lesson 11 - questions?

across the sky are many objects, some of which move quickly or slowly and some of which seem to be fixed in place. The moon, the stars, the planets, even the sun. All of these objects fit within mun's semantic space, especially the ones that are most obvious at night. If you brought a star down to earth, it would still be mun, so things like mun Kekan San, who is a shining star, are mun as well. If you left earth and visited a mun, it would still be a mun, so mars from the perspective of a rover might still be mun. The big question here is that to that mars rover, is earth mun? and then again, to us, is earth a mun? That's for you to find out.

ante describes a different thing. there are loads of things in the world, and every thing has similarities and differences to other things. In a specific context, if one wishes to frame the differences between objects, ante is incredibly useful. It can refer to the different object itself, qualities of difference, or the concept of change itself. It can also be used as a verb to mean "alter" or "change."

sitelen are depictions, such as images or symbols. A painting or a photograph are both sitelen. It's also common to see sitelen used to describe a symbol in a writing system. The letter Q and the maya glyph for b'alam (jaguar) are both sitelen. sitelen is usually used for things that were created, but these don't need to be organized. A random scribble is still a sitelen even though it doesn't necesserily represent anything. pure random noise has the potential to be a sitelen too, but doing so will likely frame the noise as having some sort of order to it. perhaps it was chosen? maybe it's being used for something? maybe it's a mistake? explore sitelen!

poki are containers. They're meant to contain things. Bags, boxes, and bins are great examples of poki. Furniture that contains things, such as trash cans, drawers, shelves, and even closets, are a big part of poki. Some poki might be metaphysical rather than physical. All semantic spaces of all toki pona words can be framed as poki, containing possible meanings. You could look at labels through this lense, and people who choose to use a label are placing themselves within the semantic space of said label. This usage of poki is fairly common. To explore poki's semantic space more, click here.

pakala describes destruction. pakala is often not intended, for example a mistake. The thing being destroyed were your expectations. Sometimes, when people's expectations are destroyed, they say "pakala" by itself to describe said destruction, similar to the way explatives work in other languages. This isn't something special that pakala does, but pakala is used this way because the situations we swear in are often situations where we've made mistakes, or when something has been destroyed. pakala can also be intentional, such as smash therapy or intentional use of explosions. pakala can also describe harm. If something cut my skin, I might use pakala to describe that. In fact, pakala merges the ideas of harm and destruction. In English, these concepts are given seperate words, but in toki pona, they aren't.

jo is the act of holding, carrying, posessing, owning, or broadly having. The english word "have" tends to be pretty broad, and jo is no different, but the size of its semantic space differs between speakers. Some speakers will only use jo if an object is in someone's hand or they're holding it. Others will use jo for something as abstract as a word having sounds in it or a language having words in it. for some speakers, if I'm borrowing your book, you don't jo it anymore, I do, even if you own it. For other speakers, in that situation both you and I jo the book at the same time in different ways. When you use jo, you're drawing a metaphor between someone's relationship with an object and a world in which they're holding it in their hands. some people like to stretch this metaphor much farther than others.

supa permiate all of our lives. notice all the flat objects around you. you use them every day. you sleep on one, you work on one, you eat at one, you cook at one. one important aspect of supa is that things can rest upon it. here's a good test you can try out to tell if something is supa: if I were to start tilting a supa on its side ever so slowly, it would cease to be supa as soon as things fell off of it. That means that a surface with very high friction (like felt) can continue to be supa for longer than something with very low friction (like a flat sheet of teflon). if you have stuck things to a surface and turn it completely upside down, it can stay a supa.

the semantic space of seme is unknown. That's the whole point! When one uses seme, it's unclear what it means. It is an invitation for an answer. this is very similar to wh- words in english like "what" and "which" and "who." unlike english, toki pona only has the one. If you want to specify what your query is about, you can modify a different word with seme. "kasi seme" can mean "which plant," for example. often, seme is a direct prompt to the listener, but it's frequently used as a prompt to the self or an expression of a lack of knowledge. speakers sometimes ask a question with seme only to answer it. Perhaps this is a me thing because I am jewish and that is how many jews tend to talk.