Lojban
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What is Lojban?
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 simpler than of most natural languages, but complex in its own unique way. Lojban is an experiment in thought, as well: its users aim to see how its unique language structures affect thought and understanding.
- Lojban allows the expression of tiny nuances in emotion, using words called attitudinals, which are essentially spoken emoticons.
- Lojban allows you to communicate concisely without unnecessary or undesired details. For example, you don't have to always think of what tense (past, present or future) to use in a verb when it's already clear from context.
- Lojban is machine parsable, which allows potential new explorations in the fields of artificial intelligence and machine translation.
- Lojban has a live community of speakers expanding its vocabulary day by day.
- Lojban is designed aiming at being neutral between cultures.
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?
More basic information ...
Learning Lojban
Unofficial and supplemental resources
Different non-authoritative learning resources have been created. They are said to be more beginner-friendly.
- A set of pronunciation guides
- Lojban in simple phrases, an introduction (also available in PDF)
- Wave Lessons, a popular textbook
- "The Crash Course", a work-in-progress textbook
- la karda, a rapid-fire overview of the grammar in small pieces
Official resources
- "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
- la jbovlaste is a prescriptive, editable, multilingual dictionary. It is considered by many to be the current de-facto standard dictionary of Lojban. Many other dictionaries and tools are based on it.
- la vlasisku is an online English—Lojban dictionary, based on data of la jbovlaste; intended to be more user-friendly (note: it is only irregularily updated, la jbovlaste is more up-to-date).
- la sutysisku is an online multilingual Lojban dictionary (including English) that also works offline. Updated at least once a month.
- la slovlacukt, an alternative offline dictionary.
- Stardict dictionaries in some languages (usable with GoldenDict, Dictionary Universal, etc.)
- Multilingual gismu (root word) and cmavo (particle) lists in tsv and html formats
- Word lists ordered by frequency of use
Related things
- An unofficial list of simple definitions of gismu
- Example sentences at Tatoeba.org
Software tools
- Memrise.com offers on-line Lojban vocabulary flashcards. Anki is a downloadable alternative.
- la camxes is an automatic grammar of Lojban. It can help you to understand the structure and correctness of sentences.
- 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
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)
At any time of day, there are likely to be Lojbanists available on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) to answer questions or engage in real-time Lojban conversation. Join the chat in your browser with
- the Slack version of the chat,
- the KiwiIRC version,
- QWebIRC browser-based clients, or
- connect with the IRC client of your choice.
There are three main channels (chat rooms):
- #lojban for discussion about Lojban in any language
- #ckule for the teaching of Lojban and questions from beginners in any Language
- #jbosnu for discussions exclusively in Lojban
The channels sometimes move slowly, so don't lose hope if you don't get a response immediately -- wait around a bit and someone is likely to see your message. Here is an cheat sheet for those unfamiliar with IRC.
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 lojban-beginners@googlegroups.com.
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 lojban@googlegroups.com.
Social media
Lojban has a presence on many of the most popular web sites: 
Facebook, 
Google+, 
Reddit, 
Quora.
la jbotcan is an informal bulletin board which hosts images and discussions in Lojban and English.
International Contacts
| Languages spoken | |
|---|---|
| la selpa'i seladwa@gmx.de |
English, German |
| la gleki bangu@lojban.org |
English, Russian |
| la ilmen ilmen.pokebip@gmail.com |
English, French |
| la tsani nictytan@gmail.com |
English, French |
| la xorxes jjllambias@gmail.com |
English, Spanish |
| la guskant gusni.kantu@gmail.com |
English, French, Chinese, Japanese, Esperanto |
| la remod rdentato@gmail.com |
English, Italian |
Lojban around the world - other ways of communication ...
What's next?
- Try reading Lojban texts. Start with something shorter and easier such as "Terry the Tiger" (audio is available) or "The Berenstain Bears and the Prize Pumpkin" (a parser suitable to those two texts). When you're ready, move on to "The Little Prince" (suitable parser: camxes) and "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" (suitable parser: maftufa).
- 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 ...
From Lojban news...
Community news
30 January 2016
- la ponjboci'ogri published a free pdf file of the group book, of which the printed book was sold in November 2015. The first part contains description of Lojban in Japanese, and the second part contains original texts in Lojban by la cogas, la niftyg and la sidas.
January 2016
- Premiere of Progress, a contemporary music containing Lojban sentences composed by Erik Natanael Gustafsson, was held at the Academy of Music and Drama of University of Gothenburg.
25 December 2015
- Masato Hagiwara released zmifanva, a Lojban-English machine translation engine based on phrase-based statistical machine translation.
On the Internet
- Official Anoma Twitt @anomatwit
- la ramcinfo cu finti lo cnino lermorna #lojban https://t.co/BHUBJUPoWI
- anomatwit 2016-03-24 15:01:17
- Sam @korvys
- @Fenreliania Yes. It's enough to make me look back longingly at my attempts to learn lojban.
- korvys 2016-03-24 06:46:08
- Dank @Dank_scriptor
- RT @s_i_d_a: mi prami si si mi do pendo si si si .u’u mi si si #lojban
Google Groups: lojban
- Re: [lojban] brivla sitcusma'o
- 2016-03-24 13:28 GMT+03:00 Bruno Panasiewicz <ciuak...@gmail.com>: > coi > i mi zgana lo nu no da cmavo fi lo su'u cusku lu'e lo selbri kei kei gi'e > so'i roi djica lo nu co'e i ku'...
- la gleki 2016-03-24 10:44:38
- brivla sitcusma'o
- coi i mi zgana lo nu no da cmavo fi lo su'u cusku lu'e lo selbri kei kei gi'e so'i roi djica lo nu co'e i ku'i lo nunpli be fi zo lu ce'o zo li'u bei te zu'e tu'a lu'e lo selbri cu clani je tolzdi...
- la uakci 2016-03-24 10:28:39
GoogleGroups: lojban-beginners
- Re: [lojban-beginners] Why is singularity so hard to express in lojban?
- Plurality is just as hard to express. Lojban lacks grammatical number, and specifying singular/plural either way requires extra effort, but saves effort when it's not relevant whether a noun is sin...
- selpa'i 2016-03-16 20:55:14
- Why is singularity so hard to express in lojban?
- Why? Is there anything wrong with being an individual? -- .i mi ca cilre fi la lojban .i mi na ca certu
- la djeikyb stuyt 2016-03-16 20:50:52
GoogleGroups: bpfk-list
- ¿ "lo'u i je ku'i le'u" smudu'i eipei "lo'u i ku'i je le'u" ?
- .i lo jai se stidi genturfa'i cu cupra zoi zoi. ([i _] [{je _} {ku'i _}] [{<mo _> VAU} {<(¹i _¹) (¹ku'i _¹)> <je _> <mo VAU>}]) .zoi. .i va'i zo ku'i galfi zo je .e zo ....
- la gleki 2016-03-24 07:38:27
- Re: [bpfk] broda be ba brode
- smucau > .i pe'i ba lasna zo ba zo brode .ija'ebo lo'u broda be ba brode le'u na gendra > > mu'omi'e .piier. ge lu lo pendo be pu ku li'u gi lu lo gerku be na ku li'u ja'a smudra .i sa'e l...
- Ilmen 2016-03-23 21:10:58
