onathird-person pronoun (he, she, it, they)
musifun, game, entertainment, art, play, amusing, interesting, comical, silly
ijothing, phenomenon, object, matter, something; being, entity, someone
janhuman being, person, someone
ikenegative quality; bad, unpleasant, harmful, unneeded
sowelifuzzy creature, land animal, beast
wasobird, flying creature, winged creature
li particlemarks the start of the predicate
ijo is the most generic word. it can stand in as a placeholder for anything or anyone.
jan and ijo can both be used to refer to others, for uses similar to "someone" in english. when talking about specific people, use what they refer to themselves as! lots of people refer to themselves as words other than jan. (for example, i refer to myself as soweli!)
when you're unsure of how someone refers to themselves, ijo is generally a better neutral term to use for them than jan
we covered sentences with only mi or sina as the subject, but for sentences with any other word as the subject, it's different.
in this case, you use the particle li to introduce the predicate:
subject predicate
subject li predicate
the end of the lessons have exercises in reading sitelen pona, but i highly recommend you practice writing sitelen pona too! grab a pen and paper and just write about your feelings, your day, everyday objects, using sitelen pona! keep practicing as you learn more words and grammar, and you'll come far.
ona li suwi
they are cute
waso li waso
birds are birds
ona li waso
they're a bird
ijo li musi
someone is playing
jan li suwi
the person is cute
human beings are cute
evil is bad
ike li ike
sweets are great
suwi li pona
the thing is bad
ijo li ike
i like movies
musi li pona
ike li musi
being bad is fun
ona li soweli
they're a dog
waso li sin
the bird is new