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.