Talk:Toki Pona

tokipona.net http vs. https

About two months ago, I made an edit moving two of the external links, the Toki Pona Dictionary and Bryant Knight (jan Pije)'s lessons to an internet archive, as they were replaced with a resumé site. Both of these resources were located at tokipona.net. Now, they have been restored, but only at the http: address. The https: address, however, still points to 404s on the resumé site.

As there are some extensions which automatically point to the https: domain by default, and some people care about the difference, I am not sure if these should be restored as they were previously. May I please have some advice?

Uncle Opyright (talk) 05:35, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Serious sourcing issues

I think this article has some serious sourcing issues. I've made a post here Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Toki Pona detailing a few that I do not think qualify as WP:RELIABLE, and probably violate WP:OR, WP:PRIMARY, and probably a number of other policies. Heiro 20:44, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

I do not know how much you guys know about toki pona. While wikipedia recommends secondary sources, it doesn't explicitly ban primary sources, for places like these. Toki Pona is a very small community and therefore you won't expect news coverage or articles made for toki pona, and especially not for writing systems that are more niche. Primary sources should be considered in cases like these Bali (talk) 10:26, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

You can see this point being made in the earlier section of this very talk page Talk:Toki_Pona#Notability. You can not expect there to be serious secondary sources in areas like these. Context matters. Bali (talk) 12:51, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Bali, you admit being the same "Dev Bali" who (in your own words) "compiled earlier attempts to create one Sitelen Emoji" and "made an android keyboard that makes using the script like pinyin for Toki Pona". You have a clear conflict of interest (COI) regarding Sitelen Emoji and Toki Pona.

Editors with a conflict of interest may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. Plase obey the following rules.ou:

• avoid editing or creating articles about Sitelen Emoji and Toki Pona;
• propose changes on the talk pages of affected articles (you can use the {{request edit}} template);
• disclose your conflict of interest when discussing affected articles (see Wikipedia:Conflict of interest#How to disclose a COI);
• avoid linking to your Sitelen Emoji website;
• do your best to comply with Wikipedia's content policies.

--Guy Macon (talk) 15:10, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

User:Guy Macon You do realize that you can write a COI disclaimer right? You feel this is a COI, I dont. You can write a COI disclaimer. I literally said that to you an hour ago and you went ahead and reverted my edit. Anyways though, since I am so tired of this, I will add a quite silly disclaimer on this talk page. Bali (talk) 18:08, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Devbali02 has been blocked from editing this page, nothing more to do here. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:20, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

"Sitelen Emoji" aka "sitelen pilin"

Today JanTelakoman added the script "Sitelen Emoji" aka "sitelen pilin" to the article. I reverted their edits and gave the following summary: "This is like saying that the Deseret alphabet and the Shavian alphabet are English writing systems just because they were invented to write English and are used by a few enthusiasts." Then JanTelakoman re-reverted me and commented : "I don't see why this is any less relevant than the part about writing systems developed by individuals. I also added a reference."

Two things: 1) We had that before and decided not to keep Sitelen Emoji. 2) Sitelen Emoji is not on the same level as sitelen pona and sitelen sitelen. The latter two are "official" writing systems presented in the language inventor's handbook Toki Pona. The Language of Good. (2014:104–110, 72–78) while Sitelen Emoji is nothing but one of many inofficial scripts that are rarely used and which include sitelen sike, sitelen linja wan, linja pi kute mute, Henrik Theiling's Toki Pona Script, and others. It seems there is no evidence for their encyclopedic relevance and no objective criterion which script(s) to present in this article. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 18:37, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Hello everyone, firstly thank you to LiliCharlie for the wikilove. I appreciate you not re-re-reverting, and giving me a chance to reply. I'd like to make a case for my edit and then everybody else can weigh in as they see fit.

As to LiliCharlie's point 1, "We had that before and decided not to keep Sitelen Emoji", I wasn't around so I don't really know what the conversation was about. Looking at what's on the talk page now, it seems there was a dispute about conflict of interest concerning the person who posted about Sitelen Emoji. I don't see how that relates to my post.

With point 2, I agree with LiliCharlie that "Sitelen Emoji is not on the same level as sitelen pona and sitelen sitelen" but it doesn't follow that Sitelen Emoji deserves no mention at at all. I agree it is difficult to find "an objective criterion", but this is not a completely random page, there is a consistency, and where there is consistency some principles can be inferred.

I think we need to separate the questions here: Question 1 is "Should Sitelen Emoji be represented on this page at all?" and Question 2 is "How should Sitelen Emoji be represented on this page?"

Let's look at Question 1 first.

For sure it is a fact that Sitelen Emoji is an unofficial writing system. However, does this mean that Sitelen Emoji should not be mentioned on the Toki Pona page at all? Surely not.

Based on the current state of the Toki Pona page, its scope of relevance clearly extends to the community that has built up around it. For example, take the leading statement of the Vocabulary section: "Toki Pona is generally said to have around 120, 123, or 125 root words." Toki Pona is more than Sonja Lang's book. The statement that "individuals from the community have adapted many other scripts to write Toki Pona" is included in this page, and as far as I am aware so far nobody is challenging its relevance.

