The grammar and the dictionary is mostly based on (and 100% backward-compatible with) pu, but also extends and tries to clarifiy it based on other sources (jan Pije's lessons, jan Kipo's writings, common practices, etc) and my own interpretations as well.
- Grammar
Words and syllables has their own well-defined structure. For the structures I will use the following notations:
- V: a vowel (a, e, i, o, u)
- C: a consonant (j, k, l, m, n, p, s, t, w)
- n: is an optional n (always at the end of a word)
*means any number (e.g.V*for "any number of vowels")?means one or zero (e.g.V?for "one or zero vowel")+means one or more (e.g.V+for "one or more vowels")()for grouping parts
Every letter's pronunciation is mostly the same as in Esperanto.
This long description of letters and sounds are from the draft of lipu toki pona, which is a planned toki pona book suitable for learnes as well.
The alphabet has only 14 letters: five vowels and nine consonants. Alternative pronunciations are allowed due to the small number of consonants.
| Vovel | Sound |
|---|---|
a |
[a/ɑ] |
e |
[ɛ/e] |
i |
[ɪ/i] |
o |
[o] |
u |
[u/ʊ] |
Many user tend to use nasal vowels when the consonant is followed by a n (in this case the n may not be pronunced).
Every vowel is an independent sound and never a diphthong (as, for example, o is often pronunced as [ou] in English)!
| Consonant | Sound | Alternative |
|---|---|---|
j |
[j] |
|
k |
[k] |
[g] |
l |
[l] |
[r] |
m |
[m] |
|
n |
[n] |
[ŋ] |
p |
[p] |
[b] |
s |
[s] |
[z] |
t |
[t] |
[d] |
w |
[w] |
[v] |
The [v] pronunciation is considered wrong by some users, but it is sometimes used (especially if the user's native language does not have a [w] sound).
The [ŋ] pronunciation is most often used before stop consonants (k, p, t) or at the end of a syllable.
Even though the [k] [p], [t] sounds can be pronounced as their voiced counterparts ([g], [b], [d] respectively), this is barely ever done in practice.
The [r] and [z] sounds are never used normally outside of obvious experimenting or unknown personal reasons.
In most cases, the basic syllable structure is CVn, which means it begins with a consonant, which is followed by a vowel and there might be an optional n at the end of the syllable. Syllable ending n cannot be used, if the following syllable begins with another n!
There are four forbidden consonant-vowel pairs:
ji,ti(becomessi),wo, andwu.
There is a rule, that the words may begin with a vowel, hence the ultimate word structure is C?Vn(CVn)*. Every (official and unofficial) word should and do fit into this structure.
Unofficial words or proper names are transliterations of one's real name, but there are cases, when someone chooses a new, "random" name. None method is wrong, till the name fit into the already shown structure.
You should avoid choosing a name that is also an official word. One of the possible exeptions is when one is called Ken (there is not a good workaround for such cases).
The proper names are adjectives, and usually they are always after a noun (jan for names, ma for countries, ma tomo for cities, etc.). However, when it is obvious what we refer to, nouns can be omitted, especially when this would lead to repetition. The most often seen example of this is nimi mi li X, when using jan would make the sentence incorrect (using mi jan X is always preferred). Some examples:
- nimi mi li Atamo (my name is Adam) instead of nimi mi li nimi Atamo -- it is obvious that Sotan is the name, although mi jan Atamo is always preferred.
- (when talking about someone) ona li Sopija (she's Sophie) instead of ona li jan Sopija -- by context it is obvious that the noun is jan, although this is unadvised and falls into gray area, unless there was at least one previous instance of saying jan Sopija previously.
Personal names' transliteration is usually based on its pronunciation rather than how it is written. The followings are not rules, only recommendations and customs:
- the number of syllables should be the same
- the letter
rbecomesl,work(depends on how it is pronounced) - English's
thbecomess(if voiceless) ort(if voiced) - consonant clusters can be either split (like Solatan) or reduced to one (as in Sotan).
