↩ Toki Pona FAQ

Toki Pona FAQ

Conlang collaboration 🤝

• Friendly cooperation
• Two Esperantists’ take on Toki Pona
• Beyond Western popularity
• International languages in other continents
• Encouraging collaboration
• Toki Pona origins and ongoing influence
• Contributions to Esperanto by Toki Pona speakers
• Lessons from historical conlangs
• Helpful feedback from Esperantists
  • Improving this FAQ
  • Better information
  • Respecting the traditional Esperanto narrative
  • Our priorities to improve this FAQ
    1. State of Toki Pona in 2025
    2. Conlang collaboration
  • Recent changes
  • Special thanks to our Esperantist friends

Friendly cooperation 🫶

Constructed languages that are popular in the world, like Toki Pona and Esperanto, have been friends for a long time. They’re not rivals. Rather, they often support each other as partners.

For example, Reta Vortaro chose to include a quotation by Sonja from the foreword of an early book that taught Toki Pona in Esperanto: “Mirinda estas la rilato de amikeco inter Esperanto kaj Tokipono.” (The friendship between Esperanto and Toki Pona is wonderful.)

The modern narrative of Esperanto is shifting away from the so-called “Final Victory”, “final solution to the language problem”, and outdated attitudes like this. Most Esperantists embrace linguistic diversity! Toki Pona is a simple language that’s growing in the world and is one visible aspect of that international diversity, which Esperanto institutions publicly support. On Twitter/X, the International League of Esperanto Instructors (ILEI) endorsed a book that teaches Toki Pona to Esperantists, because Esperanto is “a language to learn languages.” In the same spirit, various courses exist to:

• Learn Esperanto in Toki Pona
• Learn Lojban in Toki Pona
• Learn Toki Pona in Elefen

You’ll often find Toki Pona speakers who also appreciate Esperanto, and vice versa. The rapid growth of Toki Pona doesn’t threaten any previously established conlang. In practice, we are friends who share a passion for exploring languages! Let people enjoy things. We can strengthen each other.

As one fun example of this friendly coexistence, the Esperanto chess team and the Toki Pona chess team held a joint tournament. The Toki Pona team attracted a large number of participants, while Esperanto-speaking players showed strong ratings.

Two Esperantists’ take on Toki Pona 🎙️

In the 2nd part of a Varsovia Vento podcast (Feb 2025), host Irek Bobrzak and Federico Gobbo talked in Esperanto about the rapidly growing Toki Pona phenomenon. Federico stressed that, while fluent speakers use Toki Pona in 2025 in various practical domains for everyday interactions and tasks, like Esperanto, some also use the language to talk about the language itself.

The pair highlighted its viral appeal among young Esperantists worldwide, who enjoy singing in Toki Pona. Federico appreciated the beauty of Toki Pona’s culture and values. From the very beginning, Sonja clarified that it’s not a rival to Esperanto, and she granted a lot of creative freedom to the speaking community.

Beyond Western popularity 🌐

Although fans from different generations sometimes envision Toki Pona and Esperanto as promising global languages that already facilitate a certain amount of international communication, the likelihood of either becoming a true lingua franca among the majority remains very low. Both are likely to continue thriving as vibrant niche communities for language lovers and friends who live and travel around the globe. While Toki Pona and Esperanto do have global communities, including speakers in Slavic-majority countries (such as Russia), it’s still fair to say that Toki Pona and Esperanto are disproportionately popular within Western-based communities. Look at the map.

International languages in other continents ⚖️

Asia, Africa, and the Indigenous nations in Abya Yala and Turtle Island (the Americas), as well as Oceania already have their own excellent auxiliary languages. Many are at least partially constructed, but not all.

Westerners who love conlangs often claim they seek culturally egalitarian communication among people from different nations. If we truly have these values, it’s worth remembering that actions speak louder than words. When we meet conlang lovers and lingua franca speakers from other continents and nations, let’s also make sincere efforts to learn and speak those successful zonal languages to build friendships and collaborate in a fair way. Under a favourable view, Toki Pona and Esperanto are merely self-chosen language minorities that are spread out. It would be arrogant if we tried to overpromote or impose “solutions that originated in the West” on the rest of the world over their own cultures and projects, because that wouldn’t align with the idea of culturally equitable communication between people of different nations.

Instead, we can mutually invite and promote each other’s languages and communities. We support the self-determination and sovereignty of all peoples and the decolonization of knowledge. The European way is not the default or only standard, and so many other civilizations exist! Even if Esperanto and Toki Pona are used in many countries, we must stay humble and reject any imperialist aspirations.

