Lojban is designed so that any properly spoken Lojban utterance can be uniquely transcribed in writing, and any properly written Lojban can be spoken so as to be uniquely reproduced by another person. As a consequence, the standard Lojban orthography must assign to each distinct sound, or phoneme, a unique letter or symbol. Each letter or symbol has only one sound or, more accurately, a limited range of sounds that are permitted pronunciations for that phoneme. Some symbols indicate stress (speech emphasis) and pause, which are also essential to Lojban word recognition. In addition, everything that is represented in other languages by punctuation (when written) or by tone of voice (when spoken) is represented in Lojban by words. These two properties together are known technically as ``audio-visual isomorphism''.

Lojban uses a variant of the Latin (Roman) alphabet, consisting of the following letters and symbols:

' , . a b c d e f g i j k l m n o p r s t u v x y z

The alphabetic order given above is that of the ASCII coded character set, widely used in computers. By making Lojban alphabetical order the same as ASCII, computerized sorting and searching of Lojban text is facilitated.

The apostrophe, period, and comma need special attention. They are all used as indicators of a division between syllables, but each has a different pronunciation, and each is used for different reasons:

There exist 16 diphthongs in the Lojban language. A diphthong is a vowel sound that consists of two elements, a short vowel sound and a glide, either a labial (IPA [w]) or palatal (IPA [j]) glide, that either precedes (an on-glide) or follows (an off-glide) the main vowel. Diphthongs always constitute a single syllable.

For Lojban purposes, a vowel sound is a relatively long speech-sound that forms the nucleus of a syllable. Consonant sounds are relatively brief and normally require an accompanying vowel sound in order to be audible. Consonants may occur at the beginning or end of a syllable, around the vowel, and there may be several consonants in a cluster in either position. Each separate vowel sound constitutes a distinct syllable; consonant sounds do not affect the determination of syllables.

The six Lojban vowels are ``a'', ``e'', ``i'', ``o'', ``u'', and ``y''. The first five vowels appear freely in all kinds of Lojban words. The vowel ``y'' has a limited distribution: it appears only in Lojbanized names, in the Lojban names of the letters of the alphabet, as a glue vowel in compound words, and standing alone as a space-filler word (like English ``uh'' or ``er'').

The Lojban diphthongs are shown in the table below. (Variant pronunciations have been omitted, but are much as one would expect based on the variant pronunciations of the separate vowel letters: ``ai'' may be pronounced [Aj], for example.)

   Letters IPA Description

    ai  [aj]   an open vowel
                with palatal off-glide
    ei  [Ej]   a front mid vowel
                with palatal off-glide
    oi  [oj]   a back mid vowel
                with palatal off-glide
    au  [aw]   an open vowel
                with labial off-glide

    ia  [ja]   an open vowel
                with palatal on-glide
    ie  [jE]   a front mid vowel
                with palatal on-glide
    ii  [ji]   a front close vowel
                with palatal on-glide
    io  [jo]   a back mid vowel
                with palatal on-glide
    iu  [ju]   a back close vowel
                with palatal on-glide

    ua  [wa]   an open vowel
                with labial on-glide
    ue  [wE]   a front mid vowel
                with labial on-glide
    ui  [wi]   a front close vowel
                with labial on-glide
    uo  [wo]   a back mid vowel
                with labial on-glide
    uu  [wu]   a back close vowel
                with labial on-glide

    iy  [j«]   a central mid vowel
                with palatal on-glide
    uy  [w«]   a central mid vowel
                with labial on-glide

Lojban vowels also occur in pairs, where each vowel sound is in a separate syllable. These two vowel sounds are connected (and separated) by an apostrophe. Lojban vowel pairs should be pronounced continuously with the [h] sound between (and not by a glottal stop or pause, which would split the two vowels into separate words).

All vowel combinations are permitted in two-syllable pairs with the apostrophe separating them; this includes those which constitute diphthongs when the apostrophe is not included.

