I have been on my bullshit for 32 years and do not intend to stop now | autistic, median-plural system | not living my best life, but a life | largely sfw but 18+ please | asks basically always open | <3 @jay-magnum + @linaciari + @Torches



PC36
@PC36

Song: omekalike
Musician: jan Usawi1

So, this is a song in toki pona2, which those of you following me may or may not have heard of. It's a constructed language with less than 200 words3 that was desgined by Sonja Lang in 2001 to simplify her thoughts during depression. It's quickly become one of the most popular conlangs on the internet.

One thing I like about toki pona is that if you want to say something, you have to describe in simple terms what it means, which I think encourages understanding.

There's quite a bit of music in toki pona, and jan Usawi is one of the more well-known toki pona musicians. I encourage you to check out more of her music.

One thing that's unique about this song compared to most other songs I listen to is that it's very acoustic. I listen to a lot of synthesized or computer-assisted music - it's very rare for me to hear a song that's almost entirely computer-free.

You can also listen to this song on Bandcamp!


  1. In toki pona, jan is used as an honorific of sorts, designating that you are referring to a person. Only the capitalized part is the actual name.

  2. Intentionally left uncapitalized, as only names are capitalized in toki pona (when using the Latin alphabet).

  3. When the first toki pona book, pu, was published, there were 120 "official" words listed. However, when ku was published, the count was updated to 137, and as of the release of the newest book, su, the count stands at 139. However, each speaker's own vocabulary may differ. I suggest looking at linku.la for statistics (although it seems they have not updated their statistics since the release of su, as the word "su" itself sits at 0%)


two
@two

"omekapo" is a sort of joke word for "goodbye" in the toki pona community. it's a contraction of "o moku e kala pona", literally meaning "eat a good fish [imperative mood]". change the po (from pona, "good") to ike ("bad") and you get what jan Usawi describes as "goodbye but like fuck you"


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in reply to @PC36's post:

Footnote 3 la, the Linku usage stats are surveyed yearly. Results for the 2023 survey were posted about half a year ago, so new data might be a ways away. (Which is probably good, giving people ample time to experiment with and settle on whether to use the word su, instead of recency-biasing and citogenesizing it into a higher category than whatever it'll get)