Does the simplicity of a language affect one’s thinking? In other words, does having a simple language lead to clear and simple thoughts? I imagine that an automated train only requires a small set of directives, such as when to stop at a station. On the other hand, people have a large vocabulary to express themselves fully. Realistically, a small set of directives is deficient for people, but can we simplify our vocabulary and still be expressive?

In 2001, Sonja Lang created a language known as Toki Pona to explore simplicity and language. Currently, it consists of 137 words. By contrast, English has around 170,000 words. Lang wanted a language that would simplify her thoughts, and a good number of people took to it.

There are quite a few YouTube videos on Toki Pona; one even has over a million views. A Discord group, referred to as a cultural center by Sonja, is dedicated to this language. There are also various blogs that discuss it.

Certain interesting features have emerged; one is how the words in Toki Pona are very polysemous, a term that refers to words with multiple interpretations. Such words are considered very “broad” and heavily dependent on context, which help when you have a small lexicon.

Here is a taste of Toki Pona. When you need to go to the bathroom, you can say, “mi wile tawa tomo telo.” The first word, “mi,” means “I” in this context. The last two words, “tomo telo,” translate to bathroom. The word “tomo” is a broad term that can mean a room, building, or a related structure, and “telo” roughly means something related to water. Here, the word “telo” describes the type of “tomo” that is being discussed. The words “wile tawa” translate to a desire to go there. Specifically, “wile” expresses an obligation or desire, and “tawa,” in this case, expresses the action of going somewhere. Putting it all together, we get this message: I + desire to go + bathroom.

Another example is “mi moku.” This can be taken to mean “I am food,” “I am eating,” “I am drinking,” and so on. As you can see, these words are highly context-dependent.

The broadness of words pervades this language. As you can see below, four English words on the left correspond to a single Toki Pona word on the right. In other words, despite their differences in meaning, all four of the English words below would be called “lili” in Toki Pona. This table is part of a Swadesh list, a standardized system for comparing languages to one another.

Someone could say this broadness was limiting. Someone else could say that this tested the idea of language in interesting ways—such as how clear an idea can be when using imprecise words.

Toki Pona words are broad and have no exact meaning, so they are harder to pin down. A single word could be used instead of a few dozen. For instance, “lili” signifies something that is “smallish.” The word “lili” alone would be far less clear without context. Online dictionaries written on Toki Pona don’t have many entries, but many of these entries are long and describe several possible interpretations. It is polysemy at its finest.

One good thing about these broad words is that they help clarify and focus your thinking by removing inessential words. This could be especially helpful if you want to simplify your thoughts.

What if you were not interested in seven different ways to express something? Maybe you want to filter out the noise. If there were fewer words to choose from, then only the most important ones remain. Toki Pona appears to leave bare the essentials of ideas since it lacks the words to add anything else. With the words that do remain, you can focus on the simpler forms of the ideas you are conveying.

A financial statement could just be a piece of paper talking about money, a government could be seen as a large group of people, and a furnace could be thought of as a warm box. It may seem pointless to carry out this exercise, but taking this a bit further, you can imagine the following situation. Let’s say that someone, somewhere, began speaking of things in this odd way over a period of time. At first, it may seem a bit silly, but over time, the influence of this habit may grow on them, and as a result, thoughts that were originally more elaborate might become simplified.

This offers a glimpse into modes of thinking I never considered. What if language was more fluid and malleable than we think? Ideas and language are often linked together at the hip. The linkage between them is like a bridge. We also seem to treat language as something static. But perhaps, by modifying this bridge, we can alter our thoughts and perceptions through an altered lens when formulating thoughts and speech.

I speculate that thinking laterally in this way may lead to unusual results. You may never look at a financial statement or a furnace in the same way. Many things that may seem important in the short run may now appear inessential. (For example, a furnace is just a warm box.) In addition, how one communicates may be altered. On the one hand, it would be harder to be precise. On the other hand, essential points in many conversations may become more apparent. One can only guess. What I can say is that Toki Pona is very thought-provoking. Who knows where such inventions will take us.

I sometimes have a bias for minimalism, the kind that encourages one to forego practicality and focus purely on form and aesthetics. In a language like Toki Pona, it manifests as a language of few words. This type of minimalism may be interpreted as reducing elaborate and convoluted thinking.

It is said that Toki Pona is a Taoist language.

Minimalism reminds me of another experience I had. For a short while, I dabbled in Scheme, a programming language known for having relatively few features.

Programming languages are notorious for having many features. There is a very practical reason for this, but it can become bothersome. Proponents of Scheme espoused the idea that, conceptually, many programming notions can be reduced to a few elegant ones that can be used to express everything you would need. The problem, it seems, was that such an idea is rather impractical in practice. Using such a minimalistic framework appears to make certain day-to-day tasks more cumbersome. Moreover, such philosophical considerations are likely irrelevant to many practical programming tasks.

There is a parallel here with Toki Pona. It is said that Toki Pona tests the idea of maximizing the power of words with a relatively small dictionary.

Despite these practical limitations, minimalistic ideas such as those found in Toki Pona and in Scheme hold a certain appeal. Instead of focusing on the tasks they are supposed to help complete, they focus on certain ideas and explore the potential behind them. It is as if they are encouraging us to use them as an art form, not simply as a means to an end.

Somewhat ironically, one reason I wanted to learn Toki Pona was due to laziness. I wanted to exercise the language part of my brain while minimizing the amount of time I needed to learn the essential vocabulary. It indeed exercised my language muscles, and it turned out to be harder than it looked despite the small number of words.

I found that the grammar of this language was very different from English. The word order is very rigid; some say it is to compensate for the broad words. There are also particles, which are glue words that indicate grammatical relationships between the components of a sentence, a notion absent in English but important in Toki Pona. For instance, the sentence “mi moku e telo” can be taken to mean “I drink water.” This sentence contains a particle, the word “e”. What the particle does is indicate that the word “moku” is acting on the word “telo.” So, “moku e telo” means “drink water.”

It was interesting to learn how to put different words together and imagine what a second language learner may experience. There are just too many questions. What exactly makes an invention like Toki Pona tick? How can they change our perspectives on what we normally do? If you find this language intriguing, I suggest looking it up; there are several learning resources out there.