekosi was created by jan Sonja in 2019, in a then-rare visit to ma pona. It subverts the idea of authorial intent: look, the creator can still make something that doesn’t suit the language! The joke is similar to kijetesantakalu: it’s long and hyper-specific.
Pingo
car (0-5%)
In yupekosi, jan Sonja accidentally used y for j, which spawned a new genre of joke words: breaking orthographic and phonetic convention. Pingo appears almost tame compared to kijetesantakalu: it’s short, and could easily become broad in meaning. But no, that’s still a joke! It’s capitalised for no reason, and it uses g for no reason.
People kept one-upping their “new rule-breaking words”, such as ‘poak23087[i23ej&(^$!(#!@&$_(HEQq0j’ by kili pan Juli, also meaning ‘car’.
alente
the set of concepts expressed by established toki pona words, subtracted from the set of every possible concept, such that every concept not already expressed by an existing toki pona word is expressed (0-5%)
Translating the overly-mathsy ‘definition’: alente is trying to say that no matter what new word you create, alente already includes its meaning. It represents a reaction to too much experimentation and absurdity. And indeed, by the time it was created in 2022, most of the interesting ideas for new words had been sufficiently explored. Usage was stabilising, and the community slowly moved towards the living language concept.
conclusion?
Sorry if this felt more like a weird rant than an explanation! Wrapping up:
Toki Pona has a complicated relationship with creating new words:
- Due to respect for authorial intent, almost all words we use originally came from jan Sonja, with very few exceptions like tonsi, n, soko.
- Due to experimentation, we have a vast array of previously explored ideas, which someone tried turning into a word.
- Due to slowly becoming a living language, most of the newer ideas are very unlikely to affect people’s speech, as they try to solve problems that already have solutions, or don’t need solutions.