Wiktionary:About Lojban

This is a Wiktionary policy, guideline or common practices page. This is a draft proposal. It is unofficial, and it is unknown whether it is widely accepted by Wiktionary editors. Policies – Entries: CFI - EL - NORM - NPOV - QUOTE - REDIR - DELETE. Languages: LT - AXX. Others: BLOCK - BOTS - VOTES.

All text in Wiktionary should be in English with the sole exception of the entry words themselves, together with any examples and quotations. Those looking for definitions in Lojban should look in the Lojban Wiktionary. This guide is intended for those editing Lojban words, it is a supplement to Wiktionary’s page: Wiktionary:Entry layout explained.

Each entry must contain at least two headings Lojban and and a POS heading, where “POS” is shorthand for “Part of speech heading”. The sample code below shows the text for a brivla, further details will follow below, at present the pre-POS headings will be considered:

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==Lojban==

===Brivla=== 

Pre-POS headings

Details will be given for each of the three common pre-POS headings and the “See also” header.

==Lojban==

===Alternative forms===

===Etymology===

===Pronunciation===

===Brivla=== 

See also (at top)

Not a heading; if it is used the See also message should appear at the very top of the page where it will be easily seen by a user who has mistyped or is uncertain of the capitalisation, hyphenation or stress accents of a word, and appears as:
      See also Pan, PAN, pan-, and Pan-
It is not a heading and uses the template {{also}}, providing links to words of different meaning but similar spelling. Words of similar etymology could appear here, but should also be listed under Related terms.

Alternative forms

This is the place for an alphabetical list of words of identical meaning and etymology but difference in spelling, such as trixexo and trixexu. Words of similar etymology but different meaning should appear under Related terms, unrelated but similarly spelt words should appear under See also.

The canonical form of a lujvo is determined by the lujvo scoring algorithm; the canonical form of a type-3 fu'ivla is the one with a 4-letter rafsi. These are not alternative spellings, but regular morphological variants. In the canonical form, list the alternative forms in use under this header. In the alternative form, place a link to the canonical form in the definition.

Etymology

For fu'ivla and calque lujvo, write an etymology following the usual guidelines (Wiktionary:Etymology). For gismu, refer to Lojban.org’s gismu Etymology and Mublin’s Lojban Etymology lists and enter the words in the six source languages that contributed to the gismu. Note:

• Words in inflecting languages are listed without their desinences. Enter them here with them.
• Lojban words in which o resulted from Spanish ue have their Spanish source word transliterated with o. See vorme for an example.
• Many Chinese words are listed with e where o would be transliterated. See gerku.
• A few typos crept into the words as the gismu were being compiled. Enter the word as it is actually spelled in the source language, and note the typo.
• Since Lojban’s root words have been designed so common sounds are used for common meanings, enter only words that have some sounds in common with the gismu.

Parts of Speech headings

The heading (POS) should be replaced by one of the following: Cmavo, Gismu, Rafsi, Brivla, Proper noun. The expected content under each of these is described, for each part of speech, below:

1. Cmavo

   i.e. ===Cmavo | Particle or Structure Word===

   • This is a closed category (at least, definitely, for simple cmavo): include only words in the ma'oste (Lojban.org’s published word list for structure words).
   • Use this header also for cmavo clusters, though the category for these would be Category:Lojban cmavo clusters instead of Category:Lojban cmavo.
     • Cmavo clusters have their selma'o marked with an asterisk in the ma'oste. Individual cmavo do not.
   • In the header line, use template {{jbo-cmavo}} (unless the cmavo is a cluster).
2. Gismu

   i.e. ===Gismu | Root Word===

   • This is a closed category, and WT already appears to have entries for all of Lojban’s gismu in the Lojban.org’s published gimste (gismu wordlist).
   • The header line for such entry uses template {{jbo-gismu}}.
3. Rafsi

   i.e. ===Rafsi | Affix or Combining Form===

   • This is a closed category: include only entries in Wikibook’s Lojban/Rafsi list.
   • In the header line, use template {{jbo-rafsi}}.
   • In the definition line, use template {{jbo-rafsi of}}.
4. Brivla

   i.e. ===Brivla | Content Word===

   • Use this for lujvo (“compound word”) and fu'ivla (“loanword”), categorized under Category:Lojban lujvo and Category:Lojban fu'ivla respectively. Do not use this for gismu (“root words”): for gismu the POS header “Gismu” is used instead.
5. Proper noun

   i.e. ===Cmene | Proper Noun===

   • Use this for all three kinds of cmene (“[Term?]”): cmevla cmene (“[Term?]”), lujvo cmene (“[Term?]”), and fu'ivla cmene (“[Term?]”); which go in categories Category:Lojban cmene, Category:Lojban lujvo cmene, and Category:Lojban fu'ivla cmene, respectively.

Notes

• The first three are closed categories: they are “hardwired” into the Lojban baseline. Any such words should be automatically includable (without second thought) in WT, since they are, by definition (not to say by LLG’s fiat), part of Lojban.
• The last two are open categories: new Lojban words in these categories could be coined ad hoc, so think twice and proceed with caution before adding any such terms to WT as such words might have trouble meeting the requirements of CFI.
  • A similar admonition applies to the cmavo clusters (though perhaps less strong because if a cmavo cluster is made up of simpler known cmavo (“particle or structure words”) and it gets parsed correctly (either by jboski or the Official Parser) then the cluster qualifies as Lojbanic (on the other hand, this clustering could be applied unboundedly to yield silly long nonce words e.g.: “bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk” (which would not be very useful), so a CFI caution still applies)).

Related terms

This is for etymologically related terms, such as ricrceraso (“cherry tree”) and rutrceraso (“cherry fruit”) both of which are based on ceraso (“cherry”).

Derived terms

For a gismu, list here the lujvo and type-3 fu'ivla derived from it.

See also

List here semantically related terms, such as tanko and sigja which are related because of their meanings.

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Criteria for inclusion

Lojban lemma forms must be cited with 3 independent quotations showing use and spanning more than a year, per WT:ATTEST. A corpus exists of Lojban usage at https://korp.alexburka.com/