Toki pona is Chinese on rhabdo

Toki pona is a language with a basically-SVO grammar, usually written with either a version of the Latin alphabet (sitelen Lasina), or a logography that uses one character for each basic word (sitelen pona). There are 100 to 200 basic words, with pronunciations constrained by (C)V(N) phonotactics. Many words, in practice, are formed as compounds of the basic words, such as mi mute ("we", literally "many I"). Multi-character adjectives or adverbs are separated from what they describe with pi, as in tomo pi mi mute ("our home", literally "home of many I"). A clause for setting comes at the end of the sentence, separated with lon (roughly "at"), as in sina moku e pan lon tomo pi mi mute ("you eat bread at our home"). Binary questions are formed by inserting ala between duplicates of the verb in question, as in sina moku ala moku? ("you do, or don't, eat?"), or by adding anu seme at the end of a declarative, as in sina moku anu seme? ("you eat, or what?"). Open-ended questions are formed by replacing the term in question with seme, as in sina moku e seme? ("you eat what?"), or sina seme e pan? ("you do what to the bread?"), or seme li moku e pan? ("what eats the bread?").

Chinese (here, Mandarin) is a language with a basically-SVO grammar, usually written with either a version of the Latin alphabet (pīnyīn), or a logography that uses one character for each basic word (汉字). There are a few thousand basic words, with pronunciations constrained by (C)V(N) phonotactics. Many words are formed as compounds of the basic words, such as 我们 ("we", literally "I (plural)"). Multi-character adjectives or adverbs are separated from what they describe with 的 or 地, respectively, as in 我们的家 ("our home"). A clause for setting comes near the beginning of the sentence, separated with 在 (roughly "at"), as in 你在我们的家吃面包 ("you eat bread at our home"). Binary questions are formed by inserting 不 between duplicates of the verb in question, as in 你吃不吃？ ("you do, or don't, eat?"), or by adding 吗 at the end of a declarative, as in 你吃吗？ ("you eat?"). Open-ended questions are formed by replacing the term in question with 什么, as in 你吃什么？ ("you eat what?") or 什么吃面包？ ("what eats the bread?").

The two languages are quite similar, except that Chinese is a hundred times more complex. We might say that Chinese is toki pona on steroids, but Chinese is also a hundred times older, so it's fairer to say that toki pona is Chinese on rhabdo.

If you know toki pona first, you can learn Chinese a tad more easily. If you know Chinese first, you can learn toki pona with somewhat less than the already-small requisite effort.