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Welcome to the Lojban wiki!

What is Lojban?

Beauty in the artifice: an introduction to Lojban by Ewa
a «lightning talk» introduction to Lojban by Timo Paulssen

Lojban is a carefully constructed spoken language. It has been built for over 50 years by dozens of workers and hundreds of supporters.

  • Lojban's grammar is based on simple rules, and its linguistic features are inspired by predicate logic.
  • Lojban allows the expression of nuances in emotion using words called attitudinals, which are like spoken emoticons. ue marks that you're surprised; ba'u marks that you're exaggerating.
  • You can be as vague or detailed as you like when speaking Lojban. For example, specifying tense (past, present or future) or number (singular or plural) is optional when they're clear from context.
  • Lojban is machine parsable, so the syntactic structure and validity of a sentence is unambiguous, and can be analyzed using computer tools.
  • There is a live community of speakers expanding the Lojban vocabulary day by day.

Lojban means different things to different people

  • a linguistic curiosity - a test-bed for language experimentation
  • a challenging way to expand their minds or discipline their thoughts
  • a new perspective on languages
  • an entertaining medium to communicate with friends or create art
  • a domain for exploring the intersection of human language and software

What will Lojban mean for you?

Learning Lojban

These are learning resources that are made by people speaking Lojban and that represent personal views of those authors:

A set of pronunciation guides + la karda, a rapid-fire overview of the grammar in small pieces
search the dictionary
la sutysisku.png
la camxes is an automatic grammar checker of Lojban utterances. It can help you to understand the structure and correctness of sentences.
Wave Lessons, a popular textbook
Lojban guide
Provides hover translations of both sentences/phrases and words they contain.
slaide.png
Lojban in simple phrases
Also available in PDF.
try searching for arbitrary words in
the database of sentences
La Muplis.png
Some of the sentences are not proofread by fluent speakers of Lojban.
Join the chat
lo-se-irci.svg
and try talking to other Lojbanists when they appear there. Try asking them questions.
yt-lesson in lojban i.png
«Lessons in Lojban» by Dustin Lacewell

Also check out Aesop's Fables for Lojban Learners, a work in progress. The intent is to start from very basic knowledge of Lojban, gradually learning new features through translating Aesop's Fables.

This is the resource officially approved by The Logical Language Group:

The Complete Lojban Language
  • "The Complete Lojban Language", a reference grammar of Lojban. This book will help those who already understand some Lojban. It's the most complete reference of Lojban language by far. It does not, however, teach vocabulary, style, or colloquial language. Please note that since the initial publication of the reference grammar, some language reforms such as xorlo have become widely adopted.

Dictionaries

Software tools

  • Memrise.com offers on-line Lojban vocabulary flashcards. Anki is a downloadable alternative.
  • A Lojban-to-English translator. It is not precise, it can sometimes fail to correctly translate from English to Lojban or vice versa. It can be used to get at least some understanding of how Lojban works.

Other learning materials ...

Connect with the community

«ro lo ma'a datka» and other Lojban songs by la guskant
«bripre jikca», a community literary vlog
«ba'o», a song by La Djemynai

Lojban is spoken by a vibrant community, producing literature, music, and art, and discussing questions about language and thought. The web comic xkcd said that, if you spoke Lojban, you'd have to speak with Lojbanists. That may not be such a bad thing!

Instant messaging (text chat)

Connecting quickly

To get connected to Lojban chat use any of the following methods (your and others' messages will be available in all of them no matter which method you use).

People involved in Lojban community usually read each day's backlog and will answer your questions within several hours and often even within minutes.

Telegram

Using this method you will be able to read the history of the chat since the beginning of 2016.

  1. Install the free Telegram messenger on your Apple, Android or your desktop device
  2. join main Lojban chat groups by following these links:
  3. Ask questions on Lojban in ckule group, talk in or about Lojban in Lojban group and talk only in Lojban in jbosnu group.

Discord

The chat is also connected to a Discord server.

  1. Ask questions on Lojban in #ckule channel, talk in or about Lojban in #lojban channel and talk only in Lojban in #jbosnu channel.
  2. Freely chat about anything to like-minded Lojbanists in the #jboselbau channel.

Direct web access

Using this method you will be able to see messages that are sent only while you are connected.

  1. Navigate to the web-based IRC client (Kiwi), choose a nickname you want yourself to be known as, and click "Start". Easy!
  2. Click on the channel you want (tabs on the top of the page), and type your text in the text bar at the bottom - the last line at the bottom of the chat page.
  3. Ask questions on Lojban in #ckule tab, talk in or about Lojban in #lojban tab and talk only in Lojban in #jbosnu tab.

You may alternately try other methods of connecting.

Mailing lists

The lojban-beginners mailing list is for questions about learning and understanding Lojban. You can subscribe to the list by sending a question to [email protected].

The general-purpose lojban mailing list, which covers anything else related to Lojban, was founded in 1989, and has about 500 subscribers. You can subscribe to it by sending an email to [email protected].

Social media

Lojban has a presence on many of the most popular web sites: Facebook Logo Mini.svg Facebook, Google plus icon.svg Google+, reddit-12.png Reddit, quora.png Quora.

International Contacts

an exposition by la guskant in Japanese
  Languages spoken
la selpa'i
[email protected]
English, German
la gleki
[email protected]
English, Russian
la ilmen
[email protected]
English, French
la tsani
[email protected]
English, French
la xorxes
[email protected]
English, Spanish
la guskant
[email protected]
English, French, Chinese, Japanese, Esperanto
la remod
[email protected]
English, Italian

Lojban around the world - other ways of communication ...

What's next?

  • Try your hand at translating into Lojban, or write your own original texts: Poetry, prose, blogs, tweets, etc.
  • Continue learning vocabulary using memorization software.
  • Help expand the dictionary by translating Lojban words into other languages, or coin new compound words and add them.

More info ...


This web site is dedicated to documenting Lojban and the activities of the Lojban-using community, and also serves as the official web site of the Logical Language Group (LLG), a non-profit organization founded in 1987 to promote the scientific study of the relationships between language, thought and human culture.