Hello everyone! My name is Flora, but you probably know me as lawa Powa from kulupu pi kon ilo. On December 3rd, 2021, I started learning toki pona, an experience that continues to change my life in very positive ways. As of today, I have spent an entire year participating within the community actively (in one form or another). In this post, I wanted to touch on how I came across toki pona, why I decided to learn it, some advice for newcomers to the language, and what I plan to do next!

The origin story

This portion of the story delves into potentially discomforting discussion about mental health (particularly, topics of self-neglect and disassociation), and some may not wish to see it. This section is personally relevant, but not important to the rest of this post, and is able to be ignored without losing information. Click this to show that portion.

I originally began learning toki pona at a really low point in my life. I had come out as a transfeminine non-binary person a few months prior to a generally noncommittal response, and years of physical isolation (on top of a whole life of social isolation) tore me up mentally. I found myself losing interest in everything, even in things as basic as eating. My energy was non-existent, and when I did actually have it I spent my time becoming further and further jaded at the world. While I did have schoolwork to do, I would do just enough to not worry my parents (one of which had a tendency to get angry when they worried) but not enough that I would completely burn out.

Eventually, chunks of my day started disappearing. It was subtle at first, presenting itself only as gaps in my memory when people asked me of things they thought they had talked to me about prior. However, they became more and more severe as time went on. One night, I decided to start doing schoolwork and then woke up the next day. Whatever, I thought. The work was still completed, and I'm just a forgetful person. So what? But as the feeling of lost interest began to worsen, so too did a new feeling of inadequacy. My "achievements" stopped feeling like my own, and I never saw myself as deserving of regard, let alone respect.

Until one night. I went to bed as normal, and then I had a dream. I was in a blinding white void, standing in front of another person. ona¹ had long white hair, bright green eyes, and round glasses—a person I didn't recognize in the slightest. ona sat on the ground, and started speaking to me.

"How do you feel, living like this?"

I fell to the ground. Upon asking that, I realized that no one had asked that question past a passing remark the entire time. ona got up and put ona's hand on my shoulder.

"It's going to be okay."

I hugged ona and started sobbing. I kept doing this until the dream ended. When I woke up, I cried again; this time not because ona had reached the truth of the matter but because the dream was over. It is still, to this day, the only dream I vividly remember to this extent. It is also the only dream of those that I remember that was concrete in meaning and positive in nature.

I would not see ona again for a long time, but I knew that what ona said was right. I wanted to prove to myself that I could see something through to the end and actually become actually good at something; not just good enough. But what could I actually learn? Perhaps I could try learning a language again, I thought. However, I had spent 2 years learning Japanese to no avail; that seemed like a disappointment waiting to happen. Well, what about toki pona?

I had known about toki pona and its goals for a while due to an interaction with a speaker of the language in a server oriented around Linux discussion a couple years prior, but I only had an occasional interest in it. In fact, I had joined ma pona as far back as the beginning of December in 2020. Its emphasis on simplicity made it seem like a language I could actually see myself learning, and so I decided to actually commit to it for good!

Some guidance to learners

toki pona is both easier than you'd think and harder than it looks. The low word count is easy to remember, and the grammar is very simple compared to natural languages. However, what makes toki pona difficult is what it doesn't do. Because there's not a word for a given concept, you have to boil it down to not only what makes it unique, but makes it relevant to a given situation.

Context itself is a very fickle thing in the mind of a learner. A lot of experienced toki pona speakers tend to assert the importance of relying on contextual information when teaching, but don't tend to explain much past that as its become a natural (and therefore largely invisible) entity to them. However, this use of context is what makes toki pona able to be used to the extent it is! A lot of sentences in English are the same or even less words when translated to toki pona because of its far greater use of derivable context compared to English. However, there is an internal logic behind what is and is not able to be derived from context, and there is a consistent way of establishing and utilizing that context from the start of a conversation. I hope to demonstrate that as I continue to talk about and teach toki pona to those willing to learn!

The only way to learn this to a complete extent, however, is to get experience yourself through conversation. Yet, all too often I see newcomers prevent themselves from learning by limiting the depth or selection of their topics! I know it's difficult, but I really recommend working outside your comfort zone to improve at the language. If you can, try and have a conversation where someone more experienced can help you reach what you are trying to say in the moment. Questions on what certain phrases mean are common and not a big deal! It doesn't even mean you are doing something wrong: indeed, there have been times when I had to look at something a completely different way to how I personally see it in order to communicate with others. Regardless, you can't become better without putting yourself out there. o alasa pona!

But don't just do so without reflection. toki pona often tries to invoke introspection on behalf of the speaker, but it's up to you to actually do so. When you find yourself being unable to describe something despite being able to describe other things, it may be entirely unrelated to your skill at speaking toki pona! There have been many times I found myself in a rough place during a conversation because I "knew" the meaning behind a certain ijo but didn't actually sona it. Also, keep in mind that some days are going to be easier than others. Hundreds of factors lead to variation in your ability to speak a language that you are actively learning—mood, stress, physical health, tiredness, and even just what you are talking about can affect your ability to read and write the language.

Most importantly, make sure to not lose the magic along the way. Analysis and technical discussions can be very engaging and helpful towards a greater understanding of the language, but they can also become tiresome and serve little point past just finding something to talk about after a while. Be sure to maintain a balance between talking about the language and actually using the language, and ask yourself every so often whether you are actually continuing to enjoy what you are doing.

With those considerations in mind, I believe anyone has the capability of becoming really good at toki pona—it's just a matter of time!

Hope for the future

toki pona has been an integral part to our lives this past year, but by no means does that mean we are finished with it. We still have many projects that we would love to finish, parts about the language we are still learning, and discussions to have with fellow speakers! That being said, we wanted to talk about what we've been up to these past few months.

• I am currently working on two major projects: lipu lili, a booklet detailing my personal nasin regarding toki pona, and jan pi ma lape mi li tawa musi lon tenpo mun ni, what I hope to be the first fully original long-form piece of toki pona taso fiction.
• kon Kakima is working hard on a couple of things as well: a bot with scheduled timers, democratic moderation, UCSUR to latin-script functions, and a new note system for ma lili, as well as a site for storing one's own nasin pi toki pona!
• kasi Lo is making sure we get things like schoolwork and other requirements done before we work on our projects (😅).
• Finally, jan Ajomi is helping me with jan pi ma lape mi by having us bounce ideas off of each other!

Needless to say, we are quite excited with what we are working on, and we can't wait to show you further progress as we work on them! toki pona and its community has proven to me that as long as I keep at something, I can do great things. From the bottom of my heart, thank you all so much for everything.

Here's to another great year! :)

— lawa Powa

1. I am using the pronoun ona here as I later found out that ona is kasi Lo[sa] (as a representation of that person, or of actually being that person; not that it matters either way), a member of our system. ona li toki pona taso, and has only ever used English when absolutely forced to while fronting—the seemingly voluntary speaking of English in this dream appears to be a major exception to this rule.↩