The Lojban vowel pairs are:

   a'a a'e a'i a'o a'u a'y
    e'a e'e e'i e'o e'u e'y
    i'a i'e i'i i'o i'u i'y
    o'a o'e o'i o'o o'u o'y
    u'a u'e u'i u'o u'u u'y
    y'a y'e y'i y'o y'u y'y

A consonant sound is a relatively brief speech-sound that precedes or follows a vowel sound in a syllable; its presence either preceding or following does not add to the count of syllables, nor is a consonant required in either position for any syllable. Lojban has seventeen consonants: for the purposes of this section, the apostrophe is not counted as a consonant.

An important distinction dividing Lojban consonants is that of voicing. The following table shows the unvoiced consonants and the corresponding voiced ones:

   UNVOICED    VOICED

    p       b
    t       d
    k       g
    f       v
    c       j
    s       z
    x       -

The consonant ``x'' has no voiced counterpart in Lojban. The remaining consonants, ``l'', ``m'', ``n'', and ``r'', are typically pronounced with voice, but can be pronounced unvoiced.

Consonant sounds occur in languages as single consonants, or as doubled, or as clustered combinations. Single consonant sounds are isolated by word boundaries or by intervening vowel sounds from other consonant sounds. Doubled consonant sounds are either lengthened like [s] in English ``hiss'', or repeated like [k] in English ``backcourt''. Consonant clusters consist of two or more single or doubled consonant sounds in a group, each of which is different from its immediate neighbor. In Lojban, doubled consonants are excluded altogether, and clusters are limited to two or three members, except in Lojbanized names.

Consonants can occur in three positions in words: initial (at the beginning), medial (in the middle), and final (at the end). In many languages, the sound of a consonant varies depending upon its position in the word. In Lojban, as much as possible, the sound of a consonant is unrelated to its position. In particular, the common American English trait of changing a ``t'' between vowels into a ``d'' or even a flap (IPA [¨]) is unacceptable in Lojban.

Lojban imposes no restrictions on the appearance of single consonants in any valid consonant position; however, no consonant (including syllabic consonants) occurs final in a word except in Lojbanized names.

Pairs of consonants can also appear freely, with the following restrictions:

1)

It is forbidden for both consonants to be the same, as this would violate the rule against double consonants.

2)

It is forbidden for one consonant to be voiced and the other unvoiced. The consonants ``l'', ``m'', ``n'', and ``r'' are exempt from this restriction. As a result, ``bf'' is forbidden, and so is ``sd'', but both ``fl'' and ``vl'', and both ``ls'' and ``lz'', are permitted.

3)

It is forbidden for both consonants to be drawn from the set ``c'', ``j'', ``s'', ``z''.

4)

The specific pairs ``cx'', ``kx'', ``xc'', ``xk'', and ``mz'' are forbidden.

Many languages do not have consonant clusters at all, and even those languages that do have them often allow only a subset of the full Lojban set. As a result, the Lojban design allows the use of a buffer sound between consonant combinations which a speaker finds unpronounceable. This sound may be any non-Lojbanic vowel which is clearly separable by the listener from the Lojban vowels. Some possibilities are IPA [I], [ö], [U], or even [Y], but there probably is no universally acceptable buffer sound. When using a consonant buffer, the sound should be made as short as possible. Two examples showing such buffering (we will use [I] in this chapter) are:

A Lojban word has one syllable for each of its vowels, diphthongs, and syllabic consonants (referred to simply as ``vowels'' for the purposes of this section.) Syllabication rules determine which of the consonants separating two vowels belong to the preceding vowel and which to the following vowel. These rules are conventional only; the phonetic facts of the matter about how utterances are syllabified in any language are always very complex.

A single consonant always belongs to the following vowel. A consonant pair is normally divided between the two vowels; however, if the pair constitute a valid initial consonant pair, they are normally both assigned to the following vowel. A consonant triple is divided between the first and second consonants. Apostrophes and commas, of course, also represent syllable breaks. Syllabic consonants usually appear alone in their syllables.

It is permissible to vary from these rules in Lojbanized names. For example, there are no definitive rules for the syllabication of names with consonant clusters longer than three consonants. The comma is used to indicate variant syllabication or to explicitly mark normal syllabication.

