Nuts and Bolts: Toki Pona.

 Do you want to learn a whole new language in just a couple of days? 

Well, Toki Pona might be the one for you.

As a considerable bonus, it's designed to make you happy, too.

Toki Pona was invented by the Canadian linguist and translator Sonja Lang, partly to help her recover from her depression. It has its roots in Buddhist philosophy, and also in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (which says that the language you use affects the way your mind works).

Toki Pona has about 125 words (there are also 14 extra bits that are stuck on to make the grammar work). You can stick words together to make extra meanings, so for example, jan (person) plus utala (fight) means warrior or soldier. All the sounds are designed to be easily pronounceable by speakers of all languages. 

Names of people and places are transcribed phonetically according to certain rules (Toki Pona doesn't have as many sounds as most languages). John, for instance, becomes San.

Toki Pona has changed just a little since it was invented in about 2001. The words for eye and see have merged, for example, and a few words have been changed because they were too similar, but in its current form it functions as an effective means of communication.

There are several ways of writing Toki Pona, but here's one of them:

by Sonja Lang and Bryant Knight

Simple, easy, and makes people happy?

You never know, it might even be worth a try.

Word To Use Today: Tok Pona. Toki means language, and comes from the English word talk. Pona means good or simple (interesting combination of meanings, that) and comes from Esperanto, from the Latin bonus, good.