↩ Toki Pona FAQ

Toki Pona and Esperanto

Two friendly world languages

Two successful languages 🏆

Have you ever wondered how a constructed language (conlang) can unite people from different groups, even if it wasn’t originally meant to be an International Auxiliary Language (IAL)? Toki Pona is a good example. Though it was never proposed for global adoption, Toki Pona has naturally evolved into a small world language, occupying a niche that feels both similar to and distinct from Esperanto.

Meanwhile, Esperanto was originally introduced under the name Lingvo Internacia. Dr. Zamenhof advocated that it might become the one and only bridge to make the Chinese wall disappear. Toki Pona speakers also respect his vision in the lens of its traditional context, as China alone has 284 living indigenous languages, where Mandarin serves as a lingua franca. With statues and images, many revere Dr. Zamenhof as a prominent pioneer of conlangs! Esperanto continues to embody its foundational vision of fostering international communication and fulfills that ambition on a small scale. Also, Esperanto flourishes strongly when appreciated and reframed as a friendly global community that welcomes travellers and offers a very strong bibliography of physical books for a conlang, in contrast to Toki Pona’s digital corpus.

If you enjoy exploring unique languages or value cross-cultural connections, you may appreciate the path Toki Pona has taken. Despite its minimalist design, it has attracted a vibrant, welcoming community of tens of thousands of speakers and fans in countries around the world. They participate in everything from podcasts, magazines, and online chatrooms to annual gatherings on multiple continents. Toki Pona has fostered international friendships and couples, cross-cultural collaborations, literary contests, books, videos, and courses (even at universities worldwide). Toki Pona culture also includes video games, comics, an official ISO code, and a dedicated Bible translation project.

Toki Pona and Esperanto are often mentioned as two of many successful conlangs in the world today. Both languages have attracted diverse age groups, with Toki Pona recently gaining notable interest among young speakers. What do you value most in a language community: ease of learning, shared ideals, or just connecting with new friends who enjoy linguistics, arts, and science? You might discover that Toki Pona’s simple approach or Esperanto’s historic vision for global unity aligns with your own identity as a language lover. Both languages have good things to offer.

Why do young people gravitate toward Toki Pona? 👩‍🎤

Like most conlang explorers of a certain age, Sonja learned Esperanto at a young age and still actively contributes to that conlang community. Back then, Esperanto was the only viable option that was spoken by a large enough community around the world.

Sometimes our friends who speak Esperanto are curious about Toki Pona. They ask if and how its philosophy, design, and purpose are different from Esperanto. They wonder if the generation of teenagers that discovered Toki Pona will also join the Esperanto movement. As supporters of multilingualism, Sonja and the Toki Pona community try to open doors in all directions, so speakers of one conlang can feel welcome to learn and participate in any other one.

When we listen to young Toki Pona speakers, they share these reasons for their enthusiasm:

  1. Simplicity 🍃
    Toki Pona’s grammar is not complicated. Its sound system is easy for people from all language backgrounds. The minimal vocabulary can be learned quickly. These can reduce the barriers to speaking and understanding it. (Of course, learning still requires practice.)
  2. Clarity and positivity 🌞
    The language’s philosophy encourages a focus on core meanings and transparent thinking about complex ideas. You can’t just rely on technical jargon. Toki Pona speakers say this helps them express their intentions clearly or be mindful.
  3. Empowerment 🌟
    Many learners feel that studying Toki Pona is a liberating act, because it allows for fresh, creative expressions that help inspire innovative solutions to problems.
  4. Global network 🌐
    Toki Pona’s worldwide community is known for its energy and inventiveness, much like Esperanto’s. On large chat servers and during regular events, a diversity of participants come together to forge friendships, launch projects, and share cultural ideas. Many of us speak both Esperanto and Toki Pona and are shaping their shared future together.
  5. Art from the linguistic peripheries 🎨
    • By not privileging the grammatical features or the roughly 8,000 words from 2,000 morphemes of only one continent, and instead featuring many words from more peripheral languages, Toki Pona attracts those who value global inclusion, gender equality, accessibility for Deaf people, and other forms of ethical and cultural liberation.
    • The conclusion of kala Asi was that Toki Pona mostly lacks grammatical features that are common in European languages, but rare elsewhere.
    • Toki Pona was designed from perfectly functional and natural language features that happen to be highly peripheral to Europe.
    • Many members in our communities directly experience how European systems are still dominating Indigenous, minority, and regional cultures around the world, which also harms their languages. We support true grassroots solidarity, linguistic diversity, and co-existence.
  6. Shared spotlight and solidarity with Esperanto 🤝
    If you enjoy one, you might enjoy the other. While many conlangs exist, Esperanto and Toki Pona are the main two that reached a unique level of success in the world. (See the chart below, which excludes other conlangs that focus on a subregion or fictional setting.)
  7. Friendly coexistence 🕊️
    Many speakers are active in both Esperanto and Toki Pona communities. We share a spirit of cooperation.

