linluwi li ken nimi sin pona / linluwi can be a good nimisin

I believe that linluwi can be a good, useful nimisin, and I want to talk about how.

Defining linluwi

The word linluwi was coined with a primary definition of “internet”. This is generally acknowledged to be a bad definition for a toki pona word, which should generally have a large, general meaning that can be disambiguated by context and grammar. kon nimi li suli la, nimi li pona.

But despite its far-too-specific meaning, it is terribly useful for us online nerds (yes, you, the one reading this niche web page online) to have a convenient term for the internet. I think this is why linluwi is a word people come back to, despite having such an objectively un-pona definition. I think this is also why people have repeatedly tried redefining linluwi in a way that makes it more pona. Several examples exist on reddit. This post integrates some of those ideas (especially jan Kali's).

Briefly, I want to talk about semantic spaces. In general, nimi pi toki pona are primarily defined by some physical object or phenomenon. kon is a great example: it means “air”. But kon can also refer to a soul, or a meaning of a word. kon is like several other words in this regard, which have meanings with a physical aspect and a metaphorical aspect. Sometimes it is fun to take a word that only really has a physical aspect — say, soko — and “misuse” it in a metaphorical way — say, to refer to decomposition or analysis (which many soko are uniquely gifted at doing). mi soko e sitelen ni.

linluwi seems to be in the converse situation that soko is. It is a word with a metaphorical use but no physical use, and I believe that is its major problem as a nimisin. With that in mind, I propose the following definition of linluwi, which I will be discussing for the rest of this page:

(noun)

1. Weaving, tapestry, cloth, fabric, textile; lattice.

2. Net, network; web; a graph-connected group.

(adjective)

1. Woven or made of fabric.

2. Interconnected; enmeshed.

(verb)

1. To weave, knit, macrame, bead, or otherwise construct an object from fibers.

2. To connect as a group; to embed.

3. To catch in a net or web.

This allows linluwi to have a physical sense, referring to lattices, textiles and fiber, while allowing the same metaphorical use to continue unchanged.

With this meaning, weaving is linluwi. Clothes made from fabric are len linluwi (len is discussed in more detail below). Chainmail is len awen pi linluwi pi sike kiwen. Woven baskets? Those are poki linluwi. Tapestries? linluwi sitelen. Beading? linluwi kiwen. A spider is pipi linluwi. If I'm hungry, maybe I will linluwi e kala to cook it for dinner. A pie with a lattice top could be called pan linluwi. If your bread didn't rise, did you pali e linluwi ko — build the gluten network?

Moreover: If I want to learn something, I can look it up on the linluwi ilo. If a river is linja telo, then a delta or a watershed is linluwi telo. A forest is linluwi pi kasi suli. An economy is linluwi mani. A bunch of people near each other might be kulupu jan, but a community is linluwi jan. Science, the corpus of papers citing other papers reacting to yet more papers, is an example of linluwi sona. A polycule might be linluwi olin. A commune can be linluwi tomo.

Evaluating linluwi

Let's consult kule epiku Atawan's rules of thumb for good nimi sin.

1. Be universal

Explicitly, this rule says “[a]ny random person on earth should be able to know what the word is referring to.” I would actually say that for most toki pona words, any random person on earth a thousand years ago should know what the words are referring to. This is something that makes the typical “internet” definition of linluwi immediately stick out like a sore thumb. It's just so newfangled!

Unlike the internet, weaving is absolutely ancient; archaeological evidence confirms at least ten thousand years of history of weaving, and that is with the disadvantage that woven materials are typically very quick to break down. Weaving is practiced all over the world, with traditional and indiginous cultures practicing distinctive, unique forms of linluwi passed down since time immemorial. Moreover, linluwi is ubiquitous: I am reasonably confident that you, the reader, have several different types of linluwi in your home right now.

2. Be physical

This is the whole motivation for the proposed definition here. The weaving-related definition is primarily physical while the “internet” or abstract “network” definition isn't very much so (you can hold a computer in your hand, but can you hold the internet in your hand?)

