Learn Lojban with pictures

tl;dr
Hi there. I've been learning Lojban¹ for about a year and I'm not too bad with it so far.

I am looking for people who have never heard of it, or never bothered learning it, but who wouldn't mind giving it a try in a novel way.

I am doing a little experiment. I am writing a Lojban tutorial purely with pictures. It is loosely based on the A Quick Tour of Lojban Grammar, With Diagrams section of The Complete Lojban Language². The idea is:

* You shouldn't have to translate to your natural language, or any other language you speak.
* We shouldn't have to translate all the Lojban books to every language. It's just infeasible.
* You should be able to have an "intuitive", that is, kind of raw, (and here is where it is kind of experimental) unbaised interpretation of the graphics and the meaning of the words and grammar.
* Lojban being "culturally-neutral" (at some degree; we have a root word for "computer", so it applies to certain modern cultures) is great and all but all the Lojban learning materials are in English! So either we don't get potential Lojbanists, or non-native English speakers have to go through two layers of language!

I'm not really skilled at drawing but I think skilled enough to get the point across.

The irony is I am writing this post in English. How will I distribute the tutorial once it's finished? I'll leave that till later.

Why learn Lojban?

Just for fun and experimentation. Chatting with it is fun, learning it is, and teaching it is.

Get to the point

Please have a look at this (work-in-progress, so it will change frequently and get bigger) page and study the pictures, and tell me what you interpret these words to mean. If you have trouble, it's probably my fault and I'm not getting the pictures right, so don't worry.

http://jbotcan.org/xractu/xractu/xractu.html

If you like the small sample posted so far, I'll post updates in this thread, but I won't bump it unless someone shows interest.

Cheers!

¹ Lojban is a constructed, logical language, based on Loglan from the 60s. {lojban} means "logic language".
² http://jbotcan.org/cllc/

How will I distribute the tutorial once it's finished? I'll leave that till later.
More pictures, of course! I'd like to see a pictogram for "intuitive, unbiased interpretation" :)

Anyway, here's what I interpret the words to mean. I've never touched Lojban, and my native language is English.
mi → I/me (i.e. as far as I'm concerned, it means both)
do → you (singular)
ti, ta, tu → this, that, yonder
remna → person/people
mlatu → cat
cipni → bird
danlu → any living thing(s) (but I'm not sure. maybe it just means ``thing''?)
plipe → jump
jgari → hold

Will that do, Christopher?

mi → εγώ
do → εσύ
ti, ta, tu → αυτό, εκείνο, πέρα στους πέρα κάμπους
remna → μαλάκας, μαλάκω
mlatu → νιάου
cipni → τσίου
danlu → μάτσο κύτταρα
plipe → σάλτο μορτάλε
jgari → αυνανίζομαι με τη βοήθεια έμβιων και άβιων αντικειμένων

Κέρδισα κάτι;

what can i do with lolban?

You get to be a moderator and ban people while lol'ing.

>danlu → any living thing(s) (but I'm not sure. maybe it just means ``thing''?)

I think it means "animal". Nice pictures btw, OP.

cool thread:) can anyone help me translate this sentence into lojban?

"Going there by plane rather than by car will not only be cheaper but also alot faster".

>>2
All correct, except {do} is "you listener(s)", so it might not be singular. But there is no way you could tell that from the picture given until I show some pictures with little guys saying it to a group of people, for example. Good attempt. If I didn't know better I'd say you've already learned a bit of Lojban before-hand.

>>6
"Animal/creature/living thing" is correct. Thanks, btw.

>>7

"Going there by plane rather than by car will not only be cheaper but also alot faster".

Maybe something like this:

lo pu'u vinji je nai karce ku'i litru cu tolkargu po'o nai je mutce bo sutra traji

"(the process of plane and not, in contrast, car) type-of transportation is (cheap-and-fast and, not only that, very fast) type-of superlative"

There's a more wordy version but you could be just as wordy in English:

lo pu'u vinji litru cu traji lo ka tolkargu je mutce bo sutra kei fo ra ce lo pu'u karce litru

"The process of plane transportation is superlative in the property of being polar-opposite-of-expensive and much-fast, among set the latter (plane transportation ({ra})) and process of car transportation."

Also:

lo pu'u vinji litnu ku zmadu lo pu'u karce litnu ku lo ka tolkargu je mutce bo sutra

"The process of plane transportation exceeds the process of car transport in the property of being cheap and very fast."

You can cleverly shorten it to:

lo vinji ku zmadu lo karce ku lo ka tolkargu je sutra terli'u

The plane exceeds the car in the property of being cheap and fast means-of-transportation.

I think it all depends on style and what's important about what you want to express. Translating from one language to another is hard.

Consider trying to translate the following typical Lojban to another language:

ue bu'o a'u ro'i bu'o cu'i ui ro'i i'i o'e le do mamta ku iu melbi u'e au

[start surprise] [continued emotional interest] [emotional happiness] [togetherness] [closeness] your mother [love] beautiful [wonder/awe] [desire]

The name Lojban sounds like a nigger language but the language itself is more like bastard Slovakian.

HOLY SHIT I LOVE _ICEC_RE^AM

Marijuana M^UST be le_galize^d.

>>9
i guess the main language of niggers is english

>>11
Takes one to know one

hmmmmmmmmmm

yeah I kinda get it