lesson 3 - modifiers

vocab

󱤨 lilismall, short, young; few; piece, part

󱤼 mutemany, several, very; quantity

󱤂 alanot, nothing, no

󱥁 nithis, that, these, those

󱥵 wawapower, energy, strength; confident, intense, forceful; amazing, impressive

󱥶 wekaabsent, away, distant; remove, get rid of

󱤘 kenability, permission; possibility, maybe; allow, enable

lesson

modifiers

modifiers go after the word they're modifying.

󱥢 󱤨
soweli lili

small animal

to do possessive, you modify the word with a pronoun.

󱥢 󱤨 󱤴
soweli lili mi

my small animal

in sitelen pona, you can also put the modifier inside or above the word it's modifying.

󱥢󱦖󱤨
󱥢󱦕󱤨

soweli lili

there's no particular rules to when you should write modifiers one way or another in sitelen pona, just write them the way that looks the best to you!

note about modifying 󱤴mi or 󱥞sina

keep in mind that if you modify 󱤴mi or 󱥞sina, you need to use 󱤧li afterwards.

󱤴󱥝󱤧󱥵
mi sin li wawa

those of us who are new are confident

note about context

toki pona is a very context-dependent language. one phrase can mean many different things in many different contexts.

in order to communicate properly, you need to think about and break down what the thing you're talking about means, and how that can be expressed in context.

󱤑󱤻󱤨
jan musi lili

young entertainers
short clowns
a few comedians

since exercises can't really have as much context as real life situations do, the translations you come up with might differ from mine. that's okay!

think for yourself if your translation might make sense in a given context, or feel free to ask me on discord (comforttiger#0), or ask another proficient speaker.

exercises

translate from toki pona to english

ken mute

many possibilities

soweli wawa li lili ala

the strong animal is not small

ona li jan ike

they're a bad person

weka sina li ike

i don't like when you're away
your absence is bad

ni li pona ala

this is not good

translate from english to toki pona

small animals are really cute!

soweli lili li suwi mute

bats are capable

waso li ken

the children are gone

jan lili li weka

my strength is okay

wawa mi li pona lili

lots of people speak well

ijo mute li toki pona

the children, who are away, are playing nicely

jan lili weka li musi pona

read sitelen pona

󱥞󱥢󱤨

sina soweli lili
you're a tiny animal

󱥴󱤧󱥁󱤂

waso li ni ala
the bird isn't doing that

󱤑󱥶󱤧󱥵󱤼

jan weka li wawa mute
the people who left are really powerful

󱥬󱥝󱤧󱤘

toki sin li ken
a new speech is possible

󱥴󱤼󱤧󱤻

waso mute li musi
lots of birds are having fun