One thing I sorta breezed past in “There is no gender in toki pona” is the word tonsi. tonsi isn’t technically a nimi pu in the sense of appearing in Toki Pona: The Language of Good, but it’s so widely accepted in the toki pona community that it is better counted alongside those words than the nimi ku suli. It is unique, I think, in having received jan Sonja’s explicit endorsement even before the publication of ku.
toki pona, as an isolating language with no gendered pronouns, is grammatically gender-neutral. End of post.
Okay but actually…
This is an adaptation of “There is no gender in toki pona.“, with added glosses and footnotes and reduced code-switching, so as not to assume toki pona proficiency on the part of the reader. If you understand at least basic toki pona, I would recommend reading the original instead. If there are things that are still not explained well enough for non-speakers, please leave a comment! If you are interested in learning toki pona, please see “Recommended learning resources” on sona.pona.la.
[CW: Very brief references to sexuality; discussion of what gendered terms to use for people.]
There are certain pitfalls ubiquitous to learners of toki pona. One early one many of us run into is hypermodification. We might translate “I drank some cold orange juice” as mi moku e telo lete pi kili suwi sike suli jelo loje, ‘I drank cold liquid of red yellow big spherical sweet fruit’. Eventually we realize we can just say mi moku e telo, ‘I drank liquid’.1 The next big hurdle is understanding the things we can’t translate directly because they represent views that clash with toki pona’s philosophy. Trying to say that you want something but don’t need it? Too bad; you’re going to have to learn to express differing kinds of wile instead.2
As we become more fluent, we internalize these pitfalls and learn to seamlessly navigate around them. This, in fact, is the essence of fluency. We learn to think not just how to translate the English words but instead the underlying, wordless concepts. But the toki-pona-incompatible worldviews closest to us are the ones that are hardest to let go of. And in my experience, the one I see toki pona speakers struggle with the most is the idea of gender. Discourse around gender in toki pona almost exclusively revolves around trying to twist the language to convey things that simply aren’t its nature to convey, any more than want-versus-need is.
Let’s start with this: There is no direct translation for “woman” and “man” in toki pona. “Hold on!”, you might say. “pu3 translates ‘woman’ as meli and ‘man’ as mije.” And yes, it does. But the translation doesn’t go both ways. If I say, “mi toki tawa mije,” ‘I speak to the mije,’ do you know the gender of the person I’m referring to? If you think you do, take another look at pu.
meli
noun woman, female, feminine person; wife
mijenoun man, male, masculine person; husband
The simplest form of this, that meli and mije do not refer exclusively to gender identity, can be proven pretty decisively. If I see someone in public with a funny joke on their T-shirt, and that person matches my local community’s definition of masculinity, I might say to my partner “o lukin e mije poka. len ona la sitelen li musi,” ‘Look at that mije over there. Their shirt is funny.’ I am not attempting to convey to my partner, in that moment, any commentary on the stranger’s gender identity. For all I know the person is a woman and takes she/her pronouns. Rather, I am using mije to describe their appearance, which will helpfully eliminate ~50% of the nearby people I might have been referring to.
If you have ever used toki pona to talk about strangers, there is a good chance you have used meli and mije in this purely presentation-based way. But the divergence between these two toki pona words and their frequent English mistranslations goes farther than that. Consider this scenario: A lesbian is at a lesbian bar. She is exclusively interested in women, and the friend beside her knows this. The lesbian says to her friend, “ike la mi taso,” ‘I hate being single.’ Her friend gestures to a fem at the end of the bar and says, “o toki tawa ona,” ‘Go talk to them.’ She shakes her head. “mi alasa e mije,” ‘I’m looking for a mije.’ In this context, it is unlikely that the lesbian is trying to communicate that she has suddenly become interested in men. Much more likely, she is saying, “I’m looking for someone butch.” Because a butch lesbian is—sometimes, in some regards—a “masculine person,” and thus mije is an appropriate (not the appropriate) term.
A different person, looking to convey the same meaning, might have said “mi alasa e tonsi” (where, by the same logic as here, tonsi can refer to any kind of gender-nonconformity) or narrowed her scope by saying something like “mi alasa e meli pi nasin mije,” ‘I’m looking for a meli with a mije vibe,’ or set gender aside and specified what precise attributes she sought. Context-sensitivity and subjectivity don’t stop mattering in toki pona as soon as gender is involved.
Continue readingThere is no gender in toki pona. (non-tokiponist–friendly version)