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

Exercise 1

  1. The seller of the book.

  2. The one leaving from San Francisco.

  3. The vehicle going to San Francisco. (mi klama la sanfransiskos. fu le karce → le karce cu xe klama la sanfransiskos. fu mi)

  4. The dwelling of Rena. (la renas. xabju le zdani → le zdani cu se xabju la renas.)

  5. The date of my leaving; the date of my departure.

  6. The friend of the one meeting Ranjeet; the friend of the 'meet-er' of Ranjeet. (Yes indeed, internal sumti can nest. Somehow, I don't think you're really all that surprised...)

Exercise 2

  1. le fanza be la suzyn.: Susan's annoyance, what annoyed Susan

  2. le te jukpa be loi cidjrkari: the recipe for curry

  3. le klaji be le barja bei le gusta: the road at (or from) the bar to the restaurant

  4. le se nitcu be fi loinu jukpa loi cidjrkari: the requirements for cooking curry. (loi cidjrkari is safely tucked away inside the loinu jukpa abstraction, so there's no reason that be need be worried about it.)

  5. le se nitcu be la ranjit. bei loinu jukpa loi cidjrkari: Ranjeet's requirements for cooking curry

  6. le preti be lei xumske bei la jan. bei le ctuca: Zhang's question about chemistry to the teacher

  7. le kansa be le ctuca be la ranjit.: the one with Ranjeet's teacher, Ranjeet's teacher's partner

  8. le kansa be le ctuca be la ranjit. be'o bei lenu pinxe loi birje: Ranjeet's teacher's partner in drinking beer.

    Note: You absolutely must have that be'o there; otherwise, lenu pinxe loi birje would be the x3 sumti not of kansa (the collaborative effort), but of ctuca (the subject taught). The meaning would then be "The partner of Ranjeet's teacher about drinking beer." Remember, Lojban words attach to the words closest to them, unless a terminator intervenes.)

    Of course, you would never say le ctuca be la ranjit. bei le nu pinxe loi birje, because you've noticed that the x3 of ctuca is a fact (du'u) and not an event (nu) — and you would never get the two confused. Right?

Exercise 3

  1. mi mrilu fi do bau la lojban.

  2. mi dunda lo cukta be bau la lojban. do (The book is in Lojban; the giving is not.)

  3. cu'u la djiotis. la ranjit. bebna (Since Jyoti said the whole bridi, the sumti applies to the whole bridi — so it cannot be 'internal'.)

  4. la xumske fanza ku pe te me'e la suzyn. pinxe loi dotco birje (Yes, trick question. Despite where so named by Susan sits in the sentence, it applies only to the studious person of Zhang, and not to his preferences in alcohol.)

    Tip: The need for ku in the sentence above is very deep voodoo, so there's no need for you to be particularly concerned about it (yet). As The Complete Lojban Language, Chapter 8.6 points out, without the ku any qualifying phrase becomes part of the name.

    To illustrate this, consider the old parlor trick of calling someone Nobody. This is a device as old as Homer, and is used to work in jokes like "Nobody hurt me!" Lojban disallows this kind of ambiguity (consider why), so this kind of joke is impossible in the language. (The notorious Who's on First? sketch by Abbott & Costello is un-Lojbanisable for the same reason.) But you'll still want to talk about people called Nobody.

    So suppose you're talking about the Greek Nobody (Homer's Oútis), and comparing him to the Latin Nobody (Jules Verne's Captain Nemo). And in a pique of Lojban purism, you decide to refer to both with Lojbanised names — la nomei. If now you want to say "The Greek Nobody", you can't say la nomei poi xelso. That would mean that Odysseus identified himself to the Cyclops not as Nobody, but as Nobody Who Is Greek (something like Oútis Hòs Akhaiós in Greek.) You want to make sure that the cmene is over before the relative clause begins. Since this cmene contains a selbri, it is terminated with ku: la nomei ku poi xelso. If you'd stuck with la .utis., the pause would have been signal enough that the cmene is over, so the issue would not arise.

    No, of course you weren't meant to know all that. But aren't you happy you know it now?

  5. loi cmene be se pa'u la lojban. [cu] se lidne lo'u la le'u (Hope you remembered to put la inside the Lojban 'error' quotes lo'u ... le'u! You can't use lu ... li'u, because la by itself doesn't make sense as a fragment of Lojban.)

