Toki Pona → aUI Language of Space. Complete Dictionary.
by Andrea Weilgart
Since ebrulato (@ burned) began the enterprising project of translating the list of Toki Pona words into aUI (Toki Pona 2 aUI or, how with 42 symbols you can be more expressive than with 123 words, Medium, Nov. 9, 2019) — but ran out of time, I wanted to provide the original and remaining translations.
As mentioned in my Response to Ebrulato…to aUI Language “Reloaded” (n2-aUI) (May 23, 2024), the author has unfortunately taken the creative freedom that aUI offers a bit far. Though one of aUI’s goals is “to be creative, not to limit ourselves to what an existing dictionary imposes on us,” as he states, this has a practical limit.
aUI has two different usages as explained on p. 248 of the aUI textbook (1979, 4th ed.): “aUI can be used for 1) for individual expression and 2) for communication.” Yes, for individual expression, we are free to create new formulations for interesting or troubling concepts, for ourselves or in a group discussion or guessing game.
But to serve the practical needs for communication, we need a standard vocabulary for quick understanding. This is found in the aUI dictionary or web-based ‘webonary.’ Ebrulato has taken the liberty of changing some of these basic formulations, not only for himself, but also published them prescriptively in his article, since he finds some of the longer and more complex words “quite difficult to understand.”
The textbook does give explanations for many of the basic words and one should first become quite familiar with them since the longer formulations are built up from these roots or bases. Changing formulations for such basic words as I and he/she, and changing even the meaning of the element Existence (which he interprets as ‘real’ or ‘true’) will sadly cause great confusion, defeating the main purpose of the language.
On the other hand, Ebrulato concludes that “we can quite easily be much more precise in many cases. It is surprising to see that with a basic corpus of only 42 signs we can achieve so much precision. We can sometimes identify basic structures that allow us to obtain a wide range of words/concepts, by simply varying one or a few letters.”
It is interesting to note that of aUI’s 42 basic elements or categories of meaning, 28 are directly represented in Toki Pona (Time, Movement, Matter, Light, Sound, Human, Spirit, Life, Feeling, Positive, Negation, Power, Round, Action, Equal, Existence (be), This, Thing, Part, Inside, Front/Before, Toward, Above, Tool/Means, Quantity, Zero, One, Five) and at least 5 more are closely represented (Space — room; Together — with; Quality — shape, form; Two — duo, pair; Question — what?).
Note: Capitalized words in the Summary Formulation refer to the aUI elements of meaning (or semantic primes), whereas lower case words indicate combinations. Translations in red indicate direct or closely related representation within the aUI primes.
For further information visit https://auilanguage.space/
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Here are several examples of aUI translations for Toki Pona word meanings; the complete list is viewable here:
