Carbon, aka "David Simon". Lojban enthusiast, general all-purpose geek.
I am the author of the dictionary program Sutfak.
These are the rules I follow when writing Lojban. Since I'm new, I'm quite positive that at least one of them is total BS. The question is... which one?
- Lujvo should be avoided except when the lujvo consists of no more than one "root" rafsi (with other rafsi either being cmavo rafsi or else gismu rafsi whose meaning in lujvo are extremely well understood, i.e. 'zma' or 'rai'). There is one use of multi-"root"-rafsi lujvo which is acceptable; when the veljvo (selbri that the lujvo expands to) has come to mean something beyond what one might assume upon seeing only the tanru. For example, the lujvo 'brivla' means more than merely a bridi-like word; it refers to a more specific concept. With these sorts of lujvo, the reader can gain a general grasp of an unfamiliar lujvo's meaning by expanding it into a tanru, but they should understand that the term has a meaning beyond the expanded phrase; else, it wouldn't have become a lujvo (at least, if everyone followed my rule).
- Sumti should not be used by themselves except as answers to questions. Use 'me' for quote/name observatives (Mary! : me la meris, "Blah blah blah" : me zoi gy Blah Blah Blah gy), or for numerical observatives (Three mice! : me ci smacu)
- Use of to'e and no'e should be pretty minimal, and restricted to use in situations where the scale is obvious from the selbri or the context. This seems like one of the nastier implicit ambiguities.
- ki'a is for confusion about the form, not about the meaning. In particular, I don't like to use it for confusion about the referrant of a sumti; instead, use an observative of the word/phrase thats unclear and use an attitudinal (uanai me zoi ly le zirpu spati ly), or ask what the referrant is (la'e le zirpu spati cu mo)
- Referring to the same lo sumti can be somewhat confusing, since it can add directness to an indirect thing; are you talking about another anything that matches that descriptor, or the same thing that matched it earlier? If you find yourself referring back to a lo sumti with goi or ri or similar, you should probably use le instead.
- The name of a category is also the name of each item in that category. For example, la cokacolas is both the name of the Coca Cola brand, and the name of all the individual sodas of that brand. This is exemplified in lower level fu'ivla as described in the ref.
- Prefer 'fetsi' and 'nakni' over 'ninmu' and 'nanmu', since the former pair can be back-referenced with different lerfu.