But I think that Sitelen Emoji is more relevant than scripts adapted by individuals, for two reasons.

Firstly, it is not a one-person project. As the Omniglot page that I cite says, the emojis are chosen using "a democratic system". The Sitelen Emoji subreddit that the Omniglot page links to currently has 57 members.

Secondly, Sitelen Emoji is not a "rarely used" script. As the Omniglot page that I cite says, Sitelen Emoji is "one of the most used non latin systems to write toki pona."

Thirdly, with the rising cultural influence of emojis in written language, the fact that members of the community can communicate in Toki Pona using only emojis is surely relevant and interesting.

But now we come to Question 2.

I added Sitelen Emoji in two locations. I added a short paragraph after the paragraphs about the writing systems in Sonja Lang's book, because it is an unofficial script and is subordinate to these "official" scripts. On the other hand, I added this paragraph before the mention of scripts adapted by individuals, because it is a community project and therefore more significant than these projects by individuals.

I also added it to the list of scripts in the infobox. Although it is not "official", it is a community project and not a personal project. Therefore I think it merits this status.

Thanks again JanTelakoman (talk) 16:07, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Something technical to begin with: About a month ago I was involved in the discussion commons:Commons:Deletion requests/File:Sitelen Emoji Rendered on Apple.jpg. I expect this graphic and the other one in commons:Category:Toki Pona in sitelen Emoji to be deleted sooner or later, so in case we want to illustrate Sitelen Emoji we should do so in plain text or using graphics that are based on freely downloadable Emojis with a suitable licence.

At this point I am inclined to mention that —unlike other conlangs— Toki Pona has inspired many speakers to invent original writing systems for the language. I think that we could mention (at least) Sitelen Emoji and the ones I enumerated above, and link to them in a footnote. The adaptation of existing scripts such as Hangul and Tengwar is already mentioned in the article. I am less sure Sitelen Emoji's culture-dependent "democratically chosen" aspect should be mentioned (also, this is not the way Swiss-style direct democracy works), or that it is "one of the most used non-Latin systems" (I like Simon Ager and follow his blog, but are there any statisics this is based on?).

Finally I propose we create an Encoding modalities section (or whatever we choose to call it) with the current sections Writing systems and Signed Toki Pona as subsections. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 17:25, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

I see that LesVisages has removed the reference to Sitelen Emoji in the text of the article but not in the infobox, so some edit either way is necessary for consistency. Maybe now is a good time to implement what you suggested LiliCharlie? JanTelakoman (talk) 15:22, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Unless you can provide sources to back up that information and prove it's noteworthy, it shouldn't be included. Omniglot is a questionable source because one guy runs the website, you can email him, and he'll add your script if he thinks it looks nice. Also, 57 (if that number is even an accurate representation of people who use it) is only a small minority in the community of thousands. LesVisages (talk) 18:10, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Hi there LesVisages, thanks for engaging! I see that you were the one who questioned Omniglot as a source, yesterday. As you yourself note, Omniglot is cited by a number of pages. In fact, the Toki Pona page still cites Omniglot even after your edit! But for some reason you've decided to single out the mention of Sitelen Emoji for deletion. I'm not sure I understand the pattern here. JanTelakoman (talk) 19:59, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

That's why I was also adding citations. I wanted to back up information that was only sourced by Omniglot so that if the community decides Omniglot isn't such a reliable source, the information will still be sourced by something else. The emoji system does not have any other valid sources, and I think it shouldn't be mentioned until there is a reliable source that gives it a reason to be included. LesVisages (talk) 22:12, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Omniglot is a great site and I'm really fond of it, but LesVisages is right: it's run by one person, and as you can see here, it's a lovely but rather indiscriminate collection of constructed scripts. Omniglot is quite accurate and can certainly be used as a source, just remember that it does NOT indicate notability. By the way, the phrase "one of the most used non latin systems to write toki pona" doesn't really amount to anything. I would probably be right if I wrote that Cyrillic is one of the most used non-Latin systems to write Polish, but that doesn't mean that there are more than three people who actually use it. See what I mean?

This whole discussion also touches another problem with this article, namely, that it reads very much like a collection of inside information that partisans of the language want the world to learn about, and references appear to have been chosen as a means to add credibility rather than as genuine sources. Ideally, an article should be written from the point of view of an independent researcher and not be influenced by anyone's wishes or preferences. Especially now that the article has gained Good Article status, it's important to keep it clean. Initiatives of individual members are relevant only if there's significant coverage in authoritative sources. In my opinion, it's worth mentioning that Toki Pona has inspired several of its users to adapt or invent writing systems for the language, and there's nothing wrong with a reference to Omniglot here. But there's no point in naming these individual projects, unless they're "official" (same thing goes for Hangul etc.).

