Natural Semantic Metalanguage is a theory that claims there is a common set of semantics underlying all natural languages. This is a descriptive theory, but we can also use it to evaluate constructed languages and perhaps use it prescriptively to help us create effective constructed languages (or at least let us restrict them consciously rather than accidentally).

I’ve taken the chart of NSM semantic primes from 2016 and written the Toki Pona equivalent of each prime in it, and crossed it off a list of Toki Pona words. The result is a mapping of NSM to Toki Pona, but it also tells me a few other things:

• There are some primes in NSM that have no direct representation in Toki Pona. This highlights areas of Toki Pona that contribute to the sense that there are things you can’t say in it.
• There are several overloaded words in Toki Pona that function as more than one NSM prime. This helps explain the “fuzziness” you feel using Toki Pona.
• The non-primes in Toki Pona’s lexicon form a useful minimal vocabulary for people interested in language construction.

Interestingly, there are only a few primes that appear to be handled grammatically in Toki Pona. Almost all the primes in NSM are realized as independent Toki Pona words. This suggests to me that Toki Pona is extremely well-constructed.

Now, onto the chart:

NSM Prime	Toki Pona
I-ME	mi
YOU	sina
SOMEONE	jan
SOMETHING-THING	ijo
BODY	sijelo
PEOPLE	jan mute
KIND	<none>
PART	wan

In the first section, we see a pretty good mapping from NSM prime to Toki Pona. “KIND” has no mapping, which makes sense, because Toki Pona is in general very bad at making distinctions between type (by design). I’ve marked wan in bold to draw attention to the fact that it represents multiple NSM primes. In fact, wan means one, unit, element, part, piece, or make one—in other words, as a noun, it means a single thing or one of many things, but as a verb it means to unify them into a wholeness, so it is a kind of auto-antonym, which is surprising in a constructed language but occurs not uncommonly in natural languages.

NSM Prime	Toki Pona
WORDS	nimi
THIS	ni
THE SAME	sama
OTHER-ELSE	ante
ONE	wan
TWO	tu
MUCH-MANY	mute
ALL	ali
SOME	<none>
LITTLE-FEW	lili

mute and lili are both pretty polyvalent; mute winds up covering a lot of scenarios.

NSM Prime	Toki Pona
TIME-WHEN	tenpo
NOW	tenpo ni
MOMENT	tenpo
(FOR) SOME TIME	<none>
A LONG TIME	tenpo mute
A SHORT TIME	tenpo lili
BEFORE	tenpo pini
AFTER	tenpo kama

As you can see, Toki Pona is fairly weak at time. tenpo pini and tenpo kama mean “finished time” and “time to-come” and that’s about all you get. There’s definitely no distinction between points and intervals. The ambiguity here is probably intentional—intended to focus your attention on the here-and-now rather than placing sentences into arbitrary points in time and space (unlike Lojban).

NSM Prime	Toki Pona
WANT	wile
DON’T WANT	wile ala
FEEL	pilin
DO	pali
SAY	toki
KNOW	sona
SEE	lukin
HEAR	kute
THINK	pilin

Toki Pona has a full set of the mental predicates, the only ambiguity is the merging of “think” and “feel”, which was definitely an intentional choice by the inventor to steer discourse in a certain direction.

NSM Prime	Toki Pona
HAPPEN	kama
BE (SOMEWHERE)	lon
LIVE	ali
DIE	moli
THERE IS	<none>
BE SOMEONE/SOMETHING	<none>
(IS) MINE	pi mi
MOVE	tawa

Here we see lon used to place things and people as well as define them. It doesn’t seem like a perfect fit for any of these primes but it is closer than nothing. Toki Pona probably relies more on the null copula to say things like “this is a cat” (ni li soweli). I’ve underlined ali because “life” is an oblique meaning. Toki Pona doesn’t seem to have a word for “live.”

NSM Prime	Toki Pona
TOUCH	pilin
INSIDE	insa
PLACE-WHERE-SOMEWHERE	tomo
HERE	lon
ABOVE	sewi
BELOW	anpa
ON ONE SIDE	poka
NEAR	<none>
FAR	weka

I’ve underlined tomo because the sense “a general place” is definitely secondary to the sense “a room (indoors)” so it is an oblique association with the NSM prime. Also weka means “away” in a sort of vague way that might mean far but isn’t the main sense. And once again we have pilin for something sensory. That there are no real words for near and far is probably intentional—again, Toki Pona emphasizes the here-and-now—the surprise is that there is not really a word for here at all. It’s apparently just always implied; soweli mute li lon means both “there are cats here” and “lots of cats exist” and no distinction between them is possible.

