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. :)
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. :)