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Toki Pona

Toki Pona is an oligosynthetic constructed language, first published as draft on the web in 2001 and then as a complete book and e-book Toki Pona: The Language of Good in 2014. It was designed by translator and linguist Sonja Lang (formerly Sonja Elen Kisa) of Toronto. Toki Pona is a minimal language. Like a pidgin, it focuses on simple concepts and elements that are relatively universal among cultures. Lang designed Toki Pona to express maximal meaning with minimal complexity. The language has 14 phonemes and approximately 120 root words. It is not designed as an international auxiliary language but is instead inspired by Taoist philosophy, among other things. The language is designed to shape the thought processes of its users, in the style of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, in Zen-like fashion.

Writing system

Pronunciation chart Lang officially uses letters of the Latin alphabet to represent the language, with the values they represent in the IPA: p, t, k, s, m, n, l, j, w, a, e, i, o, and u.[citation needed] (That is, j sounds like English y, and the vowels are like those of Spanish or Italian.) Later other writing systems were introduced, such as hieroglyphs and a sign language.

Capital letters are only used for personal and place names (see below), not for the first word of a sentence. That is, they mark foreign words, never the 120 Toki Pona roots.