English Translation
This road goes to the park.
This phrase in Toki Pona translates to “You can go to the garden using this way.” in English. It can be broken down into these parts:
- sina: this is the word for ‘you’
- ken: this means ‘can’ or ‘ability to’
- tawa: it can act as a preposition, in this case it means ‘to’ in the sense of moving towards something.
- ma: it can mean ‘earth’, ‘land’, ‘country’, ‘outside area’ or ‘garden’ – depending on the context of the sentence it’s used in.
- kasi: it means ‘vegetation’ or ‘plant’, but when paired with ma (ma kasi), it connotes a garden or a park.
- kepeken: another preposition word, which translates to ‘using’ or ‘with help of’.
- nasin: a noun that means ‘way’, ‘path’, ‘road’, or ‘doctrine’.
- ni: it’s a demonstrative pronoun and in this context, it means ‘this’.
So, in this context, the phrase “sina ken tawa ma kasi kepeken nasin ni” tells the listener that they can get to the garden by using this path/ way. The sentence structure is similar to the subject-verb-object (SVO) order in English