Reddit reviews Toki Pona: The Language of Good

Here's what I'd say are the three best ways to learn the language.

• jan Pije is a pretty controversial figure in TP circles, but his lessons remain the most accessible way to learn the language.
  
• If you want to support Sonja Lang, the creator of TP, learn it through her book, Toki Pona: The Language of Good.
  
• If you'd much rather learn through videos, jan Misali's 12-part series is pretty good for that.

I don’t think you’ll confuse toki pona and German because they’re pretty different.

Learn the pronunciation, words, and grammar like you might with any language. Keep in mind that the grammar is pretty different than English and the words might be different than you’re used to because they all have multiple meanings.
I’d suggest getting the book if you can but you can also check out free user made courses online like Pije’s site.

I’d also suggest joining a chat group like on Discord or somewhere else so you can speak with and learn from multiple people who are proficient in the language.

Toki Pona is a very simple constructed language with a small vocabulary, and the creator even has instructions for a pictographic writing system and a sign language if you REALLY want to be secretive.

For funsies, here's a translation of the Sermon on the Mount in Toki Pona, that also shows a literal translation back into English to give you an idea of how a "simple" language works to communicate with a small pool of words.

For more info about Toki Pona sound structure you can see the wikipedia page here - (though it does't make clear what's explicitly disallowed by the Toki Pona book and what tends to not happen), or chapter 9 of the official Toki Pona book itself, or the tokiponization guide by jan Sonja (there's a lot of other info there as well).

edit: Oh geeze, posts with embedded images really are awful on old reddit. I'll never do one of those again!

If she loves languages for language sake, then she probably would love the toki pona book. It's been the most fun language resource that I have ever bought.

https://www.amazon.com/Toki-Pona-Language-Sonja-Lang/dp/0978292308

Glad you asked! It is a made up language constructed by Sonja Lang beginning in 2001. It's unique in that it only has 120 words in the entire language, making it more of a pidgin than a full-fledged one (and easy to pick up!). However, you can still be quite expressive...you just have to learn to think about things differently.

Website: http://www.tokipona.org

Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/sitelen/

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona

Book: http://www.amazon.com/Toki-Pona-The-Language-Good/dp/0978292308

:)

Definitely check out the Memrise course. 120 words, memorize them, then read through the simple grammar. Or buy a Pu~