  6. loi tcadu klaji cu mutce pluja mu'u lenu la ranjit na kakne lenu klama le kisto gusta (Ranjeet's navigational difficulties are an illustration of the complexity of city streets — not of the streets themselves.)

Exercise 4

  1. .i le ninmu cu dunda le cifnu le nanmu poi citka loi cidjrkari "The woman gives the baby to the man who eats curry"

  2. .i le ninmu cu dunda le cifnu poi kakne lenu citka ku'o le nanmu "The woman gives the baby who can eat to the man" (If you did not insert ku'o, you would be claiming that the infant can eat the man!)

  3. .i le ninmu poi mi pu viska vi le barja cu dunda le cifnu le nanmu "The woman I saw at the bar gives the baby to the man" (Despite the presence of vi le barja, ke'a can be dropped off, since it occupies the first available default place in its bridi.)

  4. .i le ninmu poi lenu mi viska ke'a cu nandu cu dunda le cifnu le nanmu "The woman that it is difficult for me to see gives the baby to the man" (ke'a cannot be dropped off, since it doesn't occupy a default place of the relative clause bridi, but rather a nested place inside an abstraction within the bridi.)

  5. .i mi viska va le barja poi mi klama fi le briju ku'o le ninmu "I saw, some way away from the bar that I go to from work, the woman" (The x2 place of klama is left empty as the place where ke'a belongs; so now you have to insert fi to make sure le briju is the origin, not the destination. You also need to insert ku'o; otherwise le ninmu becomes a sumti of klama instead of viska: the woman becomes not who you see, but the route you take to the bar (!) .)

  6. .i ca lenu mi klama le barja poi snanu le briju ku'o le briju kei mi penmi le nanmu "While going to the bar [which is] south of the office from the office, I meet the man" (Again, ku'o needs to be inserted, to prevent le briju being incorporated into snanu: "going to the bar south of the office from the office's perspective," rather than "going from the office to the bar south of the office."

  7. .i mi viska le kansa be le ninmu be'o poi le ninmu cu dunda le cifnu "I see the woman's companion, who the woman gave the baby to" (You must insert be'o, so that the relative clause applies to the entire sumti, le kansa be le ninmu. Otherwise, it will apply only to the sumti it is right next to, le ninmu: "I see the companion of the woman the woman gave the baby to.")

  8. .i mi kakne lenu citka loi cidjrkari kei poi nandu "I can eat curry, which is difficult" (Again, you must insert kei, so that the relative clause applies to the entire abstraction. Otherwise, what is difficult is not eating the curry, but the curry itself.)

Exercise 5

  1. Restrictive: the way is pretty meaningless unless you say what it is the way of.

  2. Restrictive: again, the same waiter is being uniquely identified by the relative clause, and is otherwise pretty opaque.

  3. Non-restrictive: normally, the description my friend Zhang should be doing a good job of identifying who is being talked about.

  4. Non-restrictive: although this is an indefinite noun phrase in English, the relative clause given doesn't make it any more definite: I'd be saying the same about any full train.

  5. Restrictive: the best is meaningless without the following relative clause.

  6. Non-restrictive: obviously, this is merely providing an alternative name for the same thing.

  7. Restrictive: in fact, this is what is called in English a headless relativiser — not because the relative clause is about decapitated horsemen in Washington Irving short stories, but because there is no noun ('head') there for the relative clause to narrow down at all! So the relative clause ends up supplying all the information on what is being talked about. That's as restrictive as it gets. Lojban would use a fairly empty 'head' to translate this — something like da.

  8. Non-restrictive — unless you live in a city with multiple city centres. In which case I'd move away, if I were you: the traffic must be murder...

Exercise 6

  1. A little after half an hour, the car is at the Pakistani restaurant.

    Note: That odd expression lo cacra be li pimu is in fact how you'd normally say 'half an hour.' In general, when Lojban measures things, it doesn't divide them up into n individual units, but rather says that x measures n units. So "Reading this lesson took me two hours" would be in Lojban lenu mi tcidu le vi ve cilre cu cacra li re.

    We've also specified a distance after the half an hour, through zi. Logically, ba lo cacra be li pimu will be true if I show up after half an hour, or after three hours: in both cases, you've shown up 'after' half an hour. By adding zi, you're making sure that you're not allowing that kind of latitude: the event happens in the immediate vicinity of half an hour later. This is being pedantic, of course; but of such pedantry is Lojban made.

