Welcome to this website!
It is a tool to help you learn lojban by reading:
We present here many texts in lojban. By hovering your mouse above a word or a sentence, it’s translation is shown:
Hover over this word: “{xamgu|good}”
You can have a whole sentence translated, and some words in the same sentence be given a more specific translation:
“{.ui do {cilre|learn} fi lo {jbobau|the lojban language}|You are learning lojban, nice!}” ← This whole sentence is translated, but if you hover over “{cilre~x1 learns x2 (du'u) about subject x3 from source x4 (obj./event) by method x5 (event/process).}” and “{jbobau~l1=b1 is Lojban used by b2 to express/communicate b3 (si'o/du'u, not quote).}”, you will have the translation of these words instead.
Once you are familiarized with a word (because, let’s say, it appeared many times before in the text you are reading), we do not show it’s translation anymore… Unless you click on it!
“{jbobau~Lojban (the language)}” ← nothing is shown when you hover this word, but try clicking on it…
But… How can you know that a word is translated, or that you should click on it? This is where the button in the top right of this page comes in: in lojban, “{stura~structure}” means “structure”. When you click on it, we change the aspect of the words to reflect where are the translations. Translations of sentences have a light blue background, and the more specific we get, the more dark the blue get. When you mouse over a word, it’s background turns red, so you know exactly which word you are translating (The surrounding expression also turns into a lighter red. The darkest red is the one being translated). Words that you have to click to see their translation are in green (this time, the text is green, not the background).
We reproduce this button¹ here for you, with a sentence right below it, so you can see it’s effect clearly:
\{{stura|structure}\}
{.i|start of a sentence} {{mi|I} {nelci|like} {lo jbobau~lojban} |I like lojban,} .i {{ku'i|but} {ri|it} {nandu|is difficult to} {mi~me} lo {nu|the event of} mi {djuno|knowing} {{mo'a|too few} {{lojbo|lojban} {valsi|word} |lojbanic word} |too few lojbanic words} | but I find it difficult while I don’t know much vocabulary.}
Well… I think this is all you need to know to start reading texts! Here is a list of the texts that are translated with this tool.
If you want to contribute to the project (by adding texts, correcting errors, modifying the code…), the git repository is here.
Hopefully this is the only english you will ever read on this website. Everything else will be in lojban (And if you want to understand it… Use your mouse!).
this button¹: we do not show the structure by default because it is ugly and distracting. And while we may be able, with a lot of research, to correct the ugly part, I am not sure we can do away with the distraction. What’s more, having this beautiful black and white, book like text with no easy mean to know if something is translated or not, you have an incentive to explore and stay curious… :-°