"How do I say **teacher** in toki pona?" # 1. Add context Put the word you want to translate into a *context* using at least once *sentence* in a natural language you speak (I'll use English here). > You're at an afterparty at the National Hex Wrench Enthusiasts Assocation Annual Meeting. A friend you only know from wrench stuff waves you over and asks: "Hey, what do you do in real life?" You answer: "Oh, I'm a **teacher**." # 2. Explain what information is being conveyed Explain what *information* is conveyed in this scenario when you say the sentence in which you find the target word. *Do not* use the target word in the explanation! When I say "Oh, I'm a teacher", my friend learns that **My profession is that I go to a building where there are children, and I do some combination of taking care of children and assisting them with their intellectual, social, and emotional growth**. # 3. Remove jargon Now remove jargon from that explanation, wher jargon is defined as "anything toki pona lacks a word for". Don't worry if you don't know all the words in toki pona - just simplify. Here's my explanation again. I'll mark all the words that count as jargon here: > My **profession** is that I go to a building where there are children, and I do some **combination** of taking care of children **and** **assisting** them with their **intellectual**, **social**, and **emotional** growth. So now I'll rewrite without the jargon: > People give me money to go to a building where there are children. I take care of the children. I also help them grow, so that they know more things, have more skills, are kind to other people, and understand their own emotions better. # 4. Repeat jargon removal until you only have concepts that exist in toki pona - people: **jan** - give: **pana** - me: **mi** - money: **mani** - building: **tomo** - children: nnn... not really - take care of: **mama** - help: nnn... not really - grow: **wawa, suli** - know, understand: **sona** - things: **ijo** - skills: **ken** - kind: **pona**? - other: **ante** - emotions: **pilin** Maybe I'll reframe "help" to "enable", or something like "I try to enable them grow". - try: **alasa** - enable: **ken** And for children, I can describe them as new people, perhaps. - new, young: **sin** And for kind, maybe I'll just say that I help them be good to other people. - good: **pona** - towards: **tawa** So, rewriting again: > People give me money to go to a building. Young people also go to the building. I take care of the young people. I also try to enable them to know more things, have more skills, be good to other people, and understand their emotions. # 5. Say *that* in toki pona Now that you have expressed the information you wanted to convey using only concepts that exist in toki pona, you can say *that* in toki pona! > jan li pana e mani tawa mi tawa ni: > mi tawa tomo > jan sin kin li lon tomo ni > mi mama e jan sin > kin la, mi alasa ken e ni: > jan sin li sona e ijo mute > li ken ijo mute > li pona tawa jan ante > li sona e pilin ona # 6. Conclusion The question "how do I say X?" is a reasonable question when learning nearly every other language. But it's a dead end with toki pona. Try out this process when you are wondering how to say something in toki pona! If you're stuck on it, come to kama sona and ask us to help you work through it! Over time, practicing this (plus learning all the words and the grammar), you will probably find that your mind starts to follow these steps *automatically*, and you'll be able to skip explicitly doing steps more and more until you find you can explain anything in toki pona without needing an explicit process or starting in another language. But when you're starting out, this process can be a valuable way to build up the skills involved in speaking toki pona!