Why do some gravitate toward Esperanto? 💚

While many appreciate Toki Pona’s minimalism, some learners feel at home with Esperanto. Below are a few reasons why:

  1. Familiar structures 🇪🇺🏠
    Esperanto’s grammar and vocabulary draw mostly from European languages, making it straightforward for those who share that background. Some gravitate toward having options for easy word-for-word translation, rather than learning a new way to arrange ideas into sentences.
    • Think about it 💭
    • The primary language of about 75% of the planet isn’t a European one. For them, these “familiar” features are not intuitive or predictable.
    • Do you enjoy the challenge of stepping outside your comfort zone?
    • Should we expect the rest of the world to adapt to the European way? Or only promote Esperanto for its own sake and not as the final international language?
  2. Misunderstandings among beginners 🤷‍♀️
    New Toki Pona learners can sometimes confuse one another.
    • Think about it 💭
    • Of course, this can happen in any language.
    • In some Toki Pona spaces, there are more beginners than fluent speakers and skilled teachers, who gravitate toward Discord. Many newcomers are still figuring it out together, without realizing the experts are elsewhere.
  3. Context matters in Toki Pona 🎯
    If a beginner uses too many words, the phrase will feel ridiculously long and cumbersome to experienced speakers. On the other end, using too few words can cause unintended ambiguity.
    • Think about it 💭
    • In real world situations, competent Toki Pona speakers know how to tailor their word choices dynamically.
    • While many find this situational awareness insightful or fun, it can require some practice like any skill.
    • In art and poetry, the option for ambiguity can be intentional and interesting.
    • Does learning to adapt your perception of various contexts seem agile or interesting?
    • Or do you gravitate toward a ready-made system where most words match those in your own language?
  4. Memorizing vs. combining words 🧠
    Esperanto uses thousands of specific terms, whereas Toki Pona focuses on combining up to 140 simple words to convey meaning.
    • Think about it 💭
    • In Esperanto, you need to memorize about 2,000 specific morphemes to understand 95%. After that, the rest can be understood from context.
    • In Toki Pona, describing technical things as if explaining to a non-expert can reveal how deeply you truly grasp them.
    • Do you enjoy thinking about the core meanings behind ideas and playing with fundamental building blocks?
    • Or does a deep vocabulary of specialized words suit your style well?
  5. Long history and institutions 🏛️
    Esperanto has been around a long time and has established organizations. Some learners who want to connect with existing networks find this reassuring.
    • Think about it 💭
    • Many people choose to explore and speak both Toki Pona and Esperanto. Many enjoy both communities in the spirit of linguistic diversity and Raumism.
    • A member of the Akademio de Esperanto thanked the inventor of Toki Pona in 2010 for her contributions to modernize Esperanto.
    • While Esperanto’s classical institutions offer excellent support and stability, some perceive them as slightly slow to evolve in some cases. Sometimes they can seem out of step with the needs of young people.
    • The Academy of Esperanto has remained neutral about longtime requests over gender-neutral options. They officially ruled to wait another decade.
    • For decades, the League of Male and Female Homosexual Esperantists tried to acknowledge pansexual, non-binary, and transgender people, but they faced bureaucratic hurdles. In 2024, they became the League of Esperantists with Diverse Sexual and Gender Inclinations.
    • In the Universal Esperanto Association’s Update on Esperanto, they describe Esperanto as “widely used in the ICQ, IRC, MSN, and Skype instant messaging programmes.”
    • The Toki Pona community is dynamic to changing needs. While the language remains very stable among experienced speakers, it’s quite decentralized and doesn’t depend on a single founder, book, or institution as the only reliable or mandatory source.

Ultimately, gravitating toward Esperanto, Toki Pona, or both can depend on your personal and subjective preferences, goals, tastes, and background. As a language learner, do you see yourself tapping into a rich, traditional structure or exploring a fresh, concise approach? Many of us ultimately choose to speak both, since both languages are easy to learn.

