macrocheira

I think learning toki pona has made me more therian somehow. I was kind of on the fence a little, and while I still think of myself as a "therian girl" in a sometimes human way, calling myself soweli Sawa, finding words to describe how I feel has done something to me. I now question the "sometimes human" more than I do the "sometimes animal." it's also worth noting just how generally warm and accepting toki pona communities are to therians, I am certainly not alone in calling myself "soweli." mi olin e toki pona, mi olin e ijo soweli ale pi sama mi <3

the logo to ANIMAL WELL in toki pona, "lupa soweli" is how I've translated it. I thought the game had big soweli vibes is why I made this.

really neat thing about toki pona is how names are exclusively adjectives. you can only refer to what a thing is called via "object Name" format and never the name on it's own. someone named Kisun would be "jan Kisun," (meaning person Kisun), or you would refer to a place like the USA as "ma Mewika" (meaning place America, altered to fit toki pona's phonotactics). in that way, asking for someone's name includes asking them what type of thing they are as though it were a part of the name itself, the object included being called the name's "headnoun"

but there is no rule that your headnoun must be "jan". I can call myself "soweli Sawa" (roughly meaning " 'nonspecific land mammal' Sawa") to effortlessly communicate that I'm in fact some type of creature without needing to specify it unprompted.

another great thing about toki pona is that it's got so many great symbols. everyone knows soweli (the one pictured above on the left), but another one I particularly enjoy is that the symbol for "suwi" meaning "sweet, cute, sugar, etc." is literally " ^.^ ". "wawa" is another great one meaning "power, powerful, excited, etc." and it looks like " \o/ "

oh ! another thing ! on the topic of the USA, there's actually a different word used to describe the continent(s?) America, "ma Amelika". the word for the USA can't be a derivative of united states, since there's a commitment of "every place name is what the people there call it," and we call it America, so what happens? well it turns out that people from the USA tend to see the "r" sound (which doesn't exist in toki pona) as much closer to the sound "w" makes than "l" like a lot of other places, so for the country America, they just instead substitute in a W, making it "ma Amewika." that's a really cool and interesting workaround, AND it makes it sound like an UwU-speak version of America which is awesome if you ask me

really neat thing about toki pona is how names are exclusively adjectives. you can only refer to what a thing is called via "object Name" format and never the name on it's own. someone named Kisun would be "jan Kisun," (meaning person Kisun), or you would refer to a place like the USA as "ma Mewika" (meaning place America, altered to fit toki pona's phonotactics). in that way, asking for someone's name includes asking them what type of thing they are as though it were a part of the name itself, the object included being called the name's "headnoun"

but there is no rule that your headnoun must be "jan". I can call myself "soweli Sawa" (roughly meaning " 'nonspecific land mammal' Sawa") to effortlessly communicate that I'm in fact some type of creature without needing to specify it unprompted.

another great thing about toki pona is that it's got so many great symbols. everyone knows soweli (the one pictured above on the left), but another one I particularly enjoy is that the symbol for "suwi" meaning "sweet, cute, sugar, etc." is literally " ^.^ ". "wawa" is another great one meaning "power, powerful, excited, etc." and it looks like " \o/ "