| Lojban For Beginners — velcli befi la lojban. bei loi co'a cilre | ||
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| Prev | Chapter 4. Numbers, and a few more articles | Next |
All question words in Lojban are requests to fill in an unknown value: ma asks for an unknown sumti, and mo for an unknown selbri. In Lojban xo is the question word for numbers. So, remembering the sentence re lo mi ci mensi cu nelci la rikis.martin., how would I answer the following question?
The answer, of course, is re. (But not all questions that can be answered with a number have to take xo, as we'll see in the next lesson).xo le mensi cu nelci la rikis.martin.
Tip: xo is also used in mathematics, as in
li ci su'i vo du li xo
3 + 4 = ?
A few more examples:
xo le botpi cu kunti
How many of the bottles are empty?
xo lo prenu cu klama ti
How many people come here?
do viska xo lo sonci
How many soldiers do you see?
Note: It is not actually necessary to include the lo after xo. In fact, it isn't necessary after any number — for example ci lo gerku could be simply ci gerku, if you prefer. However, some Lojbanists prefer to keep the lo for the sake of clarity.
| A final question |
Lojban has no difference between singular and plural: the dog and the dogs can both be le gerku. But suppose you wanted to make a distinction between the two; how would you do it? |