Strengths of Esperanto and Toki Pona 💪

Guiding ideas 💡

Esperanto

  1. Early Esperantists had faith in the Final Victory to “solve the language problem”.
    • They envisioned a future where the entire world will adopt a unifying language rooted in European grammar and vocabulary.
    • Critics have noted that trying to export the uniquely Western ways of saying things might not actually embody cultural equality.
  2. The internal idea taught by Dr. Zamenhof means “upon a neutral linguistic foundation, to remove the walls between ethnic groups and get people continuously used to each of them seeing in their neighbour only a human being and a brother”. He also wrote A Prayer Under the Green Flag about this.
  3. This evolved into Homaranismo, which promotes solidarity, mutual respect, and greater understanding between different cultures and religions. This is an ideal that many Esperantists still cherish.
  4. Recent movements (such as Raumism and the Prague Manifesto) focus on nurturing Esperanto’s culture as a language minority, emphasizing the value of linguistic diversity worldwide.
  5. How can we honour Dr. Zamenhof’s legacy in a way that balances the mandatory and unchangeable Fundamento with natural evolution? Speakers grapple with gender-neutral options, the Akademio’s stance to not deal with it, and a 10-year wait.

Toki Pona

  1. Originally introduced as a way to:
    • simplify racing thoughts
    • encourage mindfulness
    • communicate between different cultures
    • inspire creative self-expression
    • reflect deeply on meaning
    • focus on the big picture
  2. Over time, skilled speakers have used Toki Pona
    • for increasingly complex topics
    • to demonstrate the versatile power of its minimal features
    • for all sorts of practical and technical purposes
  3. Speakers find the way it encourages deliberate word choices to be freeing. “Analytic encoding […] is a very liberating act. […] Toki Pona is a liberating ideology.” (Dr. Laura Michaelis).
  4. Many who enjoy Toki Pona resist the idea of a single global tongue, noting that large lingua francas can harm regional, minority, and Indigenous languages.
  5. Toki Pona’s living creator fosters community collaboration, provides minor updates, and accepts a handful of new words. She intervenes minimally in a spirit of non-prescription and servant leadership to ensure all speakers collectively own the language.
  6. All conlangs owe a lot to Esperanto. Dr. Zamenhof’s pioneering efforts paved the way for Toki Pona to flourish today.

The youth factor 🤩

Esperanto

  • Telegram is the primary online platform for the vibrant Esperanto-speaking youth around the world, but offline gatherings are also important.
  • Founded in 1938, the World Esperanto Youth Organization (TEJO) serves as a strong central organization. Four officers and three volunteers actively help to sustain the broader Esperanto youth ecosystem. They have a physical office in the Netherlands.
  • Each year, TEJO organizes events like the International Youth Congress (IJK) and supports multiple in-person meetups. In 2024–25, such gatherings drew up to 30 participants in East Asia and up to 150 in Europe.
  • TEJO accepts members up to 35 years old. Some are teens in school, while others are adults with established careers. The ratio of IJK attendees to World Esperanto Congress (UK) attendees is between 13% and 23%.
  • Esperanto youth groups are active in many countries, such as Japan.
  • The movement publishes the magazine Kontakto six times a year.

Special thanks to Tyron Surmon, former president of TEJO, for this information! It’s not exactly apples to apples, but we hope this provides a stronger general picture than the bad statistics in older versions of this page.

Toki Pona

  • Primarily on Discord, a massive teen boom started around 2020 and keeps growing.
  • Over 51% of Toki Pona speakers are aged under 20 according to a 2022 census.
  • Most are teenagers, but Sonja also receives many messages from children who discovered the conlang.
  • Those aged between 20 and 30 are the next large cohort. They were 33% in 2022.
  • We can estimate those up to 35 years old to be around 88% of the Toki Pona community.
  • Offline gatherings have begun to appear. In 2024–25, 42 Toki Pona speakers attended an event in Berlin, Germany.
  • In the last few years, countless small gatherings have been happening on a local level, as Toki Pona–speaking friend groups form in cities and do activities together.
  • Currently, teens have fewer financial opportunities to travel. Young people organize such events in a grassroots way on various regional Discord servers without a single central organization.
  • Toki Pona youth groups are active in many countries, such as Japan.
  • The young community publishes the magazine lipu tenpo six to eight times a year, as well as other publications.

