Days and Months

The days of the week are also cmene built from numbers, this time adding djed., from djedi, meaning 'day'. There is at present some disagreement about which day should be day one, though. The original convention was to follow the Judaeo-Christian convention of taking Sunday as the first day, giving

Sunday		la padjed.
Monday		la redjed.
Tuesday		la cidjed.

... and so on. (Conveniently for one of your authors, this matches Greek for Monday through to Thursday.) However, in a Logical Language Group meeting in 1992 it was agreed that Monday be day 1, and Sunday be either 7 (la zedjed.) or zero (la nodjed.) according to taste (much to at least one of your author's inconvenience.) Eventually, though, people will use whichever system they prefer until one becomes universally accepted.

This may sound chaotic, but I have gone into this point as a good example of how in Lojban a large part of the language is "left to usage" — meaning that ultimately the language depends on the way people choose to use it in practice. People are also free to work out alternative conventions for cultures which do not use a seven-day week, possibly adding to the name to make it clear; e.g. la padjedjung. could be the first day of the Chinese ten-day week. (Remember, jungo means 'Chinese'.)

Months also use numbered cmene, adding mast. (from masti 'month'), so January is la pamast. and so on. Again, since there are twelve months, we use the extra numbers, so October is la daumast. .

Just in case you're interested, the words for seasons are:

vensa		Spring
crisa		Summer
critu		Autumn
dunra		Winter

(For full definitions of these words, see the gismu list.) If the seasons where you live don't match this pattern, then you can easily create new words. For example, the rainy season or monsoon could be carvycitsi (from carvi, rain, and citsi, season) or simply la carv. . Here are some I made up for fun to give a better idea of the weather in the UK:

la lekcarv.		'the cold rain' — Spring
la mliglacarv.		'the warm (mildly-hot) rain' — Summer
la bifcarv.		'the windy rain' — Autumn
la dujycarv.		'the freezing rain' — Winter

Joking aside, this shows two features of word-building in Lojban: making cmene by losing the final vowel (which we saw in Lesson 1) and creating lujvo, or compound words. (For the same reason, you'll also see pavdjed., relmast., ...) You actually need a pretty good knowledge of Lojban to make up lujvo on the spot, but we'll learn how to make some simple lujvo later on in this course.