Sitelen Pona

Sitelen Pona sitelen pona
"sitelen pona" in Sitelen Pona
Script type	Logographic
Creator	Sonja Lang
Created	c. 2013
Published	2014
Direction	Left-to-right
Languages	Toki Pona
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

Sitelen Pona (rendered in lowercase as sitelen pona, lit. 'good/simple writing',^[1] IPA: [ˈsitelen ˈpona]) is a constructed logography used for Toki Pona.^[2] It was originally designed circa 2013 and published in 2014 by Canadian linguist Sonja Lang, the language's creator. Most later characters and features were proposed and adopted by the speaking community. Sitelen Pona is the second-most used writing system for Toki Pona after the Latin script.^[3]

History

Sitelen Pona was designed by Lang in preparation for her upcoming Toki Pona textbook release. In 2013, she published a page listing 20 characters as a sample of the book's contents.^[4] The book, Toki Pona: The Language of Good, was published in 2014, and it included the first full description of Sitelen Pona in a dedicated section.^[5][2]

In 2024, Lang published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Toki Pona edition), the first in the su series of illustrated storybooks aimed at beginners, in which all Toki Pona text is written in Sitelen Pona. This was the first published book that used Sitelen Pona as a primary script.^[6]

Overview

Sitelen Pona is typically written left-to-right, top-to-bottom. As a logography, each word is written with a single grapheme. Many of the characters are derived from translingual and universal symbols such as pictograms, road signs, mathematical symbols, and emoticons.^[7] They have been described as "mostly easy to recognize, quick to remember and simple enough that even a child could draw them."^[2]

A head followed by a single modifier (e.g. a noun followed by an adjective) may be combined into one character by stacking the modifier grapheme above the head grapheme, or by nesting the modifier grapheme inside the head grapheme if there is space.^[2] The symbol of the language ^[8] is written this way, with the grapheme (pona) nested inside the grapheme (toki).^[9]

Names

Names (grammatically proper adjectives) are written by enclosing multiple characters in a cartouche shaped like a rounded rectangle. Each character inside represents the first phoneme (or, equivalently, letter) of its word. The specific characters used in a name may be chosen creatively to convey meaning about its subject.^[10]

In an alternative system called nasin sitelen kalama, characters inside a cartouche can be followed by interpuncts or dots, where each interpunct represents the next mora of the word, and a colon represents all morae of the word.^[11]

Punctuation

Sitelen Pona punctuation is unstandardized and thus highly variable, as The Language of Good features only the cartouche.^[10] As a result, some texts use no punctuation at all, instead relying on formatting and context.

Sentence boundaries are typically marked with an interpunct, period, line break, or a wide space. Question marks and exclamation marks are often proscribed due to their similarity to the characters for the words seme () and o () respectively.

Where quotation marks are used, CJK-style corner brackets (「...」) and double high quotation marks (“...” or "...") are most common.

Characters

The original English edition of Lang's book Toki Pona: The Language of Good introduces 120 hieroglyphic characters, one for each of the core words taught in the book.

• 
  a
• 
  akesi
• 
  ala
• 
  alasa
• 
  ale / ali
• 
  anpa
• 
  ante
• 
  anu
• 
  awen
• 
  e
• 
  en
• 
  esun
• 
  ijo
• 
  ike
• 
  ilo
• 
  insa
• 
  jaki
• 
  jan
• 
  jelo
• 
  jo
• 
  kala
• 
  kalama
• 
  kama
• 
  kasi
• 
  ken
• 
  kepeken
• 
  kili
• 
  kiwen
• 
  ko
• 
  kon
• 
  kule
• 
  kulupu
• 
  kute
• 
  la
• 
  lape
• 
  laso
• 
  lawa
• 
  len
• 
  lete
• 
  li
• 
  lili
• 
  linja
• 
  lipu
• 
  loje
• 
  lon
• 
  luka
• 
  lukin
• 
  lupa
• 
  ma
• 
  mama
• 
  mani
• 
  meli
• 
  mi
• 
  mije
• 
  moku
• 
  moli
• 
  monsi
• 
  mu
• 
  mun
• 
  musi
• 
  mute
• 
  nanpa
• 
  nasa
• 
  nasin
• 
  nena
• 
  ni
• 
  nimi
• 
  noka
• 
  o
• 
  olin
• 
  ona
• 
  open
• 
  pakala
• 
  pali
• 
  palisa
• 
  pan
• 
  pana
• 
  pi
• 
  pilin
• 
  pimeja
• 
  pini
• 
  pipi
• 
  poka
• 
  poki
• 
  pona
• 
  pu
• 
  sama
• 
  seli
• 
  selo
• 
  seme
• 
  sewi
• 
  sijelo
• 
  sike
• 
  sin
• 
  sina
• 
  sinpin
• 
  sitelen
• 
  sona
• 
  soweli
• 
  suli
• 
  suno
• 
  supa
• 
  suwi
• 
  tan
• 
  taso
• 
  tawa
• 
  telo
• 
  tenpo
• 
  toki
• 
  tomo
• 
  tu
• 
  unpa
• 
  uta
• 
  utala
• 
  walo
• 
  wan
• 
  waso
• 
  wawa
• 
  weka
• 
  wile

The 2022 Esperanto edition of the same book (Tokipono: La lingvo de bono) includes alternative ways to write three words.^[12]

• 
  akesi^[a]
• 
  jaki^[b]
• 
  sewi^[c]

The same edition presents characters for the 17 additional words spotlighted as "essential" in Toki Pona Dictionary (nimi ku suli).^[13] According to the accompanying text, these were the most commonly used characters for those words as of 2022, but there were still disagreements in the speaking community, and the following characters might be subject to change based on future community consensus.^[14]

• 
  epiku
• 
  jasima
• 
  kijete­san­takalu
• 
  kin
• 
  kipisi
• 
  kokosila
• 
  ku
• 
  lanpan
• 
  leko
• 
  meso
• 
  misikeke
• 
  monsuta
• 
  n
• 
  namako^[d]
• 
  namako^[e]
• 
  oko
• 
  soko
• 
  tonsi

Notes:

Encoding

As of April 2024^[update], Sitelen Pona has not been encoded into Unicode. Unofficially, it is included in the Under-ConScript Unicode Registry since 2022, at the Private Use Area codepoints range U+F1900–U+F1AFF.^[15][16]

References

Publications

• Lang, Sonja (2014). Toki Pona: The Language of Good. Tawhid. ISBN 978-0978292300. OCLC 921253340.
• Lang, Sonja (2024). The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Toki Pona ed.). Amazon Digital Services LLC - Kdp. ISBN 978-0-9782923-7-9.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sitelen Pona.