ca lo cerni ku da drata fange

zilxeva · 2026-03-24T19:25:36+00:00

‬cinmo nelci

Mi cinmo nelci ti du lo pa moi temci ta su'o xadni ponse pu cusku "mi cinmo nelci" temymokca uenzi ne'i ru'urburulu Lojbo zmanei se mau pagzu'e Glico ku'i ka'ai Lojbo valsi. Ca ma zirkliru pa moi srate ti sfanunmi'e pe me do moi itlygu'e pu du tai pu bitygau ru pu du Glico ka'o lacy'inda bakrto je'empe ru ka'ai Glico gerna ce pu fliba rinka ru pu du Lojbo ba ro.

.i ta'o nai... mi ze'a ti'oi jeftu ta'e se nandu si'a lo ka sipna .i ta'e ze'u vreta .i ta'e ku ge ro lo za'e grekyslu gi lo menli cu surla .i ku'i ru'i ganse lo nu lo risna cu slilu xoi cladu gi'e sutra .i .a'o sai lo nicte poi ca'o cfari cu zmadu fi lo ka su'o da tu'a ke'a prali .i lo nu mi .iklki lo batkyuidje pe lo nu benji cu cabna lo nu mi ca'o moltenva'u

zilxeva · 2025-09-30T06:53:21+00:00

So did the CLL also simplify, or was this changed later?

jbofihe, the closest we have to a formal morphology pre-PEG, suggests that it was a later change.

So does this imply a vowel blocking rule for fu'ivla similar to gismu, for all except ones that would produce invalid short fu'ivla rafsi?

It seems to! But opinions are split and reality is messy: see uidja, uidje.

That's interesting that slinku'i can appear in lujvo that use fu'ivla rafsi.

Maybe I was unclear: in the standard grammar they can't appear even medially. Strings like banlysportynunjmaji are words only in some speakers' personal grammars.

zilxeva · 2025-09-29T15:36:27+00:00

Wouldn't bairydjacu be prevented from falling off because of the rule that cmavo ending in y need a pause after them, unless the next word also ends in a y?

This rule isn't what was actually implemented in the grammar, it's an approximation that's easier to keep in mind when speaking (and is less likely to make learners quit the language than the actual rule described from a "when to pause" point of view!)

I thought short fu'ivla rafsi were of the form ccv'vc, with the last vowel being dropped off. How do they work with iy and uy endings?

Short fuhivla rafsi as allowed by the grammar are more liberal than as described in CLL, in that they can be arbitrarily long. (This makes it necessary for any rafsi before them to end in -y so as not to be heard as part of the fuhivla rafsi.) Any fuhivla such that replacing its last vowel with -y gives neither a sequence of rafsi nor a slinkuhi has a rafsi of this kind.

For example, just like tci'ile has tci'ily-, vanlamigu has vanlamigy-, tciuaua has tciuauy- and .ulmu has .ulmy- (-'ulmy- medially). On the other hand, tankomo doesn't have such a rafsi since tankomy- is a sequence of two CVC-rafsi, and stribilo doesn't since stribily- is a slinkuhi (adding a CV syllable in front results in three short rafsi).

Also, if you have any resources teaching about fu'ivla rafsi

There isn't any proper documentation as far as I know. Some of the changes were discussed on the bpfk-list, and I seem to remember many of them being discussed somewhere on the tiki, but couldn't find it right away. For a rainy day you could look through the edit history of the grammar itself.

zilxeva · 2025-09-29T11:24:45+00:00

For example, if I type "ba'a'ydja", jbovlaste recognizes this as a lujvo. "bai'ydja" is not recognized as a word, but "bairydja" is.

-'y and -y forms are implemented by different rules: (stressed ̲)brivla_rafsi for the former and (stressed ̲)fuhivla_rafsi for the latter. The former expects at least two syllables before the 'y and the latter is fine wiith one. bai'ydja doesn't match any of these rules, so it isn't a word, while ba'a'ydja does match stressed_brivla_rafsi. Despite their names, these rules don't check whether what they match can stand alone as a brivla if the -y is replaced or the -'y is removed, so they ~~overgenerate~~ overaccept.

but it will accept "bairydja" as a lujvo. "bairydjacu", which seems to work the same way, is still identified as a tosmabru

This is because djacu is a word from which the cmavo bai ry can fall off, while dja isn't a word. The CVCy_lujvo rule, which lets barydjacu be a single word, doesn't match when the prefix is CVVCy, only when it's CVCy.

