A door is not a hole!

Not long ago, I spotted an inconsistency in how toki pona is used: A fair number of people use lupa to refer to a door... in its entirety. Not just the gap made by opening the door- that is, the doorway- but the entire door: front-facing surface, gap, and concept, all in the word lupa. It's like lupa is a one-word lexicalization for "door".

The issue is, a door is not a hole! Or rather, it isn't always a hole. When a door is shut, it's a front-facing surface- a sinpin. When you're talking about the door as a means to get to or from the inside of a building, that's a nasin. But it is only when the door is open that it has a hole, and so it can only be described as a lupa then.

But when I've pointed this out to some people, I've gotten some surprising pushback. Why isn't a door a lupa? It has a hole sometimes, right? And we mainly use it for that reason- the hole lets us pass through it, which we do many times a day. What do you think of when you think of a door? Going through it. That's a lupa, right?

It's more complicated than that. Let's think about it in terms of another common object: Ice! Ice is a solid, which is perfectly described with kiwen. If you wanted to be specific about the type of kiwen, you can add on telo as a modifier, creating kiwen telo. But you wouldn't put telo first when describing ice. Ice is not a liquid, so telo doesn't describe it correctly!

And I'd argue that calling a closed door a lupa is a lot like referring to ice as telo kiwen- Ice is only a liquid at other times, just like how a door is only a hole at other times. Put another way, you have the right idea with the concepts that you want to express, but they aren't correct right now.

Still, a lot of people use lupa to refer to a door in all contexts. I suspect the disconnect comes from how we most often interact with doors, which is to open and shut them. The thing is, using lupa to refer to a door in this context is actually fine! If you say "mi open e lupa", that would mean "I open the hole." There's nothing wrong with that, because to open a door, you must turn it into a hole. The same goes for "mi pini e lupa," which means "I close the hole." Again, there is no problem.

But what if you wanted to look at a door? Suddenly, the word you choose matters, because the door can be open or closed- so it could be lupa or sinpin. It could even be nasin. Let's try it out:

What is this cat doing? If we say "soweli li lukin e lupa", "the cat is looking at a hole", we're being misleading- there is no hole there. There is a door, and the place where it stands is a hole at other times, but there is not currently a hole.

Because of that, it would be more apt to say "soweli li lukin e sinpin," "the cat is looking at a front-facing surface." When the door is shut, it is a front-facing surface and not a hole- so the way we describe the door changes to match. Unlike when we open or shut the door, it matters how we refer to the door. The door is either open or shut in this moment, and that determines how you would describe it- just like the ice example from before.

That said, you could still refer to the door as a lupa if it is in the context of it being a hole in those other times, such as talking about the past or future, a hypothetical, or a want for something to change. In doing this, we could instead describe the cat like so: "soweli li wile tawa lupa. taso lupa li pini", "The cat wants to go through the doorway. But the doorway is closed." In this context, nasin can fit just as well as lupa.

All of this is to say, a door is not always a lupa. But sometimes, it is! And now, you're equipped to recognize when you're using lupa incorrectly, and find better ways to describe doors in toki pona. Sometimes, you'll realize that lupa is still the best way to refer to a door. But sometimes, you'll help someone realize they're making this same mistake, and it can be a great learning moment!