Here are some examples of Lojban syllabication:

There are many dialects of English, thus making it difficult to define the standardized symbols of the IPA in terms useful to every reader. All the symbols used in this chapter are repeated here, in more or less alphabetical order, with examples drawn from General American. In addition, some attention is given to the Received Pronunciation of (British) English. These two dialects are referred to as GA and RP respectively. Speakers of other dialects should consult a book on phonetics or their local television sets.

[È]

An IPA indicator of primary stress; the syllable which follows [È] receives primary stress.

[/]

An allowed variant of Lojban ``.''. This sound is not usually considered part of English. It is the catch in your throat that sometimes occurs prior to the beginning of a word (and sometimes a syllable) which starts with a vowel. In some dialects, like Cockney and some kinds of American English, it is used between vowels instead of ``t'': ``bottle'' [bo/l`]. The English interjection ``uh-oh!'' almost always has it between the syllables.

[ù]

A symbol indicating that the previous vowel is to be spoken for a longer time than usual. Lojban vowels can be pronounced long in order to make a greater contrast with buffer vowels.

[a]

The preferred pronunciation of Lojban ``a''. This sound doesn't occur in GA, but sounds somewhat like the ``ar'' of ``park'', as spoken in RP or New England American. It is pronounced further forward in the mouth than [A].

[A]

An allowed variant of Lojban ``a''. The ``a'' of GA ``father''. The sound [a] is preferred because GA speakers often relax an unstressed [A] into a schwa [«], as in the usual pronunciations of ``about'' and ``sofa''. Because schwa is a distinct vowel in Lojban, English speakers must either learn to avoid this shift or to use [a] instead: the Lojban word for ``sofa'' is ``sfofa'', pronounced [sfofa] or [sfofA] but never [sfof«] which would be the non-word ``sfofy''.

[Q]

Not a Lojban sound. The ``a'' of English ``cat''.

[b]

The preferred pronunciation of Lojban ``b''. As in English ``boy'', ``sober'', or ``job''.

[B]

An allowed variant of Lojban ``v''. Not an English sound; the Spanish ``b'' or ``v'' between vowels. This sound should not be used for Lojban ``b''.

[d]

The preferred pronunciation of Lojban ``d''. As in English ``dog'', ``soda'', or ``mad''.

[E]

The preferred pronunciation of Lojban ``e''. The ``e'' of English ``met''.

[e]

An allowed variant of Lojban ``e''. This sound is not found in English, but is the Spanish ``e'', or the tense ``e'' of Italian. The vowel of English ``say'' is similar except for the off-glide: you can learn to make this sound by holding your tongue steady while saying the first part of the English vowel.

[«]

The preferred pronunciation of Lojban ``y''. As in the ``a'' of English ``sofa'' or ``about''. Schwa is generally unstressed in Lojban, as it is in English. It is a totally relaxed sound made with the tongue in the middle of the mouth.

[f]

The preferred pronunciation of Lojban ``f''. As in ``fee'', ``loafer'', or ``chef''.

[¸]

An allowed variant of Lojban ``f''. Not an English sound; the Japanese ``f'' sound.

[g]

The preferred pronunciation of Lojban ``g''. As in English ``go'', ``eagle'', or ``dog''.

[h]

The preferred pronunciation of the Lojban apostrophe sound. As in English ``aha'' or ``oh, hello''.

[i]

The preferred pronunciation of Lojban ``i''. Essentially like the English vowel of ``pizza'' or ``machine'', although the English vowel is sometimes pronounced with an off-glide, which should not be present in Lojban.

[I]

A possible Lojban buffer vowel. The ``i'' of English ``bit''.

[ö]

A possible Lojban buffer vowel. The ``u'' of ``just'' in some varieties of GA, those which make the word sound more or less like ``jist''. Also Russian ``y'' as in ``byt''' (to be); like a schwa [«], but higher in the mouth.

[j]

Used in Lojban diphthongs beginning or ending with ``i''. Like the ``y'' in English ``yard'' or ``say''.

[k]

The preferred pronunciation of Lojban ``k''. As in English ``kill'', ``token'', or ``flak''.

[l]

The preferred pronunciation of Lojban ``l''. As in English ``low'', ``nylon'', or ``excel''.

