sitelen sitelen explained

this is going to be a collection of posts each describing a single glyph from the sitelen sitelen writing system for toki pona, made by jan Josan aka Jonathan Gabel https://www.jonathangabel.com/toki-pona/

[sitelen-explained]

Day 0 of explaining each sitelen sitelen sitelen until i run out of sitelen

[Null]

Disclaimer: sitelen sitelen is the invention of jan Josan aka Jonathan Gabel, check out their website jonathangabel.com

I am neither an artist nor a designer, but i like sitelen sitelen and have opinions that i want to share. You're welcome to disagree with me, correct me and offer constructive criticism, because it's likely that i have no idea what i'm talking about.

In this series of posts I'm gonna be going over each and every sitelen sitelen glyph in no particular order. I'm gonna be talking about the individual elements that make up each glyphs, possible variations and other neat info about how the glyph came to be. the general structure is going to be something like

0. Featured sentences with the word from the last post

1. Introduction to the new glyph in both ss and sp, drawing guide and the word

2. Other similar glyphs

3. Element breakdown

4. My personal associations, mnemonic methods for remembering and recognising the glyph when reading and writing

5. Possible variations on the glyph based on everything above

6. Personal opinion on the glyph, maybe tierlist?

In this post i'm not gonna be explaining any one glyph, instead i'll give an overview of what sitelen sitelen/suwi is for anyone new.

So what's sitelen sitelen

It's a script for toki pona made by Jonathan Gabel and refined by the community. Among toki pona folk sitelen sitelen is seldom used, but generally people tend to know of it and maybe can recognise a few glyphs. Reading and writing in sitelen sitelen is seen as an unneseccary and difficult skill but it's really not.

the name means something along the lines of "picture-like writing". it's also known as sitelen suwi, "sweet pictures".

here's a written document entirely in sitelen sitelen! (apart from the signatures). It's a sales contract, it's describing the sale of itself. Taken from here

sitelen sitelen is a logographic script, read top to bottom, left to right. The glyphs are organised like comic panels, each one representing one word. Some glyphs are called containers for their ability to contain other glyphs or whole phrases inside them.

This is quite different from sitelen pona, the more popular logographic script for toki pona. It is usually written left to right, and some glyphs can go inside others to form two-words long noun phrases.

sitelen suwi features an alphabet that can be used to write down proper names or spell out actual words if need be. Alphabetic symbols go only inside cartouches - special glyphs-containers meant to signify either a name or a spelled out word. The letters combine to form syllables, vowels are drawn to be inside consonants. The document above has the names of the seller and the buyer in the bottom right corner of the page. Both follow the structure of "jan + name cartouche with the toki pona name". jan Mato, the buyer, is above, jan Josan, the artist, is below.

That's gonna be all for now! Please spread this to anyone you think would be interested and leave comments. The next post is gonna be describing the glyph for the word "tenpo", which means "time, moment, event". Please leave sentences that use the word for me to write using sitelen sitelen in notes! They can be in english, toki pona, written in sitelen sitelen, anything is good.

Feel free to ask any and all questions as well! I'll gladly explain everything.

Btw i'm very new to tumblr so all advice is appreciated as well!

[brosethorns]

An Unofficial Map of the Boiling Isles- Created after immense research into the Geography and Lore of the Boiling Isles. I spent SO much time and effort on this, both combing through episodes, and the lengthy art process. But I think it paid off.

[lakevida]

dude im not applying to your job on squeamix dot com.

[unrepentantauthor]

everything fucking sounds like this now i guess

[headspace-hotel]

Poob has it for you

[notemily]

I have two things to add here:

[problemnyatic]

can we talk about how being so pants-shittingly terrified of Doing A Racism you freeze up or Get Weird around anyone a shade darker than the sugar in your cupboard or with an accent is effectively the same as being scared of brown people and doesn't make you much better than Sandra Lilly Smith from the suburbs who clings her purse when a black guy gets on the elevator with her

[problemnyatic]

It also, generally, makes you much less safe to actually confront when you do inevitably fuck up and do some kind of racism, such as being scared of being around PoC for the above reasons. Because you're so wound up and tense that it becomes this Big Catastrophic Failure and your Worst Fears Realized, which immediately takes the conversation away from the racism and instead collapses it around your feelings as the offender.

This is an example of an intersection of white fragility with white guilt, both of which are ways in which white people deflect the responsibility of examining their own racist biases or actions by weaponizing their feelings to keep the conversation about them and their feelings, either by getting defensive about accusations of racism or imploding with self-flagellation and guilt for being Such A Terrible Person.

