Anarchocyclist

On the weekend i came across a site about a language called Toki Pona. It’s a created language (like esperanto), except that it focuses on simplicity. The official word list is only 118 words, so there’s a lot of flexibility in meaning. Most words can be used as a noun, a verb, and an adjective. Out of necessity, you say more complex things by combining those 118 words.

I’m starting to learn Toki Pona now, because i think it’ll be both fun and useful. I like the idea of languages that can bridge communication gaps (like Esperanto), but it’s tough if the language takes some significant time to learn. I think Toki Pona avoids this by being so simple. Of course, you lose some linguistic power, but if you really want to be super-expressive then you should learn another real language anyway (IMHO).

Another reason that i’m keen about learning this language is the possibility of having a private communication method between me and my friends when we’re in a public place. Since the language is learnable in a week or two, it seems like i might be able to convince some of my friends to learn it. Something like this would have been really handy for me and my roommates while we were viewing houses and talking with lawyers and real-estate agents. Instead of waiting for time to chat privately amongst ourselves, we could have done it openly whenever we wanted had we all known another language and been pretty sure that our opponent didn’t.

Right now i’m learning Toki Pona at a decent speed by reading the Online Lessons and chatting in the #tokipona channel on irc.freenode.net. i met a ubc student on there who’s pretty fluent in it, so i might get together with him some time and attempt a conversation. if anyone else is thinking of taking a shot at this, let me know. i’ll be happy to practice. or just come to the irc channel and i’ll be there too. I think i’ll be able to learn it in about the same time it took to learn to type with a Dvorak keyboard, so it’s not that much of a time investment….and that’s for learning it well…it’ll still be useful if several of us can speak it half-assed.

Ride hard, ride free

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 22nd, 2004 at 13:09 pm and is filed under Front Page, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.