First Steps in Lojban

Hrrrgh...

Good morning! Why the long face?

I was just going over my notes, and I realized I only know a handful of sumti—and most of them are just pronouns like "me" or "you."

That's a fair point. Today, let’s learn how to turn any word into a sumti.

Exactly. How do I talk about a "woman" or a "cat" as a thing? Is there a word for "the" or "a"?

Remember our predicates ninmu and mlatu?

"Woman" and "cat". Yep, got it.

Those are brivla. If you wrap a brivla (or even a tanru) in lo ... ku, it turns into a sumti meaning "the thing(s) that fit the x₁ slot of that predicate."

So lo is like an article? And what's ku for?

ku is a terminator—it tells the listener exactly where the description ends. Lojban is very explicit about its structure.

So lo ... ku acts like brackets around a description.

lo ninmu ku nelci lo mlatu ku

The woman likes the cat. / Some woman likes some cat.

Precisely. lo [selbri] ku basically means "some thing that is (or does) [selbri]."

So with words we know:

• lo blabi ku — something white
• lo citka ku — an eater
• lo sanli ku — someone standing
• lo cadzu ku — someone walking
• lo klama ku — someone going
• lo sipna ku — a sleeper
• lo gleki ku — someone happy
• lo tatpi ku — someone tired

Just think of lo as "pulling out" that first place slot (x₁). And this works for tanru too:

la .soran., la .latcmatcad. — is la also an article?

Yes. la before cmevla (name words—the dotted, consonant-final pieces like .soran.) means “the thing called …”

No ku after la?

There are complications…

Never mind then!

Each cmevla (name word) must end in a consonant. If your name ends in a vowel, you just add one—usually s or n.

So my name becomes .soran. Self-intro… la .soran. cmene mi?

Not quite! cmene here is the predicate “x₁ is the name of x₂”—not the same idea as a cmevla (the name-shaped word .soran.). The x₁ of cmene has to be the name text (often marked with zo), not “whoever la points at.” la .soran. picks out the person; saying what you’re called uses patterns like zo .soran. cmene mi.

So how should I introduce myself?

To say "My name is Sora", you can use zo (which we'll cover later) or me (which we'll see in Lesson 15):

Simplest is probably mi'e.

Wait, doesn't Lojban distinguish between "the cat" and "a cat"?

Not in the way English does. lo is our workhorse—it's very general and covers both cases.

"When in doubt, use lo." Got it.

There's also le, which we use for "the specific one(s) I'm thinking of." It's still referring to the x₁ slot, but the speaker is singling it out.

Like saying "that one thing I was talking about..."

Roughly. Practically speaking, if you can use le, you can almost always use lo instead. le is just a more specific tool in your kit.

When in doubt, lo—I think I can remember that!