Encouraging collaboration 🥞🧇

Only a tiny minority of deeply invested and protective friends in any conlang community sees the existence of multiple popular conlangs as a possible problem, threat, conflict, or uncomfortable topic. At most, the so-called “rivalry” is friendly, like pancakes and waffles, or like Star Trek and Star Wars. At least, that’s what happens among those who know the full story about multiple conlangs or speak more than one. Most conlang speakers don’t find such sectarian debates and tunnel vision helpful to real collaboration and progress. There is no one single conlang that is superior and that others should want to speak over another one. There’s nothing embarrassing about linguistic diversity and multilingualism. In fact, we believe such ideas of “competition” are a misconception that we want to dispel together in our public information. Let us know how we can be neutral and respectful to the traditional Esperanto narrative and to other conlangs.

Toki Pona origins and ongoing influence

The creator of Toki Pona is an active user and promoter of Esperanto! Read more about Toki Pona’s origins and how it was never intended or proposed to replace existing international languages.

Contributions to Esperanto by Toki Pona speakers 👩🏻‍💻

An Akademio de Esperanto member thanked a Toki Pona speaker for her contributions to modernize Esperanto alongside similar projects like ReVo and Komputeko. In 2010, the linguist Dr. John C. Wells wrote:

What was the context?

• In the early and mid 2000s, Esperantists were shifting:
  • from a a strong bibliography of books that were previously 100% printed and physical
  • to a new frontier of online resources that either didn’t exist or weren’t fully reliable yet
• In response to this need, Sonja was among the researchers and dictionary compilers who helped document and spread key terms needed in modern society. Such words were missing from slightly old-fashioned Esperanto dictionaries.
• She initiated and ran a somewhat well-known online dictionary and terminology service that specialized in modern translation difficulties. It was free, and Esperantists often filled out a form to send requests to add missing words.
• You could look up words like “anime”, “geek”, “podcast”, “bling”, “sketchy”, “hater”, “blog”, “smartphone”, “emoji”, or “Queer”. At the time, Esperantists debated how to express such concepts.
• You could read lists of functionally equivalent translations along with clear abbreviations of whether any word came from:
  • la Fundamento
  • Vortaro Japana–Esperanta by 宮本正男 (Miyamoto Masao)
  • E.-D. Krause’s Wörterbuch Deutsch-Esperanto
  • Carlo Minnaja’s dictionary
  • Esperanta Bildvortaro
  • Monato magazine
  • a large number of similar sources
• For each translation, she highlighted whether the compiler or author was a member of the Akademio de Esperanto.
• Unfortunately, all this data was lost during a move.
  • However, enough of her work was consulted and incorporated by Dr. John C. Wells when he updated the English–Esperanto–English Dictionary from 1969 to 2010 that he acknowledged her contributions on pages IX and XI.
  • When Sonja was a conlang-loving teenager, Dr. Wells was one of the role models whose work inspired her to devote her efforts to Esperanto and other languages!
  • Nowadays, newer projects such as the Wells dictionary, Tekstaro, Reta Vortaro, Komputeko, Vikipedio, and Vikivortaro have matured to the point that they completely replace this earlier need of the Esperanto community. Sonja continues to promote them.

Lessons from historical conlangs 🌹

Esperantists sometimes joke about the earlier conlang Volapük, saying “ĝi estas por mi Volapukaĵo” (it’s gibberish to me). They remember how Esperanto’s initial popularity coincided with the decline of Volapük. In some points of view, Esperanto could have rendered that previous conlang harder to learn or even obsolete.

A similar phenomenon is extremely unlikely to happen between Toki Pona and Esperanto, because Esperanto has a very large and stable community of speakers as far as conlangs go. While there’s a healthy overlap of people who speak both conlangs, there are also many Esperantists who seem completely unaware of Toki Pona’s large community size, as well as Toki Pona speakers surrounded by their own kind who wonder where all the supposed Esperantists are. This is probably due to different generations being siloed in different apps, platforms, and gathering places.

If ever our worst fears were to happen, where there is a real change in the number of speakers for any conlang community, then the Toki Pona community would need to take a strong role in promoting and preserving the other conlang.

In conclusion, the two conlang communities that are currently large (Esperanto and Toki Pona) fully support multilingualism. The gravitation toward any language is like enjoying different genres of music and movies. Toki Pona can express everything you need in daily life, and so can Esperanto.