- vowel clusters should become different syllables (by putting a consonant between them)
It is obvious that there are multiple ways to "tokiponize" a name. For example, the Hungarian name Zoltán could be any of these (list is incomplete):
- Sotan (by dropping the l)
- Solan (by dropping the t)
- Solatan (by adding an additional vowel to resolve the consonant cluster)
- Soli (based on the nickname Zoli)
- Soti (this is incorrect, but I was called that for a while semi-jokingly)
- Sosi (after ti>si conversion; posibble nickname for Sotan, also a version for Zolti which is a usually hated nickname of the original)
For country names, there is another unwritten customary rule: they should not only be unique, but also as distinguishable as possible.
The word order is SVO (subject-verb/predicate-object) or SliVeO (subject-li-verb/predicate-e-object), and prepositions are after the object. The usual prepositions (kepeken, lon, tawa) can be placed right after the subject (but before li) as well, although this use fall into the gray area.
Adjectives, adverbs (commonly modifiers) and possessive is after the head (which can be almost anything besides particles).
Since toki pona does not have a copula (like English's to be), the predicate can be either a verb or a modifier (as in ona li suli -- he/she is big).
Depending on what the head is, we can talk about noun phrases, preposition phrases, etc. For the sake of simplicity I shall write about noun phrases only, but the rules apply to any other phrases as well.
When we have multiple modifiers, the interpretation begins with the left-most one. This modifies the noun and then the next modifier modifies the modified noun, and so on. This can be visualized like this:
N M M M > (N M) M M > ((N M) M) M > (((N M) M) M)
For a practical example:
jan pona suli mute (many adult friends) builds up like this:
- jan (man)
- jan pona (friend)
- jan pona suli (big friend)
- jan pona suli mute (many big friends)
As you can see, the modifier applies to everything in front of it. If we want to use multiple modifiers for one as one single modifier (e.g. suli mute for "very big"), then we need to use a pi particle. For example: jan pona pi suli mute means "very big friend".
The use of pi is explained in (much) greater details here.
If we want to express that something is ours, we have two ways to go:
- make a sentence (using jo that means to have);
- add the possessor to the noun phrase.
The former works like it would in almost every other langauges, so we focus on the second case only.
Possessors works as modifiers, but they are always at the end of a noun phrase. As with modifiers, they are separated by a pi, usually only when it consists more than one word, but I recommend to use them in every case, since it can lead to ambiguity. As a quick example: soweli mi (my pet), tomo tawa mi (my car), tomo suli pi jan Anon (Anon's big house).
Some more details can be found under pi about this.
e separates the predicate and the object. Multiple es indicates and. For example, mi moku e kili e kala means I eat vegetables and fish.
li separated the subject and the predicate (e.g. "ona li moku."), unless the subject is mi or sina only (e.g. "mi moku.", but "mi mute li moku"). Also, multiple lis in a sentence means "and" between predicates (e.g. "ona li moku li tawa" -- she is eating and walking and "mi pilin pona li unpa" -- I feel good and reproduce). Using multiple verbs with the same object is also possible (mi alasa li moli e soweli utala -- I hunt and kill the attacking animal).
It is often seen to use multiple lis with their own objects within a sentence, especially if we want to express simultaneous actions. It is a recurring debate this is correct or not. At either case, using multiple sentences with the same subject works out just fine and always the preferred way, although one might want to use a la phrase to indicate simultaniousness (most likely kin la). An example would be mi moku e kili li lukin e sitelen tawa (I eat vegetables and watch a movie) vs mi moku e kili. (kin la) mi lukin e sitelen tawa. (I eat vegetables. (Also) I watch a movie).
Using multiple ls with different objects are a gray zone use, but unlike many other gray zone structures, this one is relatively accepted and almost always understood.
la separates the context (or the time) and the main sentence. The context is usually a condition, a time or la phrase. The context does not have to be a full sentence (e.g. "sina la ni li jan pona" -- for you, there is a friend). If the context is a full sentence, then the la structure means if/then or when/then (mi moku, la mi pilin pona).
Some words before la has special meaning if they are alone. The most often seen example is "ken". These meanings will be shown in the dictionary.
