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Lojban/Simple sentences with pronouns
Reference material by Wikibooks contributors. This retains its source identity and is not 411 news reporting.
Pronouns are the simplest kind of word you can put in a “place” of a place structure. Here is some vocabulary to get you started:
Lojban English mi I, me do you ti this
So how do we say “I give you this” in Lojban? Easy!
mi dunda ti do
bridi mi dunda ti do x1 x2 x3 sumti selbri sumti sumti
Slicing up the grammar
Remember that the Lojban word dunda differs in order from English “give” and the above is more like “I give this to you”. However, Lojban has words for saying which place the following word goes into. Time for some vocabulary again!
Lojban Following word goes in place... fa first fe second fi third fo fourth fu fifth
You might notice there is a pattern to these words. They obviously all start with an “f”, but also, the ending vowels are in alphabetical order.
Now we can say the sentence with the same order as in English.
mi dunda fi do fe ti
This might seem a little clumsy, and these words are rarely used in this way. They are usually used to skip places, leaving some information up to guessing from context. We could say “I give you something”:
mi dunda fi do
Lojbanists call these words “place tags” as they “tag” a place.