Lojban/Simple sentences with pronouns

      Pronouns are the simplest kind of word you can put in a “place” of a place structure. Here is some vocabulary to get you started:

      Lojban English
      mi I, me
      do you
      ti this

      So how do we say “I give you this” in Lojban? Easy!

      mi dunda ti do
      
      bridi
      mi dunda ti do
      x1 x2 x3
      sumti selbri sumti sumti

      Slicing up the grammar

      Remember that the Lojban word dunda differs in order from English “give” and the above is more like “I give this to you”. However, Lojban has words for saying which place the following word goes into. Time for some vocabulary again!

      Lojban Following word goes in place...
      fa first
      fe second
      fi third
      fo fourth
      fu fifth

      You might notice there is a pattern to these words. They obviously all start with an “f”, but also, the ending vowels are in alphabetical order.

      Now we can say the sentence with the same order as in English.

      mi dunda fi do fe ti
      

      This might seem a little clumsy, and these words are rarely used in this way. They are usually used to skip places, leaving some information up to guessing from context. We could say “I give you something”:

      mi dunda fi do
      

      Lojbanists call these words “place tags” as they “tag” a place.

      Last modified on 20 October 2009, at 20:34