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Sonja Lang

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Sonja Lang
Bornc. 1978 (age 45–46)
Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada
Other namesjan Sonja,[1] Sonja Elen Kisa
Occupation(s)Linguist, translator
Known forCreation of Toki Pona

Sonja Lang (previously known as Sonja Elen Kisa, c. 1978)[2] is a Canadian linguist and translator. She is best known for her creation of Toki Pona, a minimalist constructed language.

Biography

Lang was born and raised in Moncton, New Brunswick.[3] She grew up in a bilingual family; her mother spoke French, and her father spoke English. During and after her high school years, she became fluent in five languages, including Esperanto.[4] She later said that Esperanto was the inspiration for her creation of constructed languages.[2]

Lang worked for a communications agency for a few years, providing translation and media services. She also taught French at a community college. In addition, she worked in cybersecurity. She also worked for the Council of Europe as an interpreter.[2]

She currently lives in Toronto.[5]

Creation of Toki Pona

Main article: Toki Pona

In 2001, Lang was experiencing depression and as a way to simplify her thoughts, she developed Toki Pona, an oligoisolating constructed language.[6][4] Lang stated that the language has only 120 words.[7] Toki Pona was also partly inspired by Taoist philosophy.[7] An early version of Toki Pona was published by Lang in 2001, and it quickly gained some popularity. In 2014, Lang released a book on the language, Toki Pona: The Language of Good, followed by a French edition in 2016 and a German edition in 2021.[8]

In 2021, she published a second book on Toki Pona, Toki Pona Dictionary which includes additional words invented by the Toki Pona community.[9]

References

  1. ^ Lang, Sonja (2014). Toki Pona: The Language of Good. Copyright page, p. 7. ISBN 978-0978292300. OCLC 921253340.
  2. ^ a b c "AFP 20 - Sonja Lang: Toki Pona, Conlanging, meaning of life". Actual Fluency. 2014-07-18. Retrieved 2022-03-23.
  3. ^ "3-60 - Toki Pona". en.tokipona.org. 2009-11-15. Archived from the original on 2009-11-15. Retrieved 2022-04-27.
  4. ^ a b "What is a Language?". Canada Institute of Linguistics. 2018-03-08. Archived from the original on 2018-03-08. Retrieved 2022-03-26.
  5. ^ "What happened when I tried to learn Toki Pona in 48 hours using memes". the Guardian. 2015-01-08. Retrieved 2022-04-27.
  6. ^ "Babel's modern architects". Los Angeles Times. 2007-08-24. Retrieved 2022-03-26.
  7. ^ a b "The Nerdiest Languages You Need to Learn are Invented". Hawai'i Public Radio. 2017-10-09. Retrieved 2022-04-27.
  8. ^ Fabbri, Renato (July 2018). "Basic concepts and tools for the Toki Pona minimal and constructed language". ACM Transactions on Asian and Low-Resource Language Information Processing. arXiv:1712.09359.
  9. ^ "Toki Pona (official site)". tokipona.org. Retrieved 23 July 2022.
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