[shangaslammi]

The creator of toki pona seems to be a fan of the Finnish language. Several of the words are loaned directly (although without umlauts) and keep their original Finnish meaning.

At a glance: älä, kala, -kin, nenä, nimi, sama, sinä are exact Finnish words and "pimeja" is a slight alteration of "pimeä". Kiwen, lipu, linja and walo are probably Finnish inspired as well.

Another common trend seems to be using a simplified and shortened forms of the phonetic spelling of English words such as "ale" (all), "en" (and), "insa" (inside), "jaki" (yucky), "jelo" (yellow), "kama" (come), "ken" (can), "kule" (color), "lukin" (looking), "mani" (money), "mi" (me), "mun" (moon), "nanpa" (number), "pata" (brother), "suwi" (sweet), "tawa" (towards), "toki" (talking), "tu" (two), "wan" (one) and "wile" (will).

Slightly distorted, but still close: "anpa" (under), "kulupu" (sounds like a Japanese transliteration of group, グループ), "pilin" (feeling), "sewi" (ceiling) and "sike" (circle).

This actually helps a lot in memorizing the vocabulary. :)

[jordigh]

She's a fan of a bunch of languages, not just Finnish. Breakdown of roots:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Toki_Pona_etymologie...

She deliberately picked a broad sample of roots across human languages so people would find it easy to learn. It's pretty easy to say basic things in Toki Pona, which is all that is possible to say in this language?

Sina pona?

[panglott]

I think she speaks English, French, and Esperanto. IIRC, many of the English words came through Tok Pisin, and English-based creole of New Guinea.

[mladenkovacevic]

Some of these words are Serbian although some are made to sound as if you're talking to a baby by dropping some hard Rs and a few other consonants.

English - TP - Serbian

hand - luka - ruka

leg - noka - noga

eye - oko - oko

A few are also phonetic English-isms "Money" turns into "Mani"

[schoen]

A couple of the English-sounding terms were borrowed indirectly through Tok Pisin.