Quotes (c-)

ci (CI) allows quoting a single Eberban word (particle, root, borrowing, compound), ignoring its grammar. It has the definition [E:tca man] is word [word].

cie will instead express the family of the word.

• ci fe : [E:tca man] is the word "fe".
• cie fe : [E:tca man] is word family FE.
• ci spi: [E:tca man] is the word "spi".
• cie spi: [E:tca man] is the concept of a root word.

ce (CE) and cei (CEI) allow, respectively, starting and ending a spelling quote that is composed of units representing single characters. These units begin with either of the following: a single consonant (including sonorants), an initial consonant pair, or nothing. They are then followed by a series of vowels which can be separated by h.

Since spelling is usually used in noisy environments to clarify how words are written, units representing Eberban characters include some redundancy to help recognition.

Spaces between them is optional, however if there is no space before a unit starting with a vowel then a pause (’) must be inserted.

Units starting with an initial consonant pair are reserved to encode foreign characters in the future.

Examples:

• za ce bu o bu cei = named B-O-B
• tian de ce ti i a nu cei = tian (spelled T-I-A-N)

ceu is another member of CE that spells the sounds of a quote.

ca (CA family) allows quoting any grammatically correct Eberban text, and is terminated by cai (CAI). The text can itself contain inner ca quotes as cai will match its opening ca. The quote acts as a predicate with meaning [E:tca ecaskan] is text [text]. (ecaskan being the predicate word for a grammatically correct Eberban quote, while skan is the word for a quote or string of arbitrary data).

co (CO) allows quoting anything such as foreign text, grammatically incorrect Eberban text, or even arbitrary data. co has two quotation modes :

• if immediately followed by a [ (which can be prefixed by spaces), then it quotes foreign text until ] is reached. Thus this cannot quote text that contains ].
• otherwise it is followed by a single arbitrary root or particle, which has the role of a delimiter (it is not necessary for it to be an existing particle or root, only a valid form), followed by [. Any following characters (including spaces) are considered part of the quoted text, while in speech following pause is also considered part of the quote. The quote ends when this word appears again prefixed by ]. The delimiter word prefixed by a ] must NOT appear in the text, either written with same letters or pronounced the same way (reminder that ] is uttered as a palatal click), as it will be considered to be the end of the quote, and the remaining part will leak out of the quote.

This whole block acts as a predicate with the definition [E:tca skan] is foreign text/arbitrary data with content: [content].

As the content may be unreadable for the speaker, they can use the single word coi (COI) instead of the full quote. Foreign quotes are the canonical way to embed things such as images or URLs into Eberban text. It is recommended however to provide a description in Eberban to help comprehension for all speakers, listeners or readers.