Multiple la is also possible, then the main sentence is the last one (e.g. tenpo ni la mi wile, la mi moku. -- "now, if I will, I eat", mi lon tomo mi, la sina ken toki, la mi tu li ken toki. -- "when I'm in the city and you can talk, we can talk").
Some of the common la phrases:
- ken la: maybe, possibly
- kin la: also, additionally
- lon la: really, actually
- mi la: for me, personally, I think (not used then the subject is mi)
- tan ni la: therefore
Sometimes we see writing prepositional phrases (e.g. "lon tomo Putapesi") used in a la phrase too.
pi makes us able to express more complex and abstract thoughts. It is a separator that separates modifier groups, thus changing the way how a series of words are interpreted. For example, jan pona pali mute means literally "many working good people" or "many working friends". By adding a pi, it may become jan pona pi pali mute (a workaholic friend) or jan pi pona pali mute (man of many working goodness -- better translation is welcomed).
When it comes to the question of _multiple pi_s, many argues whether it is correct or simply wrong. I see little to no problem with it, we can apply all of our basic rules with practically no changes to make it work and nothing really forbids it. The only thing that needs to be added for them is the general assumption that modifier groups as a whole acts like single modifiers.
Naturally, the pona way is to keep sentences and generally everything else as short as possible, so having multiple pis is unadvised. Although when we need further clarification, it is often preferred as opposed to using multiple sentences. Ultimately the question comes to this: which way is more pona, having one longer sentences with multiple pis, or having more, but shorter and simpler sentences? I am an advocate of the former one, although the absolute truth is that ideally none of these would be needed.
For a quick reminder, modifiers comes after the head (in the examples this shall be a noun) and the modifiers modify the series of words before it, like this:
- jan (man)
- jan pona (friend)
- jan pona suli (big friend)
- jan pona suli mute (big friends)
With introducing a pi, we can separate the different modifier groups (consisting at least one modifier, although having only one word after pi that is not the possessor is useless) that, as a whole, work like individual modifiers.
- jan pona pi suli mute (very big friend)
- jan pi suli mute (very big man)
- jan pi pona suli mute (many-big-good man)
- jan pona suli pi mute (many big friends OR big friend of quantity -- this latter is hard to interpret without proper context, and even then it would be challenging)
By adding more modifier groups, the meaning can be further detailed:
- jan pona pi suli mute pi pona lukin (good-looking very big friend)
- jan pona pi suli pi mute pi pona lukin (good-looking many big friends -- usually "mute" would be the last in this case); same as jan pona suli mute pi pona lukin
Using a single word mofidier after a multiple word long modifier group is problematic: it is very unclear what we want to express, so these should be avoided.
Finally let us break down an example and see how it all works out. Our ridiculous example shall be jan pona mute pi pona mute lukin pi sona mute pi jan Anon (Anon's wise, very good-looking friends).
- jan (man)
- jan pona (friend)
- jan pona mute (friends)
- jan pona mute pona (good friends)
- jan pona mute pi pona mute (very good friends)
- jan pona mute pi pona mute lukin (very good-looking friends)
- jan pona mute pi pona mute lukin sona (sona is part of the previous mod. group, or a new, single modifier?)
- jan pona mute pi pona mute lukin pi sona mute (wise very good-looking friends)
- jan pona mute pi pona mute lukin pi sona mute pi jan Anon (Anon's wise, very good-looking friends)
Now let us see the same example as a tree graph (head - modifier group - individual words). Note that the meanings apply on to this context!
- jan (man)
- pona mute (very good)
- pona (good)
- mute (very)
- pona mute lukin (very good-looking)
- pona (good)
- mute (very)
- lukin (looking)
- sona mute (wise)
- sona (knowledge)
- mute (many)
- jan Anon (someone named Anon)
- jan (man)
- Anon (Anon -- name)
- pona mute (very good)
IMPORTANT!
