First Steps in Lojban

Let's take a break from tags for a bit and talk about copulas—the "be-verbs." Specifically, how to say things like “A is B” when B isn't just a simple predicate.

You mean like when we're setting two things equal to each other?

Something like that. Remember, we already have sentences like ti mlatu (this is a cat) or ti bloti (this is a boat), which don't need any extra words for "is."

True. But I still don't know how to say something like "This is Sora" or "That is the specific boat we were talking about."

Good point! Lojban handles this in a few ways. Let's start with me.

When you say A me B, you're saying one of three things: that A is among the items in group B, that A is identical to B, or that A's group is a subset of B's group.

Basically, think about "the things A points at" and "the things B points at":

• If every thing A refers to is also something B refers to, you're using me (it's either a member of B or a sub-group of B).
• If A and B refer to exactly the same set of things, that's identity (co-reference).

In simple terms: everything that is A is also B.

If I tried to draw that “A sits inside B” idea, it might look like this:

Be careful! me is not used to talk about literal parts of a whole (like a wheel being part of a car). For that, we use the word pagbu.

lo vi klupe cu pagbu le minji

This screw is a part of the machine.

Got it. pagbu for the "part-of" relationship, and me for "membership" or overlap.

If you want to express strict identity (A and B are exactly the same thing), we use the word du.