Modern Lojban concepts

Lojban has changed. Even so, these changes aren't hard to master or understand assuming a basic of standard Lojban. The following is a brief description of some of the most common reforms and conventions used by modern speakers of Lojban.

If you lament the lack of a parser for these newer styles, there are various parsers available at Ilmentufa. The "Camxes: Beta CKT CBM" is the closest to most dialects in use as of Aug. 2025.

Reforms

tcekitau

There are many un-used and under-used cmavo taking up valuable cmavo forms like CV and CVV. Tcekitau refers to the family of reforms that takes a short, unused cmavo, and assigns it to or swaps it with an existing commonly used longer cmavo. It is named for the original swaps {ce} ↔ {ce'u}, {ki} ↔ {ke'a}, {tau} ↔ {tu'a}, but there have since been many more swaps. When modern lojbanists propose one of these swaps, we refer to it as tcekitau-ing it, e.g. "let's tcekitau voi for poi'i".

See also the tcekitaujau article on the LLG Lojban wiki.

Jacus

Also known as "Simplified Connectives", la .jacus. refers to a reform authored by Solpa'i. In brief, instead of having a separate connective for each grammatical structure, just use JA for everything. Notably, the GIhA series is replaced with JAcu, hence the name.

Cmevla-Brivla Merger (CBM)

CBM merges cmevla (name words) and brivla (verb words) into a single grammatical category. That is, cmevla can be used anywhere a brivla can including as the verb of a sentence or as the seltau in a tanru. All cmevla are verbs with definition "x1 is that which is named <NAME>". E.g. «cmeval» is equivalent to «me la .cmeval. [me'u]».

Aside we refer to morphological name words, i.e. words that end in consonants, as "cmevla", not "cmene". "la jbobau" is a cmene, but does not contain a cmevla.

jboponei

Jboponei repurposes two rarely used cmavo {po} and {nei} to write generic abstractions as pure noun phrases. That is:

{po ... [nei]}

is the same as

{losu'u ... [kei]}

This is a shorter way of saying {xu'u ... [ku'au]}, if familiar.

{voi} ({poi'i})

{poi'i} has the same grammar as NU, but creates a description with an optional [ke'a] like poi. It is so useful, that we tcekitaued it to {voi}. For example:

{lo voi mi djica lonu se klama} is modern Lojban for "The place I want as a destination".

New Sentence Links (.ajbo)

Because of #Jacus, noun connectives are unneeded. This repurposes these cmavo as new sentence fences ({.i}) with different discursive meaning. E.g., {.a} starts a new question sentence and {.o} marks a command.

Stylistic Conventions

memimoi

This exploits a grammatical oddity of mekso where me + SUMTI + moi creates an arbitrary SUMTI-th object. Stylistically, we use this as a way to express «pe» as a verb. E.g. {memimoi} can be thought of as a verb "to be mine}. In general, {me ko'a moi} is equivalent to {me zo'e pe ko'a}.

Tanru abstractions

It is a common convention that if a tertau has a commonly used abstraction slot, a generic abstraction with the seltau as the verb is placed in that slot. For example, {sutra zmadu} is implicitly {zmadu fi loka sutra}. This can nest arbitrarily deep, for example {cilre sidju cafne zenba troci} becomes {troci loka zenba loka cafne fa lonu sidju fi lonu cilre}.

Implicit abstractions with {co}

As a corollary to this, {co} can be used as a pseudo abstractor. That is

{mi djica co klama lo zarci}

is definitionally equivalent to

{mi (klama be lo zarci be'o) djica}

which by convention becomes

{mi djica lonu klama lo zarci}

uivla

Modern lojbanists use UI + the pseudo rafsi -nmo to form new zi'evla meaning to feel that emotion. E.g. {.uinmo} mean "x1 is happy about x2", and {.uenmo} means "x1 is surprised about x2".

{jai} and {tau} (i.e. {tu'a} )

Modern Lojban is much more fastidious about whether an argument is an abstraction, so words that lift an object (e.g. lo mlatu) into an abstraction are far more common. The easiest way is to prefix an argument with {tau}, e.g. {mi djica tau lo mlatu}, since {djica2} is an abstraction. Sometimes this is a grammatically inconvenient or even infeasible, in which case, {jai} is used. This is like a SE that turns an abstraction slot into an entity slot. E.g. «lo jai se djica» is "that [thing] that is wanted.

Reduplication

Some speakers will double a selbri in a tanru to add emphasis instead of {ba'e}, e.g. {la .tor.ifel. cu barda barda sai}.

Using standard grammar words

When modern Lojbanists discuss Lojban grammar, it's common for them to use typical grammar words most English speakers already know, such as "verb", "noun" and "clause".

Grammar Terminology

Lojban	English
sumti	noun
selbri	verb
bridi	clause
jufra	sentence
jonvla	conjunction

{bu} pronouns

{bu} is used to turn arbitrary words into letterals. Also, letterals in Lojban can be used as pronouns. Modern Lojbanists use this realization to great effect, e.g. {mi xabju kansa lo blabi mlatu .iu .i mlatu bu dibmle}.

Additionally, modern Lojbanists are more likely to use the form CMEVLA bu to refer to non-Latin characters than alphabetic shifts.

Attitudinals

TODO: How to actually use them from Lojbanists who know what they're doing.

{ki'a} and proper question/answer ettiquette

TODO

Popular Experimental Cmavo

{me'oi}, {la'oi} and {zo'oi}

These allow the easy transformation of single foreign word into a Lojban word. For example, la'oi Martin-Löf is short for la'o sy. Martin-Löf sy. They are delimited by spaces in writing and stops in speech.

Caption text

Cmavo	Function
me'oi	verb
la'oi	name
zo'oi	word quote

Note: These words have received valid criticism of not being culturally neutral. Languages with phonemic glottal stops, such as many Polynesian languages, have many words that cannot be used with these cmavo.

{ma'oi} and {ra'oi}

Baseline does not provide a convenient way to refer to selma'o and rafsi. These words address this.

{ma'oi} is ZO, and refers to the selma'o of the quoted word. That is, {zo ma'oi cmavo ma'oi zo}.

{ra'oi} has its own grammar, and is always followed by a rafsi. I.e., it acts like a zo-quote for rafsi. It is typically stylized as {ra'oi -raf- rafsi zo rafsi}

{pu'ei}, {ca'ei} and {ba'ei}

TODO: User:Ziren doesn't know these words.

{poi'a}/{noi'a}

These are clause level relative clauses as a metaphor to {poi} and {noi}. That is, {poi'a cizra} describes the surrounding clause as strange.