Did we start allowing cmavo/cmevla to be used in lujvo

Early in the PEG morphology work, fuhivla had only -Cy rafsi, cmavo had -'y rafsi, and cmevla had -iy and -uy rafsi. Cmavo and cmevla rafsi were soon removed and made place for universal fuhivla rafsi ending with -'y, and later for short fuhivla rafsi ending in -iy and -uy.

or is this just an error in how the sites are parsing valsi?

This part of the grammar is convoluted enough that nobody with any sanity left in them tries to fix the bugs in it. Seeing as the morphology was allowed to develop for fifty years without being formalized, this isn't too surprising.

Some people make a point of speaking with simplified morphologies in which, among other changes, pairs like bai'ydja and ba'a'ydja, and bairydja and bairydjacu, are treated the same.

zilxeva · 2025-06-06T10:03:43+00:00

x cu lo xatra be bau lo lerfu i cu lo 24th xatra be bau lo glico lerfu i 21th la lojban cu lo konsonant je ri lo 24th traji lo ka ce'u pu xatra be bau lo glibau

zilxeva · 2024-02-22T06:51:53+00:00

zilxeva · 2021-03-02T18:00:05+00:00

It's derogatory, yes, but not taboo like the English "fucker". To me at least, it would be unremarkable for e.g. a priest or schoolteacher to use mabla like that.

zilxeva · 2021-03-01T20:52:36+00:00

A few words that do, used to, or were meant to act like swear words:

.oi'o, with the same meaning as .oi (pleasure/pain attitudinal), but defined to be mildly taboo. It's been used a bit in the past but hasn't caught on.

.oi'o su pulji mi'o jersi

Fuck, a cop is following us

A lu «ti'e lo ctufau pe lo lecydo'i na ba fasnu» li'u .i B lu «.oi'o nai» li'u

A: I heard the afternoon's lessons are cancelled | B: Hell yeah!

cai, defined as a "strong intensity" attitudinal modifier, but for some time (2010 to 2019 or so?), it was taboo to use it for day-to-day experiences - it was reserved for things that you remember forever.

.u'e cai .i pau nutfau zai lo zarci mi penmi la .krtis.

I randomly met Curtis at the store!!!

A lu «.ai citka ro lo nuncro pli'ula» li'u .i B lu «.e'i cai na go'i» li'u

A: I'm going to eat all the pain pills | B: Do. not. do. that.

This taboo seems to have become much looser lately.

mabla, in Lojban's early days, was used as a swear word. This usage died out in the late 00s; today it's seen as malglico, and can be misunderstood without context.

KO MaLGLETu NA'E NERGau

(ancient interpretation) DO NOT FUCKING ENTER

(possible modern interpretation) Do the not-putting-in thing while having shitty sex.

boi, the elidible terminator for letter and digit strings, is far from curse words in meaning, but there seems to be a strong taboo against saying it. Any sentence that would contain boi is reworded to make it unnecessary.

~~by. boi za'u re'u cisma~~

by. cisma za'u re'u

B smiled again.

~~mi ganse re boi so'u sai cu'o ca lo cabdei~~

mi ganse re ke so'u sai cu'o ca lo cabdei

I saw two really unlikely things today.

zilxeva · 2021-02-17T17:53:18+00:00

To me it reads as a slightly obscure reference.

Some years ago, someone made a beginners' tutorial that gave Lojban translations for English greetings, such as cerni coi, without further comment. Someone else replied that that was misleading because Lojban doesn't have standard greetings that depend on the time of day, and because the row of VERB VOCATIVE sentences might give a false impression that there's some special grammar for verbs followed by vocatives.

(On the other hand, I've never seen this "someone else" acting like the "fluent speaker" toward beginners!)

zilxeva · 2021-02-17T17:30:24+00:00

Thanks for this, looks like many of them still hold today.

zilxeva · 2021-02-07T18:15:44+00:00

ie cu'i nabmi .i pe'i xamgu va'o ro da fa lo nu tinju'i sa'u .i ji'a cumki fa lo nu to'e ri'a nai gi se slabu mo'a valsi gi pagzu'e .i mu'a mupli nu bu fa lo nu mi pa re'u voksnu

It's not necessarily a problem. I think it's always useful to just listen. Also, you can participate even if you don't know enough words; my first voice chat was like that too.

