soweli Lajon -> soweli (wawa)

So unofficial words are illegal now? https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/U...ords,_Commands

No. I haven't read every word of the course's page, but it still looks up to date. Why are you asking? Did you mean to use "Lajon" as the animals personal name (like "soweli Wini Te Pu" - Winnie the Pooh)?

I can left this sentence and put a tag "unofficial words" and add a new sentence using only official words.

Hi fjay69,
first, thanks for the correct sentence with "soweli wawa". Now, about *this* sentence with "soweli Lajon"...

So, since you use the term "unofficial words" from the "Updated jan Pije's lessons": This course isn't up to date. I remember that I once asked Pije to update his course, which he did, but these updates aren't reflected in the Wikibook. Let's assume that Pije's latest way of naming things was indeed "unofficial words". (Pije put his side offline, also because he felt it was out of date: http://tokipona.net/tp/janpije/) What is up to date is the official Toki Pona book "Toki Pona - The Language of Good" (2014) by Sonja Lang, the creator of Toki Pona. In lesson 9, she explains "proper names" (what seems to be your "unofficial words").

"Foreign words, such as the unique names of people and places, are written using the sound rules of Toki Pona..."

So, if you write "soweli Lajon", it sounds like "Lajon" is the unique name of an animal. Trying to invent species names would beg the question: from which language? Esperanto? Latin? Chinese? English? In this case, you chose English, but someone else might use Esperanto: Lejono. (Or use an emoji...) Am I supposed to know English or Esperanto in order to understand Toki Pona? Surely not. Instead, the animal in question is described with ordinary Toki Pona words.

tan seme la soweli wawa pimeja li moku e ona?
Why did the black bear eat it?

Mind that "soweli wawa" is not *the* wording for "bear", it also works for lions. Also, bears and lions can be described differently in other contexts, in which other characteristics are prominent, like "soweli suli" for example, or just "soweli". In Sonja's book, she explains:

"Toki Pona has a strong focus on context. From the perspective of a passenger, a car might be tomo tawa [...]. The driver might see it as ilo tawa [...]. If you're crossing the street and - bam! - a car hits you, then it might be a kiwen tawa [...]."

Therefore, tagging this sentence with "unofficial words" would be misleading, if - in official lingo - you mean "proper names". The issue is just, that "Lajon" is not a proper name, but a species name, and there is no such thing in Toki Pona. I'd like to therefore kindly ask you to remove "Lajon" and replace it with something like "wawa".

Regards,
Tepan

I've unadopted the sentence.

Duplicates of this sentence have been deleted:
x #9133185