LESSON 2: honey come here, they’re about to say their first words!

symbol word meaning in English etymology
mi mi I, me, my, we [any 1st-person pronoun] Esperanto: mi I
sina sina you, your, yours, y’all y’all’s [any 2nd-person pronoun] Finnish: sinä you, y’all
ona ona he, she, it, they, [any 3rd-person pronoun] Serbo-Croatian: она (ona) she, they
toki toki speech, language, communication; hello Tok Pisin: tok information, message; rumo(u)r; word, language
pona pona good, simple, fix Esperanto: bona good
jan jan person, human Cantonese: 人 jan⁴ man, human
ike ike bad, complex Finnish: ilkeä bad
moku moku eat, food Japanese: もぐもぐ mogumogu *munch munch munch*
li li [separates the subject from the predicate] Esperanto: li he
ni ni this, that Cantonese: 呢 ni¹ this

GRAMMAR LESSON - basic sentences and interjections

you only need to know four things:

  1. modifier words go after the words they modify (as in jan pona jan+pona rather than pona jan pona-jan), because that ssecond one refers to the goodness of the person.
  2. if the subject is just mi mi or just sina sina, then li li is omitted.
  3. there are three interjections so far: toki! toki! means “hello!” or “hi!”, pona! pona! means “good!” or “thank you!”, and [WORD] pona!, e.g. moku pona! moku-pona! means “enjoy [WORD]ing!” or “enjoy your [WORD]!” e.g. moku pona! means “bon appétit !” (there is a space before the exclamation mark because French just does that)
  4. in writing, modifier words go inside of the word (like in toki pona toki+pona), and if they can’t fit, they go above (like in moku pona moku-pona). in the font used on this website, use + (toki+pona) to add a symbol inside, and - (moku-pona) to add it above. You can also add parentheses to prepositions, like tawa(mi), resulting in tawa(mi).

examples:

now it’s your turn!

It is bad. =

Bon appétit ! =

A person is eating well. =

please go back     table of contents     next lesson!