anpa

[lipamanka]

anpa

sona pu

ADJECTIVE bowing down, downward, humble, lowly, dependent

sona Linku pi toki Inli

bowing down, downward, humble, lowly, dependent | ALT bottom, lower part, under, below, floor, beneath; low, lower, bottom, down

sona Linku pi toki pona

sewi ala: ijo anpa li lon noka pi ijo ante; ijo tu li utala la ijo anpa li pona sama ala ijo pi anpa ala

sona ku

down⁵, bottom⁴, lower⁴, defeat³, below³, beneath³, under², bow², underlying²

sona sin

[lipamanka]

i know we did noka already but i wanna do anpa goddamn it. here's my idea:

the space or thing below or beneath, e.g. (examples); humbled, shamed, dependent

examples might be

• ground
• floor
• basement

i'd like to hear alternative ideas. i'm not in love with this one and i'm having trouble thinking of examples.

[janPensa]

examples might be

• ground
• floor
• basement

Personally, I'd not include any translation like these. To me "anpa" is abstract - a direction, a location or an area - and never a concrete physical thing like a floor or a basement. You can translate "on the floor" as "lon anpa", and "to the floor" as "tawa anpa", but not because floor = anpa. It's just because in many contexts "located below" and "downwards" are adequate approximations of "on the floor" and "to the floor".

ku seems to agree. Any translation for "anpa" with a frequency rating of 3 or more is a pretty abstract concept, like "lower", "below" or "area under". "Floor" is lower in the list of translations, "ground" was translated as "anpa" by only one or two people, and "basement" didn't get translated as "anpa" by anyone.

humbled

I think the pu translation "humble" is better. "Humbled" strongly implies being made humble by a third party. One can be a jan anpa without being forced into that state by someone or something else.

But honestly, I'm also mildly in favor of moving "humble, shamed, dependent" to the commentary. I don't really use these meanings of anpa ever, and I believe other people don't use it often either. The main reason to keep it is that in pu anpa is used primarily for these meanings, with the traditional meanings of "anpa" moved to "noka".

Hmm... however, I guess I didn't consider the fact that using "anpa e" for "to defeat" relies on figurative meanings of anpa.

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I'd propose something like

bottom, lower, down, beneath; humble, lowly, dependant, defeated

"Bottom" first, because anpa is traditionally considered to be a noun primarily, and "lower" second, because "bottom" and "lower" word as adjective translations. "Down" and "beneath" are included more because they give proper vibes than because they're particularly accurate for explaining the grammatical characteristics of the word.

Another route we could take to more accurately explain how anpa is used is something like "[noun translations]; [literal adjective translations]; [figurative adjective translations]", so e.g.

bottom, area below, lower part; lower, located below; humble, lowly, dependant, defeated

But that more easily becomes a too long definition, I guess.

[lipamanka]

Personally, I'd not include any translation like these. To me "anpa" is abstract - a direction, a location or an area - and never a concrete physical thing like a floor or a basement. You can translate "on the floor" as "lon anpa", and "to the floor" as "tawa anpa", but not because floor = anpa. It's just because in many contexts "located below" and "downwards" are adequate approximations of "on the floor" and "to the floor".

ku seems to agree. Any translation for "anpa" with a frequency rating of 3 or more is a pretty abstract concept, like "lower", "below" or "area under". "Floor" is lower in the list of translations, "ground" was translated as "anpa" by only one or two people, and "basement" didn't get translated as "anpa" by anyone.

I would REALLY like to hear what other committee members think about this. I personally disagree, and this goes for most direction words. poka can refer to something that is at the side of something else, such as a river bank or a sidewalk. insa can refer to an object within another, such as organs or a motherboard. And likewise, anpa can describe an object under another, and I've seen it used and have used it a lot to talk about the ground.

To give examples of situations where I've used it like that and seen it used, I referred to the ground as anpa several times recently when hanging out with jan Deni the other day. I'd hate to focus on online usage for a very physical sense of a very physical word too.

I can basement being a bit weird for this and I'm very cool with removing that one, but I think anpa is actively in use to refer to the floor or ground by a lot of people.

I think the pu translation "humble" is better. "Humbled" strongly implies being made humble by a third party. One can be a jan anpa without being forced into that state by someone or something else.

I am not sure I'd use anpa to describe someone who is just humble in general. Like if someone is unlikely to brag and shows modesty about their achievements, I probably wouldn't use anpa.

But honestly, I'm also mildly in favor of moving "humble, shamed, dependent" to the commentary. I don't really use these meanings of anpa ever, and I believe other people don't use it often either. The main reason to keep it is that in pu anpa is used primarily for these meanings, with the traditional meanings of "anpa" moved to "noka".

I see anpa used like this all the time lol. I think it's an angle of anpa that I don't see a lot of beginners leaning into because they don't know about it yet, but in conversations both IRL and online with proficient toki ponists this usage of anpa is very common. This usage is definitely prevalent enough to be described. "mi anpa e sina" is something I see all the time, probably every day when I'm actively using toki pona.

---

As I mentioned, I am very curious about other committee members' experience. It seems like the two of us have very different experiences with anpa and we both have used toki pona regularly online and offline for a while so neither of our perspectives should be discounted. But I think in cases with this we should err on the side of describing rather than omitting.