Lunarian
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Overview
Lunarian is/was/will be the language spoken by the people of the moon during the "Silver Millenium" based on this SailorMoon fanfiction (of which I am not the writer). It is a very fluid language in which it is difficult to tell where one word ends and the next begins. I started a vauge topic on the phonetics in the conlang section of the forum here. It should also be said that the term "Lunarian" is the Terran word for the language.
This language is only in the beginnings of its construction. (Hence why it doesn't have its name in its own language yet; I don't actually have many words!) Input/advice would be very gratefully accepted! I also don't really know what I'm doing, having a shaky foundation of linguistics at best.
NOTE: Any time I say "English", I am referring to American English unless otherwise specified.
Word Construction
Phoneme Inventory
Vowels:
Erm. I'm working on it. @.@ The vowels are developing as I make words.
Consonants:
Fricatives are used much more often than the plosives.
plosives: p<p> b<b> t<t> d<d> k<k> g<g> nasal: F<m> n<n> fricative: f<f> v<v> T<th> s<s> z<z> S<sh> Z<j> h<h> approx.: r\<r> j<y> lat. approx.: l<l> And also W<w>, the voiceless labial-velar fricative
Consonant Mutation:
I'm fiddling around with this a bit.. I'm not sure I'll keep it. I like the idea of consonant mutation, but as of yet I don't have a use for it. I may completely re-do the grammar and use this. Um, this part is here so that I don't forget and what I was planning on doing if I do decide to use it later. Also, it would appear that I originally completely misunderstood the use of consonant mutation, so who knows what'll happen with it.
m --> b --> p n --> d l --> d th --> t f --> v k --> g s --> z sh --> j
Grammar
This will continue to be updated. ^-^
Nouns
In/Definite Articles, Plurality
Definite articles are shown by the prefix <ha>. hajan = the cloth If the noun begins with a vowel, then the <a> gets swallowed up. h'omeuri = the tree (The <'> is optional; I'm pretty sure that the script will always be spelled ha, but since it's not pronounced I prefer not to write the <a> to avoid confusion.)
Indefinite articles have no suffix. Example: haluma vs. luma. haluma refers to a specific person that either can be seen or who has already been spoken about in the conversation. luma does not refer to a specific person, but at times would still be translated as "the person." It can also refer to people in general. Exception: I'm not sure this is actually an exception.. But if you're saying "a person" as in "one person," in Lunarian you must always write is as <luma han>, "one person". (Note: the word for 1 should be "an", but because the preceding noun also ends in a vowel, an <h> is added to the beginning of the pronunciation. The <h> is not actually written in the script.)
Plurals At the moment, adding <e> or <ei> onto the end of a noun is how plurals are created.
Case Markers
Each noun has a marker, like in Japanese. <ruh> [ r\3 or r\6 ] is the subject, <ro> [ r\o ] is the direct object, and li [ lI ] is the indirect object.
The person sees the tree. h'omeuri-ro ha-luma-ruh fweivaji. h'omeuri-ro luma-ruh fweivaji.
Verbs
Things will get added here (and probably, to some extent, changed) as I think of them. Erm, I'm not sure if I'm actually using tense or aspect at the moment.. I've forgotten the difference between them again, if I ever understood it in the first place.
Tense/Aspect
Verbs have a suffix to denote the aspect. Other than exceptions, they will basically be _a_i with the _'s being consonants. The first _ is the beginning of whatever action is occuring, and the second _ is when it ceases to occur.
past = s
present = v (or occasionally w)
future = j
never = l (This is used when something either has no beginning or end. Something has always been a certain way and will continue being that way forever.)
So in the previous example of "the person sees the tree," it should be "h'omeuri-ro luma-ruh fweivaji." It is assumed that the person will eventually stop looking at the tree. But, for example, if that person and the tree were immortal, theoretically you could say "h'omeuri-ro luma-ruh fweivali", but generally this won't make sense unless something very odd occurs and the luma becomes immortal.
Also, some Lunarians can time travel. The aspects work based on a fixed point, but there are other things to tell you "when" the fixed point is in relation to another fixed point (the one in which the person talking is currently standing). I'll call the aspect's fixed point A, and the talking-person's fixed point B for the sake of convenience here. The second _ of the aspect *does* refer to point A. So you could have a sentence saying "h'omeuri-ro luma-ruh fweivaji saloi," (saloi being past of point B), and to the person in timepoint B the seeing would have already ended. The present word would be "veshla", and future is "jinle." Veshla is normally understood and not often used unless you're being really emphatic.
Mood
The basic order of the moods is this: Optative, Probablity, Imperative, Request, General, Conditional. This order can be ignored occasionally, in things like poetry. Negative and Dubative moods are rovers and go immediately after whatever they're negating, even before the aspect if it's the verb itself being negated/doubted.
Optative: -lumei Basically this means "want". If you want to do something, you add it to the verb. If you want an object, lumei is added to the sentence's direct object and no verb is needed. [Note: when the optative and conditional moods are both used within the same "stack", the optative loses its <i>.]
Probability: I split this one up into three different things, basically just degrees of probability, but I wasn't sure if they were actually called different things. Um, is it abnormal to have this one so much longer than most of the others, or is it okay?
-neshiyai Something may happen, or something is cabable of doing something. If this is negated (-neishiyailan) then something might not happen. Like "zeshajajineishiyai re zeshajajineishiyailan" is essentially "it may or may not happen." ('re' means 'or')
-neshiyo Something will probably happen, there's more than a 50% chance of something happening. If negated, it's less than a 50% chance.
