kama

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meaning

arrive, approach, summon; future; event; (preverb) to become

semantic space · lipamanka

kama is a strong metaphor in toki pona. To arrive at a location and to arrive at a state of being are the same concept in toki pona. This means that kama can refer to arriving home to eat dinner, arriving at school, or the moment you become an akesi because an evil prescriptivist wizard cursed you for using too many nimisin. This of course describes kama's use as a preverb, in which its meaning is close to "become." This can imply the start, body, or end of this process. It's easy to describe the reverse of whatever process kama preverb is representing by negating the word that follows it, i.e. "kama X ala."

ku translations

coming93 come91 arrival90 arrive88 become78 upcoming71 emerging69 emerge67 happen62 occur54 next36 arise33 developmental33 induce31 visit31 trigger29 event27 phenomenon27

pu verbatim

ADJECTIVE arriving, coming, future, summoned

PRE-VERB to become, manage to, succeed in

usage

core · 100% usage

found in pu

coined pre-pu

origin

Tok Pisin · kamap ‘event, arrive, happen, become, bring about, summon’

coined by jan Sonja

listen

kala Asi

jan Lakuse

sitelen pona

kama

motion radical; legs facing to the left. compare tawa and blissymbol “walk”

sitelen sitelen

kama sitelen sitelen

sitelen jelo

🛬

sitelen Emosi

🚶

ucsur

U+F1916