[b] Its words are easy to pronounce across language backgrounds, which allows it to serve as a bridge of sorts for people of different cultures.

Partly inspired by Taoist philosophy, the language is designed to help users concentrate on basic things and to promote positive thinking, in accordance with the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.

Despite the small vocabulary, speakers can understand and communicate, mainly relying on context, combinations of words, and expository sentences to express more specific meanings.

[5][2][6][13] Another goal of Toki Pona is to help its speakers focus on the essentials by reducing complex concepts to basic elements.

[15] Another aim of the language is for the speakers to become aware of the present moment and pay more attention to the surroundings and the words people use.

[19] In 2001, Lang was experiencing depression and started working on Toki Pona as a way to simplify her thoughts.

[11] In the same year, an early version of the language was published online, and it quickly gained popularity.

[33][34][35] Toki Pona was the subject of some scientific works,[2][36][37][38][39] and it has also been used for artificial intelligence and software tools,[23] as well as a therapeutic method for eliminating negative thinking by having patients keep track of their thoughts in the language.

The purpose of the study was to investigate the use of an artificial language on the accuracy of machine speech recognition, and it was revealed that the modified vocabulary of Toki Pona significantly outperformed English.

Stress falls on the initial syllable of a word, and it is marked by an increase in loudness, length, or pitch.

[2] The following sequences are not allowed: */wu, wo, ji, ti/, nor may a syllable's final nasal occur before /m/ or /n/ in the same root.

Capital initials are used to mark proper nouns, while Toki Pona roots are always written with lowercase letters, even when they start a sentence.

The complex artful designs of the glyphs are chosen to help people who use this writing system to slow down and explore how not only the language but also the method of communication can influence their thinking.

The content words do not fall into well defined parts of speech; rather, they may be used generally as nouns, verbs, modifiers, or interjections depending on context or their position in a phrase.

The particle pi is placed before two or more modifiers to group them into another phrase that functions as a unit to modify the head: In jan pi pona mute, pona mute as a unit means much goodness, to together mean very good person.

[b] Each is polysemous and covers a range of similar concepts,[55][14] so suli not only means big or long, but also important.

For example, jan pona can mean friend, although it translates to good person,[11] and telo nasa (lit.

[2] Essentially identical concepts can be described by different words as the choice relies on the speaker's perception and experience.

[24] Toki Pona has five words for colors: pimeja (black), walo (white), loje (red), jelo (yellow), and laso (blue and green).

For example, nena replaced kapa (protuberance) early in the language's development for unknown reasons.

[58] Similarly, ali was added as an alternative to ale (all) to avoid confusion with ala (no, not) among people who reduce unstressed vowels, though both forms are still used.

In Toki Pona: The Language of Good, the meanings were merged into lukin, oko being the alternative.

[59][23] Words that were simply removed from the lexicon include leko (block, stairs), monsuta (monster, fear), majuna (old), kipisi (cut), and pata (sibling).

[60] Besides nena and ona, which replaced existing roots, a few roots were added to the original 118: pan (grain, bread, pasta, rice), esun (market, shop, trade), alasa (hunt, gather), and namako (extra, additional, spice), another word for sin (new, fresh).

[4] Most Toki Pona roots come from English, Tok Pisin, Finnish, Georgian, Dutch, Acadian French, Esperanto, and Serbo-Croatian, with a few from Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese).

However, the changes in pronunciation required by the simple phonetic system often make the origins of other words more difficult to see.

[2] In 2007, Lang said that at least 100 people speak Toki Pona fluently and estimated that a few hundred have a basic knowledge of the language.

[6][64] One-hour courses of Toki Pona were taught on various occasions by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during their Independent Activities Period.

[65][66] For a short time there was a Wikipedia written in Toki Pona (called lipu Wikipesija).

Most of the published works are language-learning books for beginners like akesi seli lili and meli olin moli.