So maybe the vowels can stand on there own, using the way we pronounce them as the name?
(taken from your updated (March 1, 2016) lessons)letter | pronounced as in
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a | father
e | met
i | peel
o | more
u | food
The mnemonic: "are their three or two?" is stuck in my head after reading Margaret Schlauch's The Gift of Tongues.
(it is from a story she tells with a mother asking her son how many sweets he has left in his hand, as they journey across Europe on a train. ) A tokipona mnemonic would be nice.
A suggestion for the consonants, is to use one of the 5 vowels to voice the consonant-letter name. So we have a 2 letter word for each consonant (and a 1 letter word for each vowel). Instead of using a system like in Esperanto where an "o" is added to the consonant to give the letter name, why not use the AEI (ah-eh-ee) picture as inspiration, to make:
j = ja, k = ka, l = li, m = mu, n = ne, p = pi, s = su, t = to, w = wa
So the names of each letters are:
a, e, i, ja, ka li, mu, ne, o, pi, su, to, u, wa