on the definitions of toki pona words

In order to learn toki pona, one must know what the words mean. Because of this, speakers who provide resources often provide dictionaries, which are lists of the toki pona words and their definitions. But I have deep-seated problems with most of these definitions. These definitions include a list of five to eight english words, and nothing else. For words with such broad usage and such complex and wide semantic spaces, this makes absolutely no sense.

Ideally, definitions in toki pona would be a paragraph or so describing the semantic space. This could be in addition to the words that are commonly used already in definitions, but I’m dismayed to see how some of the words in definitions are not explained, like “need” under wile and “year” under sike. These should obviously be descriptive semantic spaces, which is why it’s important to have discussions about semantic spaces of toki pona words.

Ideally, there would be a dictionary that took the time to explain the semantic space of each toki pona word. This seems like a lot of work, but it would be worth it.