Speaking about sources, I've mentioned this before, but the article is still heavily overreferenced: it's really not necessary to add one or two footnotes after every sentence. Besides, 29 references to a single article of five pages is clearly overkill. Furthermore, I noticed another strange thing: that neither of two main resources (Sonja's book and the official website) appear in the references section. Why is that? Cheers, —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 23:36, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

I went and fixed up the sources more. They've been a bit of a mess for a while and fixing it all takes work. I think the book and website weren't referenced to try to avoid relying too heavily on primary sources, but I think at this point there is a good amount of tertiary sources, so that shouldn't be an issue. LesVisages (talk) 02:49, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

On the face of it, your objections about Omniglot as a reliable source seem to have some basis. Nevertheless, here are the facts about what happened here:

1. Until last week, nobody was questioning Omniglot as a reliable source. The current Wikipedia consensus is that Omniglot is a reliable source.
2. I added a reference to Sitelen Emoji citing Omniglot as a source on June 30.
3. On July 6 LesVisages wrote a a post on the Reliable Sources noticeboard questioning the validity of Omniglot
4. On the same day LesVisages, despite having mentioned many pages that cite Omniglot in their post, chose to edit only one of those pages: the Toki Pona page. On that page, they deleted only the information about Sitelen Emoji that cites Omniglot. They did not delete any other information that cites only Omniglot
5. When they made this edit, they did not write anything here on the talk page, despite this discussion being on-going.
6. When called out on it, they made the bald statement that Omniglot is not a reliable source without providing any sources and omitting the fact that they were the source of this dispute.

Now don't you think that looks fishy, to start a dispute about a long-established source and pretend that said dispute has been settled in your favor simply to justify deleting a new reference to one specfic thing?

Omniglot may or may not turn out to be a reliable source, in fact I also suspect that the consensus may well come down against it, as you both say. But IJzeren Jan, I don't think anybody's going to take away the Toki Pona page's Good Article status because of citing a established source that one person contested a few days ago.

I think the ethical and professional thing to do would be to treat Omniglot as a reliable source and treat all information that cites it equally until the dispute is resolved. Edit: I mistakenly mentioned LiliCharlie, I corrected it as IJzeren Jan JanTelakoman (talk) 07:00, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't notice this discussion was open until I was mentioned which was after I made the first edit.

People probably haven't noticed that Omniglot is questionable because it presents decent information in a lot of parts of the site. The really questionable aspect of it is the conscript sections. I made the post in the noticeboard to draw other people's attention that this source that's used a lot (and often as one of the only sources for information) needs to really be reviewed to make sure the information being presented on it is accurate and noteworthy. If I could've looked through every page that cites it and back up the information I would have but I can't do that. I don't have the understanding in all of those subjects and I don't have the time to look for more sources to support it. That's why I mentioned it in the noticeboard. LesVisages (talk) 15:07, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

@JanTelakoman: First of all, it's absolutely not true that nobody is questing Omniglot.com as a reliable source, see for example this discussion. But apart from that, you don't seem to have understood my point. Omniglot.com has a really nice collection of conscripts, but since it's a rather indiscriminate collection, it doesn't make a subject notable. In other words, the fact that something is mentioned at Omniglot.com cannot be treated as a ticket to mentioning it here. It would be a different story if the Toki Pona page mentioned this emoji script as one of its official orthographies, or if some independent researcher wrote that it's used by many people, but since neither seems to be the case, I really can't see how mentioning it in this article is warranted. —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 17:42, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

@IJzeren Jan: Thank you for bringing my attention to that page, I wasn't aware of it.

I understand your point completely, as I have alluded to several times. Everybody seems to be insistently ignoring _my_ point which is that Omniglot's validity as a source was never flagged in the context of this page until the day that I cited it in a mention of Sitelen Emoji. There were mentions of scripts used by individuals on this page, of much less notability than Sitelen Emoji (a community project), that only became a problem after I mentioned Sitelen Emoji. The issues raised by yourself, LiliCharlie and LesVisages have some validity in and of themselves. I have conceded this point time and time again. But it is clear that these issues have been artificially raised or emphasised for the sole purpose of creating a rationale to keep Sitelen Emoji off of this page.

I don't have any secondary sources other than Omniglot for you, so I'm not sure this would win in arbitration and I'm not going to waste my energy contesting this any further. Now, I understand where the bias comes from because of the previous back-and-forth with Sitelen Emoji's original creator. But make no mistake, this is a clear case of bias that any impartial observer would immediately recognize. There _is_ an active subcommunity growing around Sitelen Emoji. The proof of this will be if other secondary sources arise in the future. When that day comes, all I ask is that you all play fair. I'm happy to leave it at that JanTelakoman (talk) 18:56, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

