gotchas

Lojban gotchas, unexpected points to keep in mind

• Leftward Branching tanru Gotcha (e.g. lenku cakla ladru -- bzzt!)
• Inconsistent Gismu Place Structures Gotcha (e.g. lo tirxrxacinonice cheetah cu tirxu fi loi cukla .ije lo xirmrxipotigre zebra cu xirma fi loi dasri -- bzzt!)

• Relative Clause Veridical Quantification Gotcha (e.g. lo nanmu noi blabi -- bzzt!)
• Name Containing Selbri Relativisation Scope Gotcha (e.g. la xunre poi pendo mi -- bzzt!)

• joiku u necessary after JOI Gotcha (e.g. le ckafi joi le ladru -- bzzt!)
• le broda ku na brode Gotcha

• • This means "Not all of the brodas are brode". To say the more intuitive "(Each of) the broda(s) are not brode", the negation must be "na ku" and follow the le sumti, "le broda ku na ku brode". And Rosta, 2001/8/6
• pe necessary for sumti plus (BAI-type modifier) Gotcha (e.g. mi pinxydji loi ckafi cau loi ladru -- bzzt!)

• • Well, pe or be actually. AKA (I propose) I Shot An Elephant In My Pyjamas Gotcha
• White Knight's Song Gotcha (e.g. la djan. cmene mi -- bzzt!)

• Goatleg gotcha (e.g. vo da tuple lo'e kanba .ije re da tuple lo'e kanba -- bzzt!)
• all places equally important gotcha

• A double negative remains negative gotcha (e.g. xu do na remna -- .i mi na go'i -- bzzt!)
• Unspeakable rafsi gotcha (e.g. zo cpi rafsi zo cipni --bzzt!)

• Negative claims and universals (e.g. mi claxu lo fipybirka --bzzt!)
• Unquotable cmavo compound gotcha (e.g. mi nelci lenu mi pilno lu ganai li'u --bzzt!)

• The other Unquotable cmavo compound Gotcha (on same page) (e.g. ko'a cusku zo go'i .iku'i fo'i cusku zo nago'i --bzzt!)
• morphology of ng gotcha

• Sesame Street kei without ku Gotcha (e.g. lenu tivni la SEsamis.strit. se tcika li ze --bzzt!)
• long tanru gotcha

• lerfu pro-sumti followed by number gotcha (e.g. le gerku goi gy. paroi cmoni --bzzt!)
• abstractors with SE and connectives (this one's very esoteric)

• cu needed sometimes when unexpected gotcha
• tense/modal is not equivalent to cu gotcha

Before adding something as a gotcha, make sure it really fits the nebulous definition of a "gotcha". Before thinking that your mistake is a gotcha, please consider: Did you just make a typo? Did you just misunderstand a single aspect of the language, or was there some degree of deeper confusion, caused by the interaction of multiple features of the language? This isn't intended to prevent you from adding your gotcha, merely to make you think about more deeply about the nature of what you're reporting, so that this list doesn't simply become an enumeration of all possible mistakes.

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[[jbocre: Moved, because not really a Gotcha, and already discussed in [How to say it in Lojban|How to say it in Lojban]]:]

• There is no known, easy way to say what in English is expressed as e.g. "jbocre: The 17 tallest men". If you say "le paze clanyrai nanmu", you are actually saying that each of the 17 men are tallest, implying that they are all the same height. You have to say "The tallest man, and the second to tallest man, and the third tallest man, and the fourth tallest man ..." etc., ad nauseam.
  • I think the complaint overstated, and wish this had been asked of the mailing list first. The answers compiled under jbocre: The 17 tallest men vary, but some of them are reasonably simple, all things considered. -- nitcion

• • Certainly. ro lo clani nanmu su'epazemoi is very Lojbanic and does not imply that each of them is the tallest. The vast majority of the discussion on that page is about various ways to say "the Nth tallest man" where the fact that N is (at most 17) only complicates matters. -- rab.spir