nena

[lipamanka]

nena

sona pu

NOUN bump, button, hill, mountain, nose, protuberance

sona Linku pi toki Inli

bump, button, hill, mountain, nose, protuberance

sona Linku pi toki pona

ma mute li lon poka la ona li nena; nena li lon sinpin jan li ken e pilin kon

sona ku

hill⁴, nose³, ridge², button², peak², mountain², pile², breast¹, mount¹, fold¹

sona sin

[AcipenserSturio]

Discussion starters from me:

"protuberance" may be too bigwordy? maybe add "convex" but that's also bigwordy and may not always be true? maybe add "bumpy" as an adjective?

[berrymot]

"protrusion" maybe?

[lipamanka]

i think mountain is important because it's pointy. do we have other examples of pointy nena? for my first year of speaking toki pona i thought nena had to be smooth

protrusion is good @berrymot it is much more commonly used in english

in order to properly convey "bumpy" i see myself using nena in a construction but not as a modifier to mean "bumpy."

how do we feel about including "to smell" here? i think nena is definitely used this way and for pedagogy it would be nice to have that usage written down.

alr those are my thoughts so far

[AcipenserSturio]

i think mountain is important because it's pointy

What about "cone", then?

[lipamanka]

CONE IS AMAZING !!! please can we add this

[AcipenserSturio]

My only concern with cone is, mathematical cones are usually hollow, so both a nena and a lupa

[lipamanka]

noses are also hollow and have lupas in them but they're super duper nena

[AcipenserSturio]

Tentative suggestion:

hill, nose, bump, mountain, cone; to smell, perceive with the nose

Putting hill, nose first as those appear to be the most popular

Retaining bump for smaller non-body part nenas

Mountain, cone for pointy nenas

Dropping button because not all buttons are nenaey nowadays

Dropping protuberance because big word

Not adding convex because unhelpful

Not adding protrusion simply because im not sure and leaving that up to you all

"to smell" is clearly true but really annoyingly ambiguous in english, for that reason i had to retain "to" (so that its not a noun), and add "perceive with the nose" (so that its not misread as "to stink")

[gregdan3]

this is really funny because i was going to propose the exact opposite in removing nose due to this distinction. a nose is an example of a nena, but one that introduces secondary meanings unintentionally.

i think i've heard nena for "to smell/perceive with the nose" like, two or three times? outside of from newbies

it is also totally unrepresented in the ku data, and i would be surprised to find nena used for "to smell" be significantly adopted

[AcipenserSturio]

I think removing "nose" completely would be a step too far

I'm leaving the "smell" discussion up to you all, im underqualified

[Daenyth]

I think "mi nena e kon" is pretty reasonable but I don't think we need to include "smell", that's something better to let people come to on their own.

I'd strongly say to keep "protuberance" in the list even if it's not a common english word. It's probably the single best generic translation, in my opinion.

Dropping button because not all buttons are nenaey nowadays

I think it's a very common usage of the word and I'd like to keep it in the list.

What about "cone"

I could go either way personally. I can't remember ever seeing this usage come up, though it's pretty reasonable

Honestly, I think this is one where the existing definition is totally fine

bump, button, hill, mountain, nose, protuberance

[lipamanka]

i think because nena is used so much to talk about noses and smelling, it makes sense to include BOTH.

[gregdan3]

Dropping button because not all buttons are nenaey nowadays

Also disagree with this; buttons on a page are deisgned to look like they pop off the page. They're not literally a nena, but they're a representation of something that was once a nena. Using nena there is appropriate, and true to usage.

i think because nena is used so much to talk about noses and smelling, it makes sense to include BOTH.

I don't believe this is the case; we need more data to make this claim.

[lipamanka]

also to clarify, i have used it like this and have seen many people use it like this. (i have cooked with people while speaking toki pona and nena is what felt most natural to use for "to smell.")

[KelseyHigham]

i like protruberance and button.

i don't like "to smell". i've barely seen it, and i've seen other ways to express smelling. i've also used and seen nena used as a verb to mean other things, like booping.

for sharp thing representation, how about "spikes"?

[KelseyHigham]

i like cone. i'm worried that people would apply it to like, ice cream cones. i feel like a cone is only a nena if it's sticking up.