I find the exclusion of the script sitelen Emoji/sitelen pilin from this page bemusing at best and frustrating at worst. As was mentioned by JanTelakoman, the question of Omniglot appears misrepresented. It is certainly not a scholarly source from peer-reviewed publishing; at the same time, it is a popular and frequently cited resource by commenters on conlangs and by the conlanging community. LiliCharlie mentions a lack of "encyclopedic relevance" for the sitelen Emoji script, despite the fact, for better or for worse, that Omniglot is the best approximate to an encyclopedia on constructed language scripts at this time. Moreover, if there is legitimate concern as to its presence for citations in this article, it is curious that Omniglot is still listed in Toki Pona's reference list (albeit as a citation for a poem translation.) I find comparisons to other Toki Pona scripts created by its community an unfair comparison as well. Some mentioned earlier, like sitelen sike and linja pi kute mute, are one-off creations made for amusement, viewing, and then placement on the back-burner. To my knowledge, no one uses these scripts to create Toki Pona content or to communicate regularly. On the other hand, sitelen Emoji, like sitelen pona and sitelen sitelen, has a community of both writers and readers that converse in it frequently and consistently. sitelen Emoji also has a dedicated subreddit and Discord server, something that, as far as I know, no other Toki Pona script has. The existence of available software available for download that allows one to write in sitelen Emoji on a variety of platforms, in addition to sitelen Emoji text-converter applications being offered both on the Apple AppStore and GooglePlay, lends credence to the idea that it is far beyond a "fringe" script not worthy of mention in this Wikipedia article.

Additionally, calling sitelen sitelen an "official" Toki Pona script is incorrect. There is only one "official" non-Latinized script for writing Toki Pona, which is sitelen pona. It is true that sitelen sitelen is mentioned in Sonja Lang's book on Toki Pona; however, it is mentioned only in passing and is in no way given a full description comparable to the description given to sitelen pona. sitelen sitelen is simply an unofficial script created by Jonathan Gabel (also known as jan Josan) in late-2009. A popular script, yes, but still an unofficial one. One can see the first mentions of sitelen sitelen (formerly called sitelen suwi) here and here. sitelen sitelen is also not the only other script mentioned by Sonja Lang in her book—she also discusses ways of writing Toki Pona using modified Arabic and Japanese scripts. Which is to say, if the standard for this page is that only "official" scripts are mentioned, and the standard for "official" scripts is any script mentioned in Sonja's book, then we fail our own arbitrary standard.

A comparison between referencing sitelen Emoji and calling the Shavian alphabet an English script is, in my opinion, also an unfair comparison. Toki Pona is a constructed language and thus can be expected to have and be written with constructed scripts. Unlike an obscure English spelling reform posted on a random blog being listed as an English writing system, sitelen Emoji is democratically chosen and has multiple communities that use it, as mentioned above. It is also very concerning that during these discussions about sitelen Emoji that the Tengwar and Hangul scripts were mentioned as proof that there is room for alternative scripts to be listed, only to see themselves removed from this article in a purge of all "unofficial" scripts.

There should be a long conversation about the importance of how one uses primary sources and the context in which they are permissible, especially considering that articles about constructed languages will not have a high number of secondary sources published either in print media or academic journals. Primary sources about Toki Pona serve many important function in this article in that they show first-hand information from people knowledgable about Toki Pona. They are not mere propaganda coming from "partisans of the language."

All this is to say—what are the harms in listing sitelen Emoji on this Wikipedia page? It exists, has multiple communities that use it, and is certainly relevant to information on and about Toki Pona. I hope that we can avoid a false dilemma here of either having significant coverage of this script and removing any and all reference to it. There is a blurb in the "Writing Systems" section that briefly mentions "many other scripts" one can write Toki Pona with. I do not believe any damage is done in briefly listing some of these scripts, including sitelen Emoji and Tengwar. This only adds to the article; it does not take away. All the best. I know we all want this article to be excellent. I hope we can arrive at a fair and just consensus as to what that excellence aspires to be.

User:Vanished user 5747731753 02:50, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Why was my Tokiponido paragraph removed?

The title says it all. Some „anonymous user“ removed it again without an explanation. ArgonBebek (talk) 10:34, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Number of words

123 is no longer correct. In The Toki Pona Dictionary there are 137 nimi ku suli and 181 nimi ku. Crockett623 (talk) 21:14, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

@Crockett623: Go ahead and make the changes with the dictionary as a source. Be bold. SchreiberBike | ⌨  01:43, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

The problem is, I don't know how many of those are root words. And I don't have the dictionary on hand to check. Crockett623 (talk) 08:31, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

I've got a copy. Can get to it in a bit if no one beats me to it. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 21:03, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Okay, I've made the change, sourced to pp. 22-23 and the back cover. @Crockett623: I couldn't find any source for the grand total of 181. Where do you see that? For now I've just said "a number of less-used words". Which might be better wording long-term anyways, since the nimi ku pi suli ala are not necessarily going to have the same usage levels in a few years. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 21:36, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

@Tamzin: I got the 181 from the jan misali video on the topic Crockett623 (talk) 22:24, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

While jan Misali is a very influential tokiponist, I'm not sure he counts as a reliable source for our purposes. (The Toki Pona Dictionary is a reliable source for statements about the language per WP:ABOUTSELF.) I suppose I could go through the dictionary and count (as I did for the tally of new nimi ku suli), but giving an explicit total could wrongly imply that that number is more important or set-in-stone than it actually is. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 01:23, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Noting that an IP user recently changed the non-footnoted text to "120 to 137". I reverted that with summary revert addition of "120 to" before "137". multiple editors opined on talk that it should just say 137, and I stressed "essential words" to avoid the ambiguity of how many "real" words are there, since "essential" is a word used only in establishing the 137. the note clarifies further details. feel free to discuss further on talk. I was going to notify the user in question, but they appear to be on a very fast-changing dynamic IP, so there's no point. Instead, I'm noting it here, in case anyone agrees with them and would like to make the case. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 05:25, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Toki Pona The Language of Good.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 12:23, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Sitelen sitelen contract.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 15:38, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

nimi ku pi suli ala

aren't they more commonly referred as "nimi ku lili"? i've only seen it used that way Paper2222 (talk) 17:42, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

