First Steps in Lojban

Wait — there's more?

Hey, think of it as New Game Plus. You've cleared the main story; now we get into the hidden rooms.

…Who are you again?

Sevan. Your sister? We live in the same house?

Oh. Right. When did you get into Lojban?

About two lessons before you. Anyway, first topic: letter words.

You already know that Lojban uses Latin letters. Back in Lesson 2, you learned how to name them:

• Consonant letter names: [consonant] + y + . → by., cy., sy., zy. …
• Vowel letter names: . + [vowel] + bu → .abu, .ebu, .ibu, .obu, .ubu

A word used as a letter name is called a lerfu (letter/symbol word).

So by. is the Lojban name for the letter "b" and .abu is the name for "a". Got it. But I never heard about the period . or apostrophe '. What are those called?

Good catch. They're special:

• Period . → denpa bu ("pause-letter")
• Apostrophe ' → .y'y. (literally the cmavo .y. spoken as a lerfu — two glottal pauses around the schwa)

So denpa bu is literally the "waiting letter." A pause. That's kind of poetic.

Also works for letters Lojban doesn't normally use, like h, q, or w. Since ' already sounds like an "h", people often write h as .y'y. bu ("an h-like letter"). And q is typically .ky. bu ("a k-like letter"), since q in most languages sounds like k.

The real power tool here is bu. Stick bu after almost any Lojban word, and it becomes a lerfu — a symbol standing for that word.

Common examples you'll see in practice:

So .ui bu is literally the emoji :)? That's delightful. Can I put bu after any Lojban word?

Almost. A few words eat up whatever comes right after them before bu gets a chance to act:

• zo, zoi, la'o, lo'u — all of these grab the next word or next passage as a quotation before bu can form a lerfu.

So zo bu doesn't make a "zo-letter"; it quotes the word bu itself.

Edge case, sure. I'll remember: quotation words come first.

Here's something subtle. Consider this sentence:

Wait — "a gives bc"? Not "a gives b to c"?

Exactly. by. cy. is a sequence of lerfu and sequences are treated as a single sumti — the string "bc". So the sentence has only two arguments: the giver (a) and the thing given (bc).

Word spacing doesn't matter: by.cy. and by. cy. both mean the letter string "bc".

So how do I say "a gives b to c"?

Use boi to explicitly end the lerfu (or number) sequence:

boi cuts the lerfu string at that point. So cy. stays separate, filling x₃ of dunda as the recipient. Okay, I'll remember that one.

boi works with numbers too. If you ever see something like li pa by. (the number 1 followed by the letter b), writing li pa boi by. keeps them from fusing into a hybrid string.

Last topic: how to Lojbanize acronyms like NASA, FBI, CD, or BPFK.

The official recipe:

So every letter is just spelled out in Lojban order, smooshed together, with a final consonant tacked on?

Exactly. The last consonant makes it a proper cmevla (remember: name words must end in a consonant). As long as it's intelligible, you have some flexibility — some people drop all the bu parts and just use the Lojban letter names directly, others invent shortcuts. Communicability is the real rule.

Huh. So Lojban texters probably have their own abbreviation styles by now.

Almost certainly. The language grows with its speakers.