Moonshine

Introduction
Phonology

A-Z

Moonshine is a member of the Tapilula language family that was spoken by Lavetoid humans for about 12000 years before they lost a war against the dominant branch of the human race and became extinct. Moonshine can be traced back to proto-Tapilula, known from inscriptions found at and around Ankimiskabu Beach and dated to around 15000 BC.

Lavetoid humans separated from the coastal human community at Ankimiskabu around 15000 BC and entered the woodlands. The writing system was retained, and intermittent contact with the coast as well as with other races of humans such as the bloppabops kept the rate of language change fairly slow for the first 4000 years. But around 8000 BC, the center of Moonshine society moved deeper into the wilderness and the speakers lost contact with the other branches of humans with the animals living along the coast. The rate of language change accelerated rapidly and within a thousand years the coastal Lavetians could not understand the forest dwellers. Over the next few thousand years, the forest dwellers expanded their society and eventually conquered the lands along the coast and assimilated them. Communication with animals and bloppabops was restored, and Moonshine was reduced to a language of medicine and education for most Lavetians. By 2000 BC the language had effectively stopped changing and by 2000 AD it had gone extinct.

Moonshine is a language that is genetically related to Pabappa but is spoken by a normal branch of the human race that also believes in Pabapatapura. It has evolved into a much more spatially efficient language than Pabappa because of its speakers' greater much mental abilities.

The definite article marker is -(b)i for monosyllabic roots and polysyllabic roots that end in consonants, but -s for polysyllabic roots (and a few monosyllables that used to be poly) that end in vowels. This comes from Ižda Mir pəs and is cognate to the Pabappa verb pispa.

Most compound words use head-initial morpheme order, but there is one common construction left over from Ižda Mir which is semantically head-final even if it is morphologically similar to the other types of compounds. The compounds in Moonshine all make use of incorporation of what could be termed a case-inflected form of a noun.

beuà boy
nipaš to talk
niteuàbaš to talk to a boy

ktàpa pilpim (a type of demon)
bam city
Ktàpaǯam Pilpim Popubab, the city of demons

(Demystification of this system coming soon.) Nominal and verbal compounds both use these incorporated forms in the same way. Only indefinite objects can be incorporated; "to talk to the boy" requires two separate words.

Alphabet

The Moonshine script alphabet is very large, because of the Moonshine tendency to avoid digraphs and diacritics whenever possible. In addition, some phonemes have more than one letter assigned to them, usually for etymological reasons.

