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over a year

2 mar 2024

i have been learning and speaking toki pona on and off for over a year. in this time, i’ve really solidified my understanding of all toki pona words and i find myself being able to translate long texts into toki pona without many struggles or errors.

many idiomatic meanings of certain phrases still go over my head, and when speaking toki pona to other jan pi toki pona, i find it very difficult to understand unless they speak very slow. i occasionally pop into the toki pona taso voice chat in the ma pona pi toki pona discord server, although i wish i did it more often.

i still find it pretty difficult to express myself in more complex topics and i also find it difficult to speak with toki pona speakers that are far more advanced than me. i have all three toki pona books, lipu pu, lipu ku, and lipu su.

i recently purchased lipu su and i find it very interesting and my understanding of sitelen pona is pretty good, and while i tend to get some of the logographs mixed up, it is kind of cool learning a foreign writing system, like a kind of secret language. i also have talked to some of my friends into toki pona, including one of my philosophy major friends, who thinks toki pona has a really interesting philosophy, and is making an effort to learn it.

i have written a few works in toki pona, including ko walo, a story about the history of salt and how to salt food correctly. i aspire to make a cookbook in toki pona, based on lipamanka’s toki pona cookbook manifesto, which is a really good resource for a philosophy surrounding a cookbook that is pona.

my survival kit for toki pona is:

- lipu Linku by kala Asi, it’s my go-to simple toki pona dictionary
- lipu lipamanka, my favorite one-stop shop resource directory for anything toki pona-related, especially the semantic space dictionary
- telo misikeke by jan Nikola, a toki pona grammar corrector that i use when writing original stories or translating things into toki pona
- the toki pona cefr analysis by jan Telakoman, good for assessing my listening, reading and speaking abilities in toki pona; as of now i think i am:
· a1 in listening, “understanding very basic phrases including myself, my family, and immediate concrete surroundings”
· a2 in reading, being able to “read very short simple texts, finding predictable information in simple everyday material”
· a1 in spoken interaction, being able to “interact in a very simple way provided the other person is prepared to repeat or rephrase things at a slower rate of speech and help me formulate what i am trying to say”
· a2 in spoken production, being able to “use a series of phrases and sentences to describe in simple terms my family and other people, living conditions, my educational background, and my present or most recent job”



(c) 2024 noelle rubalcava

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