TOKI  I O

Toki Io is a creation, with many regards, ridiculous. Most probably, nobody will be able to really make use of it, because of a integrist option during the word creations. I would not advise with anybody to compel myself with such a training of the vocabulary. Myself, in spite of the attention that I carried there, I doubt to be able  not to confuse the words, but it is true that my capacities in this field are much lower than the average.

Essence is not there: it acts just of an artificial creation, made for the recreation like one makes "cross-words" (?), other macramé or haikus. By learning Tokipona, it had appeared to me that one could, within the framework of the limited vocabulary of this language, express the numbers and the hours in a way more precise that what seems the recommended standard. Some flatterers, obviously, did not like a so impertinent way, and as it is not in my intentions to hustle whoever, nor to polemize, especially for fields not very necessary, I was satisfied to create a language liking tokipona to explore the ideas which had come to me.

Toki Io is thus not an attempt at improvement of Tokipona, moreover it is worse: to the drastic limitation of the vocabulary, it adds a poverty of the phonemes which plank the indecency and which returns it, I suppose, unusable. One can comfort oneself by replacing each word of Toki IO by a word with his taste, Greek, or English, or the any other basic language, thus obtaining a vocabulary definitely less unpleasing. To communicate then with someone else becomes perhaps a fantastic notion, unless it is not the reverse and that such a limited structure can function with vocabulary taken with another language. Subject to serious inventory, it seems that it is possible with French.

But I would like not too disparage Toki Io which nevertheless offers a term for the snake:"Ziti", which adorned of the "Oi", which wants to say "a number" ("ziti oi") transforms itself into sine of trigonometry, which has, it, the poetic name of "II kono io", the number of the three angles. Horse or dog do not have a name, but sine, tangent and cotangent have one : it is nevertheless extremely useful for the sailor. "IO" wants to say a number, calculation, arithmetic, one redoubles for saying algebra "io io" according to the rule of superlatives. The geometry, the number of the earth, will be expressed by the adorable "noi io".
In an easy way (a little training perhaps?) one will be able to juggle with logic and the set theory where "O" is the empty-set and "TOTO" will be equivalent to "I + No I". Nothing better to enjoy a breakfast.

I had chosen to have less vowels and less consonants than any known language, and I had counted 90 possible words with 4 consonants and two vowels. Obviously the wager did present too many difficulties, I then realized that, having already admitted "IO" as word, I could obtain other words by admitting the final hiatuses, so theses : KIO, KII, TIO...
By limiting by principle the length of a word to two syllables, I obtained 110 combinations thus. Ouf! a hair of less than Tokipona. As, on principle always, it was necessary to be able to express better the numbers, the hours, the geometry, the logic and the set theory, I had to eliminate words of Tokipona. And so I introduced the notion of value modified in the increase or in the decline to express small / median / big, white / grey / black...

Certain number of additional grammatical rules - with regard to Tokipona - aims at decreasing the basic ambiguity of a language with reduced vocabulary. The particle for the compounds allows to clarify the role (name or adjective) of a modifier; the mark of verb is widened to all the persons; the singulars and the plural are marked only if it is important, but a singular cannot indicate(appoint) a plural. The notion of "nothing" and that of the "negation" do not express themselves with the same word. Tense of verbs, undergoing the influence of Glosa, are more systematically expressed, so offering the profit of a present, a past, a future-conditional, an imperative and a conditional-previous, to which, to make good measure, we shall add a durative mode and an immediative(?).

The expression of the numbers obeys different processes from those of Tokipona. One remembers that it was the first goal of the creation of Toki IO. One cannot undoubtedly all express in Toki IO, but there are no philosophical or religious limitation which prohibits to test there. If somebody has fun to find internal possibilities in Toki IO to say what I am not able to even consider, it would not violate (probably) any law and would obviously not destroy the language. It is even all the evil which I wish in Toki IO.

And one can always make without Toki IO.

Daniel MACOUIN
November 2006.                                 read here the original French page