Vocabulary 🧠

Esperanto

  1. Rooted in 1800s European culture 🤵🏼‍♂️
    The Universal Dictionary includes many universal concepts and also many historical words that can educate us about that context.
    falbalo furbelow
    (ruffle on clothing)
    furbelow
    frako tailcoat
    tailcoat
    galanterio millinery, haberdashery
    (beauty, grooming, and fashion accessories and handy personal knick-knacks)
    hortulano ortolan bunting
    (rare bird eaten by the French)
    iĥtiokolo isinglass
    (glue made from fish collagen)
    kafo coffee
    krispo ruff (frilled collar)
    ruff
    laktumo milt (fish or mollusc semen)
    nankeno nankeen
    (type of yellow cotton from Nánjīng)
    porfiro porphyry
    (Greek word for purple rock)
    ŝtrumpo over-the-knee sock
    (small modern socks use a derivative word)
  2. Mandatory and unchangeable 🧱
    • Words like these (above) are in “the only mandatory linguistic foundation for all Esperantists once and forever, […] in which nobody has the right to make any changes”. (Declaration on the Essence of Esperantism)
    • This guarantees permanent stability and protects us from anarchy.
    • It also enshrines a certain bias, but all languages do.
    • Dr. Zamenhof also envisioned necessary progress and change. Has this principle been de-prioritized by Esperanto’s high authority?
  3. Outside the West 🌏
    • Esperantists in Asia, Africa, Indigenous nations in the Americas, and Oceania report that fewer established words exist for some basic things in their daily lives and cultures.
    • They’re able to describe them using other words, similar to how Toki Pona handles all specific concepts. Or they invent new words.
  4. Number of words to learn 📚
  5. Emphasis on memorization 🧠
    While Esperanto’s rules simplify grammar a little, many specialized terms exist. This can be appealing if you enjoy having many options of exact words for every nuance.
  6. Lots of specialized terms 🥞
    • For example, there are dozens of distinct words for sweet baked goods. This can be fun for those who like precise vocabulary.
      • biskvito: dry, with long shelf life
      • blino: thicker than a krespo
      • brioĉo: with eggs, ball-shaped
      • kataifo: made from threads
      • kekso: hard
      • krespo: thin, fried, with eggs
      • kuko: like a cake
      • kuketo: slightly smaller
      • moĉio: steamed, ball-shaped
      • patkuko: flat
      • platkuko: flat, with eggs
      • skono: Scottish
      • torto: with a garnish
      • vaflo: baked in an iron
    • Do speakers remember all the differences?
    • Do they only use some words and not the others?
    • Where is the line between…?
      • theoretical completeness in dictionaries
      • real-world needs and style guides if we want most Esperantists in the world to understand
  7. Benefits of a huge lexicon ✅
    Having so many words makes it easy to find perfect rhymes or capture subtle differences and details, assuming your reader or listener has also studied these.
  8. Simplification attempts 📙
    • There’s even a small movement within Esperanto to reform the vocabulary to a manageable set, inspired from La bona lingvo, a book by Claude Piron.
    • They propose describing things using only common words. This strategy is very similar to Toki Pona and may have even been one of the many inspirations for Toki Pona!
    • This way, you can ignore many words from the mandatory Fundamento and creatively say:
      • ceremonia jako (formal jacket), discarding frako★
      • fiŝgluo (fish glue), discarding iĥtiokolo★
      • purpura ŝtono (purple stone), discarding porfiro★
    • However, we can’t expect or enforce everyone to speak this way. You’ll still eventually learn around 2,000 morphemes if you hope to achieve 95% understanding.
  9. Based on spelling, not sounds ✍️
    Words like boato, teamo, and suno come from English but sound quite different. That’s because Esperanto prioritizes easy recognition by spelling for those who may not speak English.

Toki Pona

  1. Minimalist core 🌸
    • Starts with about 120 to 140 words.
    • Some learners find it refreshing not to memorize thousands of mostly European morphemes.
    • Instead, you combine simple words based on context and creativity.
  2. Building meaning by context 🏗️
    • Need to talk about yellow textiles from China (nankeno)? Just say “yellow textiles from China”. 🧵
    • What about other special words? Toki Pona lets you playfully combine the basic ideas, so you provide just enough detail in a resourceful or agile way.
  3. Flexible descriptions 🤸‍♀️
    • telo wawa (stimulating drink) covers most coffee (kafo) scenarios. You can always swap the words or add more: seli (hot), pimeja (black), or any other detail. ☕
    • At first mention, milt (laktumo) would be telo unpa kala to understand “reproductive fluid of a sea creature”. Later, you shorten it to just telo or telo unpa. 🐟
    • You learn how to convey exactly what you mean without listing dozens of words.
  4. Sweet baked goods? 🥞
    • Normally, pan suwi is enough for food made from cereal grain and sugar.
    • If it’s important or helpful to specify the shape, texture, cooking method, other main ingredients, or country of origin, you can add any sort of short descriptor:
      • lipu (flat)
      • ko (soft)
      • kili (with fruit)
      • awen (durable)
    • It’s all about giving the right amount of detail, rather than expecting everyone to learn separate, dedicated terms for every slight variation.
  5. Understand what’s important 🎯
    • Since such combinations aren’t rigidly predefined, you focus on the essential ideas.
    • Many Toki Pona speakers say this frees them to think deeply or creatively about what they really mean.
  6. Situational awareness 👩‍🏫
    • Toki Pona’s style is backed by the branch of linguistics called pragmatics.
    • According to Grice’s Maxims, competent speakers of all languages offer just enough information for the real-world context: not too much, not too little.
    • Thoughts and communication don’t happen in a contrived or abstract vacuum.
    • How can you clearly convey the intended understanding to someone in the here and now?
    • What information is already obvious or easy to figure out?
  7. Back to simplicity 🍃
    • If a beginner tries to translate a word from another language too explicitly or literally, these extra details feel unnecessary and clunky to experienced Toki Pona speakers.
    • The same is true for long noun phrases with multiple pi. We don’t say “these languages of the students of the university of the country”. The Toki Pona way favours short sentences with clear particles like la, li, and e: “In the country, the students speak these languages at the university.”

