title_body: Do toki pona speakers, in practice, permit compounding more than three words? In toki pona, compounding multiple words together is possible. For example:
  
  
    tomo: room/box/structure/home
    telo: water/fluid
    tomo telo: bathroom
  
  
  It also allows compounding three words together:
  
  
    tomo pi telo nasa: a bar
    kiwen mun laso: blue moon rocks
  
  
  This is where the official grammar stops, and the official stance is that larger statements are ungrammatical. However, I am wondering if it is common in practice for people to compound more than three words. 
  
  Suppose I wanted to say “the broken yellow dome hut.” The official grammar would have me say something in a full sentence:
  
  
    tomo sike pakala li jelo.
  
  
  However, despite the rules of grammar, do people ever say:
  
  
    tomo sike pakala jelo.
  
  
  Or include other compounds of many words with pi?
  
  (Note: I am not asking whether this is grammatical according to official rules. I am asking whether colloquial toki pona permits this.)
upvoted_answer: In general, we don't want to make descriptions so long and complicated as to be difficult to follow. That is more important than exact word count, in my experience (as an admin of the "toki pona taso" group on Facebook). For example, if someone mentioned a "poki kala suli pi telo ala", I wouldn't find that at all strange as a description of an empty aquarium. However, if someone spoke of an "ilo sona lili pakala laso", I'd probably have to read it a few times to figure out what they're talking about (in this case I'm thinking of a dysfunctional blue laptop). So compounds with "pi" tend to have a bit more leeway because that groups the words together somewhat, making it easier to decipher. But shorter, simpler descriptions are generally preferred, and in practice this usually does turn out to be three words or less.