r/tokipona

How do you say the names of the days, months, hours, minutes, seconds, milliseconds, microseconds, nanoseconds and the words day, week, month, year and time? Does everyone just come up with their own translation? If yes, then is my concept of translation understandable for other Toki Pona speakers?

Day = tenpo suno
Morning = tenpo suno sin
Afternoon = tenpo suno majuna
Evening = tenpo pimeja sin / tenpo mun sin
Night = tenpo pimeja majuna / tenpo mun majuna / tenpo pimeja / tenpo mun

Month = tenpo suli pi suno mute
January = tenpo suli nanpa wan
February = tenpo suli nanpa tu
March = tenpo suli nanpa tu wan
April = tenpo suli nanpa tu tu
May = tenpo suli nanpa luka
June = tenpo suli nanpa luka wan
July = tenpo suli nanpa luka tu
August = tenpo suli nanpa luka tu wan
September = tenpo suli nanpa luka tu tu
October = tenpo suli nanpa luka luka
November = tenpo suli nanpa luka luka wan
December = tenpo suli nanpa luka luka tu

Week = linja pi suno mute / linja pi suno luka tu
Monday = tenpo suno nanpa wan
Tuesday = tenpo suno nanpa tu
Wednesday = tenpo suno nanpa tu wan
Thursday = tenpo suno nanpa tu tu
Friday = tenpo suno nanpa luka
Saturday = tenpo suno nanpa luka wan
Sunday = tenpo suno nanpa luka tu
(The number of a day depends on where you are using it. For example, if you are in Saudi Arabia where Saturday is the first day of the week, then “tenpo suno nanpa luka wan” becomes “tenpo suno nanpa wan.”)

Year = tenpo suno suli sike
My rule that I created while writing this post: Firstly, you say how many digits the year has and then the word for year. Then, every digit in a year has to be replaced with its translation into Toki Pona, with a little pause between each number, symbolized with a comma.
For example: 2026 = tu tu tenpo suno suli sike mute tu, ala, tu, luka wan.

Hour = tenpo meso
Minute = tenpo lili
Second = tenpo lili mute
Milliseconds, microseconds, nanoseconds = (Didn’t come up with a translation yet.)

Hi tokiponists!

I was wondering what are your preferences for classifying animals in the different animal groups: soweli, kala, waso, akesi, pipi...? Is an ostrich a waso or a soweli? Is a diplodocus an akesi or a soweli? Is a giant moth a waso or a pipi? Is a penguin a soweli, a waso or a kala?

I'm not looking for official correct TM answers obviously, I'm sure a lot of ways can be right. Instead I'm curious about how you might approach this :)

I have yet to learn the language, but I often wonder how practical Sitelen Pona is as a writing system. Like, if you wanted to mention a foreign word in it, how would you do it? Or do you do it at all?
Also, unrelated, what kind of names would babies have if they were named in the language?

Let’s say I want to translate “Greeks” and “Non-Greeks” into Toki Pona. Since I call the country Greece as “ma Elena,” do I also say “jan pi ma Elena” for “a Greek person” and “jan pi ma Elena ala” for “Non-Greeks?” If “ala” can be placed after a proper name in a “pi” phrase, then can I also write “mute” to specify the plural form? And since we tokiponize the names of countries, like we created the modifier “Elena” from “Ελλάδα” which is pronounced as “Ellada,” then is it optional to do the same thing from the original pronunciation of nationalities? Like in Greek, you can say “Ελλάδα”to mean “Greece,” but you can also say “Έλληνας” (pronounced as “Ellinas”) to mean refer to the male form of the Greek nationality or “Ελληνίδα” (pronounced as “Ellinida”) to refer to the female form, so do you also have to tokiponize nationalities from different languages or can you just tokiponize the name of a country and write it as a modifier in front of “jan pi ma?” If there are any other ways of saying a nationality, I would appreciate it if you tell me.