Q - What is a "calque" and why is it bad?
A - In a general sense of all languages, a calque is an idiomatic phrase in a language that is a literal translation of an idiomatic phrase from another language. "Idiomatic" just means that something doesn't make sense when translated literally into every language, such as idiom or an idiomtic expression, like "Oh they've got my goat!" or "out of the frying pan and into the fire." An example of a calque in a natural language would be "pequeno almoço" in portuguese, which literally translates to "little lunch," but actually means "breakfast." This comes directly from "petit-déjeuner" in French, which also directly translates to "little lunch" but actually means "breakfast." The Portuguese "pequeno almoço" is only considered a calque because it comes from a direct translation of a phrase in a different language.
Calques in toki pona are usually discouraged because they cannot be lexicalized (click here if you don't know what that means). Let's look at an example of what I'm talking about with English and Tok Pisin. If I said "This place is an easy belly" and you didn't speak Tok Pisin, you would have no idea what I meant. In reality, this phrase in Tok Pisin (dispela hap i bel isi) would mean "this place is calm and peaceful." Because this calque isn't lexicalized in English, it isn't understandable. Any time someone calques in toki pona, unless the phrase already makes sense in toki pona without an outside perspective, it will not be understood as intended because lexicalized phrases do not occur most of the time.
Some common examples of calques that come up with native English speaking toki pona learners are:
"tenpo monsi" for "before" and "tenpo sinpin" for "after." English has a conceptual metaphor that puts time on a line that we walk forward along, which we can see in phrases like "let's move forward with this" and "I looked back to my past." Many languages have different conceptual metaphors with time in which people walk backwards through time, facing their past, not their future. toki pona doesn't have either conceptual metaphor, so neither "tenpo monsi" nor "tenpo sinpin" are used for "before" or "after."
"kalama sewi" for high pitches and "kalama anpa" for low pitches. English has a conceptual metaphor that places pitches in order from top to bottom. It runs so deeply in English that speakers of English can't talk about pitches without using words that also talk about height (try it! you will fail!). Turkish, in contrast, treats lower notes as "thick" and higher notes as "thin," so a Turkish toki pona speaker would have no idea what this meant! While it is true that for the human voice, lower notes can resonate lower in the body than higher notes, you can also sing lying down on the floor or upside down (and people do these things, especially in opera), not to mention that you can sing very low and control the resonance so that the note resonates in your head, and the opposite is also possible. My solution for this is usually to compare voices to the sounds made by soweli and waso, because waso are usually smaller than soweli and it's definitely not a calque of English. You could use "soweli lili" and "soweli suli" as tools here if you're worried about large birds and small mammals, but large birds are often flightless, and I don't use waso to describe flightless birds, so this is a moot point for me. "sama" is very useful here either way.
"pali" for "do." This for sure isn't always a calque, but the word "do" is used a lot in English for things that aren't the same concept in toki pona. "I'm doing homework" could be "mi pali lipu" because homework is work, but "I'm doing dishes" couldn't be "mi pali e ilo moku" because that reads as "I am making dishes". Likewise, "mi pali e supa lape" means "I'm creating a bed," not "I'm making a bed." I would use nasin or pona instead of pali there. Any time you see yourself using "pali" for something you'd use "do" for in English, reconsider if what you're describing is actually a type of work or a type of making something.
"lukin" for "to look like." This calque is influenced a lot by how "lukin" sounds like the english word "looking." You may see learners of toki pona say things like "mi lukin sama soweli." This doesn't mean "I look like a dog." This means "I see like a dog." English uses the words "look" and "like" to mean "appear as," but toki pona doesn't.
"esun" for "spending time." Another conceptual metaphor in English is "time is money." This shows up all over the way we talk about things. "I'm saving time." "I spent my time in France." "I'll buy us some time." Note how the words "save," "spend," and "buy" are all used for both time and money. This conceptual metaphor is baked into our lexicon. So even though these phrases make sense in English, "mi esun e tenpo" doesn't mean "I'm buying us some time." In fact, it probably refers to switching dates on a calendar, because toki pona has a conceptual metaphor where buying and selling are acts of swapping.
As you can tell, a lot of calques in toki pona arise from a speaker's ignorance towards the conceptual metaphors in their mother tongue. This is for sure something to think about!
One more thing to keep in mind: just because it is phrased like something in a different language doesn't mean it doesn't work natively in toki pona. For example, "I'm under the covers" can be "mi lon anpa len" because toki pona has the same conceputal metaphor as English in which it uses the same words for "hidden" to refer to types of cloths. This is by coincidence, and if a proficient speaker uses len like this, they aren't calquing English, they're just speaking toki pona.But my list isn't exhaustive, and you will be able to spot calques I didn't mention. If you think a calque is common enough for me to include here, feel free to let me know and i probably will!
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