Introduction

Welcome to the LibreLingo toki pona course! toki pona is a minimalist constructed language invented by Sonja Lang in 2001. One of its most notable features is that it has a very small vocabulary. If you'd like to learn more about the language and find toki pona communities, take a look at the official website. If you'd like to learn how to speak toki pona, you're in the right place! (There are other courses listed on the website, but we hope you'll at least try this one out.)

The toki pona alphabet

Before you start learning words, you will need a basic understanding of how toki pona is written. toki pona only uses 14 letters. Each letter corresponds to one sound, regardless of context. If you're familiar with the IPA, great -- toki pona pronounciation matches it exactly! Otherwise, here's the gist:

• The vowels - a, e, i, o, u - are pronounced like in Spanish. A good mnemonic is "are there three or two".
• The consonants - j, k, l, m, n, p, s, t, w - are mostly pronounced like in English. The only exception is j, which is pronounced like the y in young.

There are other writing system for toki pona, but this is the only one that will be taught in this course.

Let's get started!

In this skill, Basics 1, you will learn some of your first toki pona words and phrases. Happy learning!