Unofficial words

Take a moment to look over the Toki Pona dictionary in the Appendix (Page ). There are no words for the names of nations; there are also aren't any words for religions or even other languages. The reason that these words aren't in the dictionary is because they are "unofficial". Before using an unofficial word, we often adapt the word to fit into Toki Pona's phonetic rules. So, for example, America becomes Mewika, Canada becomes Kanata, and so on. Now the thing about these unofficial words is that they can never be used by themselves. They are always treated like adjectives, and so they have to be used with a noun.

ma Kanata li pona.		Canada is good.
ma Italija li pona lukin.		Italy is beautiful.
mi wile tawa ma Tosi.		I want to go to Germany.

Do you remember that ma tomo means "city"?

ma tomo Lantan li suli.		London is big.
ma tomo Pelin		Berlin
ma tomo Alenta		Atlanta
ma tomo Loma		Rome
mi kama tan ma tomo Pelin.		I'm from Berlin.

If you want to talk about a language, you simply use toki and then attach the unofficial word onto it.

toki Inli li pona.		The English language is good.
ma Inli li pona.		England is good.
toki Kanse		French language
toki Epelanto		Esperanto

If you want to talk about a person who is from a certain place, you just say jan and then attach the unofficial word at the end, like this:

jan Kanata		Canadian person
jan Mesiko		Mexican person

Of course, you can use other nouns to describe certain people, too. For example, you can use the mije and meli that you learned a few minutes ago.

meli Italija		Italian woman
mije Epanja		Spanish man

Now suppose you want to talk about someone using their name. For example, what if you want to say "Lisa is cool"? Well, it's quite simple. To say a person's name in Toki Pona, you just say jan and then the person's name:

jan Lisa li pona.		Lisa is cool.

Like for the names of countries, we often adapt a person's name to fit into Toki Pona's phonetic rules. Keep in mind that no one is going to pressure you to adopt a tokiponized name; it's just for fun.

jan Pentan li pana e sona tawa mi.		Brandon teaches to me.
jan Mewi li toki tawa mi.		Mary's talking to me.
jan Nesan li musi.		Nathan is funny.
jan Eta li jan unpa.		Heather is a whore.
pana e sona		to teach (give knowledge)

Anyway, there are two ways to tell people who you are:

mi jan Pepe.		I am Pepe.
nimi mi li Pepe.		My name is Pepe.