Lojban. A crash course. Introduction. Version 0.1 by Ark Balandin Transcript coi ro do mie .ark.balandin.

Hello everyone Im Ark Balandin. This is the first introductory video to Lojban. For those who dont know Lojban is an international logical language You can find more about Lojban using the links below this video. This crash course is primarily a response to those who found other courses not as helpful as they wished. It will try to be as simple as possible when explaining the stuff. And I hope that after watching this video you can continue learning Lojban having certain questions already solved. So lets get started. The basic thing you need to know about Lojban is obviously alphabet. Lojban uses Latin alphabet. You pronounce words as if they were English transcription or when pronouncing Latin words. But there are few differences. The letter c is pronounced as sh (like in shop) j = zh (like s in pleasure or treasure) x = like ch in Scottish loch (try pronouncing ksss while keeping your tongue down and you get this sound) = like English h y = like the first a in the word America. so its kinda er. Thats all. Now lets start constructing sentences. Some think that in Lojban there are no verbs. Of course they are. Those words that are called brivla in Lojban grammar can be safely called verbs. Lets take some verbs. The word mlatu - is roughly translated as cat but its more correctly to say that it means to be a cat. Its a verb. pinxe - to drink. Its a verb. ladru - is roughly translated as milk. But its rather to be a quantity of milk.

Now lets imagine we wanna say A cat drinks milk. In order to convert a verb into a noun we put a short word lo in front of it. And in order to show a verb we put the word cu in front of the verb. lo mlatu cu pinxe lo ladru - A cat drinks milk. Remember that c is pronounced as sh. So we turned mlatu and ladru into nouns. And we show using cu that pinxe is still a verb. So its all very simple. Now lets talk about pronouns like I and you. Like their english name suggests they are much like nouns. mi - means I in Lojban. do - you. ti - this one, this object. ta - thats one, that object. Pronouns work like nouns by default. They dont require lo in front of them. mi pinxe - I drink. do pinxe - you drink. ti ladru - this is milk. ta mlatu - that is a cat. We can even omit cu as we can clearly see the pronoun and the verb being separated. Now lets talk about adverbs and adjectives. You just string two verbs together. And the left one becomes an adverb. For example, sutra - to be fast sutra pinxe - to quickly drink, to drink fast. Here the verb sutra becomes an adverb as it is to the left of another verb. We can put lo to the left of such string. Now the adverbs act as adjectives or participles. And of course the verbs turn into nouns. lo sutra pinxe - a quick drinker. lo pinxe mlatu - a drinking cat. Now you know why there was cu after nouns in our example lo mlatu cu pinxe lo ladru - A cat drinks milk. Without cu itd turn into lo mlatu pinxe with no clear sense. Well, lets talk about tenses.

English forces us to use certain tenses. You have to choose between A cat drinks milk. A cat has been drinking milk. A cat drank milk. A cat will have drunk milk. and so on. However, in Lojban you can easily control the precision of your speech. Our sentence lo mlatu cu pinxe lo ladru - A cat drinks milk. in reality says nothing about when this event is happenning. Only the context can help us. In fact context is clear enough in most cases. But lets imagine that we need more precision. We just add more words. pu - past tense or before some event ca - present tense or at the same time as some event ba - future tense or after some event cao - continuous tense bao - perfect tense tae - habitually So we can get lo mlatu ca pinxe lo ladru - A cat (at present) drinks milk. As you can see we replaced cu with ca as ca also clearly separates the previous noun from the verb. Or we can say even more precise lo mlatu ca cao pinxe lo ladru - A cat (at present) is drinking milk. Here we get a very precise translation of english sentence that has Present Continuous tense. There is also Present Simple tense that describes events that happen sometimes. lo mlatu ca tae pinxe lo ladru - A cat (habitually, sometimes) drinks milk. For perfect we use bao lo mlatu ca bao pinxe lo ladru - A cat has drunk milk. Of course we could omit ca in this as Im sure that the context would be clear enough in most cases. We can use the same rules for describing past using pu instead of ca or future using ba. Now lets talk about tenses. Amazing but we havent said yet how many of our cats are actually drinking milk. The sentence lo mlatu ca pinxe lo ladru - A cat (at present) drinks milk.

is vague in this regard. It can be one cat or even 25 cats drinking milk. Any such interpretations are possible. lo simply turned a verb into a noun but now we might want to specify the number. Lets add number in front of lo. pa means 1 re = 2 ci = 3 vo = 4 mu = 5 xa = 6 ze = 7 bi = 8 so = 9 And no means 0 (zero). So pa lo mlatu ca pinxe lo ladru - A cat/one cat drinks milk. For numbers consisting of several digits we just string those digits together. re mu lo mlatu ca pinxe lo ladru - 25 cats drink milk. Yes, its that simple.