Toki Pona Dictionary (Official Toki Pona)

I've been interested in toki pona for some time, but it wasn't until I heard about this book that I really decided I wanted to learn the language. I spent a week learning the baseline stuff, and then bought this, and I couldn't be happier.One thing that must be said about jan Sonja is that she is not a possessive creator. In many ways, toki pona has taken on a life of it's own outside of the official 120 words, and I think that it's genuinely wonderful. While the language may have been originally conceived of as a minimalist project, a natural byproduct of that is that it encourages incredibly creative use of language, and I think that creativity naturally leads as well to people wanting to coin new words to better express themselves. A lesser conlanger would try to scold the community and say "no! you're not being creative the right way!" but that's jan Sonja clearly sees that new words can open up new, fun, and exciting ways of using this wonderful little language she's made. One of my favorite lines in the entire book is this: "Personally, when I evaluate [new words that are not used very frequently,] some of them give me the reaction, 'OK, I understand this word, but do we really need it?' Others give me the reaction, 'This word has excellent expressive power. Let's use this creatively in more situations!'" Because of that, she's given plenty of room to many terms coined by the community, and given loose (but quantitative) indications of their frequency of use. To some extent, I worry that this may have the effect of bolstering the already popular terms and causing smaller but still cool ones to die off, but this is one community that I'm confident won't be swayed too much in that way. Some of my favorite words that made it in are kiki, taki, and to/te. I only wish alu and sikomo could have made the cut.I do have a few small things that are less criticisms and more things to think about if future editions are ever published. The most minor one is that there is the unfortunate thing where sometimes the definitions that a community comes up with and largely stick to just aren't great. Easily the worst offender here is 'bacteria,' which gets definitions like 'jaki' (gross thing), 'kon jaki' (gross spirit/air/invisible thing), and 'ijo lili ike' (bad small thing). It's 2021, we know that akesi are cute, we should be able to understand that bacteria have a variety of roles in our ecosystem and in our own biologies! But alas, this is a byproduct of this being a descriptive survey-based dictionary, and not a prescriptive one like in The Language of Good, so it's just how it is, and I'll just have to convince people on discord and reddit to reconsider some terms. (i also think shoot should be utala alasa but that's neither here nor there)Another related issue is that I wish polysemous English words would be broken up into their different meanings. This is done every now and then (such as the right as in the direction vs right as in correct), but it would definitely be worth doing more in my opinion, as some EN->TP translations take a second to make sense if you're not thinking of the right definition. That said, I don't know the exact survey methodology, but I assume this may be somewhat related. In the end it's not a big deal, since if you think about them a bit the intended meaning generally becomes clear, but it would make the product feel more polished if you didn't have to quite as much as you do (which, to be clear, is not really that much).On the note of polish, one last thing I would have liked would be an index of every page a given toki pona lexeme shows up, but I understand that that would have been a tedious effort and probably beneficial to only a few. That's why, like all of these things I've listed here, it would be a nice little thing to have, but it's absence isn't a knock against the book.Now that I've got those nitpicks out of the way, I want to conclude by saying that this is absolutely the most fun I've ever had reading a dictionary, and that comes from a linguist and translator who actually does peruse dictionaries quite a bit. Reading what other people have come up with in this language, being inspired to coin new phrases myself, having debates in my head about why a tongue is definitely a linja uta and not a palisa uta, it's just a blast.If you have any interest in toki pona or conlangs in general, this is a must-read. jan Sonja and the toki pona community have done truly incredible work, so please show it the appreciation it deserves.

