wile

meaning

must, need, require, should, want, wish

semantic space · lipamanka

The semantic space of wile contains all desires. A desire to eat is a wile. A desire to be near others is a wile. These desires can be influenced by external forces: a desire to do tedious chores motivated by the prospect of negative consequences is a wile. By using wile to describe something, it's being framed as a type of desire. For example, if I normally don't want to tidy up my workspace but I feel obligated to anyway, if I used wile to describe that feeling of obligation, I'd be describing it as some sort of desire. This can be used for anything, no matter how animate. Speakers frame nonliving objects as having desires very frequently.

A warning I have for wile is assuming it contains the idea of a "need." A "need" is a complex concept and trying to use wile to describe it is misguided. While most needs can be framed as types of desires, the goal of "wile" isn't to merge those concepts, it's to throw one of them away. This enables a toki ponist to align their desires with their actions by giving them a word to describe their desires without any complex connotation. Sometimes it's more useful to say "my body wants food, but I don't want to eat."

Another part of wile's usage is its use as a preverb. wile changes the sentence it's part of to make the subject desire to perform the verb, rather than just performing it. It's similar to the word "want" in english.

ku translations

want⁵, wish⁵, intend⁵, require⁵, need⁵, desire⁵, intention⁵, willing⁵, will⁵, intent⁴, preference⁴, motivation⁴, necessity⁴, ought⁴, yearn⁴, necessary⁴, willingness⁴, ambition⁴, hope⁴, prefer⁴, requirement⁴, required⁴, must³, obligation³, decision³,

pu verbatim

PRE-VERB must, need, require, should, want, wish

usage

core · 100% usage

found in pu

coined pre-pu

origin

Dutch · willen ‘want, desire’

by jan Sonja

sitelen pona

wile wile2

perhaps from Latin letter W

sitelen sitelen

wile sitelen sitelen

sitelen Emosi

💭

ucsur

U+F1977

audio

kala Asi

jan Lakuse

luka pona

gif · mp4