Adjectives and compound nouns

Toki Pona has a very minimal vocabulary. Many words do not exist in this language. Therfore, we often have to combine various words together. For example, there is no word that means "friend".

jan pona

friend (good person)

As you can see, the describing noun(s) and the adjective (which was pona in the above example) goes after the main noun. This will undoubtedly seem incredibly awkward to you if you only speak English. However, many, many languages do this.

Many of the verbs are often used as adjectives.

jan pakala		an injured person, victim, etc.
ilo moku		an eating utensil (fork/spoon/knife)

You can add more than just one word onto a noun to reach the meaning that you want:

jan utala		soldier
jan utala nasa		stupid soldier
jan utala nasa mute		many stupid soldiers
jan utala nasa ni		this stupid soldier

As you might have noticed, ni and mute as adjectives come at the end of the phrase. This occurs almost always. The reason for this is that the phrases build as you go along, so the adjectives must be put into an organized, logical order. Notice the differences in these two phrases:

jan utala nasa		stupid soldier
jan nasa utala		fighting fool

Here are some handy adjective combinations using words that you've already learned and that are fairly common.

ike lukin*		ugly
pona lukin *		pretty, attractive
jan ni li pona lukin		That person is pretty.
jan ike		enemy
jan lawa		leader
jan lili		child
jan sewi		God
jan suli		adult
jan unpa		lover, prostitute
ma telo		mud, swamp
ma tomo		city, town
mi mute		we, us
ona mute		they, them
telo nasa		alcohol, beer, wine
tomo telo		restroom
tomo toki		chat room, conference room
ilo suno		flashlight

* Note that you can only use pona lukin and ike lukin by themselves after li.