Chapter 1. Sounds, names and a few attitudes

Table of Contents
Vowels
Consonants
Special Characters
Alphabet
'Correct' pronunciation
Lojban with attitude!
Lojban Names (cmene)
Lojban words as names
Answers to Exercises

The first thing you need to do when you learn a foreign language is to become familiar with the sounds of the language and how they are written, and the same goes for Lojban. Fortunately, Lojban sounds (phonemes) are fairly straightforward.

Vowels

There are six vowels in Lojban.

a 

as in father (not as in hat)

e 

as in get

i 

as in machine or (Italian) vino (not as in hit)

o 

as in bold or more — not as in so (this should be a 'pure' sound.)

u 

as in cool (not as in but)

These are pretty much the same as vowels in Italian or Spanish. The sixth vowel, y, is called a schwa in the language trade, and is pronounced like the first and last A's in America (that's English America, not Spanish.) It's the sound that comes out when the mouth is completely relaxed.

Two vowels together are pronounced as one sound (diphthong). Some examples are:

ai 

as in high

au 

as in how

ei 

as in hey

oi 

as in boy

ia 

like German Ja

ie 

like yeah

iu 

like you

ua 

as in waah!, or French quoi

ue 

as in question

uo 

as in quote

ui 

like we, or French oui

Double vowels are rare. The only examples are ii, which is pronounced like English ye (as in "Oh come all ye faithful") or Chinese yi, and uu, pronounced like woo.