4.7 fu'ivla
phonemes are converted to their closest Lojban equivalent and modifications are made as necessary to make the word a legitimate Lojban fu'ivla-form word. All fu'ivla:
- must contain a consonant cluster in the first five letters of the word; if this consonant cluster is at the beginning, it must either be a permissible initial consonant pair, or a longer cluster such that each pair of adjacent consonants in the cluster is a permissible initial consonant pair: spraile is acceptable, but not ktraile or trkaile;
- must end in one or more vowels;
- must not be gismu or lujvo, or any combination of cmavo, gismu, and lujvo; furthermore, a fu'ivla with a CV cmavo joined to the front of it must not have the form of a lujvo (the so-called “slinku'i test”, not discussed further in this book);
- cannot contain y, although they may contain syllabic pronunciations of Lojban consonants;
- like other brivla, are stressed on the penultimate syllable.
Note that consonant triples or larger clusters that are not at the beginning of a fu'ivla can be quite flexible, as long as all consonant pairs are permissible. There is no need to restrict fu'ivla clusters to permissible initial pairs except at the beginning.
This is a fairly liberal definition and allows quite a lot of possibilities within “fu'ivla space”. Stage 3 fu'ivla can be made easily on the fly, as lujvo can, because the procedure for forming them always guarantees a word that cannot violate any of the rules. Stage 4 fu'ivla require running tests that are not simple to characterize or perform, and should be made only after deliberation and by someone knowledgeable about all the considerations that apply.
Here is a simple and reliable procedure for making a non-Lojban word into a valid Stage 3 fu'ivla:
- Eliminate all double consonants and silent letters.
- Convert all sounds to their closest Lojban equivalents. Lojban y, however, may not be used in any fu'ivla.
- If the last letter is not a vowel, modify the ending so that the word ends in a vowel, either by removing a final consonant or by adding a suggestively chosen final vowel.
- If the first letter is not a consonant, modify the beginning so that the word begins with a consonant, either by removing an initial vowel or adding a suggestively chosen initial consonant.
- Prefix the result of steps 1-5 with a 4-letter rafsi that categorizes the fu'ivla into a “topic area”. It is only safe to use a 4-letter rafsi; short rafsi sometimes produce invalid fu'ivla. Hyphenate the rafsi to the rest of the fu'ivla with an r-hyphen; if that would produce a double r, use an n-hyphen instead; if the rafsi ends in r and the rest of the fu'ivla begins with n (or vice versa), or if the rafsi ends in "r" and the rest of the fu'ivla begins with "tc", "ts", "dj", or "dz" (using "n" would result in a phonotactically impermissible cluster), use an l-hyphen. (This is the only use of l-hyphen in Lojban.)
Alternatively, if a CVC-form short rafsi is available it can be used instead of the long rafsi. - Remember that the stress necessarily appears on the penultimate (next-to-the-last) syllable.
In this section, the hyphen is set off with commas in the examples, but these commas are not required in writing, and the hyphen need not be pronounced as a separate syllable.
Here are a few examples:
- Example 4.46
- spaghetti (from English or Italian)
- spageti (Lojbanize)
- cidj,r,spageti (prefix long rafsi)
- dja,r,spageti (prefix short rafsi)
where cidj- is the 4-letter rafsi for cidja, the Lojban gismu for “food”, thus categorizing cidjrspageti as a kind of food. The form with the short rafsi happens to work, but such good fortune cannot be relied on: in any event, it means the same thing.
