Growing Toki Pona

This is a record of my process for interesting others in learning and speaking Toki Pona!

Foreword

• You'll need to be aware of somebody's interests to know what reasoning will work best for them!
• If you get through two selling points without getting somebody interested, they won't be interested.
• Don't be annoying or overly-persistent. It'll backfire!
• Keep up personal projects or other interesting things to talk about that are related to Toki Pona. When the opportunity comes, you'll have something cool to talk about that comes from Toki Pona, rather than Toki Pona itself.
  • By the way: this applies to ANY hobby!
• Be confident in yourself. Toki Pona is your passion. Show people that fact.
• This is most important: if you really wanna interest somebody in Toki Pona, be present and active in their life and talk excitedly about Toki Pona. There's a saying that "you are the average of the 5 people you're with most often." Be an influence in somebody's life so they want to Toki Pona with you!

Selling Points

These are ordered by effectiveness I've observed. Start from the top!

• Ease: Toki Pona is the easiest language to start. You can memorize all the words and start practicing right away!
  • Be cautious with this. Avoid calling Toki Pona "the easiest language." I use the phrasing "easiest to start." Languages are not easy!
  • You can talk about how long you took to learn! I memorized all the words in a month, then was reading and writing effective sentences in two months. This progress took 10-15 minutes of effort a day!
• Sneaky: Few people know Toki Pona, so you can speak it in almost any context and nobody will know what you're saying!
  • People love this. You could use this to convince people to try luka pona too!
• Language Learning: If you learn Toki Pona, you'll figure out how you best learn languages. Later, you'll be able to start learning another language, better understanding how you personally learn language.
  • This one is huge. If you learn Toki Pona, you learn about your memorization needs, your comfort and understanding in your parent language, how translation works, what immersion you need, what skills you are better or worse at in language learning, and so much more.
• Teaching: Toki Pona's list of simple concepts makes you break down ideas into their core components in order to communicate. Many speakers have pointed out that this made them a better teacher.
  • I could write a book about this one in particular. But here's the summary: In teaching, you break down an idea, hand the pieces to your student, and help them rebuild the original idea. This is how speaking Toki Pona works, so speaking Toki Pona is practicing teaching!
• Community: Toki Pona's community is dedicated and friendly. If you're looking for an online community, you can make friends with everyone there just by starting to learn.
• Art and Hobbies: Toki Pona's community responds to work put in, and your work is much more visible because of the small size of the community. If you're a creator, you'll find an audience!
• Intellectual: Toki Pona has few concepts compared to English- part of the fun is figuring out how you'd express an idea, point out an object, etc by only using Toki Pona's ideas!
• Philosophical: Toki Pona's focus on simplicity comes from its creator's want to simplify her thoughts through a troubled time in her life. Learning a process to break down your thoughts into their core components can help you navigate your feelings.