Naturally, the pona way is to keep sentences and generally everything else as short as possible, so having multiple pis is unadvised. Although when we need further clarification, it is often preferred as opposed to using multiple sentences. Ultimately the question comes to this: which way is more pona, having one longer sentences with multiple pis, or having more, but shorter and simpler sentences? I am an advocate of the former one, although the absolute truth is that ideally none of these would be needed.
In the usual way though you cannot say it is mine. With a minor trick, it is easily expressible like ona li pi mi. Usually it is not used, but it was part of official and semi-official grammars for years (in the pre-pu era).
In many lessons pi is used only if there are more than one word after it. I recommend to use pi every time when it marks possession ("ona li tomo pi mi", "ni li tomo pi jan pona"). Since the possessor should always be at the very end of a noun phrase, using a pi is very helpful when the possessor is one word long and not a pronoun.
In pu, it is not explicitly said that there must be at least 2 words after pi; instead, it talks about noun groups (i.e. noun phrases, that I would rather call modifier group). The word group suggest that it should be at least 2 long, but technically nothing explicitly says that it could not be a one long group, i.e. a singe word, which would normally be unnecessary (it does not change meaning), unless we talk about possessors, hence my recommendation to use them in this case.
This use was also called the Sotanic "pi" by jan Inwin.
It is also often used to express about (mostly along with ijo: mi sitelen e ijo pi mi -- I write about myself).
The usual or traditional prepositions are kepeken, lon and tawa. The words tan and sama often used as prepositions (and pu also defines them so), and sometimes also the words for directions (mostly poka). Although tan and sama could and should be next to the usual prepositions, traditionally kepeken, lon and tawa are introduced in the same lesson, while tan and/or sama are introduced in another one, hence I tend to call only those three usual or traditional.
As a general rule, if there are more than one word after the preposition, a pi should be used! In the case of locations, the location word should be seen as part of the preposition (i.e. lon poka pi tomo mi instead of lon poka tomo mi).
The usual meanings are with and use. Usually it is not used as a verb (if so, it means use as a verb and with as a preposition), although originally kepeken was a verb (and another word was used for with that was removed from the language).
The usual meaning is located in/on/at, and existing as an adjective. It usually does not used as a verb, but it could be with the meaning to place in/on or to put into/onto/. lon can also used for time ("lon tenpo ni" -- now), although using a la structure is recommended.
The usual meanings are moving to, going to and for, to. As an adjective it also is means moving, and as a verb it is sometimes used for saying to move something.
Usually it means by, from, because of as a preposition. It also can mean reason as a noun and to cause as a verb.
The usual meanings are fine (see in the dictionary).
With the usual use, these (sinpin, sewi, anpa, insa, poka and monsi) are after a preposition (lon or tawa) and there is a "pi" after these, if it is followed by more than one word, or has a modifier. It is an often seen practice, that these are used as preposition (especially poka for historical reasons); this is not recommended, but if you use them this way (i.e. for quoting someone using it), put a comma before them.
Usually pi is used when location words are used, but also it can be used with ala when you want to express the opposite of it (i.e. "without", "not at", etc.) and there would be more than one word after it. This can be argues by some, but I believe it works, because ala can be interpreted as "the lack of something", e.g.:
mi musi kepeken ala sina -- I have fun without you.
mi wile tawa ma tomo sona kepeken ala pi tomo tawa (pi) sina. -- I want to go to the University, but not with (without) your car.
There are four ways to create a question:
- repeat the verb, preposition or pre-verb before the verb and put an ala between them (sina wile ala wile moku?);
- put an "anu" into the sentence and mark it with a question mark that it is a question (sina wile moku anu musi?);
- put "anu seme" to the end of the sentence (sina wile moku anu seme?);
- use "seme" as the subject or the object (sina wile moku e seme?).
The first two cases will result in a yes-no question, while the latter two in an open question.
To answer of a yes/no question, repeat the verb of the question (with or without the subject) to say "yes", and say "ala" or repeat the verb (with or without the subject) with "ala" to say "no". Alternatively, you can always answer with a full sentence.
The ultimate rule of punctuation is this: besides the full stop at the end of the sentence and the colon after certain structures, everything is either optional or an alternative.
