Writing Toki Pona with kanji

This has probably been proposed before; I just think it’d be cool.

Japanese is the only language I know any of that uses Chinese characters, so I’m only considering Japanese usage when I make these choices.

Criteria I use include: - Meaning of the character - Distinctiveness from other characters in this list - Ease of writing/reading - Pronunciation/etymology (for particles, mostly)

On the other hand, using just hiragana for the particles could be visually appealing too. This isn’t an Official Toki Pona Proposal, it’s just me spitballing what could possibly be done.

Then again, one could also choose which character to use on the fly based on the precise meaning of what they’re trying to convey, but I’m not sure how keeping that is with the “spirit” of Toki Pona. Could be fun to read and write, though!

a

Literally means “sub–”, like as a prefix, but is used pretty often to just make an “a” sound in proper nouns.

akesi

ala

alasa

ale/ali

anpa

ante

anu

I considered , but is simpler to write.

awen

You might recognize this as the kanji for shinobi, but it can also mean “endure”. I went with this because my original choice, , was much too close in appearance to , which I chose for jo; and because is pretty visually distinct from many of the other choices I’ve made here.

e

Okay so in Japanese they use the hiragana to mark a direct object. The katakana version, originated from the kanji . As far as I can tell, this character is only used to refer to a specific kind of marking used to aid reading classical Chinese writings. (The hiragana version originated from , which means “far, distant”.)

en

Literally refers to addition in a mathematical sense. But “and” is not usually written in kanji in Japanese.

epiku

(god) is used as a slang term to mean something great or fantastic. Kind of like saying “god-tier” in English, I guess? I feel like it has the same vibe as epiku.

esun

ijo

ike

ilo

insa

isipin

jaki

jan

jasima

jelo

jo

kala

kalama

kama

kasi

ken

kepeken

使

kijetesantakalu

kili

kin

kipisi

kiwen

ko

kokosila

kon

kule

kulupu

ku

kute

la

lanpan

lape

laso

lawa

leko

len

lete

li

lili

linja

lipu

loje

lon

luka

lukin

lupa

ma

mama

mani

meli

meso

Hopefully not to be confused with insa.

mi

mije

misikeke

moku

moli

monsi

monsuta

mu

mun

musi

mute

n

This character is the origin of the hiragana .

namako

nanpa

nasa

nasin

nena

ni

nimi

noka

o

This is the character that the hiragana and katakana and were based on.

oko

olin

ona

I’m not super thrilled that the default third-person pronoun in Japanese means “he/him”, and “she/her” is formed by adding the character for “woman” to it. But then, it turns out that can also (rarely) be used for あれ “it, that”, which is also in keeping with the definition of ona.

open

pakala

pali

palisa

竿

pan

pana

pi

pilin

pimeja

pini

pipi

poka

poki

pona

pu

sama

seli

selo

seme

sewi

sijelo

sike

Look, I could have used , but how could I resist?

sin

sina

sinpin

sitelen

soko

sona

soweli

suli

suno

supa

suwi

tan

taso

tawa

telo

tenpo

toki

tomo

tonsi

Can mean “queer” as in “strange”, but can also mean “exciting”, “charming”, “miraculous”. For lack of any actual kanji that refer to transgender people, I like this option.

tu

unpa

Maybe? I don’t know what to do here. Japanese is very circumspect about this kind of thing. Could be confused with olin by someone not expecting this.

uta

utala

walo

wan

waso

wawa

weka

wile