Indeed! That is one of several reasons that I don't attempt communication with other humans in toki pona.

Thank you for the info; I will keep that in mind should I ever attempt to communicate with anyone using toki pona!

I definitely agree! I don't think it's reasonable to expect anyone to know all the words in use in any language, and I don't think toki pona is especially well-suited to communication between people (as opposed to communication with the self).

Using a resource that doesn't pretend specific words are universally understood seems like a great idea! It seems like the best approach to this very interpretive, subjective language, rather than taking an approach that rejects curiosity and assumes your knowledge is already comprehensive.

I must be using different reference material than you are! Might be an idea to search for other resources on the topic if you're running into vocabulary you're not familiar with - I found this one linked from the "official site". docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

...or to say "sinpin sona ona li awen ala jo kuntu" - the known face has ceased to have humor? I like the latter better but I'm not certain 'awen' can be used in a purely negative form like this.

Figuring out when I can omit particles, or when conjunctions and relationships are already baked into a given word, is my current biggest challenge. Everyone seems to perceive those aspects differently and be pretty sure everyone else is doing it wrong, which seems antithetical to the concept.

Oops! Okay I think my problem is I'm thinking of "clotted" as a verb when it's being used as an adverb. If I flip it around the way it started, can I just use "ni" to append the description? Like so:
kon li wekama e sijelo ona, ni jaki e kon seli e kalama moli.

Went with "kon seli," the breath of the fire, for smoke, and "kalama moli," the sounds of dying, for screams. I like how it creates this recursive image of the fire breathing the smoke out, and Keshena breathing it in, with no air free of death to breathe at all.

jan pi jo palisa li tawa poka kin li pana ona e toki. tenpo lon la mije li tawa weka. tenpo lon la meli li tawa poka. Tenpo lon la mije li pakala la telo sijelo ona li kule e sinpin meli. Ona li lukin e sinpin sona ona.

And most importantly, someone suggested a much better way to say "blood"! Thanks for that, "telo loje" felt massively underwhelming.

So here's the full paragraph, since this language relies heavily on context for clarity:

Which just reinforces my overall impression of this, which is... this is not a language for communicating information to other people. This is a language for exploring concepts within yourself. It does the former exceedingly poorly and always painfully, and the latter gracefully and beautifully.

...And finally someone comes in to say, "Hey, but wasn't the whole point of this to SIMPLIFY thoughts? Minimalism? Incredibly personal interpretation? Why are we ADDING words and saying that makes a sentence more correct? Isn't that in direct contradiction of... the whole idea?"

This gave me so many questions!
-Is "blood" just "telo loje"? Because that seems like it sucks.
-Is "tenpo lon" the right way to say "now"?
-The last bit is meant to say "the blood paints her face." It's the best way I could come up with to say that her face is covered in his blood. Is that clear?

Sorry y'all, I am a linguistics nerd but I am also a hiphop nerd. I do indeed aspire to write out a version of Tech N9ne's "Dysfunctional" with a Folger's-Shakespeare-style translation on the facing page, because there's nothing I find funnier than pedantic descriptions of very unprofessional things