  2. Jyoti, who was driving the car, is angry at Ranjeet for not paying attention to the route. (Literally, "Jyoti, who was operating the car." Lojban tends to keep its gismu fairly vague: there is no essential difference, as far as it's concerned, between what you do with a car, a computer, or an espresso machine.)

  3. Ranjeet and Susan have been paying attention to each other.

  4. Ranjeet is now talking to Susan about music by Johann Sebastian Bach.

  5. Susan is not interested in paying attention to music by Bach — who is German. (Bach, not the music! Although, on second thought...)

  6. But Susan is very interested in paying attention to Ranjeet's eyes.

  7. Susan likes observing Ranjeet's lip hair (= moustache), which Lech Wałesa's looks like. (You need the be'o, otherwise it will be Ranjeet's lip that Wałesa's moustache resembles.)

  8. Jyoti, who is waiting at the outside of the restaurant (= outside the restaurant), is operating a Nokia mobile phone. (Since this is presumably Jyoti's only mobile phone, we do not need to use pe: the brand is only incidental information, and we don't need it to narrow down which phone is being 'operated'. So ne is the word to use.)

  9. She says "Hello Zhang. This is Jyoti." (Hope you remembered coi from Lesson 7!)

  10. "Meet us at the disco at Second Street after (= in) two hours." (Sorry about springing that ordinal on you. All Lojban ordinals — pamoi 'first', bimoi 'eighth', nomoi 'zeroth', romoi 'allth = last' — are formed in the same way.)

Exercise 7

  1. .i ca lenu la djiotis. klama le nenri be le gusta kei la suzyn. te preti fo dy. fi lu .i do zvati ma li'u (or: te preti lu .i do zvati ma li'u la djiotis.)

  2. .i la djiotis. cusku lu .i mi pu tavla lo pendo poi mi to'e morji lenu mi tavla ke'a puku li'u (You have to insert the ke'a.)

  3. .i la suzyn. cusku lu .i la ranjit pu tavla mi lesedu'u le zgike be fi'e la bax. cu simsa le kisto zgike le ka pluja li'u (We tucked away ka in an earlier lesson; nu or su'u would be just as fine. You could also have said the less specific le zgike pe la bax. or le la bax. zgike; this could mean the music Bach played or owned, rather than wrote, but in context it's clear enough.)

  4. .i la djiotis. cusku lu .i doi suzyn. do jinvi ledu'u ro da pe secau lo jgita cu pluja li'u (Lojban does not distinguish between 'anything', 'everything' and 'all things'.)

  5. .i la ranjit cusku lu .i le jgitrviolino cu mintu le jgita poi zo'e bevri vi le janco li'u

    Note: Two things. First, Lojban doesn't encourage you to say that one sumti 'is' another sumti; there is a word, du, that sort of does that, but you should think of it as being more like an equals sign (see Lesson 12.) If you want to say that a violin is a guitar, it is better to say either that they are identical (le jgitrviolino cu mintu le jgita), or to turn one of the two sumti into a selbri (lo jgitrviolino cu jgita). Since we need a relative clause here, we have gone with the former.

    The other thing is that Ranjeet (much to Jyoti's annoyance) is correct in his Lojban usage. In order to have as broad a coverage as possible, gismu tend to be inclusive rather than narrow in their definitions; we already saw that with Jyoti 'operating' her car. So while the Lojban wordlists list jgita under guitar, the gismu is actually used to refer to any stringed instrument. Jyoti should have specified Susan's instrument of choice as jgitrgitara (a 'guitar guitar'), or even dikca jgitrgitara 'electric guitar'.

    Those funny-looking words are loan words into Lojban (fu'ivla), and we will also be covering them in Lesson 12.

  6. .i la djiotis. cusku lu .i la ranjit. mintu da poi na kakne lenu klama lo gusta poi berti le tcadu (or: la ranjit mintu lo na kakne be lenu klama lo gusta poi berti le tcadu)

  7. .i do ba citka ma li'u (You could specify that Jyoti means both of them by using re do or ro do, but you wouldn't normally bother unless it was somehow vital.)

  8. .i la suzyn. catlu la ranjit. soi vo'a

  9. .i la djiotis. noi to'e se cinri lenu catlu cu cpedu fi le bevri pe zu'a vo'a fe lenu klama (or: cpedu le nu klama kei le bevri pe zu'a vo'a) (As you can see, vo'a is more useful than you might have thought!)

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