Toki Pona, #3

I’m reading Pepper & Carrot in toki pona! This post is a bunch of my random thoughts. I’m at about 10% comprehension, but I understood this line perfectly: “mun li pana e nasin.” (source) It felt different to understand directly in toki pona without needing English. The words take on their own meaning and the “space of understanding” is softer than in English. It’s not so precise, especially when all the interpretations are true. “mun li pana e nasin”, literally: “the moon shows the way”, “the stars give a path.” The feeling I get when I read, “mun li pana e nasin”, doesn’t feel anything like its English translations.

Pepper & Carrot has some seriously complex sentences which I struggle to understand. It’s really nothing like the toki pona presented in Toki Pona: The Language of Good. I’m not used to the context spanning multiple sentences. Especially “ona”, like what is it referencing? And when “la” appears at the end of a sentence. Some words are easy to understand because they almost always have the same meaning, but words like “lon”, “la”, and “ni” either change in context or change the context. Also, if “mi” doesn’t default to singular, they why say “mi tu”? Because the translation is pre ku?

Anyway, I hope some of that was interesting! I’m having fun as I continue my journey learning toki pona. mi tawa!