Introduction

Sitelen Lawa (SEE-de-len LA-wa, often stylised as sitelen lawa), inspired by Mark Rosenfelder's Elkrîl, is a writing system designed for Sonja Lang's toki pona.

Orthography

Every character resembles a face that consists of (at least) a mouth and eyes. Each possible syllable can be spelled with a unique face-resembling character: the eyes represent the syllable onset, the mouth the nucleus and the nose the syllable coda:

onset | >| X
∅- m- n-
; : B
p- t- k-
>: <: >B
w- l- j-
>:
s-
nucleus P D
e- i-
) O (
a- o- u-
coda . -
∅-coda -n

A set of logographic characters represent certain common, multisyllabic words:

|-3 |X D: O3 |A
akesi ala ike kala kama
)( >O O: P( :O.
kepeken lukin moku mute nena
;-x O O-| >|3 (-;
nimi oko ona pipi pona
<:: (-:< >:: :3 |V
seme sina sona soweli tawa
;,' :V DD
tenpo toki uta

Example

jan ale li open lon sama / "All people are born equally" in sitelen lawa:

'jan ale li open lon sama' in sitelen pona.