Lunarian

Lunarian 󴑔󴕉󴖊󴕕󴑷󴒔󴔩󴑪󴑙󴐁󴕧󴑽󴔯
Pronunciation	[[tukɨ́sáɟːე̌mga]]
Created by	–
Setting	Outrealm: Unidentified Frantic Incursion
Official status
Official language in	Lunatic Kingdom
Recognised minority language in	Eientei
Regulated by	Lunatic Linguistic Correction Facility
Language codes
ISO 639-3	LNR

Lunarian is one of serveral attempts at sticking to a single joke language by Astaryuu. It was created after Muskian, Wharfordish, and Proto-Protogen. Lunarian, natively known as Tukǝsaɟɟɇmga (IPA: [tukɨ́sáɟːე̌mga]) is a pseudo-Japonic language spoken on the moon and in other places that have had contact with lunar species. It is the language of the Lunatic Kingdom.

Dialectology

Lunarian is noted for being impossible for terrestrial beings to "correctly" pronounce. The reasons for this are manifold:

• Linguofascism: Particularly true for Standard Lunarian, the language is strongly affected by Lunatic policy regarding language use, preventing some of the most extreme features of Lunarian from simplifying.
• Imaginary phonemes: Eleven of Lunarian's phonemes, including half of all vowels, are always pronounced (at least in Lunatic dialects) in ways that humans either find extremely difficult (for imaginary consonants) or physically impossible (for imaginary vowels). These eleven phonemes are referred to as "imaginary phonemes", and were the main reason for the creation of asterIPA.
• Purity mutation: In specific environments, Lunarian phonemes can undergo "purity mutation" of either first-order or second-order. These are lenitions that are typically used in formal words or situations. Purity mutation is mandated in Jinhayan Lunarian, and causes many phonemes that otherwise aren't imaginary to have imaginary allophones.
• Imaginary mathematics: Lunarian's standard base is "raishnegahex", or base 4i. Additionally, Lunarian standards of mathematics differ from terrestrial standards.

There are three major varieties of Lunarian:

• Standard Lunarian: The legally-mandated variety for use in the Lunatic Kingdom. This dialect's hearth is the Sea of Tranquility. There are three major sub-dialects: Jinhayan (also spelled "Jinghayan") Lunarian, the government-approved register which officials are required to use, Kriseon Lunarian, a "punk dialect" of the Sea of Crises that intentionally diverges from Jinhayan norms, and Eienteyan Lunarian, used by refugees from the Lunatic Kingdom. Eienteyan Lunarian has significantly less influence from linguofascism than any of the Lunatic dialects.
• Impure, Terrible, Evil, Gross Lunarian: Also referred to simply as "Impure Lunarian." Spoken elsewhere that youkai are prominent, such as the two hells. Impure Lunarian generally does not use second-order purity mutation. The English name is an exonym translated from Standard Lunarian. Eienteyan Lunarian is considered an impure dialect by Lunatic officials, even though linguistically it is at best a creole between Standard Lunarian and Impure Lunarian.
• Disgusting, Awful, Repulsive, Terrestrial Lunarian: Also referred to as "Terrestrial Lunarian." Spoken in the "human world". This is by far the smallest dialect group. It is strongly suggested that Area 51 contains a treatise on Terrestrial Lunarian.

Phonology

Main article: Lunarian phonology

Consonants

Consonant phonemes

		Labial		alveolar		Post- alveolar/ palatal		Velar		Uvular		Laryngeal
Stop		p	b	t	d	c	ɟ	k	g			ʔ
Fricative	plain	ɸ				ç	(ʝ)				ʁ	h
	sibilant	ѳ		s	(z)	ʃ	ʒ
Nasal			m		n		ɲ		ŋ		ɴ		ն
Approximant	plain		ʋ̟		ɹ		j		w
	lateral			ɬ	l		ʎ		ʟ		լ
Trill					r				ր

Notes

• The Cyrillic letter fita <ѳ> is used in Astaryuu IPA extensions to refer to a "whistle fricative", even though this has an extIPA symbol; Astaryuu defends this by saying that Lunarian considers the whistle fricative a labial sibilant, while <s͎> is clearly alveolar.
• All approximants (regardless of if they are lateral or not) become voiceless when before a voiceless plosive; [ɬ] just is the only voiceless approximant which is found outside of this context (though [ç] is often considered a voiceless /j/).

Vowels

Vowel phonemes

Nepo		ა
Dim	ო	ჷ	ე
Esolc	უ		ი
	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ɨ	u
Mid	e		o
Open		a

Notes

• In Impure and Terrestrial Lunarian, nepo, dim, and esolc vowels become the equivalent open, mid, and close vowels respectively, but with their backness and rounding flipped. For example, the dim front rounded vowel /ო/ becomes [ɤ], the mid back unrounded vowel. This is also why the Georgian letters used for the imaginary vowels appear reversed compared to their actual values in Georgian.
• The vowels /e o ო ე/ are all true mid [e̞ o̞ ო̝ ე˔].

Purity mutation

Main article: Purity mutation

Orthography

Much like how Japanese technically uses four scripts at the same time, Lunarian technically uses six scripts at the same time. However, most dialects do not use all six scripts at the same time. The following scripts are ordered in order of how often they are used in Lunarian writing.

