The following cmavo are discussed in this section:

Numerical free modifiers, corresponding to English “firstly” , “secondly” , and so on, can be created by suffixing mai or mo'o of selma'o MAI to a number or a lerfu string. Here are some examples:

This does not imply that I go to the store before I go to the house: that meaning requires a tense. The sumti are simply numbered for convenience of reference. Like other free modifiers, the utterance ordinals can be inserted almost anywhere in a sentence without affecting its grammar or its meaning.

Any of the Lojban numbers can be used with MAI: romai , for example, means “all-thly” or “lastly”. Likewise, if you are enumerating a long list and have forgotten which number is wanted next, you can say ny.mai , or “Nthly”.

The difference between mai and mo'o is that mo'o enumerates larger subdivisions of a text; mai was designed for lists of numbered items, whereas mo'o was intended to subdivide structured works. If this chapter were translated into Lojban, it might number each section with mo'o : this section would then be introduced with zemo'o , or “Section 7.”