[jean-]

>> left and right.

> I've never had it be necessary to use these words. Often "on my/your side" if I'm walking with someone, or "beside/towards X" if there's a feature there.

> (it has deficiencies, and can be cumbersome, but these aren't them)

Surely the lack of words for left/right would make it pretty cumbersome to describe, say, the vehicle code, or to give driving directions, no?

[jan_Inkepa]

Yeah.

Vehicle code is a good example. Having a limited vocabulary hits you hard when it comes to technical/legal texts, and when you don't have context to refer to (The text on the page linked to doesn't make sense when you can't see the pictures). If a very specific word isn't in the language, and can't be easily described using other words, it just gets very messy/unpleasant (even if you can technically do it, nobody's going to want to read it).

You can often give directions in english pretty well in many places using landmarks "go to the crossing, you'll see a church - go there, then...etc." . But yes, not having left/right is a bit cumbersome for this application. If I was giving directions in Toki Pona to someone, I'd probably just draw a map if it was in any way complicated ... .

On the other had, as you can see by the translation someone made in the comments here of my page, you can talk about some technical things just fine, like building a computer! (if you have enough photos to refer to).

Edit: Oh, here's what the creator of the language had to say about it:

"Toki Pona has a rather narrow range of functions. Although it is very easy to meditate and communicate honest thoughts and everyday activities in Toki Pona, it is impossible to translate a chemical textbook or legal document in the language without significant losses. Such texts are products of the complex, modern civilization we live in and are not suited for a cute, little language like Toki Pona.

As an artistic language with limited means of expression, Toki Pona does not strive to convey every single facet and nuance of human communication. Nevertheless, the results we can achieve with so few elements prove to be very interesting, if not spiritually insightful."

[sdenton4]

It might be interesting to explore what a minimalistic language explicitly for technical concepts might look like. It's easy to imagine falling into 'import blocks' declaring what particular variable jargon placeholders will refer to... But probably there's a more elegant way to deal with the problem of an explosion of concepts as you get into the weeds of a technical area.

Or to go full Sapir-Whorf, one could ask what it would look like to design a language where (say) linear algebra is intrinsic, and thus intuitive.

[yiyus]

This is something I would be very interested in.

I think that the combination of an array language (like APL or J, but smaller like K) which intrinsically incorporated geometric algebra so that concepts like complex and imaginary numbers or trigonometry are not essential, and a minimalist artificial language like Toki Pona, would make an excellent tool for communication of technical concepts.

[Doxin]

I'm sure you could go for something like "drivers side" and "the side the driver is not on". From a quick look at the toki pona dictionary that'd be something like "tawa ilo lawa" for drivers side and "ala tawa ilo lawa" for the not drivers side.

It's not terribly compact but it works.