Glyph	Transliteration	Sound	Value	Comments
	p, ʔ, `	p, ʔ	0	This letter primarily marks sounds descended from Ižda Mir /p/ sounds, regardless of their pronunciation in modern Laveti Moonshine. Its use could be explained by saying that it marks the glottal stop /ʔ/ except in positions where the glottal stop cannot occur, in which case it represents /p/. One could also say that it marks both the glottal stop and a cluster /bʔ/ which is always realized as /p/. This is also the letter used to transcribe all of the /p/ sounds of Bloppabop and most other foreign languages.
	p	p	0	This letter is pronounced /p/ regardless of position. It usually marks sounds descended from a historical /pʷ/ which survived the change of /p/ to /ʔ/.
	b	b	0	This sound is rare, found mostly in borrowed words and recent derived forms. It is the voiceless counterpart of , a sound that marks a theoretical historical /bʷ/ which did not actually exist.
	b	b	0	This glyph is the one used to indicate most of the /b/ sounds in Moonshine. In most cases it goes back all the way to the original /b/ of Ižda Mir, but some sound changes created /b/ where it did not exist before. is considered an epenthetic consonant, an "empty" phoneme, and therefore this same glyph is also used for the schwa /ə/. It is also used to indicate the number zero.
	w	w	0	This marks those /w/ sounds in Moonshine that are historically linked to /u/ sounds, and is also the glyph used for /u/.
	m	m	0	This letter spells most of Laveti's /m/ sounds, as well as indicating an assimilating nasal glide before a stop or fricative.
	t	t	+1	This glyph is used only for the voiceless alveolar stop /t/, although it originally was used for /pʲ/ and then /pf/.
	d	d	-1	Like its voiceless counterpart, was originally used for a labial consonant but changed to alveolar after a sound change.
	š	š	+2	This glyph represents the native Lavetian /š/ sound.
	ž	ž	-2	This glyph represents the native Lavetian /ž/ sound.
	s	s	+6	This letter represents /s/ sounds which have in most cases been the same since the days of Ižda Mir. This glyph was formerly used to represent /sʲ/ and later /ṣ/, but was taken over for /s/ because the native /s/ glyph had begun to look too much like one of the glyphs for /b/.
	z	z	-6	This letter represents all occurrences of the /z/ sound in native Moonshine words.
	j, i	j, i	+12, 0	As a consonant, this letter is used to indicate the /j/ sound. As a vowel, it indicates an unstressed /i/ sound, one of the four vowels that can occur in unstressed syllables.
	n	n	-12	This glyph represents Moonshine /n/ exclusively and has never been used for any other sound. However, to indicate /n/ before an alveolar consonant, is used.
	k	k	+4	This letter is used to indicate the /k/ sound. It is the same glyph used for this sound by all of the other languages in the area. It also happens that the Laveti word for "God" has come to consist of just this one sound /k/, and there has arisen a small community of Laveti speakers who consider it a taboo to use this sound or glyph except when talking about God, and they have various substitutes for it, usually a variant glyph pronounced /f/.
	g	g	-4	This letter is used to indicate the /g/ sound. It is the same glyph used for this sound by all of the other languages in the area. It also happens that the Laveti word for "Satan" has come to consist of just this one sound /g/, and there has arisen a small community of Laveti speakers who consider it a taboo to use this sound or glyph except when talking about Satan, and they have various substitutes for it, usually a variant glyph pronounced /v/.
	h	h	+8	This letter represents a sound that is variously pronounced as a velar, uvular, or glottal fricative, depending on the surrounding sounds and the idiolect of the speaker.
	ɣ, x	ɣ	-8	This sound varies between velar, uvular, and pharyngeal pronunciations but it is always a voiced fricative. It is often Romanized x because there is no other phoneme that needs that spelling.
	r, ă, я	ŕ	+16, 0	As a consonant, this letter is used to indicate a voiced uvular approximant /r/. As a vowel, it indicates an unstressed /a/ sound, one of the four vowels that can occur in unstressed syllables.
	ŋ	ŋ	-16	This is the velar nasal. However, to indicate /ŋ/ before a velar consonant, is used.
