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

symbol word meaning in English etymology
󱤴 mi I, me, my, we [any 1st-person pronoun] Esperanto: mi I
󱥞 sina you, your, yours, y’all y’all’s [any 2nd-person pronoun] Finnish: sinä you, y’all
󱥆 ona he, she, it, they, [any 3rd-person pronoun] Serbo-Croatian: она (ona) she, they
󱥬 toki speech, language, communication; hello Tok Pisin: tok information, message; rumo(u)r; word, language
󱥔 pona good, simple, fix Esperanto: bona good
󱤑 jan person, human Cantonese: 人 jan4 man, human
󱤍 ike bad, complex Finnish: ilkeä bad
󱤶 moku eat, food Japanese: もぐもぐ mogumogu *munch munch munch*
󱤧 li [separates the subject from the predicate] Esperanto: li he
󱥁 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 󱤑‍󱥔 rather than pona jan 󱥔‍󱤑), because that ssecond one refers to the goodness of the person.
  2. if the subject is just mi 󱤴 or just sina 󱥞, then li 󱤧 is omitted.
  3. there are three interjections so far: toki! 󱥬! means “hello!” or “hi!”, pona! 󱥬! means “good!” or “thank you!”, and [WORD] pona!, e.g. 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 󱥬‍󱥔), and if they can’t fit, they go above (like in 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 󱥩󱦗󱤴󱦘. This also works the other way: {tenpo}kama becomes 󱦚󱥫󱦛󱤖

examples:

now it’s your turn!

It is bad. =

Bon appétit ! =

A person is eating well. =

please go back     table of contents     next lesson!