toki pona is a minimalist language with 118 core words (and 134 common words). It means "language of good" (or "good talk", or "communication that's related to good"). It was created by jan Sonja in an attempt to understand the meaning of life, and is now curated by its community. You can find the official website here.

A huge part of the philosophy behind toki pona is breaking down and explaining what things really are. Context is extremely important in toki pona; chances are, you'll call the same object two different things in two different situations. For example, instead of calling a car a "car", you might call it a:

All of these are valid ways to refer to a car. There is no one way to describe a given thing, and there is no one thing that a description always means. For example, "ilo tawa" can mean a car, but it can also mean a motorcycle, some pistons, or an anthropomorphic hammer running away from you.

Words in toki pona have very broad definitions. For example: clays, powders, pastes, and doughs have their own separate words in English, each with their own specific meanings and connotations. In toki pona, all of these things are referred to with one word: "ko", which means anything malleable; anything that's not fully rigid, but not fully fluid. Clay is ko, sand is ko, a plushie is ko, ketchup is ko. steel is ko to the Hulk. Clothes have attributes of ko (though they are usually described with their dedicated word, "len"). A rose flower is ko if you're talking about its texture when you squeeze it. I could go on.

A big part of toki pona is describing what something is to you. Chances are, two proficient tokiponists will describe the same object differently, even in the same context.

What personally drew me to toki pona was the fun challenge -- game, really -- of breaking down concepts into their essential parts. There's also the reward of understanding a concept more deeply through breaking it down.

If you want to learn more, the official website tokipona.org has further resources. Specifically, the learning resources can be found at the bottom of the page; I highly recommend lipu Linku. Don't use Glosbe. Not present on the official website, but still helpful, is this database of quotes from the bot ilo pi sike lili on the ma pona pi toki pona Discord server. Speaking of ma pona, I also recommend checking out the community! I think it is very cool. (So cool in fact that I am intimidated enough to never talk there.)