There’s a piece of toki pona advice I heard early on in my learning which I come back to over and over again. It’s from waso suno Alana, and I’d say it’s easily one of the most universally applicable pieces of guidance on how to think about and speak toki pona that I’ve ever heard. waso said: > Don’t think about "is", instead "can describe" Things and concepts don’t have a single correct way to talk about them in toki pona. This is very unintuitive if you’ve ever studied any other natural languages, all of which have large numbers of specific words for specific ideas and things (1). For example, I would guess that most natural languages have a word for "computer", and it means roughly the same thing in each language. An *ordinateur* is, for all nearly all intents and purposes, an exact synonym of "computer". An ordinateur *is* a computer, and vice versa. toki pona is different. If my one year old walked into the room right now and tried to grab my laptop off my legs, I might say to them: "a! **ilo** ni li tawa ala sina, lili olin o." Does ilo *mean* "computer" in this sentence? If backtranslating into English, I might translate it as computer ("hey! This **computer** isn’t for you, my beloved little one"). And yet! I would argue that you’ll get farther faster with toki pona if you answer "no": ilo neither *is* nor *means* computer here. Rather, I suggest that one should think of ilo as *describing* my computer. What’s the difference? Consider the (also frequent) alternative situation where my child walks into the room and demands my watch from my wrist. (Yes, this happens on a daily basis. Parenting is weird, y’all.) "a! **ilo** ni li tawa ala sina, lili olin o. taso... mi pana e ona tawa sina tan olin, a a." I don’t think ilo should be thought of as *meaning* "computer" in one of these sentences and "watch" in the other. Not that this is impossible - words can have more than one meaning, of course. "Watch" has multiple meanings, and it is using a different one of those meanings in the sentences "I watch the movie" and "I wear a watch" and. But I think it’s odd - or at least unhelpful - to say that "ilo" here is taking on the meaning "computer" and "watch" in the second, and that it has an infinite number of other meanings corresponding to every possible tool. Instead, I suggest that in both sentences it *means* the same thing: it refers to its semantic space, which is centered around the concept of "a thing that is used" or something in the cluster sketched by English words like tool, machine, device (2). In both sentences, I am describing or framing the thing as an "ilo", and I am doing so because I am emphasizing that each is a tool, one that I am using for its intended purpose (writing essays about toki pona)... and that I can’t really imagine my one year old using for its intended purpose for a few years at least (3). This reminds me of saying that something is "a tool, not a toy", a statement which doesn’t say much about what the thing *is*, but rather describes the thing in terms of its intended uses and how they want the listener to understand and relate to it. My child also frequently demands to play with my phone (4). When I don’t want to give it to them, I might say: "a! ilo ni li tawa ala sina, jan suwi mi o." But sometimes, I want to let them play with it. So as I turn it off (so they can’t accidentally called emergency services from the emergency dialing button on the home screen...), I might say: "a! sina wile e **leko** mi, olin lili (5) o. o awen lon tenpo lili. mi pana." Does "leko" *mean* **smartphone**? I won’t fight you if you say it does, but I am arguing that it’s not as useful to say so. Rather, in a lighthearted way, I’m saying that to my child, the smartphone is not an ilo, but instead it’s just this fun rectangle. I could just as easily use "musi" instead if I wanted to describe it as a toy, since they want to relate to it by playing with it. You can do this in other languages too, of course. I sometimes jokingly call my phone a rectangle in English too, and I might say to a child "hey, can I play with your toy with you?" or "could you pass me the long pokey thingy" even if I might more specifically say that the toy in question *is* a "doll" and the long pokey thingy *is* a "halberd". So you can use this strategy of describing in natural languages, and it works just as well as in toki pona, and is often a very effective way to avoid intimidating someone with jargon or make sure that you really understand what you’re talking about. It’s just that in toki pona, you can *only* talk in this describing mode, and that’s one of the things that makes it a really weird language, and, I would argue, is a big part of why toki pona is so good at helping people to understand, break down, and discuss complicated topics without jargon. ### Footnotes 1. Note that this doesn’t mean that the meanings of toki pona words are subjective or can mean whatever you want them to be. Their semantic spaces cover - that is, describe - broad but specific attributes of things. sike always refers to things that are literally or metaphorically circular, spherical, cyclical, or related to one of those concepts, and you can’t avoid that you’re talking about something having an attribute of circleishness if you use sike, because that *is* what it means, according to the consensus understanding of proficient speakers. However, that doesn’t mean that "sike" is the only or only correct way to describe something that happens to be circular, or to translate a word like circle or ball. A sphere might more relevantly be a musi if you are playing with it, or a lukin if it’s someone’s eye, or a mun or a suno if it’s a giant ball of incandescent gas. 2. https://lipamanka.gay/essays/dictionary#ilo 3. The watch is primarily played with by throwing it at hard objects, such as the floor, because this causes satisfying noises. I haven’t given them enough free reign with the laptop to find out what they would do with it, but I suspect it would be similar. 4. The phone is also primarily played with by throwing it at hard objects, such as the floor. Relatedly, I now need a new phone because the screen is starting to die... 5. As a side example, notice how in each of these scenarios, I refer to my child differently, describing them as a little beloved (olin lili), a beloved little one (lili olin), and as my adorable person (jan suwi mi). These are all ways that I am describing my child, telling them and the people around me how I feel about them, how I relate to them, what is important to me about them.