The commas , have no grammatical meaning, they are only helps to interpret written sentences. These are optional. I often use commas in the following cases and places:
- before la, if there is a full sentence before it (mi moku, la mi pilin pona);
- before prepositions, if it is not obvious that the word is a preposition or an adjective (ona li tomo tawa mi), or it is not a preposition by pu (ona li tawa, poka mi);
- before X ni structures.
And I do not use comma before taso when it is a conjunction. Within pu there is one example, where it is used, although I think it is a much more pona way to end the sentence with a period and start the next one with taso (ona li pona. taso ona li ike lukin).
Question marks ? are used at the end of questions. See more about questions under questions.
I use exclamation marks ! in
- imperative sentences (o moku!),
- interjections (moku pona!), and
- after regular, but somehow emphasized sentences (mi wile moku! ona li suli a!).
In both imperatives and interjections the subject is optional.
Colons : are always used in X ni structures, where X is either a preposition or the separator e.
The closest translation of e ni would be that (as a conjunction) in English. I like to think of it as a "placeholder", since it basically renders the next sentence to be the previous/main sentence's object, for example:
- mi toki e ni: jan li wile jo e jan pona. (I say that people want to have friends)
- mi wile e ni: jan li utala ala. (I want that people don't fight ~ I want people to stop fighting)
- mi sona e ni: jan pi mute lili li lukin e lipu ni. (I know that few people reads this booklet)
If we interpret e ni as I described above, in theory every verb that has a direct object can be used with it, although in practice only a handfull is used with it, including sona, toki and wile. Similarly, if we want to use an X ni as well (i.e. when we want to say something like "I want that people stop fighting, because peace is good"), then the X ni comes after the object/subordinate sentence.
The X ni structures (where X is a preposition) is similar to e ni, they both usually translate to conjunctions in English, except we use prepositions instead of e.
This definition however is kind of misleading, since in practice we use only tan ni (because, since) and sama ni (similar to, similarly). I am not aware of any instances of using lon ni or kepeken ni. I have seen tawa ni as well for "for", but that seems to be a bit of a stretch, since tan ni covers that meaning and much less ambiguous.
Commas are often used in front of X ni for easier readability.
Some examples:
- jan li wile utala, sama ni: soweli li wile unpa. (People want to fight, similarly to how animals want to procreate)
- mi wile e ni: jan li utala ala, tan ni: utala li ike. (I want people to stop fighting, because fighting is bad)
- mi wile e soweli tan ni: soweli li wile e mi: jan lawa ona li pilin pona. (I want a pet, because they want to keep their master is happy)
I recommend using double quotes "..." for quotes to avoid ambiguity with shortenings (where apostrophes ' might be used) and special uses (like jan Lope's lessons -- this latter is only mentioned for the sake of completeness, it is not widely used and generally unadvised).
For second level quotes I recommend to use the guillemet «...» (also known as angle quotes), or when special characters are not available, simply one or two two angle brackets <<...>> <...>.
The followings are experimental, purely recommendations and no rules; there are no official ways to write dialogues in toki pona.
For dialogues, I recommend using en-dashes –, em-dashes — or two hyphens -- (if no special characters available). When en-dashes are mentioned, all of the listed alternatives are acceptable; the important thing is that you should use only one of them consistently.
I use the following rules when writing dialogue ():
- En-dash
–, if the direct dialogue begins after line break, or after dialog tags and actions; - En-dash
–, if the direct dialogue followed by an indirect dialog; - Quotation marks
"for indirect dialogue; - Quotations marks
"for quoting (whether within a dialogue or otherwise); - The line cannot begin with a dialogue tag or action. The dialogue tags would come after the last line of dialogue (separated by en-dash) and actions would be on a separate line (along with dialogue tags if needed) between two lines of dialogue.
Example (for the dialogue format, not for the use of the language):
ona li toki e ni: "mi wile tawa weka!" mi sona e ni: jan li apeja e ona.
-- mi pilin e ni: sina wile pini e toki kalama. sina sona e ni: mi kepeken sina. jan li wile apeja e sina, la jan li wile utala e mi! -- mi toki tawa ona.
