Re: [lojban] A new member has some questions

[Pierre Abbat <phma@bezitopo.org>]

On Wednesday, October 02, 2013 15:15:21 Lormoral King wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> 
> this is my first mail to this list. I recently found out about Lojban and
> have been spending a lot of time reading about it. When learning languages,
> I prefer to first get a very broad overview before focusing on the details.
> Once I am more familiar with the big picture I can better tell where all
> the little things I learn go in the grand scheme of things. So, I have been
> reading as much as I could fine online; mostly tiki pages and some old
> mailing list conversations, but I also saw some comments on the facebook
> group that interested me. I understand the language is currently in a flux,
> though I cannot quite tell what the officials' stance on anything is. I
> have seen talk of certain proposed changes, and I'd be interested to know
> what I should think of them and also what their status is, specifically the
> 'dotside' reform, the thing about connectives getting reduced (I hope you
> know what I mean), and what I think was called 'cmevla as a class of
> brivla' (I wasn't really able to follow the discussions). Also, I saw some
> people using different accent marks sometimes, Does this mean I can
> capitalize words, since capital letters were previously used for stress
> marking purposes?
> I hope I didn't ask too many questions!

People invent new words fairly often. That doesn't mean that the language is 
in flux. The syntax hasn't changed (barring the introduction of some new 
selma'o like ZOhOI), nor has the assignment of rafsi to gismu except for one, 
"fi'u", where the Book disagreed with the gimste. I've been involved with the 
language for over ten years. Sometime before that there was the Great Rafsi 
Reallocation, but unless you want to read old works like "ziryroi" (which in 
modern Lojban would be "ziryro'i"), you don't have to worry about it.

As to dotside: before dotside, "blabruk" is one word, "labruk" breaks into "la 
bruk", and "belarus" breaks into "be la rus". You have to pause after it, but 
pausing before is optional. In dotside, all three are one word, but you have 
to pause both before and after it.

Some experimental cmavo are used often enough that it's good to know them:
sa'ei (COI): marks the following cmene as an ideophone or onomatopoeia.
la'oi, zo'oi (ZOhOI): quote the following foreign word, which must be 
delimited by pauses. The distinction between them is the same as between 
"la'o" and "zoi".
mu'ei (ROI): enumerates possible worlds. It's a way to say "if" or "maybe".
lo'ai ... sa'ai ... le'ai: replaces previously said words with other words.

>         mi'e Ucauricu'um (I hope I said that right)

It's a valid name, and it resembles your email address, but I have no idea 
what it means or what language it's from.

Pierre
-- 
loi mintu se ckaji danlu cu jmaji

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