It's a wonderful reference, and it does a lot. Its main purpose is accomplished very well.It fixes a few little issues in pu (the book Toki Pona: The Language of Good, which teaches the language). Finally, 'akesi' (reptile, amphibian) no longer means 'non-cute animal', lol.It canonizes a few extra words as the 'nimi ku suli' (which literally means "important Toki Pona Dictionary words"), and I think they're mostly pretty useful. The ones I've used the most are 'misekeke' (medicine, cure), 'leko' (square, block), and 'meso' (average, medium).It shows you a bunch of possible ways to say things. Like, an absolute bunch. It's certainly helped me interpret Toki Pona text I've seen on the internet, too. The book has really broadened how I interpret various words and phrases in the language.Oh, and there are extra words that, although not considered an essential part of the language like the nimi ku suli, are used enough to be worth a mention in case you want to try using them or if you see them used in some text on the internet.There are a few issues, however.Most notably, the usage info is collated from only one Discord channel -- the channel in question is admittedly the most concentrated place where Toki Pona is used, but it does feel like a glaring issue to only ask a single community of users when collecting data for use in a usage based dictionary.I also think some of the newly canonized words are a bit unneeded. However, I will fully admit that their promoted status is entirely based on usage, and I expect that different people will have different ideas on which words if any were needed or not. Plus, they're a reminder to not take this all too seriously -- the best example of that is 'kijetesantakalu', which was a joke word made by Sonja Lang that was deliberately made to be overly specific (it means 'an animal from the Procyonidae family, such as racoons') that ended up getting used quite a bit by speakers, and there's even a patently absurd numbering system in the back of the book based on stressing different syllables of it (which is entirely impractical, but very, very funny -- the stressed syllable is not marked in writing).Some of the definitions are really, really odd, although those are almost always marked as being very low usage (with the 1/2 marker), another product of the book being usage based.Also, one major omission, that is at least acknowledged in the dictionary, is the lack of 'sitelen pona' characters (the writing system shown in pu) for the nimi ku suli.The 'creative works' section is also really, really, really short. 3 pages.Here's hoping Toki Pona doesn't get overly large, but I'd only really start to worry when the list of "essential" words that are in wide use gets close to 200, haha -- with the nimi ku suli, the language has 137 words, so that's probably quite far off.mi wile e ni: jan ali li ku! lipu ni li pona suli a.

Ninety-nine percent of this book's nearly four hundred pages are devoted to a bilingual, English-to-toki pona and toki pona-to-English dictionary. So this is pretty extensive, which is cool.At the front of the book is a bit of commentary on the language, although most of this comes in the form of corrections and clarifications to the first official toki pona book, "The Language of Good."I know this book is literally called "Toki Pona Dictionary," so I can't complain when it does what is says on the tin. Nonetheless, I find myself wishing it contained additional material, such as reflections on the language and its community, or some notable texts in toki pona. I feel like I can't really attach to the book if I'm only hitting it up now and then for a very specific piece of information, then setting it down again forty-five seconds later. So I'm disappointed in it in that respect; I wish it had more to say to me.

At long last a resource which gives an overview of the actual usage of words and expressions in the Toki Pona community! This is exactly the resource I'd been hoping and wishing for - and now it has materialized! A must-have for any Toki Pona learner or speaker.

With 3.5 the size of pu, this book is surprisingly chonky!What to expect: A ton of translated English terms, a reflection of how toki pona is currently usedWhat not to expect: An overhaul of the language, toki pona 2.0This book is mostly really what it claims to be: a dictionary, meant to facilitate both understanding word combinations that others use if you don't understand them and using the language *practically* if you want inspiration or struggle with going beyond learning the basics with pu.Yes, there are extra words in there. No, not all of them are considered important - in fact, the frequency index will give you an indication of how much something is used. And even with the 17 "nimi ku suli" that are considered important enough, it's entirely up to the individual person - but you will most likely meet those in the wild, so now you can look them up.Ok, but also, there is extra stuff in there! Let me go through them!- Some relatively minor corrections to pu. Most of them are more like clarifications that people have asked about over the years- Some discussion about the different ways people use toki pona now. ku is not meant to supersede pu, so while ku upholds some core pu philosophical principles, the one core concept that seems to permeate ku is: many ways are valid, play with the language, pu is not the end-all-be-all (and neither is ku)- Some of jan Sonja's tongue-in-cheek humour. Look out for how seriously you take her.- 3 pages of creations by other people: 2 poems, 1 new number system that jan Sonja recommends (see previous point)- sitelen pi suwi mute: The illustrations by Vacon Sartirani are both cute and funny. I would have liked about 10 times more of them =)- Some hilarious entries in the dictionary. Best one I've seen so far: "jan kalamARR" for pirateOverall, I really like going through the book and see what possible translations for different words are. As someone who likes both using toki pona as close to pu as I feel is reasonable and seeing other people having fun with the language in a different way than I use, I was really, really concerned when I heard rumours about a new book. But now that it's here, I think this is handled really well and the book will be a positive experience in the coming years!

After a quick introduction, the dictionary has two parts: English to Toki Pona (example) and Toki Pona to English. Superscripts above the words give the frequency index (1/2 = <11%, 1 = 11 to 20%, 2 = 21-40% ...). A must have!Après une brève introduction, le dictionnaire comporte deux parties : de l'anglais vers le toki pona (exemple) et du toki pona vers l'anglais. Les exposants au dessus des mots donnent l'indice de fréquence (1/2 = <11%, 1 = 11 à 20%, 2 = 21-40%...).Un indispensable!o ku :-)

A present - unseen at this time.

Having an updated and extensive dictionary is necessary for any language learner, and especially for any jan pi toki pona! Can't wait to get additional books to help me learning the language of good!