lilismall, short, young; few; piece, part
mutemany, several, very; quantity
alanot, nothing, no
nithis, that, these, those
wawapower, energy, strength; confident, intense, forceful; amazing, impressive
wekaabsent, away, distant; remove, get rid of
kenability, permission; possibility, maybe; allow, enable
modifiers go after the word they're modifying.
soweli lili
small animal
to do possessive, you modify the word with a pronoun.
soweli lili mi
my small animal
in sitelen pona, you can also put the modifier inside or above the word it's modifying.
soweli lili
there's no particular rules to when you should write modifiers one way or another in sitelen pona, just write them the way that looks the best to you!
keep in mind that if you modify mi or sina, you need to use li afterwards.
mi sin li wawa
those of us who are new are confident
toki pona is a very context-dependent language. one phrase can mean many different things in many different contexts.
in order to communicate properly, you need to think about and break down what the thing you're talking about means, and how that can be expressed in context.
jan musi lili
young entertainers
short clowns
a few comedians
since exercises can't really have as much context as real life situations do, the translations you come up with might differ from mine. that's okay!
think for yourself if your translation might make sense in a given context, or feel free to ask me on discord (comforttiger#0) or e-mail (tiger@comforttiger.space), or ask another proficient speaker.
ken mute
many possibilities
soweli wawa li lili ala
the strong animal is not small
ona li jan ike
they're a bad person
weka sina li ike
i don't like when you're away
your absence is bad
ni li pona ala
this is not good
small animals are really cute!
soweli lili li suwi mute
bats are capable
waso li ken
the children are gone
jan lili li weka
my strength is okay
wawa mi li pona lili
lots of people speak well
ijo mute li toki pona
the children, who are away, are playing nicely
jan lili weka li musi pona
sina soweli lili
you're a tiny animal
waso li ni ala
the bird isn't doing that
jan weka li wawa mute
the people who left are really powerful
toki sin li ken
a new speech is possible
waso mute li musi
lots of birds are having fun
i teach each modifier as modifying the whole phrase before it, meaning that in "jan musi lili", "lili" modifies "jan musi". this is because thinking about modifiers this way just makes more sense to me, but lots of people see it differently. to them, "lili" and "musi" both modify just "jan".
the differences between these two ways of interpreting modifiers don't really ever matter. i've never run into a situation where someone didn't understand me because we were thinking about the modifiers differently. so ultimately, it sort of just depends on which way of explaining them makes more sense to you