Helpful feedback from Esperantists 📨

At first, we only wrote that we hope this page is impartial and doesn’t misrepresent Toki Pona or Esperanto! Many of us enjoy and actively use both languages. If there are any errors, please contact Sonja Lang or ask any Toki Pona speaker who might know another speaker who knows her closely.

Improving this FAQ 💡

We’ve begun receiving helpful messages from our friends who are deeply invested in Esperanto and are less familiar with Toki Pona and other constructed languages. Because of their expertise, such Esperantists are in a unique position to offer an Esperanto-first perspective that aligns with the narrative when Esperantists talk among each other, and Toki Pona is not in the room. We value all their contributions. These are relayed to the multilingual team on Discord, many of whom are Esperantists, who help refine this website. (Some Esperantists have asked us to take down this FAQ. Instead, if you’d like to join the writing team to share an Esperanto-first viewpoint in a constructive way, please let us know!)

This FAQ started as a frank comparison of the two most successful constructed languages that many of us love and support. It naturally showed some biases from those who speak both fluently and have contributed to both communities for a long time. We don’t want the FAQ to come across like an advertisement: “Toki Pona makes your towels 130% fluffier than the leading product!” Nor do we want it to feel like modern “propaganda.” (Dr. Zamenhof used the verb propagandi, which historically only meant “spreading” or “promoting” according to Dr. Wells, though it can sound different to modern ears.)

Better information ℹ️

Our goal is to share interesting and accurate details about various conlangs according to the best information we can find. We don’t intend to hide linguistic data, but we do want to highlight what makes each language special without dismissing others. If this occasionally seems to favour Esperanto, Toki Pona, Interslavic, Tolkien’s works, Guosa in West Africa, or anything else, we welcome additional perspectives to keep things as balanced as possible. We also acknowledge that most of our writing team knows Esperanto and Toki Pona better than other conlangs, so these two are our current focus.

As an example, Toki Pona speakers often see the older demographic of Esperanto as a strength! Experience and continuity are valuable. We believe any ageism in society is a bad thing. If you’re interested in lists of conlang communities, the number of members can indicate current or historical activity if those matter to you, but we also fully recognize the importance of smaller projects. We still support their creativity and goals. We hope that by providing more or better information, readers can form their own well-rounded view of many different conlangs.

Respecting the traditional Esperanto narrative 📜

We recognize that previous versions of this FAQ might not have fully captured the cultural significance of Esperanto and the optimism many people share about its future. We understand that Esperanto is an important part of many people’s identities and a beloved favourite conlang. For those who are passionate about both Esperanto and Toki Pona, this friendly coexistence is often seen as something like Star Wars and Star Trek.

We also acknowledge that Dr. Zamenhof’s Esperantismo and the Esperantists have long drawn on a cultural heritage of hope (espero). This has led to a lasting conversation on how Esperanto can remain perceived as a strong, simple, and culturally egalitarian conlang, offering a pathway toward becoming a real and practical global language (IAL). We appreciate how deeply these ideals matter to the Esperanto community and the sense of unity they inspire.

In contrast, Toki Pona speakers sometimes doubt the idea of a single global tongue, so they tend to present Esperanto more in line with its modern guiding ideas such as Raumism and language diversity. Even without an official claim of becoming a future IAL, Toki Pona has grown into a fun and inventive community, creating a distinct small culture and international network. At the same time, Toki Pona speakers celebrate and look up to Esperanto for being the first conlang culture to achieve such a network of speakers and cultural output. There’s plenty to discover, like Esperanto music and the Esperanto bibliography.

Meanwhile, Toki Pona speakers acknowledge how much they can learn from Esperanto’s final approach to solve the language problem. Did you know that China alone has 284 living indigenous languages according to Ethnologue 2025? In this context and by analogy, Dr. Zamenhof advocated that Esperanto could one day become the one and only bridge to make this Chinese wall disappear in other countries as well.

Our priorities for this FAQ 🎯

1. State of Toki Pona in 2025 🚀

We want to inform language enjoyers and the casually curious.

• Major developments have happened between 2001 and 2025. Newcomers need a summary to keep up.
• A large and growing community of fluent, active, and “hardcore” Toki Pona speakers has emerged.
• Anything Sonja might have envisioned in 2001 has since been enhanced to new levels of eloquence and expressive power.
  (Naturally, this still requires skill and situational awareness, as with any language.)
• There are ways to communicate technical ideas that sound natural to experienced speakers, which might surprise those less familiar with Toki Pona.
• Some developments took shape in large, internally focused servers, then appeared in official publications (2014 and 2021) and free online courses.
  (We don’t expect casual readers or non-speakers to delve into these resources, so this FAQ provides a helpful overview.)
• Many Toki Pona teachers have asked for our help, because:
  • On learning servers, teachers work with waves of new learners who sometimes come with assumptions that Toki Pona is limited.
  • These assumptions have become lighthearted memes or “inside jokes” among the teenage cohort that discovered Toki Pona and even uses it for technical topics.
  • We’d prefer to clarify these features, so non-speakers always feel welcomed rather than teased.
  • These oversimplified views probably stem from a beginner’s reading of Toki Pona’s first outline in 2001 and even Sonja’s initial doubts about how the language could develop later.

