<story><title>Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)</title><url>https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/07/toki-pona-smallest-language/398363/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>elldoubleyew</author><text>In high school I was the founder of our (small) Esperanto Club. I gave Esperanto lessons each week at our club meeting designed as a one year course, usually by the end of the year if someone attended each week and did moderate self study outside of class they could communicate in Esperanto really well. We even had one international student who really struggled with english that after a few months of attending our club could communicate with us in Esperanto more fluently than English!&lt;p&gt;We had one a freshman join during my senior year who was a huge advocate of Toki Pona as a conlang. We decided to devote a month of the club to Toki Pona instead of Esperanto and it was mind boggling how quickly everyone was able to get a grasp of it. Granted Toki Pona is much more &amp;quot;wordy&amp;quot; than Esperanto, you often have to use many words to convey an idea that you could express quickly in a language with a larger vocabulary. Regardless it was an absolute blast to learn and I&amp;#x27;m surprised by how much I remember.&lt;p&gt;Once I got to college there seemed to be a severe lack of interest in Esperanto, or any conlang for that matter, amongst the student body. I could never really keep enough people interested the same way I could in high school so I gave up after my sophomore year. I really miss teaching people Esperanto. I believe the club at my high school still runs to this day, I&amp;#x27;d love to be able to go back and visit one day.</text></comment>
<story><title>Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)</title><url>https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/07/toki-pona-smallest-language/398363/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>kazinator</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;In Icelandic, a compass is a direction-shower, and a microscope a small-watcher.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;In Latin, microscope is also &amp;quot;small-watcher&amp;quot;, namely,  &lt;i&gt;microscopium&lt;/i&gt;.</text></comment>