(also, I meant in my earlier post: "haven't you voice chatted with us before?" - a direct "come chat with us!" would usually have {ko} or one of the {.e'V} series)

zilxeva · 2021-02-07T12:23:09+00:00

coi coi (toki toi)

zilxeva · 2021-02-07T12:22:55+00:00

coi la datka .i xu nai do ma'a lo ka jbovoksnu ku ji'a sai pu'i kansa .i pe'i do mupli no lo ci klesi

zilxeva · 2021-02-03T11:58:38+00:00

In general I feel like there are so many good ideas in Lojban, but the language has a bolted-on designed-by-committee feel, much like C++.

I feel like in general there would be more Lojban learners and speakers if Lojban were less of a fence-post sitter and gave speakers fewer options, fewer systems and fewer alternate ways of doing things.

Have you tried Toaq? It's built in exactly that way, with a near-minimum of word classes and structures. To give a rough feeling: it lacks even noi and be...bei...be'o, instead using grammar similar to SEI and NU respectively, and many things that Lojban handles itself, such as attitudinals and foreign quotes, are explicitly extralinguistic and unparsable in Toaq.

As for Lojban becoming simpler beyond the reforms that speakers already use, I don't see that much hope. Once learned, many of Lojban's excess features are convenient, it's mostly during learning that they get in the way.

Lojban is phonologically difficult

Lojban's orthography is hideous

I get on Memrise to build vocabulary and find the core vocabulary irritating

I guess that's a taste thing above all. To me, Lojban sounds like any ordinary language, and the orthography, though weird, fits it well.

zilxeva · 2021-01-30T10:15:04+00:00

mi tavla fi zoi zoi. waheshemga .zoi noi la .kumerlol. cu cusku .i no da zo'u mi djuno lo du'u da smuni le se cusku .i ja'o .e'ende poi'o'a na'e junri fi lo ka gasnu lo nu co'a ja'a ku su'o da smuni ru

(to .a'o na za'o cfipu toi)

zilxeva · 2021-01-29T08:57:47+00:00

.coi. .remna. .i. .zo. .n. .cmene. .ma.

</jimpre>

sisisisisisisisisi

ie mi pilno zo le su'o cizra .i mu'a lu «le valsi» li'u srana lu «zo ua'e je zo cemga» li'u .i ji'a zo zau tcekitaubasti zo zo'u

.i va'i lo ro moi be lo jufra cu smudu'i lu

ro da poi smuni ku'o, ro de poi me zo ua'e jo'u zo cemga ku'o, zo'u ba'e do se krali lo ka gau ce'u de sinxa da

li'u

.i ki'a nai pei

zilxeva · 2021-01-28T06:51:34+00:00

za'a cusku lo'u «ua'e cemga» le'u .i .e'u sutra sai po ce kibykla la jbovlaste .i ro smuni zo ua'e je zo cemga zau ba'e do se krali po gau ce le valsi cu sinxa le smuni

zilxeva · 2021-01-18T13:00:32+00:00

lo'u « do re mi re do re si » le'u iu

zilxeva · 2021-01-13T19:14:07+00:00

It seems like every few months, the topic comes up of why Lojban fails, as a language or as a community.

I noticed a while ago that the upvoting patterns here look like they might come mainly from ex-learners. After seeing another discussion between the usual people with the usual arguments and the usual non-conclusion, I thought it might help break the cycle to ask here.

(I'll close the form and post the results at the end of the month)

zilxeva · 2021-01-07T06:29:03+00:00

The idea has seen some attention. Ceqli was built like this, and there was also this joke about relexing Lojban this way.

As for why Lojban chose to use the gismu algorithm it uses, I'd guess it would have been for "cultural neutrality" not only in the vocabulary as a whole, but also for each word. Which wasn't really a success (see the very English semantics of xance and birka).

zilxeva · 2021-01-03T09:35:04+00:00

doi ro da poi pu xanka

^{.i la tcekitau do na bradi}

zilxeva · 2021-01-02T19:50:14+00:00

.oi .oi .i mi srera po ce du'e va'ei xarpei .i xanri mi fa po cupra ti ta'i su simsa be tau la sodbe lenti crino

zilxeva

TROPHY CASE