[AcipenserSturio]

What about "pyramid" instead of cone? I feel like its better in terms of lupa confusion, but worse in terms of obscurity for everyday activities

[KelseyHigham]

i like pyramid a lot better! everyone knows what a pyramid is, it's not obscure

[AcipenserSturio]

The nena poll in #sona-kulupu showed that "to smell" is a minority nasin, at 31 non users to 5 users; the only notable part about users is it includes jan Sonja

I think the right call here is to exclude "to smell" because the part of the community that uses it seems too small, its still derivable from "nose", and previous definitions didn't list it anyway

[AcipenserSturio]

Also leaving in all of protuberance, button, nose by popular agreement

[lipamanka]

alright i guess. i'm sad about this one! but it doesn't NEED to have "smell"

[AcipenserSturio]

bump, button, hill, mountain, nose, protuberance, pyramid, spikes

The order remains undetermined - my earlier order suggestion seems to have gone largely ignored

We have yet to fully discuss "pyramid" and "spikes" - more opinions pls

[lipamanka]

spikes are good! pyramid is too specific. what about ziggurat, or maya temple? and also aren't these all tomo too? are we sure it's a good example? i mean i like it but it calls into the mind egyptian pyramids or nubian pyramids or maya temples or ziggurats or other likewise things, not topology and geometry. that being said i like it anyway

[Daenyth]

I like spikes but I'd leave out pyramid

[KelseyHigham]

i like pyramid because it's a mathematical shape like cone, except with a clearer implication that the pointy bit is on top. but i'm fine with leaving it out

[KelseyHigham]

order la, i like putting bump first because it's a good single-word translation. the rest can be vaguely grouped by category

[lipamanka]

in VC with kulupu kasi, and they said we should add "thorn." they also recommended to removing cone because it isn't a protrubence, it's like if you cut the protrubence off which might make it like a kiwen or palisa. bump, button, hill, mountain, nose, protuberance, spike, thorn

[lipamanka]

@KelseyHigham, kulupu kasi, and I think that nena should have both to sniff and to nuzzle as verbs in the definition.

[Th3Scribble]

me too

[RetSamys]

I like cone, I'm not a fan of "smell" and of "pyramid", and I dislike spikes and thorns. I guess I'm in the "pointy doesn't necessarily always mean nena" camp - but it looks like I'll get outvoted

[AcipenserSturio]

That's fair imo, maybe ask more in the community or something

[gregdan3]

@KelseyHigham, kulupu kasi, and I think that nena should have both to sniff and to nuzzle as verbs in the definition.

Sniff is just a relative of smell, and smell is a minority usage (<20%). I don't agree it should be included. If we were to poll sniff independent of smell, we'd almost certainly get similar results.

[gregdan3]

I would like to introduce the following test for examples given in a word's definition:

Is there another word which suits this better than the word we are defining?

The idea is that we should avoid words which imply the definitions of other words too much, or which may introduce properties to a word that were not present before.

Applied to "spike" and "thorn", these both match palisa much more than nena, even if both could be used to describe them.

I don't mind pyramid based on this test, but I do believe spikes and thorns are misleading. They are not as central to understanding nena as the other given examples; they are closer to another word. Put another way, if I used nena to describe a spike, I would expect to confuse my listener more often than not; if I used palisa, I'd expect my listener to get it more often than not.

I do not think spike or thorn are good inclusions. They can be nena, but they're distant examples of nena compared to the rest of the definition.

[lipamanka]

@KelseyHigham, kulupu kasi, and I think that nena should have both to sniff and to nuzzle as verbs in the definition.

Sniff is just a relative of smell, and smell is a minority usage (<20%). I don't agree it should be included. If we were to poll sniff independent of smell, we'd almost certainly get similar results.

alright so the reasoning is, nena is a noun at its base. through derivation it can become a verb. it's good to include possible derivations of nena as a verb in the definition. which begs the question: should we do this for every word that's a noun at its base? and the answer there is actually maybe we should. nena for sniff is minority usage because people just don't use nena like that, not necessarily because they don't consider it correct. also, sniff is way more direct than smell, which is the difference that matters here for giving examples of "applying nose to something." we also discussed having it be "to sniff, to nuzzle, etc." to show that those are just possible derivations, not part of the core meaning, which i think is good.

so like if a beginner sees nena being used transitively there's a very low chance they'll know how toki pona's derivational system works. i'd like for them to be able to look at linku and for linku to help them there.

i think that these reasons are pretty concrete.

[lipamanka]

as for spikes and thorns, i think the reason why they feel distant is because examples that are sharp like this aren't provided often enough. i think a thorn is first and foremost a protuberance on a stem in function. if you were to lop it off it could be a kiwen or palisa, but when it's on the plant using nena for it works really well.

[KelseyHigham]

a rose thorn is shaped more like a mountain than a stick. it would feel weird to label some thorns as not nena just because they're individually long. fundamentally they're all just protruding, they're not for grabbing or whacking or supporting or other things palisa do

[Daenyth]

fundamentally they're all just protruding

This is the thing I agree with the most. I strongly feel that the word "protuberance" is an almost 100% match for the zone of nena, and I think it might be one of the closest things to a 1:1 translation between english and tp across all words

[RetSamys]

to sniff

I am against this. I have encountered beginners doing this - and wasn't able to understand them. Granted, they don't know how to use context, so this plays into this, but it's odd to include edge cases or things that are minority usage into a dictionary like that. It feels like "this is underused, let's push this through the dictionary so more people are influenced" - and I think that can be a valid approach when everyone agrees, but mi wan is not agreeing in this instance. kulupu li pilin ante la pilin pi mi wan taso li suli ala.