-- pona! mi sona e ni. taso mi pilin monsuta. -- oko ona li telo. -- mi ken pali e seme?
-- mi sona ala. ike mi.
ona li awen lili li toki e ni kepeken kalama mute:
-- o nasa ala! sina ike ala.
The followings are even more experimental.
As an alternative way, in toki pona it is rational that always writing X toki tawa Y is long and ugly. I recommend that especially in conversations between more than 2 people always mark who is speaking with brackets (like -- (jan Sotan) xyz).
Additionally, in this case the noun could be omitted and the rest might be shortened, since normally different jan have conversations (like (Sotan) xyz or (S) xyz).
As an alternative way of writing it, add the name right after the en-dash (without any whitespace) and "close" the name by a single hyphen or an en-dash.
Do not mix these method within a single conversation like they are in the example!
Example (with mixed signs):
ona li toki e ni: "mi wile tawa weka!" mi sona e ni: jan li apeja e ona.
-- (mi) mi pilin e ni: sina wile pini e toki kalama. sina sona e ni: mi kepeken sina. jan li wile apeja e sina, la jan li wile utala e mi!
--ona- pona! mi sona e ni. taso mi pilin monsuta. -- oko ona li telo. -- mi ken pali e seme?
--mi- mi sona ala. ike mi.
(ona) o nasa ala! sina ike ala.
These are the tenpo X la... sentences. Time also can be expressed after lon. I use the followings for time:
- tenpo pini: past,
- tenpo ni: current,
- tenpo kama: future,
- tenpo suno: daytime,
- tenpo pimeja: night,
- tenpo pali: weekday,
- tenpo mun: month,
- tenpo sike suno: year (alternatively tenpo suno sike is used as well, but using it is unadvised),
- tenpo mute: often, many times,
- tenpo mute mute: very often, many many times,
- tenpo pi mute lili: sometimes,
- tenpo (pi) kama lili: in near future,
- tenpo (pi) suno pini: yesterday,
- tenpo kin: again (alternatively tenpo sin),
- etc (by the same scheme).
When tenpo is used by itself, it often means a time interval and not a specific time (in either case, the exact meaning is context dependent).
I also use the phrase tenpo la meaning "sometimes".
Numbers are rarely used in the language. They work like adjectives, but they are never preceeded by pi, and they are placed after modifiers and before the possessor.
In most of the time, this simple version is used and recommended (for amounts):
- ala for 0,
- wan for 1,
- tu for 2,
- mute for 3+ or plural (unknown amount, but more than 1), and
- ale for every or countless amount.
There is also a bit more complex way:
- ala for 0,
- wan for 1,
- tu for 2,
- luka for 5,
- mute for 20, and
- ale for 100.
These ways can be extended with the deprecated tuli (3) and po (4).
For ordinal numbers, put the word "nanpa" before the number.
Quick examples are:
- jan tu -- two individuals
- jan nanpa tu -- the second individual
- jan pona luka tu tu pi jan Anon -- Anon's nine friends
- jan pona tu nanpa wan pi jan Anon -- Anon's first two friends (ordinals should come after the number).
If we need to write down huge (20+) numbers, I recomment to write the number down with simple numbers and never even attempt to say them out loud (e.g. tenpo sike suno 2019).
There is no official (or any widely accepted) way to say mathematical expressions. As a personal opinion, numbers should be avoided (besides the simple version) as often as possible.
With exception of taso, no one of these should start a sentence (use la structures instead).
"And" is (traditionally) expressed in three ways, depending on where we want to say it:
- if it is between subjects, use en;
- if it is between verbs, use li;
- if it is between objects, use e.
For example, sina en mi li wile pali li pali e ijo e ijo ante.
In other (traditionally avoided) cases, where one would use an "and", but toki pona usually does not give an easy solution for that, I recommend using "en" as it would normally never be in those positions and thus it is easily understandable.
