Tokithkui Ponal

Matthew McVeagh | my conlangs

A combination of opposite conlangs: Ithkuil (complexity of categories and features) and Toki Pona (simplicity of phonology, grammar and lexicon).

Toki Pona is generally agreed to be one of the simplest conlangs ever, in fact one of the simplest languages at all, with only 123 words, simple grammar, and very sparse phoneme inventory and phonotactics. There's a whole bunch of subtle, complex things you can't say, because the whole point is to learn to see things more simply.

Ithkuil is generally agreed to be one of the most complex conlangs ever, in fact one of the most complex languages at all, with a high phoneme count, burgeoning grammar options on many dimensions, all micro-represented in a 'Speedtalk' style with minimally short morphemes, and capacity for a large lexicon. Even a short sentence contains a huge amount of information, because the whole point is to enable the expression of highly complex ideas.

The two are at opposite ends of scale of language elements and the range of simplicity/complexity. Both have been classed as 'engelangs', but the principles behind their designs point in opposite directions. They are about as different in spirit and realisation as two conceptually based conlangs can be.

The task: to enable the expression of all of Ithkuil's grammar categories, plus its lexical derivation capacity, while preserving Toki Pona's ultra-simple phonology and lexis. There are a couple of ways this can be done:

1. Keep the syntheticity of Ithkuil, which would help given the low morpheme count. But to compensate I would need to keep the longer morpheme length of Toki Pona, at the two-phoneme length if not the four.

2. Keep the analyticity of Toki Pona. Ithkuil's complex collections of grammar features now have to be expressed by phrases.

In pretty much all cases utterances would be longer than those in the two original languages, either with long words or long strings of shorter words. It will probably be necessary to expand the phonemes beyond Toki Pona's minimal set, just not to Ithkuil's level, or requiring diacritics or new letters. The real challenge will be the lexicon. I think an expansion beyond 123 roots will also be needed, but still in the low 100s. If the grammatical morphemes are structured analytically rather than synthetically that would add to the lexemes, of course. As it happens both languages are what might be called "oligomorphemic", i.e. made up of a small number of roots, which will definitely help the process of combining.

No particular advantage would be gained from the combination, and relative brevity would be lost. But if it could be achieved it would show that it's possible, that the qualities of these two supposedly opposite languages could actually be brought together rather than necessarily remaining separated.