About the Book
Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 67. Chapters: Adjuvilo, Adunaic, Arcaicam Esperantom, Atlantean language, AUI (constructed language), Babm, Barmoodan, Barsoomian language, Black Speech, Bolak language, Communicationssprache, Damin, Dothraki language, Enchanta, Folkspraak, Globish (Gogate), Globish (Nerriere), Goldogrin, Idiom Neutral, Intal language, Ithkuil, K len, Khuzdul, Kobaian, Kukura language, Latino sine flexione, Lingua sistemfrater, Loxian, Mandalorian, Mundolinco, Na'vi language, Noxilo, Palawa kani, Romanico, Slovianski, Slovio, Solresol, Sona language (artificial), Spokil, Syldavian, Talossan language, Teonaht, Toki Pona, Tsolyani language, Universal (Esperantido), Uropi, Utopian language, Wenedyk, Westron, Yerkish. Excerpt: Toki Pona is a constructed language, first published online in mid-2001. It was designed by translator and linguist Sonja Elen Kisa of Toronto. Toki Pona is a minimal language. Like a pidgin, it focuses on simple concepts and elements that are relatively universal among cultures. Kisa designed Toki Pona to express maximal meaning with minimal complexity. The language has 14 phonemes and 123 root words. It is not designed as an international auxiliary language but is instead inspired by Taoist philosophy, among other things. The language is designed to shape the thought processes of its users, in the style of the Sapir Whorf hypothesis in Zen-like fashion. This goal, together with Toki Pona's deliberately restricted vocabulary, has led some to feel that the language, whose name literally means "simple language," "good language," or "goodspeak," resembles George Orwell's fictional language Newspeak. Sonja Elen Kisa is a translator (English, French and Esperanto) and linguist living in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In addition to designing Toki Pona, Kisa has translated parts of the Tao Te Ching into English and Esperanto. Pronunciation chartKisa officially uses letters of the Latin alphabet to represent the language, with the values they represent in the IPA: p, t, k, s, m, n, l, j, w, a, e, i, o, and u. (That is, j sounds like English y, and the vowels are like those of Spanish.) Capital letters are only used for personal and place names (see below), not for the first word of a sentence. That is, they mark foreign words, never the 123 Toki Pona roots. Toki Pona has nine consonants (/p, t, k, s, m, n, l, j, w/) and five vowels (/a, e, i, o, u/). The first syllable of a word is stressed. There are no diphthongs, long vowels, consonant clusters, or tone. The statistic vowel spread is fairly typical cross-linguistically. Counting each root once, 32% of vowels are /a/, 25% /i/, /e/ and /o/ a bit over 15% each, and 10% are /u/. 20% of roots are vowel initial. The usage frequen
