First Steps in Lojban
Lesson 25. Attitudinals (UI)
Finally, we have attitudinals. These are "contextual stickers" that attach to a word to express how the speaker feels about it, but they don't change the underlying grammar of the sentence. They're what make Lojban feel "alive."
Examples:
- .a'o, .au, .ie, .iu, .ua, .ue, .ui, .u'i
- hope, desire, agreement, fondness (love), discovery (aha!), surprise, happiness, amusement
.i .ui mi jimpe fi la .lojban. (Yay!) I understand Lojban.
.i .a'o mi mitre li papibi I wish I were 1.8 m tall.
lo .iu vi titla cu kukte This sweet thing (which I'm fond of ♡) is tasty.
You can adjust the strength of your emotion by adding words like cai (intense), sai (strong), or ru'e (slight). You can also use nai to flip the meaning (like from happy to sad) or cu'i for a neutral feeling.
COI — vocatives
coi, co'o, mi'e, ki'e, je'e, vi'o, di'ai, fau'u + optional sumti + do'u.
coi la .soran. mi'e la .kocon. Hello, Sora! I'm Koshon.
ki'e lo sidju ― je'e Thanks for the help! ― You're welcome.
You can put pei after an attitudinal to ask "Do you feel that way too?" A standalone pei just asks "How are you feeling about this?"
For the full list of these expressive particles, you can dive into the UI and COI sections of The Complete Lojban Language or look at a reference card. There's a whole "zoo" of them to explore!
True or false
Pick whether each statement is true or false according to the lesson.
Attitudinals syntactically attach to the previous word, but semantically they may “float”.
.a'o is hope, .ua is discovery, .u'i is amusement.
cu'i pairs with no'e; nai pairs with na'e.
Emotion intensity order is: cai > sai > ru'e > nairu'e > nai > naisai > naicai.
coi always takes a sumti and means a greeting at a meeting.
ki'e sidju can be glossed as “thanks for helping”.
pei must be immediately preceded by an attitudinal.
pei can attach to COI vocatives.