[l`]

The syllabic version of Lojban ``l'', as in English ``bottle'' or ``middle''.

[m]

The preferred pronunciation of Lojban ``m''. As in English ``me'', ``humor'', or ``ham''.

[m`]

The syllabic version of Lojban ``m''. As in English ``catch 'em'' or ``bottom''.

[n]

The preferred pronunciation of Lojban ``n''. As in English ``no'', ``honor'', or ``son''.

[n`]

The syllabic version of Lojban ``n''. As in English ``button''.

[N]

An allowed variant of Lojban ``n'', especially in Lojbanized names and before ``g'' or ``k''. As in English ``sing'' or ``singer'' (but not ``finger'' or ``danger'').

[N`]

An allowed variant of Lojban syllabic ``n'', especially in Lojbanized names.

[o]

The preferred pronunciation of Lojban ``o''. As in the French ``haute (cuisine)'' or Spanish ``como''. There is no exact English equivalent of this sound. The nearest GA equivalent is the ``o'' of ``dough'' or ``joke'', but it is essential that the off-glide (a [w]-like sound) at the end of the vowel is not pronounced when speaking Lojban. The RP sound in these words is [«w] in IPA terms, and has no [o] in it at all; unless you can speak with a Scots, Irish, or American accent, you may have trouble with this sound.

[]

An allowed variant of Lojban ``o'', especially before ``r''. This sound is a shortened form of the ``aw'' in GA ``dawn'' (for those people who don't pronounce ``dawn'' and ``Don'' alike; if you do, you may have trouble with this sound). In RP, but not GA, it is the ``o'' of ``hot''.

[p]

The preferred pronunciation of Lojban ``p''. As in English ``pay'', ``super'', or ``up''.

[r]

One version of Lojban ``r''. Not an English sound. The Spanish ``rr'' and the Scots ``r'', a tongue-tip trill.

[¨]

One version of Lojban ``r''. As in GA ``right'', ``baron'', or ``car''. Not found in RP.

[R]

One version of Lojban ``r''. In GA, appears as a variant of ``t'' or ``d'' in the words ``metal'' and ``medal'' respectively. A tongue-tip flap. [{] One version of Lojban ``r''. Not an English sound. The French or German ``r'' in ``reine'' or ``rot'' respectively. A uvular trill.

[r`], [¨`], [R`], [{`] are syllabic versions of the above. [¨`] appears in the GA (but not RP) pronunciation of ``bird''.

[s]

The preferred pronunciation of Lojban ``s''. As in English ``so'', ``basin'', or ``yes''.

[S]

The preferred pronunciation of Lojban ``c''. The ``sh'' of English ``ship'', ``ashen'', or ``dish''.

[§]

An allowed variant of Lojban ``s''. Not an English sound. The Hindi retroflex ``s'' with underdot, or Klingon ``S''.

[t]

The preferred pronunciation of Lojban ``t''. As in English ``tea'', ``later'', or ``not''. It is important to avoid the GA habit of pronouncing the ``t'' between vowels as [d] or [R].

[T]

Not normally a Lojban sound, but a possible variant of Lojban ``'''. The ``th'' of English ``thin'' (but not ``then'').

[v]

The preferred pronunciation of Lojban ``v''. As in English ``voice'', ``savor'', or ``live''.

[w]

Used in Lojban diphthongs beginning or ending with ``u''. Like the ``w'' in English ``wet'' [wEt] or ``cow'' [kAw].

[x]

The preferred pronunciation of Lojban ``x''. Not normally an English sound, but used in some pronunciations of ``loch'' and ``Bach''; ``gh'' in Scots ``might'' and ``night''. The German ``Ach-Laut''. To pronounce [x], force air through your throat without vibrating your vocal chords; there should be lots of scrape.

[Y]

A possible Lojban buffer vowel. Not an English sound: the ``ü'' of German ``hübsch''.

[z]

The preferred pronunciation of Lojban ``z''. As in English ``zoo'', ``hazard'', or ``fizz''.

[Z]

The preferred pronunciation of Lojban ``j''. The ``si'' of English ``vision'', or the consonant at the end of GA ``garage''.

