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Coming From Toki Pona

If you love Toki Pona so much, why make a new one?

I have wanted to make a language like Dugi Bialan, for a long time, but I did not have the skills/knowledge needed to put it together until I found Toki Pona. Most notably, how simple a framework can be to still achieve soo much, and how different "morphemes" (units of meaning) can be broken up so effectively, even while being different lengths.

Learning Toki Pona, has taught me many things, and I have used them to make Dugi Bialan. I have also made many direct imports, so Dugi Bialan is 100% a Tokiponido. That is, a child language of Toki Pona. It could not exist without the hard work that jan Sonja, and others put into making Toki Pona.

That said, this langauge deviates from Toki Pona wildly in many places, and I wanted to explain why.

But I CAN flip and change my own language. "That's it," I said "I'm going to build my own [ language ], with blackjack and hookers" (and where "pi" can introduce a dependent clause.)

Incidentally

A language of Balance

I wanted to keep as much of the simplicity of Toki Pona as I could, but I wanted to be able to express some common things simply that, in Toki Pona, might take more than 4 words, or even a whole sentence.

I decided my new language would be a "Language of Balance" "" (' dugi bialan '). Its goal would finding a place where I kept the features of Toki Pona I love, but balanced them with ability to communicate clearly.

For Example:

If I'm creating a new langauge anyway, I might as well fix the problems I see

Maybe a stricter grammar, and phonotactics would really help the listener know what's happening.

Simple Phonotactics - Clear word boundaries

This has a surprisingly simple fix.

Have a set of sounds, one of which must appear exactly once per word.

You could do this at the start or the end, or even in the middle. I chose the end.

Every word in Dugi Bialan ends in one of the following sounds. (Read as IPA

'a' 'an' 'as'    
'o' 'on' 'os'     
'i' 'in' 'is'
'ei' 'ein' 'eis'

And those sounds do not appear elsewhere. There are a separate set of vowels that may be repeated throughout the rest of the word.

'oi' 'ia' 'e' 'u'

Because some of these sounds glide. I had to dissallow words from starting with an "a" to avoid a problem after words ending with an 'i'. I also dissallowed "n" or "s", from the start of words for the same reason.

Then, because I wasn't paying attention, I allowed the "i" at the start of words. But since there are only three possible words that start with "i" it wasn't a big problem. This is the language of "Balance" not "Perfection" after all. I like the words I already have that start with an 'i', and even though "goigo" can collide with "go i go", the later is grammatically very unlikely.

Minimalist Word Set, but not exactly Toki Pona words.

I wanted Dugi Bialans word list to have echos of Toki Pona, but also be distinct enough that it was easy to know which I was speaking. I still want to speak Toki Pona sometimes.

Instead of 't', 'k', and 'p', I opted to use their voiced equivilents, in order 'd', 'g', and 'b'. This meant that even if the words were similar, I'd be saying different words in each language to help me know which I was supposed to be speaking.

Minimalist Word Set - with Helpful Words added

I set a word limit of 240 words, I did not want to have more than double Toki Pona.

Moving words across was not always as easy as you might expect. The stricter phonotactics, meant that many Toki Pona words, simply could not be said within Dugi Bialan rules.

"awen" - stand/wait - for example, has an 'a' at the beginning, and 'en' on the end. so I had to switch out the vowels, 'ewan' would have been acceptable, but at that time, I hadn't yet allowed 'a' at the end of words, so I settled on 'uwein'.

"tomo" - Structure / building - actually has several meanings, and I really wanted to separate them, because vehicles are really common, and rooms are inside buildings. So "tomo" became three/four words.

"telo" - Water Liquid

Minimalist Words - but Roles allow more meaning

In Toki Pona, "li", isn't so much a word, as a marker, when verb/adjective begins. But I wanted to know if I was dealing with an adjective or a verb.

So as well as " " (' li ') which would mark adjectives, I added " " (' wei ') to mark verbs. This had some big advantages, and in several cases allowed one word in Dugi Bialan to cover two distict Toki Pona words.

for example "" (' elo ') = "kepeken", and "ilo"

" " (' dis wei elo ') - this uses -- or -- " " (' dis li elo ') - this is a tool

" " (' mi li vi ') : I am hot -- or -- " " (' mi wei vi ') : I heat

No more ambiguity

Pre-positions, such as "  /  /  / " (' da / gin / lon / dan ') are never used as a noun/verb/adjective.

So no longer can these two be mistaken :

    (' mi wei bena ei mengi da vin ') "I give a house to you"
   (' mi wei bena ei mengi giawin vin ') "I give your moving building".

AND you can tell if someone is eating or food because these are different

  (' mi li mugo ') : I am food
  (' mi wei mugo ') : I eat

Inclusive Pronouns

A big part of the role of "He" and "She" in English is to help the listener know which of two people did a thing, "he said, she said". It's helpful to have a bit of extra info to narrow this down, but it doesn't have to be locked on Gender.

In Dugi Bialan, it can be anything.  (' is ') must be followed by an adjective or a noun, and can be any word that helps to disambiguate between two people/things.

"" (' is-zan ') : The person ( He / She / They)
"" (' is-zo ') : The thing ( it )
"" (' is-mon ') : The male ( He / They (m))
"" (' is-min ') : The female ( She / They (f))
"" (' is-mudei ') : The many ( They )
"" (' is-vuli ') : The big ( He / She / They )
"" (' is-won ') : The one / The first
"" (' is-buna ') : The good
"" (' is-egi ') : The bad (found more than once in my diary)

Precision and numbers

In toki Pona, it's possible to use "hand","many", and "all" to represent the numbers 5, 20, and 100, which allows some larger numbers, but not clearly distinct.

In Dugi Bialan I wanted numbers, but I did want to guard the simplicity of Toki Pona. So aiming for balance I chose words for:

The number sounds are all short, and with practice become quite easily chainable to make larger numbers.

"" (' in-za-in-van ') : 2023

You can now name any element, using "edin [number]", eg "" (' edin lan van ') (Oxygen) and while most people do not know all the atomic numbers, you do not need to leave the language for precision.

Dependent Clauses

"" (' bi ') not "pi", does more or less the same thing as "pi", but can introduce extra info

"    " (' vo-ezan bi wei mugo ei gela mi, wei luga ei guli-delo lon luga is-ezan ')
(The fierce animal that eats my fish, has body liquid on it's hands.)

By combining particles we can also achieve all kinds of phrases.

"   " (' mi wei belin ei i vin wei giawin ')
(I want that you go)

"    " (' o bena da mi ei zo bi i vin wei biagela ')
(give me the thing you broke)

So this is Dugi Bialan.

I hope this gives a good grasp on why it exists, and some of my journey to creating it.

It's not finished yet, I still have plenty of work to do to make it ready. If you'd like to speak it with me, or work with me on some of it's niggles. I'd love to hear from you. matt.storyfeet@gmail.com