This is a document explaining some intermediate-level Lojban to people who finished reading la karda. I'll try to explain the topics you really need to understand to bridge the gap between la karda and everyday conversations or prose!

More on tanru

You know about tanru: they are "compounds" of selbri formed simply by juxtaposing them. Let me jog your memory with some examples:

• .i vi lenku tcima = It's cold-kind-of-weather here.
• .i mi snuti darxi lo pendo ku = I accident-kind-of-hit my friend.
• .i lo cukta pixra ku melbi = The book-kind-of-picture is pretty.
• .i lo blanu karce ku spofu = The blue-kind-of-car is broken down.

In each case, the meaning of the right-hand selbri (called the tertau) is influenced by the left-hand one (the seltau).

The result has the place structure of the tertau: the x₃ of cukta pixra is the x₃ of pixra (namely the artist).

A note on vagueness

When you say a tanru, you are intentionally being a little vague in a way you assume your interlocutor will tolerate. We could have said lo pixra ku poi ke'a jadni lo crane be lo cukta ku ku ku'o (the picture which adorns the front of the book) instead of lo cukta pixra ku (the book picture), but this takes a bunch of time and effort that might be unnecessary to get the idea across.

Vagueness comes at a cost: cukta pixra might refer to a picture of a book, or a picture we found in a book, et cetera. But often context will reduce the ambiguity quite well.

The variety of examples demonstrates how general tanru are: in a translation, the seltau might become an adverb, a noun, an adjective, or something else. They're pretty powerful!

We can chain more than two selbri into a tanru. By default, this operation is left-grouping:

• .i [cnino tadni] bende = A (new-kind-of-learner)-kind-of-crew. (A crew of beginners.)
• .i [[[lojbo gerna] cukta] finti] kamni A (((Lojbanic-grammar)-book)-inventor)-committee. (One for inventors of books on Lojban grammar.)

What's really going on here is that cnino tadji bende is a new tanru whose seltau, cnino tadji, is itself a tanru. We can regroup the units of a tanru whichever way we want with ke … ke'e, which functions as spoken parentheses inside a tanru.

• .i cnino ke tadni bende ke'e = A new-kind-of-(learner-kind-of-crew). (A newly established crew of learners.)
• .i lojbo ke gerna cukta finti ke'e kamni = A [Lojbanic-((grammar-book)-inventor)]-committee. (One for grammar book authors who are Lojbanic.)

In la karda, you saw that connectives like je and ja can join selbri. It's actually more precise to say that they join "tanru units". Here's how that works:

• .i do [zabna je prije] pendo mi = You are a (delightful-and-wise)-kind-of-friend to me.
• .i ko sutra [cpedu je cpacu je bevri] lo jinci ku = Fast-kind-of-(request-and-obtain-and-bring) some scissors!
• .i mi [dunku je terpa] [denpa je cadzu] = I (stressed-and-afraid)-kind-of-(wait-and-pace).

One final cool trick: remember how dunda be lo pinsi ku is a new selbri (x₁ gives a pencil to x₂)? It is actually even a new tanru-unit, so we can use it as a seltau or tertau:

• .i mi [dunda be lo pinsi ku] troci = I (give a pencil)-kind-of-attempt.
• .i lo xendo [dunda be lo pinsi ku] ku cisma = The generous-kind-of-(giver of a pencil) smiles.

Rafsi and lujvo

A very adjacent concept that isn't taught in la karda is that of a lujvo. The idea is simple: we take a tanru, replace each word in it with one of its "root" or "short forms" (called rafsi), chain them together according to an algorithm, and give the result a single, definite meaning and new place structure.

An example:

• zekri lebna means crime-kind-of-take. It has the place structure of lebna, but how the zekri plays into it is left vague.
• zerle'a means steal. It has place structure “x₁ steals x₂ from x₃, which is a crime according to x₄”, because someone defined it that way and then wrote it in the dictionary. It's made of -zer- and -le'a-, which are rafsi of zekri and lebna respectively — these are also defined in the dictionary.

Note that zerle'a isn't the only lujvo you can make out of zekri lebna. Often, gismu have multiple rafsi, leading to forms like zekryle'a or zerlebna. But people tend to favor the shortest or prettiest one.

Some non-gismu words have rafsi: for example, vo (four) has rafsi -von-, which means it occurs in words like vondei (Thursday) and vonma'i (April). se te ve xe have rafsi -sel- -ter- -vel- -xel-, which are very frequent! (In fact, the words seltau and tertau introduced earlier are lujvo of se tanru and te tanru.)

