did you ever do those word cloud exercises in elementary school?

where you try to come up with as many words as possible that are similar to each other?

if you do that exercise with the word “witch” at the center, and then pick the most important 2-4 words, you’ll probably have a good answer!

the trick is that you have to do this exercise in toki pona :P

example, where i’m thinking of the halloween-y type of witch:

witches are often people, so jan

they’re generally powerful in a magical way, so wawa

they’re often associated with darkness and night, so pimeja

they are strange, often with unfamiliar behaviors or confusing ways of speaking- nasa

they are often evil or want to take advantage of others for their own gains, and ike can cover that

and of course, people are often afraid of them! so monsuta.

if you mix and match these words, you can express the idea of a witch in different ways, placing the importance on different ideas in the way you express it. one example might be “jan pi wawa nasa pimeja,” something like “person of strange, dark magic”. you can make more too! and you can also use these words as parts of a full sentence instead of just a phrase. “jan ni li wawa nasa li ike, li monsuta e mi!”, “this person is strangely powerful, and evil, and scares me!”

and you can try this exercise with any word!