Q: There are so many good resources already in 2026. Why start a new one?
We saw a niche that is not addressed well yet. A lot of learner–teacher conversations can be summarised as “How do you say … in Toki Pona?”. The teacher usually answers with a list of situations they can think of involving the requested word, with various possible translations. This can feel exhausting to some teachers: some words are asked more often than others, needing the same questions to be answered over and over. It is also a barrier to entry for learners, as not all learners will use Discord or choose to actively ask questions.
We hope that lipu Kemeka can serve to accumulate teachers’ experience and make it more accessible.
Q: How close to done is lipu Kemeka?
Quite far from done. At the time of writing lipu Kemeka includes about 300 dictionary entries and 450 word senses. A long-term goal is to add enough entries so that a learner could reasonably enter most colloquially used words in the English language and be directed to an entry with a suitable translation. This could likely happen closer to 1000–3000 entries.
Q: How authoritative is lipu Kemeka?
The examples you see in lipu Kemeka are of reasonably high quality, and closely follow how the language is spoken. However, please keep in mind that it is impossible for us to comprehensively cover every spoken situation and every obscure sense of English words. If you notice lipu Kemeka does not offer some option, this is normally because no one has got around to talk about it yet, not because we think it is wrong. The exception to this is frequent misconceptions or learner mistakes, which may be explained in usage notes below any given definition.
Q: How wide is the range of varieties or styles of Toki Pona on lipu Kemeka?
We aim to describe the variety spoken in the 2020s by proficient speakers, which is fairly convergent. Variation that exists is usually easy enough to describe. We do not aim to capture individual styles that diverge greatly from how proficient speakers speak or how they understand said speech. There is a grey area in between those extremes, and we may rely on usage notes to remark on such instances.
If you are familiar with Linku survey terms, you can imagine this resource as mostly matching the “core” and “common” speech, sometimes remarking on “uncommon” features, while “obscure” or “personal sandbox” ideas are out of scope for us.
Q: Who can contribute to the data of lipu Kemeka?
A: As we aim more for quality of descriptions rather than quantity, our contributors are generally proficient speakers. It is a fuzzy category, of course, but overall if you are able to form non-trivial example sentences that closely match community expectations, and make reasonable judgements about context-dependent translations of English words, your contributions are welcome.
Q: How can I contribute data?
A: As of now, lipu Kemeka editing is coordinated on the Linku Discord server, and data is entered through a Google sheet. Please talk to kala Asi to get edit permissions on the spreadsheet.
Q: Is lipu Kemeka going to stay at this domain?
A: For now, yes. In the future, remains to be seen. Its purpose overlaps somewhat with lipu Linku and sona pona. Those projects could benefit from dynamically offering data from lipu Kemeka. We do not yet know how learners and teachers want to use this resource, so the UX will be shaped by what we learn about our users in the future.