Pronunciation 🗣️

Esperanto

  • “The Esperanto phonological system is almost entirely Polish.” (Walter Żelazny)
  • This honours where Dr. Zamenhof was born and raised: Białystok, now in Poland.
  • Tricky contrasts 😅
    Most Esperantists can master these, and they aren’t a barrier:
    • /f/ vs. /p/
      uncomfortable at first in Korean, Bengali, Tamil, Tagalog, Indonesian, etc.
    • /r/ vs. /l/
      unnatural at first in Japanese, Korean, colloquial Thai, etc.
    • clusters alveolar post­alveolar
      sibilant voice­less /s/
      kaso
      cash register       		/ʃ/
      kaŝo
      act of hiding
      voiced /z/
      kazo
      case       		/ʒ/
      aĵo
      thing
      affricate voice­less /ts/
      kaco
      dick       		/tʃ/
      kaĉo
      porridge
      voiced /dz/
      adzo
      adze       		/dʒ/
      aĝo
      age
      3 parts voice­less /sts/
      scii
      know       		/ʃtʃ/
      puŝ­ĉaro
      shopping cart, wheel­barrow
      voiced
      (rare)      		 /zdʒ/
      riz­ĝardeno
      rice garden       		/ʒdʒ/
      skulptaĵ­ĝardeno
      sculpture garden
      4 parts /kstʃ/
      eks­ĉefo
      former boss
      5 parts (rare) /ststs/
      post­scio
      hindsight

Toki Pona

  • Few sounds and universal 🌐
    • Toki Pona’s sound system is very easy to pronounce for speakers from all language backgrounds.
    • This eliminates barriers and misunderstandings due to different natural accents.
  • Adapting names 🆔
    • Since Toki Pona doesn’t replicate every sound from every language, this also means that names of people or places are adjusted to nearby sounds, e.g. ma Apika (Africa), toki Kanse (French).
    • All languages must do this, but you need to be familiar with the predictable Tokiponization patterns to recognize some names.

Proper names 🏷️

Esperanto

  • Exonyms for foreign recognition 🌍
    Esperanto mainly uses names that are easy to recognize for Europeans (and often also speakers of other languages). These follow spelling, not pronunciation.
    1. 🇯🇵 la japana lingvo
    2. 🇩🇪 la germanoj
    3. 🇰🇷 Sud-Koreujo or Sud-Koreio
  • Exceptions to learn 🔍
    • Sometimes the base word refers to a person in lowercase:
      • italo (an Italian)
        → Italujo or Italio (Italy)
      • finno (a Finn)
        → Finnlando (Finland)
    • In other cases, the country is primary, and the person is capitalized:
      • Usono (USA)
        → Usonano (an American)
    • This analysis was based on PIV and many traditional texts, but other valid capitalization styles exist to simplify.
    • Do Sud-Koreo, Ukraino/Ukrajno, and Egipto now mean a person or country? Sometimes speakers in one country ask everyone else to change the pattern for them, leading to confusion.

Toki Pona

  • Endonyms for cultural respect 🙏
    Toki Pona always prioritizes how local groups prefer to call themselves. These follow pronunciation.
    1. 🇯🇵 日本語 → toki Nijon
      [ɲihoŋ] → Nijon
      [ɡo]→ toki
    2. 🇩🇪 die Deutschen → kulupu Tosi
      [ˈdɔɪ̯t͡ʃn̩] → /doiʃ/ → Tosi
    3. 🇰🇷 한국 → ma Anku
      [haŋɡuk̚] → Anku
  • Consistent word categories 🗂️
    Instead of suffixes like “-ish” or “-land”, Toki Pona uses:
    • kulupu… (group)
    • ma… (territory)
    • toki… (language)
    • jan pi ma… (person in or from a place)
    • jan pi kulupu… (member of group)
  • Clear head nouns 💡
    By consistently labelling names with any basic Toki Pona word, everyone immediately knows what kind of entity it is:
    • jan Muwama (person named Muhammad)
    • telo Tana (body of water called Tana)
    • ilo Sun (technology called Zoom)
    • kulupu Sun (organization called Zoom)

