Answers to exercises

.uu is the most usual reaction. This is one meaning of English Sorry!

.u'u (again, unless you flout the dominant social norms.) This is the other meaning of English Sorry!

.e'uru'e, the "Eh, whatever" type of request.

.e'ucai, the "Begging on hands and knees" type of request.

.i'eru'e: yet another 'slacker' attitudinal.

.o'onai. In Lojban, anger is considered the opposite of patience: "losing your temper". The Buddha would presumably react with .a'ucu'i (indifference), and Christ with .io (love). Someone getting a thrill out of this would react with something more like .oinai (un-complaint, i.e. pleasure.)

ba'u is the only discursive Lojban would tolerate here, as the Eiffel Tower, is, like, totally not 20 miles tall!

1. da'i

2. ju'o "that would certainly be embarrassing" (or sa'e — "that would, in precise terms, be embarrassing.")

1. ta'onai ("getting back to what I was saying...")

2. po'o ("this is the only relevant thing I'm doing.")

3. ki'a (there's a wealth of attitudinals in this word, but ki'a is really the only relevant discursive.)

1. zu'u ("on the one hand..."; it might not be as elegant as the Classical Greek contrast clauses with men and de, but that's what it means.)

2. zu'unai

3. ji'a

4. sa'e (or ba'ucu'i: presumably our hapless narrator isn't exaggerating here.)

.i mi viska la djan.

.i mi catlu la djan.

.i mi catlu (What follows sa is a selbri; so it replaces the last selbri we've seen, as well as everything else up to sa, including the sumti, la djan.)

.i lenu vimcu loi lojbo valsi lo jufra cu nandu (You're telling me!)

.i mi .e la ranjit. cu zvati le barja ca lenu do zvati le gusta (The phrase following sa is the name la ranjit.; everything from that name on, i.e. cu zvati le barja, is deleted.)

The word to (I am now speaking Lojban) is good for speaking Lojban.

Good?!

To change the topic: Do you like the (mass of) Loglandia Contrapositives?

lai?! (Not a commonly used article, after all.)

I (and you?) are happy to buy flokati rugs. (Note that xu, as a UI cmavo, specifically queries the word it follows; this is shorthand for asking "Do you too?")

You say strange things.

(New Paragraph) Incidentally, Zhang is somewhat drunk, because he went to another bar.

Anyway, Zhang says "Pedro, I mean, friend, do you mind telling me what you're doing here?"

Ranjeet says "I'm with Jyoti and a friend of hers (really good-looking; what a win!)"

Zhang: "I, for you and two beautiful people accompanying, am happy, friend... I mean, for you accompanying two beautiful people (to put it precisely), am happy" (We can get away with "this sentence no verb" in Lojban. And let's not be too hard on Zhang, either, who has the sense to fix his Lojban grammar even in his elated state. He has tried to say "for you and two beautiful people being together", but kansa in Lojban corresponds to "you are together with two beautiful people": it is not reciprocal.)

Ranjeet: "You're now going to the Chicken — sure you can manage it? :‑)"

Zhang: "You're just waiting to see me dance that, er, the Chicken at, uh, the Chicken." (The empathy attitudinal dai expresses desire, but it's a desire Zhang is projecting onto others. That's roughly what just is doing in the English: "You must be wanting it, waiting for me...". Zhang produces one too many lenus, so he has to delete his last one; note that lenu counts as two words!)

Ranjeet: "Everybody in the disco starts shouting 'Please do' — more or less." (Any resemblance to "Everybody in the house say 'Yeah'" is purely obscured by Ranjeet's pedantry. The attitudinal goes after vau, which you may remember from Lesson 5 is the terminator for a sentence; so the 'slight exaggeration' attitudinal applies to the whole sentence.)

Zhang: "Are you really done sending broadcasts to the pixies?" (Sacrificing Zhang's pretty good wordplay, considering his 'tired and emotional' state.)

(Ranjeet analyses radio transmissions for the Search for Extraterrestial Intelligence.) (Abstractions can be names just like simple sumti.)

Ranjeet: "Good job! Certainly you talking is entertaining." (Or more colloquially, "It's fun to hear you talk.")

Zhang: "Yup, it is, isn't it!" (Spoken with some comical smugness, no doubt...)

.i la suzyn. po'o na djuno ledu'u la ranjit. slabu la jan. (Some languages, like French and German, differentiate between knowing facts and knowing people. Some languages, like English, do not. No prizes for guessing which side of the divide Lojban is on. po'o follows la suzyn., since that's who it applies to.)

.i la suzyn. lu .i .uecai do vi zvati gi'e ji'a dasni loi zirpu li'u or .i la suzyn. lu .i .uecai do vi zvati .i je ji'a do dasni loi zirpu li'u (You can tone it down to .uesai, if you want.)

.i la jan. lu .i da'i mi djuno ledu'u do vi zvati kei nagi'a dasni noda zo'o li'u or .i la jan. lu .i da'i mi djuno ledu'u do vi zvati .inaja mi dasni noda zo'o li'u. In fact (for reasons we won't go into here), things turns out to be less problematic for hypothetical if-statements if you use a solution based on nibli or ni'i: .i la jan. lu .i lenu mi da'i djuno ledu'u do vi zvati cu nibli lenu mi dasni noda zo'o li'u, or .i la jan. lu .i mi da'i djuno ledu'u do vi zvati .i seni'ibo da'i mi dasni noda zo'o li'u

la djiotis. lu .i kulnrgiki po'onai gi'e ji'a fekypre li'u (But here doesn't contradict expectation; it corroborates it. So in this case but actually means 'also'! You could in fact add also or too in the English sentence. Some languages have different words for the two types of but: German, for instance, would here use sondern instead of aber.)

.i la ranjit. mutce se zdile gi'e cusku zo la'a (or lu .i la'a go'i li'u)

to vuku lo terdi bartu pensi co'a klama la terdi toi or to lo terdi bartu pensi vu co'a klama la terdi toi (You could optionally put an .i after to, but you don't have to: there's no danger of the sentence within parentheses being merged in with the sentence before it.)