As far as I know, nimi ku pi suli ala is the only term found in citable literature, namely Lang (2021:23). Established usage may change over time, but that still requires a reliable source rather than personal observation. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 18:03, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

I edited the wording a bit to be more factual and less confusing to people who are used to the "nimi ku lili" term. From "words called nimi ku pi suli ala" I changed it to "words which Lang called nimi ku pi suli ala in her book". Spenĉjo (talk) 13:40, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

i've kama sona'd a bit more knowledge about toki pona, and now i oppose in using "nimi ku lili" Paper2222 (talk) 07:17, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

"Stylised"

Is it appropriate to call "toki pona" a stylization, when Toki Pona orthography does not use capital letters except as part of names? It seems more appropriate to say that it's how the name is written in Latin characters in the language.Ithinkiplaygames (talk) 17:52, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

I agree with you. This from Oxford dictionary blog "Incidentally, toki pona itself translates as ‘talk good’ – and pona also means ‘simple’. In Lang’s philosophy, simplicity and goodness are one and the same." suggests to me that toki pona isn't a stylisation of Toki Pona. Looking at Romanization_of_Japanese it doesn't say that it is stylised as romanji but that it is 'sometimes referred to in Japanese as rōmaji ' so maybe we could say 'refered to as toki pona in the language' or similar wording which is a little less clunky. Vanteloop (talk) 18:53, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Maybe "Toki Pona (rendered toki pona when writing in the language," with an explanatory footnote regarding that capitals are used for proper names only? Ithinkiplaygames (talk) 21:52, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Looks good to me. I say be bold and make the change. Vanteloop (talk) 00:08, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

References

Sonja Lang Article

I am new to editing and wanted to ask. A very short article for Sonja Lang exists in Spanish and has some basic information about her that the English Toki Pona one doesn't have.

Should an English Sonja Lang article be made or should that information be included in the Toki Pona one? (I have a direct translation of the Spanish one as a personal draft)

Also, please correct me about wikipedia etiquette if there's something I should know. Diegox6 (talk) 14:16, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Sonja Lang re-redirected

@Tagishsimon, SusunW, Tamzin, EpicPupper, Nintendofan885, QoopyQoopy, and Vanished user 5747731753:

I have pinged the editors at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women in Red/Archive 112#Draft:Sonja Lang and some of the editors at Sonja Lang.

In March, after looking through some WP:WPWIR lists, I found an page whose subject I found reasonably notable, so I began to draft and draft. Since I could not trust myself to create content directly, I created the page in draftspace until I could submit it for possible inclusion. However, I found out that the article actually existed before, and was redirected back as a BLP1E. To avoid this mistake, I decided to start a discussion at WT:WIR to check for some community input. A rough consensus emerged that it was barely above WP:GNG, and as such barely merited its own article.

In April, I had submitted the draft, and EpicPupper published it into the mainspace in May. It had a brief life before Vanished user 5747731753 redirected it back just under a day ago, citing WP:1E and WP:BIO. Now, I am here. I'm not going to revert Vanished user 5747731753's edit; I want to create another consensus on this page. Thank you. — 3PPYB6 — TALK — CONTRIBS — 01:48, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

3PPYB6 I am not sure why you are unwilling to revert Vanished user 5747731753's edit and take a discussion to the talk page. We don't need to form another consensus. Their comment cites WP:Bold, i.e. they were acting alone and without consensus. I have reverted and asked them to discuss it if they disagree. SusunW (talk) 14:31, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. Sonja Lang definitely appears in a significant amount of coverage, but most of that coverage talks about Sonja Lang only to the extent that it's important to Toki Pona. It's definitely more than trivial mentions, though. I am very softly in favor of Sonja Lang's notability. — Preceding unsigned comment added by QoopyQoopy (talk • contribs) 15:08, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Noting that I saw this discussion, but would like to step aside to allow for other editors to engage. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 16:26, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

"The Lord's Prayer" deleted?

The toki pona translation of "The Lord's Prayer" is gone for some reason. Where did it go? Ayslays (talk) 06:13, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Nevermind, it's back. 118.137.29.117 (talk) 12:28, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, i wasn't logged in. Ayslays (talk) 12:30, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Where is it moved to? I can't find any of the examples texts, neither the prayers nor the poems. Ike a! Oogalook (talk) 17:13, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

@Oogalook the example texts were removed in this revision due to concerns over their copyright status discussed at Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2023 December 9. Although it appears they missed something in that discussion: the Lord's Prayer had already been replaced with a wholly different, probably non-copyright violating translation supplied by @Casperdewith, in this revision from January 2023. I remember this happening because it caused these weird formatting problems that made it invisible for some users for some reason; the comments you're replying to here were about this!