The thing about being raised white in the US, europe, and canada, is that the society you grew up in will inevitably instill subconscious racist biases in you, directly or indirectly. Even the most leftist white spaces are rife with racist tendencies, many of which stem from absences, rather than overt presence of denegrating opinions of PoC. Like ignorance to the breadth and nature of the struggles of BIPoC, the nuances of systemic racism, where assumptions of equal opportunity and saftey in a given scenario break down.

If you want to actually be an effective anti-racist, it needs to be easy and safe to tell you "hey, that was racist" without you imploding, exploding, getting defensive, or centering your guilt. Don't make it a bigger deal than the person approaching you has made it, keep the apology short and sweet, and keep the load off of whoever aproached you to correct your error; that is your responsibility to fix and your responsibility to manage your emotions about, not the victim of your racist behavior.

Like all things in life, you need to be willing to make a little bit of an ass of yourself if you want to get better. You need to get comfortable being wrong, being the bad guy. Because sooner or later, you will be, and you can't let it be the end of the world. Because it never is, but treating it like one forces everyone else to save you from whatever personal apocalypse you've spun up over it. And when you've fucked up or hurt someone, it is always the wrong time to make yourself need rescue first.

You can come back from a faux pas, even a Racist one. You just need to chill the fuck out and listen.

[sitelen-explained]

day 1 of explaining each sitelen sitelen sitelen until i run out of sitelen

tenpo

Disclaimer: sitelen sitelen is the invention of jan Josan aka Jonathan Gabel, check out their website

I am neither an artist nor a designer, but i like sitelen sitelen and have opinions that i want to share. You're welcome to disagree with me, correct me and offer constructive criticism, because it's likely that i have no idea what i'm talking about.

0. Featured sentences with the word from the last post

none on the account of me not explaining a single glyph last time.

1. Introduction to the new glyph, drawing guide and the word

the glyph is quite straight-forward. a squarish body, a landlocked circle in the middle and a coastal semicircle on each side.

one piece of advice i think is useful here is how to draw the squarish shape for it to not end up more of a circle which isn't the end of the world of readability anyway. I'll go over it in the element breakdown and variations.

what i'm trying to say is that there is no element unique to this glyph, so it doesn't want any special instructions for itself. the elements can go in any order without any real effect on the outcome (as long as you start with the main body).

2. Other similar glyphs

i might change my mind on this later but i think the glyphs with this squarish outline all feel similar. ala, leko, mi and mun are the other ones. len is close, but the shape is slightly different. a few more glyphs have a square shape overall, but they're different enough to not put them here (len, luka, nanpa, ale, awen)

3. Element breakdown

the squarish body - i find that it's generally interchangeable with a circle or any other simple shape, really. still, if you want to end p with a nice squarish body, i find that this stroke order leads to best results for me

the landlocked circle - again, it's interchangeable for any other soft simple shape as far as readability goes. is a guide necessary here?

the coastal semicircle - the exact proportions aren't that important, but some glyphs demand it to go deeper into the body of the glyph.

and that's it!

these elements are fairly common and are easy to execute, so i decided to start with a glyph that has them. some other elements are made up or a certain combination of simpler elements, so this is worthwile i promise!

4. My personal associations, mnemonic methods for remembering and recognising the glyph when reading and writing

i can come up with three distinct ways of vizualising this glyph, but do let me know if you see anything else here!

a literal clock

the four seasons. the landlocked circle here can either represent the Earth or the Sun, with semicircles representing the four distinct states that a lot of humans experience

the day/night cicle, represented by four points: dawn, midday, dusk, midnight.

please let me know if you have any other associations! i'm curious.

5. Possible variations on the glyph based on everything above

these are a bit wild for actual writing in my opinion, but i'd probably understand them in proper context.

you're welcome to try your own hand at this if you want! i'm excited to see what you come up with, even if it's very simple.

6. Personal opinion on the glyph, maybe tierlist?

sorry no tierlist (for now).

this is a very solid glyph in my opinion! solid iconography, plenty of room for interpretation, very little to mess up. it's not an outstandingly fun glyph, nor is it obnoxious or hard to remember.

i have nothing to compare it to, so i'll leave it at that for now

Your turn!

the assignment for you today is to try and use this word in a sentence! don't be afraid if you barely know toki pona or can't draw, feel free to do it in english, write it down in toki pona using any writing system that you like, in fact. I'll start the next post by first writing your sentences down in ss (if needed) and then explaining them.

see you whenever that happens! Feel free to ask questions or interact with me in any other way, this is really exciting for me if i'm being honest