On July 19th, 2021, Sonja Lang has released an additional official toki pona book, “Toki Pona Dictionary” (also known as ku or lipu ku). This book provides translations from English to toki pona and vice versa for a whole lot of words, compiled from a community poll ran on the toki pona community in 2020-2021, and documents 61 additional words used in the language for a total of 181 nimi ku. While most of these words are rarely used in the community, there are 17 extra nimi ku suli words that have been deemed frequent and important enough to be listed separately. This page shall cover these new words.
| word | meaning |
|---|---|
| namako | spice, additional |
| kin | also, too |
| oko | eye |
| kipisi | to cut, to divide |
| leko | square, block, (stairs) |
| monsuta | fear, monster, scary |
| misikeke | medicine, cure |
| tonsi | non-binary, gender non-confirming, (transgender) |
| jasima | mirror, reflect, reverse, opposite |
| soko | mushroom, fungus |
| meso | average, medium |
| epiku | epic, awesome |
| kokosila | to speak not in toki pona while in a toki pona group |
| lanpan | seize, steal, get |
| n | um…, hmm….. |
| kijetesantakalu | raccoon or other musteloid |
| ku | (to interact with) the Toki Pona Dictionary |
The words namako, kin, and oko were listed as synonyms for sin, a, and lukin respectively in lipu pu. However, in the community, these words have somewhat different meanings:
sin typically means “new”, namako typically means “additional” or “extra”.
kin is used at the end of sentences for “also” or “too”. a does not have such a specific usage.
oko specifically means “eye”, while lukin also means “vision” and “to see”.
The words kipisi, leko, monsuta, and misikeke were early words invented before lipu pu's publishing, and they are still used in the community today. Some of these words were invented by Sonja Lang herself, such as kijetesantakalu and misikeke (the former as a joke word, which ended up being well-received by the toki pona community).
The rest are specifically newly-added words. Specifically, the word ku was invented by Sonja Lang as an counterpart to pu to describe interacting with the second official toki pona book.
You may choose to use these words or to avoid them. I personally prefer using only the vocabulary defined in the lipu pu, and only use additional words when absolutely necessary. But it’s always helpful to learn the most common additional words and to know what they mean (See also: extra page 1).
Now, try to figure out the meaning of these sentences.
And try to translate the following sentences into toki pona. (The answers page will provide both nimi pu and nimi ku answers.)