-neshii Something will definitely happen. If negated, it definitely will not happen.
Imperative: -mii fweimii [look] (Now would probably be a good time to say that in Lunarian there's no difference between "look" and "see")
Request: -mai This suffix is the equivalent of saying "please".
Generic: -anlo janwuu-ruh wuuanlo [hangingcloths-[subj.] hang[gen.]] hangingcloths hang
Or, the suffix can be left out entirely. "janwuu-ruh wuu".
NOTE that the _a_i suffix gets taken away for this mood.
Conditional: There is no if-then statement. The sentence takes optative mood, I guess. I don't really know how else to explain it but through an example...
"If he sees the tree, then he'll hang the cloth."
"hajan-ro luma-ruh wuujajilumei h'omeuri-ro luma-ruh fweijaji."
the-cloth-[D.O.] he-[Subj.] hang[fut.fut.][want] the-tree-[D.O] he-[Subj.] see[fut.fut.]
(I think the closest English that still uses "want" in this case is something like "Hanging the cloth wants seeing the tree," which still doesn't make much sense in English.)
Negative: -lan This is going to be a "roving" suffix; it goes immediately after whatever it is negating. It could negate the noun itself: the-dog-not him bite[pastpast], the-cat him bite[pastpast]. It could negate a suffix, the aspect, the verb, an adjective, etc. It's just pointing a finger at exactly what is the incorrect part of the sentence. Sometimes it doesn't matter whether it's the noun or the verb negated, but other times it will matter.
Dubitative: -rei Like "-lan", this can attach to any part of the sentence; you're doubting that particular part of the sentence. h'omeurimarei-ro luma-ruh fweisasi implies that the speaker is doubtful that it's *the self-aware tree* which the person saw, whereas h'omeurima-ro lumarei-ruh fweisasi implies that the speaker is doubtful that *that particular person* saw the self-aware tree.
Voice
Passive Causative Reflexive Reciprocal
Adjectives
Adjectives go after the noun they modify.
Word Order
Generally, word order is OSV. Adjectives (as stated above) go after the noun they modify. Adverbs go after the word they modify, unless they modify the verb in which case they go at the beginning of the sentence. In poetry, these rules can pretty much go out the window.
The Script
I have a script now! Each consonant sound has its own letter. The vowels use a system of lines and dots (and maybe shapes) written to the side of each letter, kind of like Hebrew (and maybe Arabic; I'm not very familiar with Arabic script though). When a word consists of more than one consonant (which is usual), the letters "shrink" to accomodate more in one area. My scanner is broken, and my attempts at using imaging programs to represent the letters haven't worked well, so I'm going to attempt ASCII representation of the way the letters "shrink." Each three-sided box |_| represents one character. I don't currently have any words that have more than four consonants, so I won't represent that here.
Plain consonants: | | --> | || | --> |__||__| --> |_||_| |____| --> |__||__| --> |______| --> |_||_| 1 2 3 4
When a row has one consonant, its vowels (if it has any) are written to the right of the consonant. When it has two, the first consonant's vowels are written the the left and the second's are written to the right. One consonant can have multiple vowels. <y> and <w> can be written in the vowel slots when used in conjunction with other vowels, like in the word omeuri, where <e> would probably be better written as <ey>. (I did not write it as omeyuri because then it looks like the word has four syllables.) The *'s represent vowels.
Vowels and consonants: | |* * --> * *| || |* * --> |____| * --> * |_||_| * --> (and so on and so forth)
There is a letter in the script which has no sound. There are rules as to when it is/isn't used; I'll write them up later after I solidify them a bit.
Numbers
The number system has a base of ten, but climbs up to ten using threes.
I have every number through 23 written out, and then by tens through 90. It takes a long space to write out, so I made a separate page for it. Without further ado, Lunarian numbers.
Word List
Basically I'm just going to add words as I come up with them. italic is the Lunarian word, bold is the English word. Things in (parentheses) are general notes and/or what will/may happen to the word and this language developes. They're not in alphabetical order because I'm lazy and/or don't have time to do it right now. About half are written Lunarian -> Eng and the other half the other way around for the same reason.
[u]va – and
zei – yes
lan – no
re – or
h[a] - the
jan – cloth
wuu – hang
lai – beam (of light)
shii – up
shei – day
essuu – outside
omeuri – tree
saiyo – hope
fwei – see/look
fala - wing
fathalær - fly (v.)
jindar - spread open (v.) [e.g. A bird spreading its wings open, or spreading open the pages of a book.]
saloy - past (adv.?)
veshla - present (adv.?)
jinle - future (adv.?)
heisaa - light wind, breeze (n.) [the first vowel is longer than the vowel in heysaa, but other than that they're pronounced the same]
heysaa - breath (n.)
mau - cat (n.) [I know that's probably clichê.. It comes from the conworld, which is not actually [i]my[/i] conworld.)
person, he/she/it – luma
it (not sentient) – fuu
I – washima
we (inclusive) – washimae
we (exclusive) – washimakye
you (sing.) – ajima
you (pl.) – ajimae
word (n.) – shesi
write (v.) – shite
read (v.) – fweshey
like (v.) – (sffx.) –lumeianlo
create (v.) – ærzor
piece, part (n.) – kyu ( -kyu)
happen/occur (v.) – zesha; toi [slang, has more negative connotation than zesha]
water (n.) – lijwa
move, go (v.) – jilwar
