Lojban For Beginners — velcli befi la lojban. bei loi co'a cilre
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Answers to Exercises

Exercise 1

  1. la socac. or li so

  2. la feicac. lir.

  3. la recac. lec.

  4. li papa pi'e ni'u pamu or li pare pi'e vomu. (You can also use the hexadecimal digits, if you like, though this will probably be less common: li gai pi'e ni'u pamu, li fei pi'e vomu.)

  5. la nocac. or la gaicac. lir. (if you follow the convention that midnight is 12 AM)

  6. li so pi'e remu

  7. li pare pi'e pamu

  8. li pavo pi'e cino or li pavopimu

  9. li paze pi'e ci

  10. li reno pi'e no pi'e ci

  11. li repa pi'e muvo pi'e paxa pi zepa (The last component is just an ordindary decimal point.)

Exercise 2

  1. 15:20 is the time that I gave the book to you.

  2. 7:00 is the time that [someone] broadcasts Sesame Street; 7:00 is the time that Sesame Street is broadcast.

  3. 1:00 is the time that I write [something]

  4. Claudia likes that [someone] sells cups to Julia; Claudia likes Julia buying cups.

  5. Tim likes that 19:00 is the time that Mary leaves; Tim likes it that Mary leaves at 19:00.

Exercise 3

  1. la meilis. se prami mi ("Mei Li is loved by me.")

  2. le jipci cu se catra le mlatu ("The bird is killed by the cat.")

  3. le mlatu cu se vecnu la mari,as. ("The cat is sold by Maria." You now need cu, to prevent mlatu and se vecnu running together into the one tanru.)

  4. la .iulias. se dunda la mari,as. la klaudias. ("Julia is given by Maria to Claudia." As the third place, la klaudias. is unaffected by the conversion, and stays where it is.)

  5. zo'e se vecnu la mari,as. la tim. ("Something is sold by Maria to Tim." The same holds for the third place here as in the previous sentence.)

  6. [zo'e] se fanva la fits.djerald. le glico ("[Something] is translated by Fitzgerald into English." The original sentence has an empty x2 place; so there is nothing there to swap with x1. But of course, when a sumti is left out, you can assume its value to be zo'e — which you can still leave out even after conversion. And now that there is an explicit x2 place there, you don't need fi any more to introduce the x3 place.)

  7. la bast,n. se klama fu le karce ("Boston is gone to by car.")

  8. lenu tivni la SEsamis.strit. cu se tcika li ze ("The broadcasting of Sesame Street is at the time 7:00." The cu is actually necessary, here, even though it follows a cmene; can you work out why?)

  9. lenu loi kabri cu se vecnu zo'e la .iulias. cu se nelci la klaudias. ("That cups are sold by someone to Julia is liked by Claudia; cups being sold to Julia is something Claudia likes.".)

  10. lenu lenu se cliva la meiris. [cu] se tcika li paso cu se nelci la tim. ("The fact that [something] being left by Mary is at the time 19:00 is liked by Tim; [the place] being left by Mary at 19:00 is something Tim likes." Yes, I know it's horrible.)

Exercise 4

  1. la xadjed. or la xavdjed. or la xavdei

  2. la vodjed. or la vondjed. or la vondei

  3. la cimast. or la cibmast. or la cibma'i

  4. la bimast. or la bivmast. or la bivma'i

  5. la feimast. or la pavypavmast. or la pavypavma'i

  6. la gaimast. or la pavrelmast. or la pavrelma'i

Exercise 5

  1. la pavosorenanc.

  2. la pavomucinanc.

  3. la pazebisonanc.

  4. la pabivobinanc.

  5. la xarerenanc. (or la pananc., if you're using the Muslim calendar)

Exercise 6

  1. Zhang is at the bar.

  2. Zhang waits for Susan to be at the bar.

  3. Zhang asks the giver for two beers (and no, that's not necessarily what you'd call a waiter, but that is nonetheless a legitimate if laconic description of what waiters do. Lojban grammar tends to be pedantic, but Lojban descriptions can be rather sparse.)

  4. Drinking German beer is liked by Zhang

  5. Alas, Susan hates German beer.

  6. Zhang wants 20:30 to be the time Susan will come. (Zhang is using the fraction pimu, unlike me.)

  7. 21:00 is the time Zhang knows that Susan is not coming

  8. Look! He's drinking 0.3 of one beer. (Any bridi with its x1 missing is considered an observative.)

  9. Zhang leaves the bar.

Exercise 7

  1. .i la suzyn. klama le barja ti'u li rere le briju (Because the time of day has its own sumti tcita already, it doesn't really matter where in the sentence you place it. So .i la suzyn. ti'u li rere klama le barja le briju means exactly the same thing.)

  2. .i la suzyn. sruma {lenu la jan. djuno {lenu lerci fa {lenu la suzyn. klama}}} (Lojban insists on distinguishing between events and entities; you can't say that someone is late in Lojban, but only that someone's action is late. There are ways in Lojban for working around this, but they are considered 'advanced Lojban' (see Lesson 15.)

    And yes, that's a rather deeply nested sentence. Lojban tends, for better or worse, to make things more explicit, and thus more complex, than is usual for natural languages. The normal word order version is even worse: .i la suzyn. sruma {lenu la jan. djuno {lenu {lenu la suzyn. klama} cu lerci}}.)

  3. .i la suzyn. viska pa le re botpi

  4. .i {lenu jimpe {lenu la jan. cliva}} na nandu la suzyn.

  5. ti'u li rere pi'e pamu la suzyn. djica {lenu penmi la djiotis. ti'u li rere pi'e vomu} (Extra credit if you worked through that one!)

    Note: As noted in the Introduction, those brackets are there for clarification only; you won't normally see them in Lojban text. The whole point of having a syntactically unambiguous language, after all, is that you shouldn't have to use brackets in the first place!

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SummaryUpTime and Space — basic Lojban 'tenses'