⚠ Warning!
Note that Kokanu’s grammar has diverged radically from Toki Pona’s, so that Kokanu written in Ikama Tasuwi and Toki Pona written in Sitelen Pona are not mutually intelligible!
Ikama Tasuwi is a bit like Chữ Nôm. It was created based on Chinese characters for Classical Chinese, but extended to fit Vietnamese vocabulary and grammar. Vietnamese written in Chữ Nôm and Classical Chinese written in Chinese characters are also not mutually intelligible.
Here’s the sentence “I want you to stay well.” in both languages:
Toki Pona in Sitelen Pona “mi wile e ni: sina awen pona.”
Kokanu in Ikama Tasuwi “mi le ju ta tu le tope conca.”
There have been semantic shifts and narrowings from Sitelen Pona to Ikama Tasuwi. For example, Sitelen Pona’s 
wile is not the same shape as 
ju (want), but as titi (chest/breasts)!
New radicals & word categories
Sense lines
For consistency, all words meaning the five senses have two curved lines to the right, representing detecting stimuli with the body part depicted. Some other words also contain sense lines.
anan “to smell (a scent)”: nose + sense lines
kun “to perceive (a trait)”: sense lines alone
pa “to touch (a surface)”: right-pointing finger + sense lines
sapole “to taste (a flavor)”: mouth + sense lines
sema “to hear (a sound, audio)”: ear + sense lines
tijante “to focus [on], to pay attention [to] (a focus)”: head + sense lines
teka “to see (a view)”: eye + sense lines
Taster mouth
For consistency, SP suwi has been changed. All six taste words are expressed with a combination of a specific thing representing that flavor + a mouth above, modeled after makan ≡ SP moku.
kikolo “bitter”: bitter melon + mouth (This may change in the future for being too Japanese-centric)
muncu “sour”: lemon + mouth
nankin “salty”: water + fish (symbolizing seawater) + mouth
pikante “spicy”: chili pepper ≡ SP namako variant + mouth
satu “sweet”: apple ≡ kuwosi and SP kili + mouth
umami “umami flavor, savory”: meat on the bone ≡ niku + mouth
(Is it just me who finds the coincidence nice that the Japanese-based word umami is derived from another Japanese-based word niku?)
Color triangle
For consistency, color words have not been inherited from Sitelen Pona loje, jelo, laso, walo, and pimeja. However, their common triangle shape has been kept and reinterpreted.
The triangle is now a hue picker: the bottom left vertex represents red, the top vertex represents yellow, and the bottom right vertex represents blue. The circle can be right outside one vertex, between the vertices tangent to the midpoint of an edge, or in the center if a color is achromatic.
hunsi “red”: ↙ red
nalinca “orange”: between red and yellow
sepo “yellow”: ↑ yellow
lunti “green”: between yellow and blue
nile “blue”: ↘ blue
sunaja “purple”: between blue and red
tusa “grey”: no hue; circle in the center
If the hue is not enouh to specify a color, a brightness slider is added to the bottom.
pula “brown”: dark orange
penpe “white”: light gray
nelo “black”: dark gray
The underlying logic is similar to ColorADD, which also combines 6 hues from red, yellow, and blue, and modifies them for brightness. As an exception, “brown” is not derived from red + yellow + blue in Ikama Tasuwi. Ikama Tasuwi’s “brown” would be ColorADD’s “dark orange”.
Animals
Sitelen Pona’s minimalist animal drawings have been kept. They have also been joined by Kokanu’s more specific animal words.
Inherited from SP:
Additional animal words:
anpipi “amphibian”: Frog head inspired by Animal Crossing.
cuwi “mouse, rodent”: Different simplification from misa.
jone “sheep, goat, caprine”: soweli with curly ram’s horn.
meja “cat, feline”: Cat head inspired by Pusheen.
neje “horse, equine”: Horse head inspired by chess bishop.
pawo “dog, canine”: Dog head inspired by a head-on view of Snoopy.
suwina “pig, swine”: Pig snout with two dot eyes above.
Emotions
[wip]
Numbers
The number words from 0 to 9 are just the numerals 0 to 9:
The first three powers of 10 are Roman numerals:
Other number words are as follows.
hen times 10 to the power of (E)
hu digit delimiter (’)
mita # ≡ SP nanpa
Time
Toki Pona lacks words for time except, well, “time”: tenpo. This has been directly loaned:
Past, present, future
The past, present, and future are represented as three circles in a line representing them. These words are used as tense markers too.
Young, new, old
Toki Pona’s sin has split into talun for animate objects and neso for inanimate objects. Meanwhile, majuna has not split, becoming cune alone. This has caused this slight asymmetry:
neso ≡ sin (meaning restricted to inanimate)
talun (variant of sin, meaning restricted to animate)
cune ≡ majuna
Other
Other words related to time are derived from the clock glyph of ten or based on internationally recognized media symbols.
Directions
[wip]
Movement
[wip]
Shapes
Sitelen Pona’s
leko,
lili,
linja,
lupa,
palisa,
sike,
and
suli
have been joined by Kokanu’s variety of shape words.
Inherited from SP:
Additional animal words:
.
kijetesantakalu
