sentence. Prepositions are used in the predicate in place of a regular verb. Vocabulary Toki Pona has around 120 to 137 words. Each is polysemous and covers a range of similar concepts, so not only means 'big' or 'long', but also 'important'. Their use relies heavily on context. To express more complex thoughts, the roots can be combined. For example, can mean 'friend', although it translates to , and , , could be understood to mean 'alcohol' or 'alcoholic beverage' depending on the context. The verb to teach can be expressed by , . Essentially identical concepts can be described by different words as the choice relies on the speaker's perception and experience. Colors Toki Pona has five words for colors: (black), (white), (red), (yellow), and (blue and green). Although the simplified conceptualization of colors tends to exclude a number of colors that are commonly expressed in Western languages, speakers sometimes may combine these five words to make more specific descriptions of certain colors. For instance, "purple" may be represented by combining and . The phrase means "a reddish shade of blue" and means "a bluish shade of red". Numbers Toki Pona has words for one (), two (), and many (). In addition, can mean 'zero', although its meaning is , and 'all' can express an infinite or immense amount. The simplest number system uses these five roots to express any amount necessary. For numbers larger than two, speakers would use which means 'many'. A more complex system expresses larger numbers additively by using phrases such as for three, for four, and so on. This feature purposely makes it impractical to communicate large numbers. This system, described in Lang's book, also uses () to signify 'five', () to signify 'twenty' and () to signify 'hundred'. For example, using this structure would mean '102' and would signify '78'. Roots history Some words have obsolete synonyms. For example, replaced (protuberance) early in the language's development for unknown reasons. Later, the pronoun replaced ('he, she, it, they'), which was sometimes confused with ('bad'). Similarly, was added as an alternative to ('all') to avoid confusion with ('no, not') among people who reduce unstressed vowels, though both forms are still used. Originally, meant 'eye' and was used as a verb 'see'. In the book, the meanings were later merged into , being the alternative. Words that were simply removed from the lexicon include ('block,