Nuzzling is totally fine for me. It uses the nena of the sinpin as a nena, and not as a small uta kon. Yes, plenty of nena are hollow, but smelling is way less about smelling than about being a bump.

grabbing or whacking or supporting or other things palisa do

That's not how I view palisa, but that'll have to wait for the palisa issue. One way or another, I'm against spikes.

I can compromise on thorns, I still think it's potentially confusing because a) I have the impression that people think of thorns as spikes/more elongated than thorns actually are, or b) pointiness, prickliness, sharpness, are not something that is well covered by nena alone, for me, or c) if people do think of thorns as "oh there are bumps on the plant", it feels a bit more specific than the other examples.

[tbodt]

Sniff is clearly a better match than smell but i still don't like it because we shouldn't overemphasize "nose" in the verbs

[AcipenserSturio]

On 2023-08-15, we had a protracted conversation on Discord about the nena/palisa boundary, which mostly culminated in this proposal from me:

dull protuberances, e.g. bump, button, hill, nose; *sharp protuberances, e.g. mountain, thorn, spike

* - somewhat less common. supported by more experienced speakers. people who use kiki {uncommon word} tend to use it instead.

lipamanka, jan Kekan San, and waso Keli seemed in favour of this.

jan Kita later added that dull/sharp might actually be about wide/narrow, which we haven't investigated further just yet.

This also leaves smell, sniff etc on the table, but it appears to be used even less than the "sharp protuberances" variant, so the options are either including it with a usage note, or excluding altogether.

[tbodt]

I really don't like that strong separation. plus seems real odd that the definition for a pu word should bring up a non pu word like this.

[lipamanka]

oh lol i didn't even notice the definition mentioned kiki. i'm strongly against that. i'm okay with saying that sharp usages are less common if they are, but i'm not okay with mentioning that kiki is used instead.

[KelseyHigham]

we cooouuulllddd maaayyybbbeee mention kipisi but i'd rather mention neither of them

[lipamanka]

i really don't see how kipisi is related to nena's definition

[KelseyHigham]

widespread word that means sharp

[Th3Scribble]

i don't read kipisi as sharp, just as part or divide, but i don't know how common that is

[lipamanka]

yeah kipisi just means "to cut" or "piece" and i've never seen it talked about as meaning sharp

[janPensa]

i don't read kipisi as sharp, just as part or divide, but i don't know how common that is

yeah kipisi just means "to cut" or "piece" and i've never seen it talked about as meaning sharp

I'm pretty sure I've seen "kipisi" being talked about as a possible translation of "sharp", because "sharp" can be interpreted as "capable of cutting". In ku "sharp" gives "kipisi, ken kipisi, kiki", although they're all frequency rating 1, so take with a grain of salt.

"kipisi = sharp" definitely isn't the most common, but I'm pretty sure that that usage does exist.

---

But back on topic:

I'm not a fan of "smell" and of "pyramid", and I dislike spikes and thorns.

I'm in the same camp.

"Smell, spikes, thorns" are already discussed a lot, and I don't have much to add.

To me "pyramid" seems like a too specific example which isn't prototypical enough of "nena" and starts going into "leko" territory. If we want people to know that nena can be pointy, I'd personally rather add a note to the effect of "like mountains and hills, a nena may be blunt or pointy". (Also, mountains are typically drawn as pointy in cartoons and such, but mountains can also be blunt, especially if they're old and eroded like the Waterberg Mountains in South Africa, rather than newly formed like the Himalayas.)

[Daenyth]

I also don't use kipisi as "sharp" ever. Even if I'm in a conversation where I'm not using kiki (and I do use kiki sometimes)

[jnpoJuwan]

bringing this back, I'm not the most experienced speaker but here's my two cents on this. below is an image showing how I think about nena and palisa, I don't use the word kiki often they are very similar, but it comes down more to the width, so all the above are wide and nena, all below are thin and palisa

a rose has palisa pakala, because they are very thin and sharp a mountain and a pyramid, despite having a sharp point are nena

this (edited a bit) is good to me

bump, protuberance, button, nose, to smell, hill, mountain, spike

I changed the order, but it is not important and you might disagree with me. I did what felt natural: general words, human-sized nenas, big nenas, sharp nenas (an outlier, because of all of this discussion)

it also comes down to the commentary, nena might be blunt or sharp also, please do poll #sona-pona for all of this, I want to see how people think about this