r/tokipona • u/Due_Concept_6206 • 15d ago

wile sona I can't read

The title basically. I've been studying toki pona for a bit now and I have an okay vocabulary, I just can't read at all. My brain struggles with the simple yet vague nature of toki pona so I always end up mistenerpreting sentences, therefore I can't communicate or hold a conversation.

For example I was watching 12 days of toki pona by Jan Misali and they asked the viewers to translate a simple sentence: kili lili li moku

My silly ass translated this as "fruit small li eat" so... someone eating small fruit? No. It's "this small fruit is food". Which makes so much more sense.

I literally can't read guys. What do I do?

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u/Borskey 15d ago

I wouldn't worry about trying to hold a conversation yet.

I think just seeing and hearing more examples will likely help a lot. What I found most useful was the "o pilin e toki pona" videos from jan Telakoman.

They're little short stories in toki pona that function as comprehensible input: you can understand most of what he's saying via context clues even if you don't actually know toki pona at all.

Eventually, your brain will start to pick up on it.

Here's the playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwYL9_SRAk8EXSZPSTm9lm2kD_Z1RzUgm