As a contraction, en also could be between modifiers too, when two different kind of thing is expressed. Generally it looks like this:
N pi M1 en M1, where N is a noun, followed by a pi, M1 is a modifier and M2 is another modifier. Usually this piece would look like this: N M1 SEP N M2, where SEP is a separator. This sould work with possessors too (as moku pi jan Atamo en jan Sopija -- the food of Adam and Sophie).
It meant to be used mainly in speak (where stress and emphasis helps to make it clear how this should be interpreted)!
Example
jan pi pona en toki = jan pona SEP jan toki (good people and talking people) -- the SEP marks that there is an "e" or a "li" or an "en", depends on where it is within a sentence.
Obviously, if this structure is in the object, it is preceeded by an "e" (...e jan pona en toki). If it is a predicate, there is a "li" (note: it cannot be used after a verb!).
Important, that it does not work with multiple modifiers without pi!
jan pona toki en ike kalama and jan pona en ike kalama are weird and really hard to understand. With one modifier (the original jan pona en toki) or with an additional pi (_jan pi pona toki en ike kalama) it is understandable, but only with the right context.
This is expressed by anu. It can be used between either subjects, verbs or objects ("sina anu mi li pali", "sina wile anu pali", "sina pali e ijo anu ijo ante"). It also could be used as en between modifiers (see: Conjunctions > And > Special cases)!
taso is the word you need. I always end the sentence with a period before it (mi wile pali. taso sina pali, not like mi wile pali, taso sina pali), although it is more of a habit than a rule: pu does not explicitly allows using commas instead of periods before taso, there is one instance where it does that in an example. There were debates whether this is a typo or an interntional use. If you want to express exception, then I recommend to use and and negative (mi wile e ale e ike ala) instead of taso (mi wile e ale. taso mi wile ala e ike). Using and and negative is more compact, shorter, and ultimately more pona.
These words became merged in pu. As most of the speakers, I use them differently:
- a makes a word emotionally emphasized or exaggerated, while kin is for confirmation and used as also;
- oko means eye, all the other is lukin;
- namako means extra, bonus and sin means new, fresh.
There is another good alternative to use oko as a word, thus making a difference between the meanings of look (oko) and see (lukin).
The definitions above are not full: for the detailed definitions, see the dictionary.
With the exception of the most known deprecated words (monsuta and kipisi), it is recommended to avoid using these in formal use. Though I do not think that using deprecated (or even planned) words is a bad thing, especially if they were not replaced (e.g. 'powe' and 'pake' have no obvious counterparts). On the other hand, I would avoid using the numbers ('tuli', 'po').
Colors are jelo (yellow), laso (blue, green) and loje (red). Additionally suno is often used for the color gold.
To express the color of something, you can use kule as a noun before them (e.g. kule kasi for green or kule mun for silver).
You can also mix colors using more than one words, for example laso loje for magenta. If there is a dominant color, then put that at the first place and place the other/rest after it.
Many use laso for blue and green. I use laso for blue only, and kule kasi for green.
These are unforgivable habit that have to end.
Sometimes we can see sentences like "sina wile moku tawa pilin pona" (you have to eat for feeling good) or "ona li pali tawa kama jo e ijo" (he works for getting something). It is toki pona and not English. Do not do this. Just do not.
It should be obvious that tawa also shall never be used as a conjunction.
Use a la structure (ona li pali, la ona li ken kama jo e ijo, lon tenpo kama), or use tan ni: (if possible) after the preposition and a subject in the following sentence (sina moku tan ni: sina wile pilin pona).
Starting a sentence with en or anu is wrong. It is against every rule.
Use kin la instead of "en", and ante la instead of "anu". In some cases en la and anu la may work too.
These are widespread use of words that cannot be prevented anymore (since these in lessons or were official in the past).
It is a new phenomenon and seems to be spreading. There is no real problem with it in informal use, but in formal use, it is ugly.
Do not be lazy and write jan Sotan instead of jSotan. Thank you.
It is often seen that people put the direct address to the end of a sentence (ni li ijo, jan Ijosan) instead of starting with it (jan Ijosan o, ni li ijo).
Put the direct address to the beginning and use an o after it (additional comma is recommended).