The Monk trait only really matters for Monks. It is an easy way for the developers to leave room to add future "Monk" weapons, without having to keep adding them to Monastic Weaponry in the core class. Simply stating that you are trained with all Monk Weapons is the easiest way to format the Monastic Weaponry Feat.
A Fighter would be able to use any of the Martial "monk" weapons just as well as any other Martial weapon, as the Monk trait itself has nothing to do with whether you are trained or not. However Nunchaku are Uncommon Monk Martial weapons, thus your GM would have to allow you access to them however they see fit if you don't take Monastic Weaponry.
Access to weapons and proficiency in them are separate. So an Uncommon Monk Martial Weapon follows your Martial Weapon training, but requires some form of access to get in the first place. Monastic Weaponry provides that access and also stipulates how trained you are with those weapons.
For example, anyone and their brother could purchase a Bo Staff as readily as a Longsword, as it is simply a Martial Weapon. But Nunchaku wouldn't be nearly as widely available and thus you would need to hunt them down, or have a feat or class feature granting you access to them.
There are no penalties involved in using an "uncommon" weapon that don't apply to the "type" of weapon that they are. Simple being simple, martial being martial and advanced being advanced.
As beowulf said, it's just a way to group all the "thematically appropriate to monks" weapons in one place.
A monk ability might refer to "monk weapons" which is just "any weapon with the tag."
Some of these weapons however are uncommon, which means you either need an ability that grants access (like the monk feat "monastic weapons") or you need to work with your GM on whether and how your character gains access to it. It might be as simple as "something in your backstory justifies your use of the fighting fan" or they might need to work it in somewhere.
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The Monk trait only really matters for Monks. It is an easy way for the developers to leave room to add future "Monk" weapons, without having to keep adding them to Monastic Weaponry in the core class. Simply stating that you are trained with all Monk Weapons is the easiest way to format the Monastic Weaponry Feat.
In general, traits often do not do much on their own. The trait system is there to tag an item for use with other abilities (ie- the monastic weapon feat gives you proficiency in all 'monk' weapons.).
This system lets them add items to various lists as needed. Barbarians can't use concentration actions while raging? Which ones are those?- all of the ones with the concentrate trait. Devs add a new action, and they want to stop barbarians from using it- add the trait. Heck, it can even be a rather easy form of errata- they just have to write a single line of "these actions now have the concentrate tag".
If you want to know what you can do with the trait you are looking at, it is usually faster to look look for abilities that reference it. I do believe the Archives of Nethys is working with Paizo right now, so doing a search on its site would be helpful.
Anyway, feel free to use the weapons if you can grab them. Heck, some classes probably uses them better than the monk (sad, flurry-less shuriken might work on a ranger).