John Woldemar Cowan

“ Therefore, the “se'e” convention is only intelligible to those who know the underlying character set. For precisely specifying a particular character, however, it has the advantages of unambiguity and (relative) cultural neutrality, and therefore Lojban provides a means for those with access to descriptions of such character sets to take advantage of them. ”

“ Very roughly, Chinese characters represent single elements of meaning; also very roughly, they represent single syllables of spoken Chinese. There is in principle no limit to the number of Chinese characters that can exist, and many thousands are in regular use.
It is hopeless for Lojban, with its limited lerfu and shift words, to create an alphabet which will match this diversity. However, there are various possible ways around the problem. ”

“ Since different alphabets require different punctuation marks, the interpretation of a “lau”-marked lerfu word is affected by the current alphabet shift and the current font shift.
What about Chinese characters? Chinese characters (“han4zi4” in Chinese, “kanji” in Japanese) represent an entirely different approach to writing from alphabets or syllabaries. (A syllabary, such as Japanese hiragana or Amharic writing, has one lerfu for each syllable of the spoken language.) ”

“ Some alien lerfu may simply not have any shifted equivalent, forcing the speaker to fall back on a “bu” form. Since a “bu” form may mean different things in different alphabets, it is safest to employ a shift word even when “bu” forms are in use.
Shifts for several alphabets have been assigned cmavo of selma'o BY:
lo'a Latin/Roman/Lojban alphabet ge'o Greek alphabet je'o Hebrew alphabet jo'o Arabic alphabet ru'o Cyrillic alphabet The cmavo “zai” (of selma'o LAU) is used to create shift words to still other alphabets. ”

“ Section 19 contains a table of proposed lerfu words for some common accent marks.
Punctuation marks Lojban does not have punctuation marks as such: the denpa bu and the slaka bu are really a part of the alphabet. Other languages, however, use punctuation marks extensively. As yet, Lojban does not have any words for these punctuation marks, but a mechanism exists for devising them: the cmavo “lau” of selma'o LAU. “lau” must always be followed by a BY word; the interpretation of the BY word is changed from a lerfu to a punctuation mark. ”

“ Still, the capability of spelling out words does exist in Lojban.
Note that the lerfu words ending in “y” were written (in Example 2.1 and Example 2.2) with pauses after them. It is not strictly necessary to pause after such lerfu words, but failure to do so can in some cases lead to ambiguities:
2.3) mi cy. claxu I lerfu-“c” without I am without (whatever is referred to by) the letter “c”. without a pause after “cy” would be interpreted as:
2.4) micyclaxu (Observative:) doctor-without Something unspecified is without a doctor. ”

“ In principle it would be all right to map “ty.” to “phi” or even “omega”, but such an arbitrary relationship would be extremely hard to remember.
Where no obvious closest counterpart exists, some more or less arbitrary choice must be made. ”

“ The existence of these names does not mean that you should insert “.uibu” into running Lojban text to indicate that you are happy, or “zo'obu” when something is funny; instead, use the appropriate attitudinal directly.
Likewise, “joibu” represents the ampersand character, “&”, based on the cmavo “joi” meaning “mixed and”. Many more such lerfu words will probably be invented in future. ”

“ A lerfu string as selbri (followed by a cmavo of selma'o MOI) : 11.3) le vi ratcu ny.moi le'i mi ratcu the here rat is-nth-of the-set-of my rats This rat is my Nth rat. A lerfu string as utterance ordinal (followed by a cmavo of selma'o MAI) : 11.4) ny.mai Nthly A lerfu string as subscript (preceded by “xi” of selma'o XI) : 11.5) xy. xi ky. x sub k A lerfu string as quantifier (enclosed in “vei ... ve'o” parentheses) : 11.6) vei ny. [ve'o] lo prenu (“n”) persons The parentheses are required because “ny. lo prenu” would be two separate sumti, “ny.” and “lo prenu”. ”