Times and Events, Improved: Conversion

If "Ten o'clock is the time that I go" sounds backwards, there are two ways you can switch it round. One is using se, which swaps the first and second places of any bridi.

le nu mi klama cu se tcika la daucac.

means exactly the same thing as la daucac. tcika lenu mi klama. se coincidentally is pretty much the same as Spanish se, but is actually part of a series along with te, ve and xe, which switch around the first and third, first and fourth, and first and fifth places of a selbri. (This kind of swapping is known as conversion.) te, ve and xe aren't used so much in sentences as se, but are often used in making lujvo (compound words), as we'll see later in the course.

This conversion business, of course, doesn't apply just to sentences with abstractions in them, but to any bridi. You may want to change things around for different emphasis (people tend to mention the more important things in a sentence first), or as above, to work around the complexity of Lojban grammar (cu is a very powerful tool.) So the following pairs mean the same thing:

Exercise 3

Rearrange these Lojban sentences so that the main selbri in each sentence is converted to having se. Don't forget to use cu if you need to! For example, mi viska dodo se viska mi

  1. mi prami la meilis.

  2. le mlatu cu catra le jipci

  3. la mari,as. vecnu le mlatu

  4. la mari,as. dunda la .iulias. la klaudias.

  5. la mari,as. vecnu zo'e la tim.

  6. la fits.djerald. fanva fi le glico

  7. klama la bast,n. fu le karce

  8. li ze tcika lenu tivni la SEsamis.strit. (Leave the bridi with tivni alone.)

  9. la klaudias. nelci lenu zo'e vecnu loi kabri la .iulias. (Convert the bridi with vecnu as well as the bridi with nelci.)

  10. la tim. nelci lenu li paso tcika lenu la meiris. cliva (Convert all three selbri.)