#also the word “kepeken” is an example of how syllable count isnt the end all be all of speed

[superwhosecock]

usually to describe a cow we'd just say "soweli" (lit. 'land mammal'). if it is 100% crucial that it is exactly a cow, one way to convey that is "soweli suli pi telo walo," (lit. 'the big white-fluid land mammal), which is pretty short imo.

as for the idea of having more sounds to make fewer syllables per words, theres lots of reasons that isn't done.

1. three CVN yllables really isnt that long. English goes at like 7 something syllables per second with crazy words like "twelfths" and "fences".

2. the idea is to make the phonetic inventory as simple as possible, like the rest of the language. it's got 14 very common sounds; that way no matter what you don't have to learn too many new sounds.

3. it would be significantly harder to hear the language if every word were only one syllable long. toki pona is easy to understand through thick accents or bad microphones or crappy internet connections; even just shortening the three syllable words makes this not as true.

Toki Pona seems pretty cool but the words are too long imo. Like you recently had a post about how to say "cow" and the resulting compound was a sentence of its own. It's 120 words in the language; find five vowels and 24 consonants (one can be "no consonant") and you can have everything in one syllable. Quicker! More efficient! Wasted opportunity imo.

thats just ithkuil! ithkuil is fun but basically unspeakable. which is less cool. i do think its weird that toki pona has three syllable words though, when its nowhere near exhausting its budget of 2 syllable words. perhaps we need...toki pona pona