Toki Pona - Vocabulary

Vocabulary

The 120-root vocabulary is designed around the principles of living a simple life without the complications of modern civilization.

Because of the small number of roots in Toki Pona, words from other languages are often translated using a collocation of two or more roots, e.g. "to teach" by pana e sona, which literally means "to give knowledge". Although Toki Pona is generally said to have only 115, 118 or 120 "words", this is inaccurate, as there are many compound words and set phrases which, as idiomatic expressions, constitute independent lexical entries or lexemes and therefore must be memorized independently.

On the word list on the official website there are 123 roots including those not present in the vocabulary.

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