Perhaps the title of this page is not the best one. The idea was to collect here English words with ambiguous meaning which are likely to mislead a beginner. --mi'e .evgenis.

  • A false friend is a word like "curve", which looks like an English word, but has a different meaning in Lojban. The only others I can think of quickly are "to" and "be".
    • The gismu which are spelled the same as a common English word are these. I tried to make the list complete. There are near-misses; for example, gurni is like "gurney". "Pruce" is a rare English word; I will be unsurprised if many other gismu match up with rare English words. mi'e jezrax


crane
curve
glare
mitre
ruble
santa
since
tuple

See also malglico, Misleading Gismu Keywords, Swedish False Friends, Norwegian False Friends, Spanish False Friends

  • This overlaps with Misleading Gismu Keywords, but I think it still deserves its own page — nitcion

think

(think about ...; ponder) - pensi
(think that ...) - jinvi

old

(opposite to new) - slabu
(opposite to young) - tolci'o

cold

(temperature) - lenku
(ailment) - ??? zbitisna (mi'e pier.), vaxterbi'a (mi'e filip.)

papri means specifically a page of a bound book or booklet. That is when the pages come out of the printing press, they are merely pelji boxfo until someone staples, stitches or glues them together in the back. No, a bit more than just that: a 'selpri' ke pelji boxfo (mi'e .aulun.)

cipnrgru crane front
ba'o, ki'u since snake
midju centre centimetre
mei tuple leg
jdatro mapku, jgavelfendi mitre metre