[½]

An allowed variant of Lojban ``z''. Not an English sound. The voiced version of [§].

Here is a list of English words that contain diphthongs that are similar to the Lojban diphthongs. This list does not constitute an official pronunciation guide; it is intended as a help to English-speakers.

   Lojban      English

    ai      ``pie''
    ei      ``pay''
    oi      ``boy''
    au      ``cow''

    ia      ``yard''
    ie      ``yes''
    ii      ``ye''
    io      ``yodel'' (in GA only)
    iu      ``unicorn'' or ``few''

    ua      ``suave''
    ue      ``wet''
    ui      ``we''
    uo      ``woe'' (in GA only)
    uu      ``woo''

    iy          ``million'' (the ``io'' part, that is)
    uy          ``was'' (when unstressed)

The following notes describe ways in which Lojban has been written or could be written that differ from the standard orthography explained in the rest of this chapter. Nobody needs to read this section except people with an interest in the obscure. Technicalities are used without explanation or further apology.

There exists an alternative orthography for Lojban, which is designed to be as compatible as possible (but no more so) with the authority used in pre-Lojban versions of Loglan. The consonants undergo no change, except that ``x'' is replaced by ``h''. The individual vowels likewise remain unchanged. However, the vowel pairs and diphthongs are changed as follows:

``ai'', ``ei'', ``oi'', ``au'' become ``ai'', ``ei'', ``oi'', ``ao''.

``ia'' through ``iu'' and ``ua'' through ``uu'' remain unchanged.

``a'i'', ``e'i'', ``o'i'' and ``a'o'' become ``a,i'', ``e,i'', ``o,i'' and ``a,o''.

``i'a'' through ``i'u'' and ``u'a'' through ``u'u'' are changed to ``ia'' through ``iu'' and ``ua'' through ``uu'' in lujvo and cmavo other than attitudinals, but become ``i,a'' through ``i,u'' and ``u,a'' through ``u,u'' in names, fu'ivla, and attitudinal cmavo.

All other vowel pairs simply drop the apostrophe.

The result of these rules is to eliminate the apostrophe altogether, replacing it with comma where necessary, and otherwise with nothing. In addition, names and the cmavo ``.i'' are capitalized, and irregular stress is marked with an apostrophe (now no longer used for a sound) following the stressed syllable.

Three points must be emphasized about this alternative orthography:

It is not standard, and has not been used.

It does not represent any changes to the standard Lojban phonology; it is simply a representation of the same phonology using a different written form.

It was designed to aid in a planned rapprochement between the Logical Language Group and The Loglan Institute, a group headed by James Cooke Brown. The rapprochement never took place.

Finally, an orthography using the Tengwar of Féanor, a fictional orthography invented by J. R. R. Tolkien and described in the Appendixes to The Lord Of The Rings, has been devised for Lojban. The following mapping, which closely resembles that used for Westron, will be meaningful only to those who have read those appendixes. In brief, the tincotéma and parmatéma are used in the conventional ways; the calmatéma represents palatal consonants, and the quessetéma represents velar consonants.

   t   tinco       p   parma
    -   calma       k   quesse
    d   ando        b   umbar
    -   anga        g   ungwe
    -   thule       f   formen
    c   harma       x   hwesta
    -   anto        v   ampa
    j   anca        -   unque
    n   numen       m   malta
    -   noldo       -   nwalme
    r   ore     u   vala
    i   anna        -   vilya

The letters ``vala'' and ``anna'' are used for ``u'' and ``i'' only when those letters are used to represent glides. Of the additional letters, ``r'', ``l'', ``s'', and ``z'' are written with ``rómen'', ``lambe'', ``silme'', and ``áre/``esse'' respectively; the inverted forms are used as free variants.

Lojban, like Quenya, is a vowel-last language, so tehtar are read as following the tengwar on which they are placed. The conventional tehtar are used for the five regular vowels, and the under-dot for ``y''. The Lojban apostrophe is represented by ``halla''. There is no equivalent of the Lojban comma or period.

Last modified: Mon Jun 27 23:10:59 PDT 2005