Grammatical gender 🚹🚺

Esperanto

  • Male-centered origins 🚹
    • Many common terms default to a masculine:
      • frato (brother) → fratino (sister)
      • onklo (uncle) → onklino (aunt)
    • Is this only a convention? A clever way to simplify Esperanto’s vocabulary for very common words?
    • Can it imply the feminine is derived or secondary? Can onklino feel like a “female uncle”?
  • Neutral terms 🤝
    • Many words let you choose:
      • instruisto (teacher of any gender)
      • vira instruisto (male teacher) 🚹
      • instruistino (female teacher) 🚺
  • Two pronouns 🚻
    • li (he) and ŝi (she) are traditional in most European languages.
    • Gender-neutral options face debates since the 1970s.

Toki Pona

  • Gender-neutral from the start 🤝
    • Words don’t mark gender, so ona covers he, she, they, or it.
    • This natural approach is backed by many world languages: spoken Mandarin, Hindi–Urdu, Bengali, Malay–Indonesian, Swahili, Punjabi, Persian, Turkish, Javanese, informal Korean, Filipino, Thai, Yoruba, Igbo, Hungarian, and Finnish.
  • Optional markers 🏷️
    • For clarity, you can add:
      • mije (masculine) 🚹
      • meli (feminine) 🚺
      • tonsi (new word for gender non-conforming) ⚧️
    • As of 2024, 18% of 918 surveyed Toki Pona speakers prefer not to use these three words at all. They completely de-emphasize gender.
  • Universal words 🤗
    • mama means “parent of any gender”, borrowed from the Georgian word მამა mama meaning father.
    • Does the idea of unified words seem appealing? Or is it unfamiliar in your culture?

Gender of the speakers 🚹🚺⚧️

Esperanto

  • Men (77%) overwhelmingly outnumber women and gender minorities combined (23%) by a factor of about 3½.

Toki Pona

  • Similar numbers of men (mije) and gender-variant people (tonsi).
  • About 2⅓ times fewer women (meli) than men.
Notes
  • The graph is based on data reported in Libera Folio. The methodologies weren’t identical but give a general idea. (If you know a better source of data, please help us improve the FAQ to show Esperanto as fully inclusive.)
  • We only compare male, female, and tonsi. The slices sum to 100% after removing “no data”.
  • tonsi is an umbrella term. It includes those who reported themselves in a Toki Pona census as being non-binary, transgender, gender non-confirming, agender, gender-questioning, and/or have a gender that’s not one of the previous categories.
  • There’s partial overlap. Some speakers may fall under two or more categories, but the chart was re-adjusted to total 100%.
  • The incomplete data is also affected by an Esperanto culture that sometimes reinforces a simplified binary model of sex and gender.
    • Institutions and services don’t always provide any option beyond sinjoro and sinjorino.
    • Of course, gender-variant Esperantists exist. For decades, they’ve asked for sinjoripo, but sometimes they’re unintentionally hidden from records.

Writing system ✍️

Esperanto

  • Latin alphabet with a twist 🔡
    • Esperanto keeps the familiar Roman letters but adds six with diacritics: ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, ŭ.
    • Although these special letters are rare among world languages, they’re fun and and easy to type with modern technology.
  • Phonetic consistency 👂
    • Each letter corresponds to one sound, e.g. transdoni (to hand over) isn’t /tranzdoni/.
    • This allows for many subtle variations to remove ambiguity:
      • pesi: to measure the weight of something
      • pezi: to have a certain weight
      • ŝargi: to load a computer program or firearm; to charge a device or battery
      • ŝarĝi: to load something to be carried by a person, animal, or vehicle; to burden someone
    • If you value a clear, direct relationship between spelling and pronunciation, this might appeal to you.

Toki Pona

  • Latin alphabet (sitelen Lasina) 🔡
    • Like Esperanto, Toki Pona uses a straightforward approach: one letter, one sound.
    • Most people are familiar with the Roman alphabet, so this is easy to read and write.
  • Optional glyphs (sitelen pona) ✒️
    • Logograms depict words in a pictorial style: one symbol, one word.
    • Many find them fun. They inspire visual forms of writing.
    • Many say the symbols help them remember word meanings.
      • soweli fuzzy land mammal
      • pan rice, wheat
      • kasi plant
      • len cloth, fabric
    • Glyphs can be combined in creative ways. For example, the symbol toki‍pona (Toki Pona) comes from toki (language) and pona (positive, simple).