Because this isn't a copyright issue (anymore), the question then is whether it's fine to have an example text in a language article that's written by a Wikipedian and not published anywhere else. I actually have no idea. Alternatively we could copy (with attribution) something short out of lipu tenpo, as it has the same license as Wikipedia. twotwos (talk) 00:04, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

What an excellent answer, thank you! And that seems like a wise solution. Oogalook (talk) 14:06, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

the question then is whether it's fine to have an example text in a language article that's written by a Wikipedian and not published anywhere else

I'd be happy to publish it on my site if this becomes and issue and @Casperdewith is okay with that --u9000 (they/them • talk) 00:33, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi all – sorry for the late reply. I don’t need my translation to stay on the Wikipedia page. I just wanted to rid the earlier, terrible one, so I made my own as a temporary replacement. It’s licenced under a CC BY-SA 4.0 licence, though. So @U 9 000, feel free to use it on your website.

The random Toki Pona texts seem to have been removed in favour of texts with a clear source and licence that are sure to be of good quality: a poem that got first place in the annual literature competition (licenced under CC BY-SA 4.0), and an excerpt from jan Sitata, a book that’s linked on the official Toki Pona website (licenced under CC0 1.0). I’m satisfied with this new ‘policy’.

Using lipu tenpo articles, as @Twotwos mentioned, is also fine. They are all licenced under a CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. And as for the measure of quality, they’re proofread by at least two (but usually more) proficient tokiponists.

Greetings from jan Kasape, lipu tenpo designer and proofreader. Casperdewith (talk) 14:12, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Add Bible (In progress as a link/something that has a description on it

https://github.com/PaulieGlot/lipu-sewi Is the first and most popular active Bible translation group, me included, and I am wondering if it could get a spot in the wiki, not sure where but it might be nice to see it on the page. E1.ias1 (talk) 22:41, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Is there any secondary coverage of it? If so, it could be included in a sentence. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 18:24, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Poem copyright

I'm looking at the subsection on the poem, and the source states Copyright © 2001-2002 Toki Pona. All rights reserved. Are we sure that the poem is released under terms compatible with Wikipedia's CC license? If not, is there any poem we could use that is? — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 18:29, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

I can ask someone on the toki pona Discord server to publish a poem here under a free license. Ca ^{talk to me!} 00:36, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

The edit history shows that the poem was added by a newcomer without anything to indicate that its creator have given permission. I'll contact the poem' creator Sonja Lang to see if she wants to publish the poem in a free license. Ca ^{talk to me!} 09:28, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

su

today, Sonja released a new Official Toki Pona. as it's still very early, there are few secondary sources about it, here are the ones currently available:

• su on sona pona (Toki Pona wiki)
• Video and interview of Sonja by Oats Jenkins

hopefully there will be more in the relases, such as from

• other content creators on YouTube
• lipu tenpo magazine (next issue currently near publishing)

Juwan (talk) 19:39, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't believe that either of these is a usable source for WP:V. The first is user-generated content and the second is self-published social media with a layer of Sonja talking about her own project, about which she is neither an independent source nor a secondary one. Largoplazo (talk) 20:18, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

I am aware that citing other wikis are not allowed, but it is good if other editors see what there already is available. for the second one, dang bad luck ig. Juwan (talk) 15:13, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

External links

Copy of comment originally posted at User talk:Mathglot#External links.

It appears to me that you mistakenly applied the verifiability requirements for sources, which are cited in support of statements made in the body of an article, to the links to resources in a final section External links. The criteria for extenal links are much more lax. The videos of the RobWords channel cover a variety of topics and the video on Toki Pona is clearly well researched, informative, and not in any way fancruft. The videos are produced and presented by Rob Watts, who is not a professional linguist, but formally a newsreader, reporter and presenter in the UK on BBC radio, now working in Berlin as a reporter for DW-TV (and occasionally BBC World Service).  --Lambiam 12:25, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Moved from User talk:Mathglot § External links

Lambiam, I've moved the discussion here, so other interested editors may participate if they wish to; they are unlikely to find it on my Talk page. You're right that I mistakenly used verifiability requirements, and I'm thinking maybe that link could be included under WP:ELMAYBE #4, assuming it doesn't run afoul of WP:ELNO #10 (a.k.a., WP:NOSOCIAL). That section names several sites on the no-no list, but YouTube isn't one of them, but it does have its own section at WP:YT which mostly points back to the others. I glanced at some of Rob's other language-related videos and they are entertaining, but is he the best choice? If we are going to use a YT link, isn't there a presenter who is better source about Toki Pona than a news reader who writes about language? In the end, I guess it depends on whether it meets the criteria at the top of the Wikipedia:External links page, namely whether the link contains "further research that is accurate and on-topic" and if consensus is that it is, I have no objection to restoring the link. I can't answer that question, but I know someone who can: pinging User:Tamzin. Mathglot (talk) 21:08, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Since no further objections have been raised in almost two weeks, I'm reinstating the external link.  --Lambiam 21:30, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Vandalised article preview