	l	l	+24, +9	This glyph is used to indicate native Moonshine /l/ sounds. For other languages, different glyphs are sometimes used. This glyph arose as a ligature of two glyphs, because at that time was being used for the /j/ sound, and /l/ originated from the cluster /jj/.
	ŕ	r	-24, -9	This letter spells Moonshine's native /ŕ/ sound, whose articulation varies from speaker to speaker but is always articulated with the tip of the tongue rather than the dorsum, as in the case of /r/.
	č	tš	+3	This glyph is used to represent the normal Moonshine /č/ sound, a voiceless postalveolar affricate. In older scripts it was used for /t/, but this use became confusing because of a sound change.
	ǯ, dž	dž	-3	This glyph is used to represent the normal Moonshine /ǯ/ sound, a voiceless postalveolar affricate. In older scripts it was used for /d/, but this use became confusing because of a sound change.
	c, ts	ts	+7	This glyph, originally a ligature of and , represents the /ts/ sound in native Moonshine words, when it behaves as a single phoneme. It is also possible to spell the sound out as , but only across morpheme boundaries.
	ʒ, dz	dz	-7	This is the voiced version of . It is not a ligature, but rather a borrowed glyph. As in the case of , it is used only for monomorphemic occurrences of the sound /dz/.
	w, v, ŭ	ʋ, v	+5, -5, 0	This glyph is used to represent /u/ after a vowel in the cases where the ligatured glyphs are not available. It has several different pronunciations depending on position and environment, and the idiolect of the speaker. It does not normally occur in any other position except in transcribing foreign names containing the sound /ʋ/, which matches neither Laveti /w/ nor the borrowed sound /v/.
	p, f	p	+1	This glyph represents those occurrences of /p/ that come from an /f/ that disappeared very late in Laveti's history. It is the glyph most often used to transcribe foreign /f/ sounds.
	b, v	b	-1	This glyph represents those occurrences of /b/ that come from an /v/ that disappeared very late in Laveti's history. It is the glyph most often used to transcribe foreign /v/ sounds.
	ə	ə, silent	0	This sign is used to indicate the unstressed vowel /ə/ that does not contrast with silence and is therefore elided in many positions by most speakers. Note that this is the same glyph used to indicate most /b/.
	y	i	+1	This glyph indicates the unrounded front vowel /i/, but i is in use for a weak vowel so normally y is used to spell it in the Roman alphabet.
	ỳ	ì	-1	This is the lax counterpart of y. Like all the lax vowels, this glyph is occasionally replaced by its opposite plus the glottal stop , especially between vowels, but even this is considered archaic and nonstandard.
	e	e	+2	This letter represents the Moonshine tense /e/ sound and foreign vowels that are close to it.
	è	è	-2	This is the lax counterpart of e, a vowel close to IPA /ɛ/.
	o	o	+3	This letter represents the Moonshine /o/ sound and foreign vowels that are close to it.
	ò	ò	-3	This is the lax counterpart of o, a vowel close to IPA /ɔ/.
	a	a	+4	This letter represents the Moonshine /a/ sound and foreign vowels that are close to it.
	à	à	-4	This is the lax counterpart of a, a vowel close to IPA /ɐ/.
	u	u	+5	This represents an unrounded back vowel, close to the IPA ɯ sound.
	u	u	+5	This is a variant glyph for /u/. This glyph is usually only encountered in places where historically there was a consonantal /w/ that became a vowel.
	ù	ù	-5	This is the lax counterpart of u.
	û, yu, iu	û	+6	This vowel arose from a diphthong /iu/ and became the IPA /y/.
	ú, ỳu, ìu	ú	-6	This is the lax counterpart of .
	ô, eu	ô	+7	This vowel arose from a diphthong /eu/ and became the IPA /u/. It is usually Romanized as ô because the letter u is already taken.
	ó, èu	ó	-7	This is the lax counterpart of .
	ô, ou	ô	+8	This vowel arose from a diphthong /ou/ and became the IPA /u/.
	ó, òu	ó	-8	This is the lax counterpart of .
	â, au	â	+9	This vowel arose from a diphthong /au/ and became the IPA /o/.
	á, àu	á	-9	This is the lax counterpart of .
	û, uu	û	+10	This vowel arose from a diphthong /uu/ and became the IPA /y/.
	ú, ùu	ú	-10	This is the lax counterpart of .

Below are some more glyphs used for transcribing foreign names and also used in a few loanwords:

	h
	ɣ, x
	w, ẇ
	mʲ, ṃ
	w, ù
	mʷʰ
	mʷ
	r, ṙ
	pʲ
	bʲ
	mʰ
	mʲʰ
	tʷ
	dʷ
	sʷ
	zʷ
	nʷʰ
	nʷ
	s
	nʰ
	ṭ
	ḍ
	ṣ
	ṇʰ
	ṇ
	kʷ
	gʷ
	hʷ
	ɣʷ, xʷ
	ŋʰʷ
	ŋʷ
	ŋʰ
	ŋ
	ł
	kʲ
	gʲ
	f
	v
	ŋʰʲ
	ŋʲ
	ř
	ā
	á
	ē
	é
	ī
	í
	ō
	ó
	ū
	ú
	ə̄
	ə́