> A problem with "tomo tawa" is that "tomo tawa kon" 'air travel space' is arguably ambiguous between an airport and an airplane!
That's the problem with all of these—they're all ambiguous. Which is fine if the person you're talking to knows which you mean, but when you're talking about something new, you have no way of actually making clear what you mean. It seems like the best you can do is reinvent agglutinative languages, badly.
All languages have compound lexemes. And all languages can use description to disambiguate.
The balance in toki pona is at a dramatically different point to English, which has a relatively large functional vocabulary. But it isn't a difference in kind. And most conlangs, in my experience, rely more on compounds than English.
The "Badly" at the end seems to drop your comment from curious bafflement to prejudice. Why would it be bad?
Because agglutinative languages have much more sophisticated systems and morphemes for expressing complicated ideas. This reads more like Mark Twain's satire about German (https://www.cs.utah.edu/~gback/awfgrmlg.html).
I think the confusion is because of simplified vs. traditional characters. 机 is made from 木 (wood) and 几 (table) radicals, and in Japanese it really does mean desk/table. But in Chinese it's the simplified form of 機 (machine). The 几 is just a substitute for some more complicated strokes, and 木 is just for the sound.
That's the problem with all of these—they're all ambiguous. Which is fine if the person you're talking to knows which you mean, but when you're talking about something new, you have no way of actually making clear what you mean. It seems like the best you can do is reinvent agglutinative languages, badly.