Sometimes, Lojbanists use lujvo that aren't defined in the most popular dictionary. They might be made up on the spot. There are some popular patterns that make such ad-hoc lujvo easy to understand. For example, -gau lujvo are usually taken to be causative forms: lenku (x₁ is cold) → lekygau (x₁ cools x₂), and jinsa (x₁ is clean of x₂) → jisygau (x₁ cleans x₂ of x₃). This -gau is the rafsi of gasnu, meaning “x₁ causes x₂.”

Dropping terminators

Many of the constructs explained to you have surrounded another phrase from both sides.

• lo dansu ku = a dancer.
• nu dansu kei = x₁ is an event of dancing; a dance.
• … noi dansu ku'o = …, who dances.

While this is correct, the "terminators" ku, kei, ke'o are not strictly necessary, and often omitted.

• .i lo nu dansu kei ku pluka lo vitke ku = Dancing pleased the guests.
• .i lo nu dansu ku pluka lo vitke = Dancing pleased the guests.

This has to be done carefully, though, because erasing too many terminators from a sentence might change its meaning:

• .i lo nu dansu pluka lo vitke = An event of dance-pleasing the guests. (!)

Here, ku was keeping dansu pluka from becoming a tanru, and erasing it changes the meaning.

A very important thing to remember about Lojban grammar is that selbri are sticky. They really love to stick together and form tanru — when you see two adjacent brivla in a sentence, they are (very nearly) always forming a tanru together. So always make sure there’s a ku keeping tanru units in the x₁ and the selbri from sticking together: lo citno nanla ku sutra citka, not lo citno nanla sutra citka.

Even nu … kei is grammatically a selbri, which means it can participate in tanru. So lo fanza nu casnu kei is an annoying-kind-of-(event of discussing), and lo du'u stace kei senpi is a (whether someone is honest)-kind-of-doubter. So watch out for that sort of combination, too, when considering if it's safe to drop a kei.

Some common cases

Here are some common cases where you can leave out terminators:

• You can drop ku if the next thing in the sentence is the end of the sentence or clause, or the start of a neighboring sumti.

  • .i mi vreta lo sfofa ku (I recline on the sofa.)
  • .i lo nu mi lumci lo denci ku kei ku xamgu (That I brush my teeth is good.)
  • .i mi canja lo jemna ku lo solji ku do (I trade gems in return for gold with you.)

• You can drop kei and ku'o (actually, any terminator) at the end of a sentence.

  • .i lakne fa lo nu mi ba fliba kei ku (It's likely that I'm going to fail.)
  • .i ti mupli lo nabmi ku poi mi skicu ke'a do ku'o (This here is an example of the issue I told you about.)

There are other cases where it's possible, but they're not as clear-cut. I suggest you leave the terminator in when you're not sure.

The cmavo cu

The cmavo cu marks what follows as the selbri of a bridi. It doesn't change the meaning of that selbri at all:

• .i mi se cfipu (I'm confused.)
• .i mi cu se cfipu (I'm confused.)

cu is often used to not have to worry about which terminators to say at the end of the x₁. You just say cu.

• .i [lo nu do djica [lo nu do sidju mi [lo te jukpa ku] kei ku] kei ku] zabna (That you want to help me with the recipe is awesome.)
• .i [lo nu do djica [lo nu do sidju mi [lo te jukpa]]] cu zabna (That you want to help me with the recipe is awesome.)

(Another strategy is to flip the sentence around: .i zabna fa lo nu do djica lo nu do sidju mi lo te jukpa. That's just like saying, in English, "It's awesome that you want to help me with the recipe.")

Some Lojbanists use cu even for simple cases like lo zdani ku melbi — so you often see lo zdani cu melbi.

Tricky note: cu also works in subclauses. You can think of saying cu as introducing the selbri of the "deepest" clause that hasn't seen its selbri yet. Let's walk through .i lo nu lo trene cu spofu cu nabmi (= That the train is broken down is a problem.) and comment on how we interpret each cu.

• .i lo nu lo trene cu… (okay, we haven't seen the inner nu selbri yet, so what follows is it!)
• spofu cu… (another cu, but now we're past the inner selbri, so what follows must be the main clause's selbri.)
• nabmi (and we're done.)