Hello lovelies!
According to Wikipedia:
Toki Pona translated as 'the language of good’ is
a philosophical artistic
constructed language known for its small vocabulary,
simplicity, and ease of acquisition
It was created by Sonja Lang, a Canadian linguist and translator to
simplify her thoughts and communication.
Toki Pona only has 14 phonemes and focuses
on simple, near-universal concepts to maximize expression from very few words.
In her book Toki Pona: The Language of Good, Lang presents around
120 words. Despite the small vocabulary, speakers can understand and
communicate, mainly relying on context, combinations of words, and
expository sentences to express more specific meanings.
And did I mention that it is all in GLYPHS? That’s
right. The title of the book looks like this in Toki Pona:
How amazing is that??? As a very lonely child who didn’t connect well with my peers, I spent years creating secret codes in the hopes that one day there would be a like minded weird friend who would want to write messages back and forth. Bonus points if they wrote it in lemon juice with a toothpick so I could hold the letter over a candle and expose the secret writing. It is for reasons such as this that I was bullied and beaten up frequently as you can imagine. But I digress.
The illustrations are delightful and the text has an interesting literal but also poetic translation to it such as lines like:
The foot clothing of the Evil Powerful Woman of the Sun's Arrival became the foot clothing of Dorothy.
