Writing Toki Pona

Writing Toki Pona can be an experience. You can choose from many different ways, from a logographic writing system (little glyphs) to an alphabet (like English). Though, when I say many, you might think that sounds like a lot of learning to do, but fear not. While there technically are many, many different ways to write Toki Pona, many of them do not get used frequently.

Which are used?

Out of these many, the Toki Pona community only use two or three regularly. These are sitelen Lasina (lit. Latin writing), sitelen pona (lit. good writing), and sitelen sitelen (lit. drawing writing). sitelen Lasina uses the Latin alphabet, while sitelen pona and sitelen sitelen use a logographic writing system. jan Sonja (Sonja Lang) developed sitelen pona. sitelen sitelen, on the other hand, was developed by jan Josan Kapo (Jonathan Gabel).

Which One Should I Learn?

Of the three previously mentioned writing systems, the easiest is sitelen Lasina. Most people learning Toki Pona likely learned it with this writing system, so whoever you are talking to will most likely understand you. It is absolutely a writing system you should learn. sitelen pona is another great writing system to learn if you are a more of a visual learner. It uses logograms that look like this: toki-pona. sitelen sitelen is a bit tricky to learn since there is no efficient way to type it out, due to its non-linear and hieroglyphic-like nature. However, if you are a fan of intricate expression, sitelen sitelen provides that very well.

Uncommon Systems

Other than the top three, people have made numerous writing systems for Toki Pona. Some make them as a artistic statement, while others adapt other languages’ systems to fit Toki Pona. These writing systems can be very interesting to learn, or even create!

Try it out!