Toki Pona uses only 14 letters of the alphabet.
a e i j k l m n o p s t u w
Vowels
There are five vowels, similar to Spanish, Japanese, and Esperanto.
how it’s written | how it sounds | phonetic symbol |
a | ‘ah’ as in the word ‘father’ or ‘bra‘ | [ä] |
e | ‘eh’ as in ‘bed’ or ‘head’ | [e̞] |
i | ‘ee’ as in ‘deep’ or ‘machine’ | [i] |
o | ‘oh’ as in ‘pony’ or ‘go’ | [o̞] |
u | ‘oo’ as in ‘food’ or ‘moose’ | [u] |
Consonants
Toki Pona has nine consonants. The letters p t k m n s l w sound exactly as in English. The Toki Pona letter j sounds like an English ‘y’. For example, the word jelo sounds like ‘yellow’.
Stress falls on the first syllable of a word. Pronounce it a bit louder, longer or higher-pitched. For example, toki is pronounced ‘TO-kee’ and not ‘to-KEE’.
Toki Pona words are written in lowercase, even at the beginning of a sentence.