When i view the article preview (on mobile. canno confirm on desktop) there's what seems to be an emoticon / ;) / after "Toki Pona". Is this supposed to happen? Telaso1 (talk) 05:13, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

This seems to be a bug in the way page previews are generated! It's supposed to hide everything within parenthesis (brackets). But instead of counting bracket pairs and removing everything between "(rendered as" and "/ˈtoʊki ˈpoʊnə/)", it goes from the first opening bracket ( to the first closing bracket ). So the "; English: /ˈtoʊki ˈpoʊnə/)" displays when it shouldn't, but translation/pronounciation templates are also skipped so what's left is "; )". I've gone ahead and marked the whole bracketed section as noexcerpt so it definitely shouldn't display in previews anymore. Thanks for reporting this, it was a fun puzzle to solve! twotwos (talk) 22:47, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

@Twotwos Your welcome! Telaso1 (talk) 22:52, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Reliability of chapter 'Provenance'

Chapter 'Provenance' has almost only the word origins' page on tokipona.org as its reference. However, it was apparently a wiki page. It seems that Sonja Lang has never released an etymological list of Toki Pona. I had tried to look for more reliable sources of Toki Pona's word origins, but failed. I wonder what we should do to the chapter. CuSO4, who non-natively speaks English 22:44, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Speaker Count

I understand that the file mentioned is the most reliable source for a speaker count, but the toki pona Subreddit (is 'subreddit' a proper noun?) alone has 20 thousand members, and the Discord server has 14 thousand more. I'm certain not all of those people are speakers, but these are indicators that the number is far higher than "500–5000". ThaNook (talk) 00:16, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

We're to use more reliable sources, even if they're not that new. Subreddit population is too suspicious to be used as a reference to speaker count. CuSO4, who non-natively speaks English 14:52, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Criticism

Since this is a constructed language, it would be nice to have a criticism section. Consider, e.g., https://www.reddit.com/r/tokipona/comments/sp52ap/some_critique_from_an_outsider_trying_to_learn/, https://www.reddit.com/r/tokipona/comments/k8n2f4/sorry_but_toki_ponas_ideology_is_scarily_similar/ , but there may be better sources. Kdammers (talk) 18:30, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia policy is to avoid Criticism sections. But a section detailing 3rd party analysis of its scope, strengths and weaknesses would be useful. Ashmoo (talk) 10:07, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

word count

Most words (70%) are disyllabic; about 20% are monosyllables and 10% trisyllables.

Given that there are fewer than 200 words in all, why not use exact numbers here? —Tamfang (talk) 23:56, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Percentages give a better idea of the proportions of those slices, which I think is more important than exact numbers. Plus, seeming-rounded percentatges allow for slightly different total word counts.

I'm open to other reasoning though! --u9000 (they/them • talk) 00:18, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

GA Reassessment

Toki Pona

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: Ijzeren Jan has presented evidence that the article is not broad in coverage enough for GA status. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 11:40, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

Article has 4 citation needed tags, two non-primary source needed tags, and two failed verification tags. I think a cleanup might be needed to maintain its GA status. ❤HistoryTheorist❤ 03:38, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Three citation needed tags now. The claim of sitelen suwi being inspired by Woodring and Scharf is verifiable in . Bowler the Carmine | talk 16:56, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

References

Comments by User:IJzeren Jan

Let me start with two disclaimers. First of all, I am not too fond of the circus around featured and good articles. And secondly, I know little about Toki Pona, and although I am impressed by its achievements, it's not really my thing. That said, since I was asked for an opinion, I'll be happy to share some thoughts.

Although there's no doubt that this is a really nice, decent article, I can see some space for improvement. To sum it up:

• The article is extremely heavy on references. Not that there's anything wrong with references, au contraire, but there's no reason to provide three or four different sources for just one simple, unquestioned fact. This comes across as an effort to justify the article's existence rather than to prove a fact, by making the references section look more impressive than it actually is. Which is understandable in so far that constructed languages are frequently under attack for being not notable enough, self-promotional etc., but Toki Pona is way beyond that point by now.
• Speaking about sources, it can't go unnoticed that the vast majority of them are primary sources. I would recommend cutting their number somewhat, at least in cases were a reference is not really necessary.
• On the other hand, the sentence "Toki Pona was the subject of some scientific works" is followed by only one footnote, referring to an article of five pages, which has been used for no less than 29 references and whose author is an active member of the Toki Pona community himself. I'm sure there must be some truly independent academic research on Toki Pona by now.
• In the same sentence, it is also written that "it has also been used for artificial intelligence and software tools". However, after briefly skimming through the source I get the impression that it is about potential uses rather than actual usage. The same goes for the third part of the sentence ("as well as a therapeutic method"): the source writes that the professor is "studying the language's usefulness", not that he actually uses it.
• The "purpose" section discusses the design principles of Toki Pona, which is fine. But what I would expect in this section is rather something about its intended goals. Was it a private thing of its creator that unwittingly happened to achieve some popularity, or was it actually intended to be spoken by others? And if so, by whom and why?
• What I would also like to know, and perhaps there are sources indicating it, is this: what exactly explains the popularity of Toki Pona? It's not uncommon for a constructed language to have a few fans, but rarely more than a handful. Why do so many people learn it? Is it because they want to be part of some experiment? Or because of the community? Is Toki Pona to them what Esperanto is to Esperantists, or is it rather what Klingon is to Klingonists?
• The article should at least explain why there are three different writing systems, and also if they are used, and if so, by whom and for what?
• Apparently, Toki Pona has no less than two different signed versions, and the phrase "more widely used in the Toki Pona community" seems to suggest that both are actually in use, which is surprising for such a small language. If that is true, I really would like to know more about that.
• Toki Pona uses capitals only for proper names. Why?
• And speaking about names, it seems like members of the community use a Toki Pona pen name, consisting of "jan" and a bastardised form of their first names, right? Which I guess would make me "jan Jan". :) This would be worth mentioning in the article, too. And what happens if two people have the same name?
• Nevertheless, I would suggest using real names instead of "in-universe" names. Same goes, BTW, for phrases like "Toki Pona: The Language of Good (known as pu)". Things like that make the article look like a from-fans-for-fans kind of thing.
• In-person meetups: it would be interesting to mention the number of attendees. And if it's just two or three people, better leave it out.
• Not that I am such a fan of "criticism" sections, but given the extremely low number of words, the article should present viewpoints on questions like: in how far can Toki Pona be considered a language at all? How do non-users see it? Etc. Several of such questions can be found on Meta.
• Including this one: how does Toki Pona handle complex (f.ex. technical) texts, especially since circumlocutions are subjective? Even if it is possible to translate complicated texts to Toki Pona, can the result be translated back in a reasonably reliable way?
• And at last, lipu tenpo looks great, but adding every individual issue to the list of publications seems a bit of an exaggeration. Instead, I would suggest adding https://liputenpo.org/ to the external links section.

Hope this helps! —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 21:58, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

120 words + 4 synonyms in pu?

The History section claims that pu ‹features 120 main words, plus 4 words presented as synonyms of these›, citing an arXiv article. However, this claim is wrong. There are only three synonyms in The Language of Good: ‹kin›, ‹namako›, and ‹oko›, and they are synonyms of the words ‹a›, ‹sin›, and ‹lukin›, respectively. It would be more appropriate to cite pu here instead of the arXiv article. – Casper (talk) 10:43, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

There's also ale and ali. Kovcszaln6 (talk) 12:23, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

ROILA, an irrecognisably modified Toki Pona

In the History section, a study is mentioned in which ‹it was revealed that the modified vocabulary of Toki Pona significantly outperformed English› in terms of speech recognition. I consider this claim misleading.

The study is not about Toki Pona, but about ROILA. And yes, according to section 2 (p. 251), the initial vocabulary of ROILA is the 115 Toki Pona words*. However, a genetic algorithm is then run on them, in order to construct a vocabulary where the words are as distinct as possible. The eight allowed word types are CVCV, VCVC, VCCV, CVCVC, VCVCV, CVCVCV, VCCVCV, VCVCCV, of which only three follow Toki Pona phonology.

* The study refers to tokipona.org from 2008. I can’t verify which words were in use then, because tokipona.org is excluded from Wayback.

So what does the final vocabulary of ROILA look like? The study regrettably didn’t include it, but from the few examples in table 1 (p. 254), we get to learn that a ROILA translation of ‹I walked to the house› is ‹pito fosit jifi bubas› (I walk PAST-TENSE house), probably pronounced as /pɪtɑ fɑsɪt d͡ʒɪfɪ bʌbæs/. This ridiculously far from Toki Pona – I almost feel insulted by how far. For reference, a Toki Pona translation would be ‹mi tawa tomo› (I toward house).

All in all, although mentioning an appearance of Toki Pona in scientific literature is nice, the relation of ROILA to Toki Pona is so weak that I’m very tempted to delete the whole ROILA bit. – Casper (talk) 15:14, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

I agree. Feel free to remove that bit. Thanks. Kovcszaln6 (talk) 12:30, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

how on earth is ‹pito fosit jifi bubas› so different (semantically) from ‹mi tawa tomo›? the only difference is the fact that there is a past tense marker. that's all

i do agree that the phonology is much different NS1729 (talk) 08:57, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

oh and also i forgot to mention, the current vocab of roila can be found at https://roila.org/language-guide/vocabulary/ which is extremely far from toki pona NS1729 (talk) 09:00, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

"16 additional words" "120 words plus 4 synonyms"

ok so first the toki pona dictionary did add 16 community selected words, but also autocratically the word "ku" (referring the the book itself) was added which is now widely accepted making it 17. this itself is not a large problem and i see the benefit of including it this way. however,

"120 words and 4 synonyms" is just wrong. i have no idea where the source just made a 4th word appear from but it isn't there in the book itslef (Which i have a copy of). I do not have however a better source that mentions the true count so i haven't been bold and changed it yet. NS1729 (talk) 08:56, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

There's also ale and ali. Kovcszaln6 (talk) 15:42, 17 December 2024 (UTC)