3. Be useful

Despite its awkward definition so far, linluwi has refused to die, and I believe that is because it just happens to be very useful to talk about the internet when one is using the internet. I also like to think the new definition makes the word even more useful, since as already shown, the abstract concept of a network applies to quite a lot of things.

4. Be different

This deserves some discussion. It's time to address len.

Overlap with len

Let's talk about alternatives to linluwi. There are certainly phrases and descriptions which work for the concept to some degree. In some cases, kulupu linja works well enough. But it takes a good amount of work to communicate the “interconnectedness” aspect when restricted to the term kulupu linja.

An alternative nimisin that has been proposed and which could potentially work would be aka, roughly referring to a crossing or intersection. In theory, a linluwi is made up of many aka. Despite aka seeming more “elementary” in that way, I believe that linluwi is simply more useful than aka. “Network” and “lattice” are terms that can be used to refer to far more things than “crossing” can. One can also simply refer to aka as linluwi lili.

Lastly let's talk about len. len is a nimi pu which refers, in general, to clothing. pu taso la, len is the best single word to cover linluwi. But I think understanding len can be a bit of a struggle, because len is forced to play “double duty”. To illustrate, here are the definitions of len, adapted from the wiktionary entry:

(noun)

1. Clothing.

2. Cover; a layer of privacy or secrecy.

3. Cloth; fabric; textiles.

(adjective)

1. Clothed.

2. Hidden; private.

3. Fabric.

(verb)

1. To clothe or be clothed.

2. To hide; to secretize.

3. To weave.

In general, there are two basic aspects of clothing being referred to here. The first aspect, definition #1 for each part of speech above, is that len is something which covers the body. This is the primary physical definition of len, which is then extended to more metaphorical concepts (definitions #2) of covering, concealment, or hiding. In this metaphorical sense, if you hide behind a rock, that rock is len. A secret code to communicate is toki len. Anything can be len, no matter what it's made of, if you use it to cover up.

The second aspect to talk about (definitions #3) is that which overlaps with linluwi: cloth. Typically (but not always — consider leather!) clothes are made out of fabric, woven or otherwise constructed from fibers. tenpo mute la len li linluwi. Following from this, then, if len covers the physical sense of linluwi, then len should also cover the metaphorical sense of linluwi. len pi ilo sona — the fabric of the knowledge tools — can be a perfectly cromulent way to refer to the internet.

But note that, of these four meanings of len (physical-covering, metaphorical-covering, physical-fabric, and metaphorical-fabric), metaphorical-fabric isn't included in the definitions on wiktionary! I believe that this isn't a simple oversight, but rather a sign that len is overstretched. It is difficult to parse four semi-coupled aspects of meaning from a single word, especially when the two metaphorical senses (covered/concealed/private/obscured, and connected/networked/enmeshed) are completely unrelated and to some degree even slightly opposed to each other. telo linluwi, woven water, makes some sense. It could be a river delta, or watershed, or maybe the canals of Venice. But telo len could be all of those things, or groundwater, or a covered reservoir, or some other generally hidden water. Context helps, of course, but perhaps this is a large enough tent of meaning that two tents wouldn't be inappropriate?

So linluwi does overlap with len, but I claim it isn't really redundant with it. linluwi frees len up from its awkward double meaning, and allows us to start talking about metaphorical fabric and weaving and networks and webs freely, adding interesting and novel noun phrases to the language, and with far less ambiguity.

sitelen pona for linluwi

Based on this definition of linluwi, I also have a novel sitelen pona glyph to propose. The glyph, simply described, is linja superimposed on top of mute. It is pictured at the top of this page. I believe this glyph makes sense on a few levels:

1. linluwi are made up of linja mute, so the glyph is mildly featural in a fun way.

2. The glyph physically resembles a simplified view of the warp and weft of an in-progress weaving on a loom. The lines of mute make up the warp, while the linja is the weft snaking through.

3. The three lines on the bottom correspond with the three lines that make up the bottom of the glyph for len. In the physical metaphor, one can picture how the linluwi glyph represents an “in-progress” view of the len glyph.