2. Conlang collaboration 🤝

We want to represent all conlangs. We share fun facts, giving an idea of the conlang landscape in an accurate, friendly, and culturally sensitive way.

• Some misconceptions like perceived conlang rivalry also affect Esperanto, so we need to mention Esperanto.
• Many of us are long-time contributors to the Esperanto cause. We have no bad intentions toward any conlang.
• Some Esperantists have asked us to remove all mentions of Esperanto, because readers and outsiders might misinterpret them and then tease Esperanto for not being #1 at everything. We don’t believe it’s a contest: different conlangs excel in different ways. We believe that hiding Esperanto would make any such problem worse.
• Instead, we welcome constructive feedback from devoted Esperantists and experts in other conlangs.
• We honour Dr. Zamenhof as a visionary pioneer, acknowledging his historical and cultural context.
• We respect the Fundamento de Esperanto.
• If there are any uncomfortable realities or real problems concerning a particular language, we don’t want to ignore them. We believe that “sweeping things under the rug” only delays any possible improvement.
  • Instead, the multilingual Esperanto and Toki Pona community is here to listen to all concerns.
  • We stand ready to participate as an open and positive partner to improve and solve any possible issues, whether on this website or in the broader community of conlang lovers.
  • Toki Pona speakers are happy to share any factors or any “recipe for success” that may have nurtured our boom among the young generation.
  • Conlang communities of the past, present, and future can learn from these strategies and formulas if they’re interested.

Recent changes 📝

1. We removed a chart that seemed to suggest that:
   • An overwhelming majority (82%) of the Akademio de Esperanto might be men.
   • A large majority (76%) might come from Europe and Western nations.
   • A majority (60%) might be aged over 55.
   • None (0%) seem to be from Africa, the Indigenous nations in the Americas, or Oceania.
   • None (0%) seem to be openly non-binary or transgender.
   • We acknowledge that the Akademio de Esperanto has been actively working in a good way.
   • Recently, they’ve made efforts to recruit more members to represent Esperanto’s intended use as an international language by all human beings.
   • Like Esperanto, the Toki Pona community is quite global but visibly more active in the West.
2. We removed incomplete information that could imply the number of Esperanto-speaking teenagers is changing or that the rapid growth of Toki Pona might be related.
3. We changed “choosing” or “preferring” any specific language to “gravitating toward” it. Conlang enjoyers often learn another one after their first.
4. We removed most comparative and superlatives. Words like “simpler” or “simplest” became just “simple”.
5. We split the FAQ into multiple pages to make the scope of each page clearer.
6. We added information about the Esperanto-speaking youth from Tyron Surmon.
7. We corrected the estimated amount of morphemes needed to understand 95% of Esperanto, thanks to our friend Edmundo Grimley Evans!

Special thanks to our Esperantist friends 🙏

• Anthony McCarthy helped emphasize Esperanto’s impressive bibliography of printed books and radio shows!
  1. We honour the primacy and importance of books and radio before the era of online resources and podcasts.
  2. Young Toki Pona speakers rose up to Anthony’s challenge in large numbers.
  3. They published an equally impressive digital corpus of texts, videos, podcasts, and video games.
  4. This corpus led to the ISO 639-3 standards committee reviewing Toki Pona and classifying it as world language.
  5. Today, it’s hard to describe Toki Pona according to anything imagined or written in 2001.
  6. Since the early 2020s, we must acknowledge Toki Pona as “a small world language” or “a small language that exists in the world”, which led to this FAQ. We don’t believe Toki Pona is “the world language”, and we respect that some Esperantists call their language this way or hope this will happen.
• LaPingvino optimistically hoped Toki Pona would have over 10 physical books with ISBNs one day.
• Tomaso Alexander is remembered by Toki Pona speakers for his contributions on Duolingo. He concluded: “My suggestion: Use and enjoy Esperanto. Use and enjoy Toki Pona. The end.”

illustrations on this page by jan Alola

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