jan

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meaning

human being, person, somebody

semantic space · lipamanka

usage of jan differs a lot between groups of speakers, but many speakers use it broadly to refer to any sentient creature. But this can break down when you consider what sentience is and where we draw lines between ourselves and nature. This also gets complicated when we take into account nonhuman identities such as radical reclamation of dehumanization, which is awesome. many toki pona speakers specifically choose to not be a type of jan, so jan broadly cannot be applicable to all speakers of language. It's still used frequently to refer to a group of people, some of whom may not be humans, and especially "somebody," i.e. a hypothetical unspecified agent. If someone is not a jan, it's often rude to call them one--just stick with whatever word they've chosen for themselves.

ku translations

person100, human93, people82, anybody62, dude61, anyone56, character50, somebody50, guy43, being42, individual31, citizen30, civilian30, whoever30, participant29, Hominidae27, personal27

pu verbatim

NOUN human being, person, somebody

usage

core · 100% usage

found in pu

coined pre-pu

origin

Cantonese · 人 jan ‘person’

coined by jan Sonja

commentary

There are two sides to the concept, "sentient entity" and "homo sapiens", which matters for whether to use the word in edge cases (i.e. aliens, humans turned into werewolves, etc). Which sense is more central to the word remains controversial.

sitelen pona

jan

head radical; pictogram of a person showing the shoulders

sitelen sitelen

jan sitelen sitelen

sitelen jelo

🧑

sitelen Emosi

👤

ucsur

U+F1911

audio

kala Asi

jan Lakuse

luka pona

gif · mp4