Miss Darcy and her brother appeared, and this formidable introduction took place. With astonishment did Elizabeth see that her new acquaintance was at least as much embarrassed as herself. Since her being at Lambton, she had heard that Miss Darcy was exceedingly proud; but the observation of a very few minutes convinced her that she was only exceedingly shy. She found it difficult to obtain even a word from her beyond a monosyllable.
A handy monosyllable, descended unchanged from Old English, and before that from long-dead Germanic predecessors.
2022 March 28, Simon Davies, “Conlang Excursions 5: Making a Good Thing Better”, in ESF Connected[2]:
Many people have experimented with Toki Pona’s design, either to simplify it still further – one person reduced it to a “stealth language” of just 99 monosyllables called Ta Ti – or to try to iron out the ambiguities.
