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--- In engelang@yahoogroups.com, Risto Kupsala <risto@...> wrote: > > Toki Pona is designed to be minimal and it doesn't really care for word > recognition. The words came from natural languages but they were > modified without mercy, like: box -> poki, bona -> pona. It's fun but I > think that it should be more serious to convince all kinds of people. I'm not convinced that eliminating voicing contrast is more severe than eliminating nasality, tone, aspiration or pharyngealization contrasts. Isn't it a case of an Indo-European-centered point of view? I have already heard that most world languages do have tones, and WALS page says that "About a third of the languages surveyed for this chapter (32.0%) have no voicing contrast in either plosives or fricatives, as this has been defined above." http://wals.info/chapter/4 I know that being Indo-European centered is not a sin, but I think that creating a "pan-Indo-European-friendly" auxlang is a little different from creating a "pan-world-friendly" auxlang. The first goal is undoubtely easier.