First Steps in Lojban

Now let's look at how to urge someone to do something: commands.

To make an imperative sentence, you just replace "do" with the word ko.

So putting na before the selbri with ko means "don't..." That last example is interesting—it takes a moment to wrap my head around it.

ko can fill any terbricmi — the command is “make this bridi true.”

So instead of ordering someone to love you, lo prenu cu prami ko is more like "Behave in a way that results in people loving you."

ko alone already spans “do it” through “please do”; that covers most imperative needs.

If you want to add more nuance—like making a polite request, a suggestion, or granting permission—you can use attitudinals at the start of your sentence:

(Plus pei for “may I?” patterns — see below.)

Some sentences keep do instead of ko — proposals and permissions aren’t always straight imperatives.

We’ll go deeper into the nai suffix in the finale. But generally, if it's a suggestion or a request rather than a direct order, it's very common to use do instead of ko.

You can also use the word pei to turn an attitudinal into a question:

I see. So nai flips the attitude, similar to how to'e flips a brivla. This is getting deep!