Sign language 🤟

Esperanto

  • Signuno
    Unfortunately, this manually coded form of Esperanto has not gained any traction. This reflects concerns from Deaf communities that signed one-for-one translations of spoken languages only reinforce the dominance of hearing culture and also hinder the natural flow and grammar of true sign languages that Deaf people rely on.
  • International Sign (IS)
    Actually used by Deaf people in situations of international communication, International Sign evolved independently of Esperanto and does not appear at any known Esperanto gatherings.

Toki Pona

  • Luka Pona Sign Language (LPSL)
    • LPSL was developed in 2020 by jan Olipija and others.
    • It’s actively used by Deaf, Hard of Hearing, non-speaking, and neurodivergent members of the Toki Pona community.
    • How might a sign language crafted specifically with Toki Pona’s spirit of clarity and simplicity support egalitarian communication?
  • Linguistic foundation
    • Unlike old experiments that were manually coded (including two discontinued ones in Toki Pona), LPSL reflects authentic sign language principles, valuing natural expression over literal translation.

Music scene 🎶

Digital platforms like Bandcamp, YouTube, and Spotify have broadened the global reach of artists who produce music in conlangs. This section was written with the help of jan Misali (musician and YouTube teacher).

Esperanto

Toki Pona

Adaptability to social change 🪴

All living languages evolve naturally and gradually as speaker demographics and societies themselves also change. What happens when a new generation of speakers has different needs that weren’t foreseen by the older founder or older institutions?

Esperanto

  • Unresolved question 🤔
    • Have you ever needed a gender-neutral option beyond the well-established ways?
    • Various proposals address this, yet they face heated debates. 🔥
      • ri (singular they)
        used by some since the 1970s
      • -ip (non-binary)
      • -iĉ (a proposed masculine form complementary to vira or vir-)
    • Some organizations describe ri as a purely transgender pronoun, while those who use ri treat it simply as a gender-neutral option for any person.
    • How do you feel about these proposals? Do they represent healthy, natural language evolution?
    • What about the need to uphold the Fundamento of 1905 as mandatory and unchangeable? Could that perspective be limiting the language’s growth in some way, or is it a crucial safeguard?
  • Founder’s stature 🖼️
  • Stance of the Akademio 🏛
    • Dr. Zamenhof tasked the Akademio de Esperanto with guiding the language’s future on behalf of all speakers. 🌐
    • Every new member must declare his allegiance to the Fundamento. 📜
    • Previously, membership slanted toward European and Western men over 55, but that’s now changing. ⚖️
    • In 2021, many European languages similar to Esperanto underwent minor updates to recognize gender-neutral options. 🚹🚺⚧️
    • As an official response to this, the Akademio announced it could neither endorse nor reject ri. They mentioned ri alongside ŝli, a pronoun nobody seems to use. 🤷
    • Their solution is to remain neutral, not deal with it in 2021, and wait an additional 10 years. ⏳
    • In your opinion:
      • Was this a wise and prudent way to balance the conflicting views of different generations and different world regions? ⚖️
      • Did this hands-off approach play it too safe in a pivotal moment that called for leadership, courage, outreach, and mutual consultation with the youth that use ri? 🦁
  • Did Dr. Zamenhof envision progress? 📈
    • Dr. Zamenhof wrote:
    • Could our culture of rigid Fundamento-ism overshadow Dr. Zamenhof’s own teachings?
    • By 2021, many were aware of this gender-neutral pronoun, increasingly embraced by the young generation.
  • If you had a voice… 🗳️
    • Would you say that ri is still too “arbitrary and personal”, risking future “anarchy”? 🏴
    • What if they could clarify like this? 📢
      “Now that it’s 2031, the Akademio de Esperanto acknowledges the emergence of the pronoun ri, which has been used as a gender-neutral option by a noticeable and growing minority of speakers since the 1970s. While its use is not mandatory, learners and speakers are advised to be aware of its presence in contemporary discourse. At the same time, the pronouns li and ŝi remain foundational elements of the language, as codified in the Fundamento de Esperanto, and should never be considered obsolete or superseded.”

