lukin - eye; look at, see, examine, observe, read, watch; look for, seek
kule - colourful, pigmented, painted
pali - do, take action on, work on; build make, prepare
tomo - indoor space; building, home, house, room
telo - water, liquid, fluid, wet substance; beverage
moku - to eat, drink, consume, swallow, ingest
olin - love, have compassion for, respect, show affection to
e - marks the direct object
pali is not a general do like in english. every word in toki pona has the act of doing built into it when used as a verb.
i did this
~ mi ni
you use the particle e to indicate the direct object, the one being affected by the predicate.
subject li predicate e direct object
jan li pali e tomo
~ the people are building a house
when you want to express more complex ideas, you should often split it up into several sentences.
i saw the person who's building the house
~ mi lukin e jan · ona li pali e tomo
~ i saw a person. they were building a house
you use the words ni or ona to refer to ideas you've already said or are going to say. ni is a bit broader than ona.
mi lukin e ni · sina olin e mi
i see this: you love me
moku ni li wawa e jan
~ this food strengthens people
lukin sina li suwi e mi
~ your gaze makes me cute
~ your look cute-ifys me
jan li musi ike e soweli lili
~ the person is poorly entertaining the small animals
ona li pali wawa e musi
~ they are confidently making games
waso li lukin e ni · soweli sina li sin
~ the bird sees that your pet is new
toki pona has no defined punctuation. anything is valid
often, when using ni to refer to an idea in the next sentence, people use a colon, but the colon doesn't add any semantic meaning and it would be okay to use a period or a line break or anything else too.
you'll notice that i chose to use an interpunct throughout this course. this is mostly to drive home the point that you can use whatever punctuation you'd like
i love you
colourful drinks are tasty
an evil person is staring at my food
it's very colourful
many workers painted the restaurant
i eat your new food
mi lukin e suwi sina
mi lukin e ni · sina suwi
soweli li moku
mi musi e jan pali
tomo moku ni li pona
olin mi li pona e mi
jan olin li moku
mi ken e ni · sina moku e moku mi
i allow this · you eat my food