Transcript

TITA BEAVEN

Rather than using a language that you might already know, let’s try using a memory palace to learn some vocabulary from an invented language. The language is Toki Pona (or the language of good), a language invented by Canadian translator and linguist Sonja Lang.

Here are three Toki Pona words.

Meli: woman

Ike: bad, negative, irrelevant

Kala : fish, sea creature

So the first word, Meli, means woman. I can imagine Melisandre, the Red Woman from the TV series Game of Thrones sitting on my sofa: meli = woman. Then, as I walk to the next station, the fireplace, I can imagine trying to build a fire with a lot of Ikea catalogues – as the stove fills with smoke, I realise this is a really bad idea (Ike = bad). Sitting at the piano is an enormous squid (Calamari) playing the piano with its eight arms: Kala = sea creature…. and so on.