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 who is being affected by the subject's action (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 can also use the word ni to refer to an idea from a previous sentence, or to indicate you will elaborate on an idea in a future sentence. you can also use the word ona similarly, but for words instead of ideas.
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.
it's very colourful
colourful drinks are tasty
tomo moku ni li pona
jan olin li moku
i love you
an evil person is staring at my food
many workers painted the restaurant
i eat your food again
mi lukin e suwi sina / mi lukin e ni: sina suwi
soweli li moku
mi musi e jan pali
olin mi li pona e mi
mi ken e ni: sina moku e moku mi