Toki Pona

  • Living language 🌱
    • Toki Pona has a living creator, who sees herself as an equal among other speakers.
    • Its founding documents are only a starting point, not set in stone.
    • Many excellent community resources exist in parallel. The main Toki Pona researchers, teachers, and publishers collaborate to keep their descriptions aligned with each other.
  • Youth contributions 💡
    • The three new words introduced by the new generation are widely recognized and treated on par with old terms.
    • tonsi is a great example! It wasn’t created by Sonja, but it’s now accepted alongside other gender words.
  • Founder’s responsibilities ⚖️
    • All experienced speakers have maximum freedom, but they cannot dictate every feature for official books. The language creator will fail if she over-caters to “power users” but also fails if she neglects them.
    • The creator listens to all well-supported feedback and publishes minor updates when enough time has passed.
    • Beginners are free to follow any experienced speaker’s style or teachings.
    • Fluent speakers expect large surveys and corpus research to accurately describe majority usage.
    • These descriptions normally align closely with Sonja’s style, but she tracks any small differences and cannot prescribe.
  • Exceptional cases ❗
    • Sonja only steps in when a persistent, widespread issue calls for a unifying voice.
    • If the community accepts, she offers help as a short-term facilitator. After that, she withdraws so all groups keep ownership of the language.
    • The most recent example is standardization of Sitelen Pona among expert stakeholders before Unicode can implement our consensus.
  • Personal views 🙏

Topics of use 💬

Concern: Do constructed languages mostly stay self-referential and meta-linguistic? In other words, do people mostly talk in the conlang about the conlang itself? Is it only larger communities, such as Esperanto, Toki Pona, and Interslavic, that can sustain many varied domains of everyday use? Let’s explore this question with a very small sample of activity on Reddit and Bluesky.

Observations: On Reddit, about 40% of Esperanto threads and 54% of Toki Pona threads already use the languages for the domains of daily life, creative arts, and translation, going beyond talking about the conlangs themselves. On Bluesky, that outward focus rises to 74% for Esperanto and 66% for Toki Pona, confirming that both communities have passed the milestone and comfortably discuss the wider world. Of course, these are only small snapshots.

Notes: This section was recently added and is still being edited and improved. Send us your corrections! Although fluent Toki Pona speakers prefer Discord and fluent Esperantists prefer Facebook and Telegram, we didn’t consider these, because they’re overwhelmingly used by one conlang community more than the other. So these observations skew toward beginners.

Reddit

Since the sizes of both conlangs’ Reddit communities are similar, we sampled the top topics being discussed in the week ending on 2025-05-02 15:00:00 Z. For both languages, Reddit has more beginners than advanced speakers, who tend to gather elsewhere.

Esperanto

  • 14 posts in Esperanto
  • 6 posts about Esperanto in other languages
  • 12 posts looking inward at the conlang
    • Questions (5)
    • Esperanto activism and politics (3)
    • Language resources and tools (2)
    • Meetings and gatherings (2)
  • 8 posts using the conlang for various purposes
    • Lifestyle (4)
    • Personal experiences (2)
    • Translations to or from Esperanto (2)

Toki Pona

  • 7 posts in Toki Pona
  • 17 posts about Toki Pona in other languages
  • 11 posts looking inward at the conlang
    • Questions (7)
    • Cultural references to Toki Pona (2)
    • Word discussions and meanings (2)
  • 13 posts using the conlang for various purposes
    • Translations to or from Toki Pona (6)
    • Creative works in Toki Pona, e.g. music, stories (4)
    • Visual content and images (3)

Bluesky

Since Bluesky has a fairly active community for both Esperanto and Toki Pona, we sampled the topics being discussed in the 48-hour period ending on 2025-05-02 15:00:00 Z.

Esperanto

  • 19 posts in Esperanto
  • 5 posts looking inward at the conlang
    • Language learning and resources (3)
    • Events and meet-ups (2)
  • 14 posts using the conlang for various purposes
    • Music sharing (5)
    • Daily life and hobbies (4)
    • Creative media projects (2)
    • Science and nature (1)
    • Miscellaneous other topics (2)

Toki Pona

  • 50 posts in Toki Pona
  • 16 posts about Toki Pona in other languages
  • 17 posts looking inward at the conlang
    • Language learning and resources (15)
    • Events and community organizing (2)
  • 33 posts using the conlang for various purposes
    • Daily life, feelings, and mutual support (19)
    • Humour and memes (6)
    • Creative projects and art sharing (5)
    • Environmental observations (2)
    • Miscellaneous other topics (1)

Two million Esperanto speakers? 📈

Many have read the claim that there are around two million Esperanto speakers worldwide, cited by sources like Esperanto.net (run by E@I) and early editions of Ethnologue. However, observed community sizes seem somewhat different. If two million is correct, then roughly 97% of speakers aren’t part of any major online community. Because the Internet makes it so easy to connect for international communication, it’s natural to wonder where all these Esperanto speakers might be. What do you think?

  • Could many prefer not to socialize online, focusing on local or in-person gatherings instead?
  • Did this figure reflect Esperanto’s peak in the 1920s, with changes in numbers since then?
  • We often hear that millions studied Esperanto during the Internet era using Duolingo. Where have these learners gone?
  • Is it possible that the original estimate of two million was too optimistic to begin with?

↩ Toki Pona FAQ