NSM Prime	Toki Pona
NOT-DON’T	ala
CAN	ken
BECAUSE	tan
IF	la
MAYBE	ken la
LIKE-AS-WAY	nasin

la functions as a strange bit of grammar in Toki Pona, separating an “adverb” or “context” from the rest of the sentence. Conditionals are handled this way, as are temporal constructions. I think it’s likely that this area was intended to be simple and weak but grew more complex as the community expanded. Anyway, all the primes are available here, but not all as single words.

NSM Prime	Toki Pona
VERY	kin
MORE-ANYMORE	mute
SMALL	lili
BIG	suli
BAD	ike
GOOD	pona
TRUE	lon

Once again, mute and lili reappear as common adjectives. lon in the sense of “true” is probably oblique. There’s no explicit way of saying false; you would simply negate the statement somehow.

So, what does that leave? Quite a bit:

• a (ah, ha, uh, oh, ooh, aw, well)
• akesi (non-cute animal, reptile, amphibian)
• anu (or)
• awen (stay, wait, remain)
• en (and)
• esun (market, shop)
• ilo (tool, device, machine)
• jaki (dirty, gross, filthy)
• jelo (yellow)
• jo (have, contain)
• kala (fish, sea creature)
• kalama (sound, noise, voice)
• kasi (plant, leaf, herb, tree, wood)
• kepeken (use)
• kili (fruit, pulpy vegetable, mushroom)
• kiwen (hard thing, rock, stone, metal, mineral, clay)
• ko (semi-solid or squishy substance)
• kon (air, wind, smell, soul)
• kule (color, paint)
• kulupu (group, community, society, company, people)
• lape (sleep, rest)
• laso (blue, blue-green)
• lawa (head, mind)
• len (clothing, cloth, fabric)
• lete (cold)
• linja (long, very thin, floppy thing)
• lipu (flat and bendable thing)
• loje (red)
• luka (hand, arm)
• lupa (hole, orifice, window, door)
• ma (land, earth, country)
• mama (parent, mother, father)
• mani (money, material wealth, currency, dollar)
• meli (woman, female, girl, wife, girlfriend)
• mije (man, male, boy, husband, boyfriend)
• moku (food, meal, eat, drink)
• monsi (back, rear end, butt, behind)
• mu (cute animal noise)
• mun (moon)
• musi (fun, playing, game, recreation, art)
• nanpa (number)
• nasa (silly, crazy, foolish, drunk, strange, stupid, weird)
• nena (bump, nose, hill, mountain, button)
• noka (leg, foot)
• o (vocative)
• oko (eye)
• olin (love)
• ona (she, he, it, they)
• open (open, turn on)
• pakala (blunder, accident, mistake)
• palisa (long, mostly hard object)
• pan (grain, cereal)
• pana (give, put, send, place, release, emit, cause)
• pimeja (black, dark)
• pini (end, tip)
• pipi (bug, insect, spider)
• poki (container, box, bowl, cup, glass)
• seli (fire, warmth, heat)
• selo (outside, surface, skin, shell, bark, shape, peel)
• seme (what, which)
• sike (circle, wheel, sphere, ball, cycle)
• sin (new, fresh, another, more)
• sinpin (front, chest, torso, face, wall)
• sitelen (picture, image, draw, write)
• soweli (animal, especially land mammal, lovable animal)
• suno (sun, light)
• supa (horizontal surface, e.g furniture, table, chair, pillow, floor)
• suwi (candy, sweet food)
• taso (only, sole, but)
• telo (water, liquid, juice, sauce)
• unpa (sex, sexuality)
• uta (mouth)

More details on the Toki Pona vocabulary can be found at the semi-official wordlist, by consulting pu, the official Toki Pona Book or perhaps by reading a tutorial.

Ideas for further work:

• Create an NSM-complete Toki Pona by filling in the missing primes and disambiguating multi-valent words
• Create an inflected Toki Pona by converting NSM primes into bound morphemes on the remaining TP lexicon

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