Re: The Ultimate Test for Toki Pona
Postby frpeterjackson » Sat Aug 14, 2004 9:12 am
--- In tokipona@yahoogroups.com, Philip Newton <philip.newton@g...>
wrote:
> On Fri, 13 Aug 2004 22:28:22 -0700, Jonathon Blake
> <jonathon.blake@g...> wrote:
> > An Office Suite, or other software, that has _everything_ in Toki
> > Pona. Help files, documentation, skin,etc.
>
> Um. I don't think that would be usable.
>
> Documenting things require that you be precise. Toki Pona is not
about
> being precise. It's about "the simple things of life".
>
> Being vague is built into the language - "pona" means "good" as
well
> as "simple", for example, and that's (to me) just one example of
what
> makes it very easy to utter vague platitudes such as "ale li pona"
but
> hard to differentiate precise shades of meaning.
>
> I believe that it may be possible by connecting enough words
together
> to shrink the range of possible meanings to what you want to
specify,
> but that would make things so verbose that you would have to read
very
> much text, which may not even fit into the screen layout of the
office
> software.
>
> How would you say "file", for example? "ijo pi awen ijo" - "thing
for
> keeping things"?
>
> So basically, I think you'd either have to be vague or be verbose.
(Or
> use tons of foreign words, which kind of undermines the spirit of
Toki
> Pona.)
>
> Cheers,
> --
> Philip Newton <philip.newton@g...>
One of the joys of Toki Pona is finding ways to say things in just a
few words, and sometimes it's surprising how few words it takes. I
know that the idea behind TP was to make it all but impossible to
express subtleties, but I keep finding that TP is capable of more
than we usually credit it with.
toki pona li ken toki e nimi pi toki Inli kepeken nimi mute lili
lili. ni li pana e pilin pona tawa mi. tenpo mute la jan li ken
kepeken e nimi tu anu tu wan taso. jan li pali e toki pona tawa ni:
jan pi toki pona li ken ala toki e ijo pi pilin suli. taso mi kama
jo e ni: toki pona li ken pali e mute. jan mute li pilin e ni: toki
pona li ken pali e lili taso.
BTW, "file" can be simply "kulupu lipu".
jan Pita
