Chapter 18: lojbau mekso: Mathematical Expressions in Lojban

2. Lojban numbers

The following cmavo are discussed in this section:

pa  PA  1
re  PA  2
ci  PA  3
vo  PA  4
mu  PA  5
xa  PA  6
ze  PA  7
bi  PA  8
so  PA  9
no  PA  0           

The simplest kind of mekso are numbers, which are cmavo or compound cmavo. There are cmavo for each of the 10 decimal digits, and numbers greater than 9 are made by stringing together the cmavo. Some examples:

✥2.1  pa re ci
one two three
123
one hundred and twenty three

✥2.2   pa no
one zero
10
ten

✥2.3   pa re ci vo mu xa ze bi so no
one two three four five six seven eight nine zero
1234567890
one billion, two hundred and thirty-four million,
    five hundred and sixty-seven thousand,
    eight hundred and ninety.

Therefore, there are no separate cmavo for “ten”, “hundred”, etc.

There is a pattern to the digit cmavo (except for “no”, 0) which is worth explaining. The cmavo from 1 to 5 end in the vowels “a”, “e”, “i”, “o”, “u” respectively; and the cmavo from 6 to 9 likewise end in the vowels “a”, “e”, “i”, and “o” respectively. None of the digit cmavo begin with the same consonant, to make them easy to tell apart in noisy environments.