1. Lunarian runes (ƿtadassja): An alphabet based on man'yogana that functions similarly to hangul. Ƿtadassja is considered the "native script" of Lunarian, and is usually written in the same direction as Sinitic or Japanese writing.
2. Katakana (terasja): Generally used for loanwords from Japanese and onomatopoeia. Ironically, the name ƿtadassja is often written in katakana, as it is literally "the correct characters" (with the word for correct coming from Japanese tadashii.
3. Hiragana (ønnasja): Not used commonly in Lunatic dialects, but in Eienteyan and Impure dialects, hiragana are often used in place of katakana when the word would use hiragana in Japanese.
4. Latin script (romasja): Used for non-Japanese loanwords originally written in Latin script. Use of Latin script is banned by the Lunatic Linguistic Correction Facility and a third-order misdemeanor that can result in a sentence of up to 3 years or ¥300,0000 (the highest sentence that the Lunatic Constitution allows a non-felony to have).
5. Cyrillic script (bɏlgasja): Equivalent to Latin script, including its legal status in the Lunatic Kingdom.
6. Hanzi (hansja): Although Han characters are legal, they are considered old-fashioned in Lunatic dialects. The only common use for hanzi in modern Lunarian writing is in the numeral system.

Because the scripts see use in some dialects, there is also a complete romanization and cyrillization of Lunarian. However, only Terrestrial Lunarian uses these more than ƿtadassja. Both are also considered to be badly designed, with heavy use of characters outside Windows-1251 (Cyrillic script) and -1252 (Latin script). While there generally are commonly accepted digraphs that are within these standards, Impure Lunarian prefers to use the monographs, and so this extends to Terrestrial Lunarian.

Morphology and grammar

Word order

Like Japanese, Lunarian uses SOV word order. Likewise, clitics are applied after the word to indicate one of five cases (accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental/locative - nominative is unmarked), alongside the topical clitic ɟa which can occur in tandem with a case marker.

Noun class

Nouns are divided into one of thirteen classes based on perceived purity. For nouns that refer to people, this forms a formality hierarchy. When addressing someone, the correct marker must be applied to (or should replace) their name depending on their social standing relative to the speaker. Referring to a government official using the incorrect class is illegal in the Lunatic Kingdom (though unless the speaker disrespected the royal family or referred to any official using the earthly class while not in the royal family, the punishment is usually just a small fine).

It is easier to refer to these purity classes using a numerical ranking. The thirteen noun classes are ranked 13 ("heavenly"), 11, 10, 9, 8 ("pure"), 7, 6 ("average"), 5, 4 ("impure"), 3, 2, 1, -1 ("earthly"). Adjectives decline against this class, and all non-personal nouns can move up or down the ranking for different semantic reasons. Using a higher class for a noun than its "natural" class is called "purification", while using a lower class for a noun than its "natural" class is called "pollution".

Applying the standard honorific ƿ- to a noun that does not already have it is a first-degree purification.

Nouns that refer to people are much more strict with this system - they always have a natural purity rank of 6, and always end in -sa (likely an archaic marker of this rank). Names are personal nouns, but need not have a naturally average purity rank. These nouns also have a suite of rank-altering affixes which are mostly unique:

• -mistɣmpƿzden: the "dogwhistle affix", only used in Kriseon Lunarian. Borrowed from the name of a notorious Earthling politican who planned to nuke the moon and turn the Sea of Crises into a parking lotTemplate:Fix. Fourteenth-degree pollution, but adjectives applied to the noun conjugate as if no purity change occurred unless the speaker is not likely to be heard by a Lunatic Kingdom official. Not exclusive to people.
• tem-: Borrowed from Japanese temē. Twelfth-degree pollution.
• yukȝrɨ: Name of the yukkuris. Reduces to Impure class, or third-degree pollution, whichever is more pollution.
• sɏka-: Borrowed from Russian сука. Third-degree pollution.
• añ-: Second-degree pollution.
• Removing -sa: First-degree pollution that can stack with any other affix.
• -fwⱥ: First-degree purification.
• ƿ-: First-degree purification that can stack with any other affix. Not exclusive to people.
• -fwʉna: Second-degree purification.
• -mistapƿzden: Borrowed from English "Mr. President." Third-degree purification unless the root is explicitly a human.

Numerals

Lunarian typically uses base 4i, also known as "raishnegahex." However, simple negahex (base -16) and even plain hex (base 16) are also used commonly, and there is no standard marker for when a number is raishnegahex, negahex, or plain hex. Bilingual communities of Lunarian and a language that uses decimal may even use negaBCD or standard BCD (where BCD stands for binary-coded decimal), where the words for Lunarian numbers are used, but they represent 10^x rather than 16^x, and the numerals for 10-15 are skipped. Again, no marker is standard. Additionally, unlike human languages, Lunarian mathematics makes frequent use of the so-called surcomplex wheel, so there are normal words for the numbers ω, ε, and ν (the inclusion of ν, the nullity, makes this technically not the standard surcomplex numbers, but that is a topic for another page).

Out-of-universe, all variants of this number system are based on the numeral system of Proto-Protogen, and all use the same words. However, unlike Proto-Protogen, English translations of Lunarian digits do not use prefixes. Instead, English words for 0 to 12 are used for their corresponding values, while 13 uses luck, 14 uses fort, and 15 uses comp. The names for powers of 16 do still use Proto-Protogen-inspired names, though, such as nibble for 16, byte for 256, and short for 65536.

Lunarian typically represents its numeral system using Han characters, using the standard characters for 0-9 and the modern Japanese kanji for the days of the week for 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15. The Han characters for 10^x are used for 16^x. However, in recent years, argam numerals (an extension of Hindu-Arabic numerals; "argam" means "number" in Arabic) and standard hexadecimal code have become popular in some dialects. Particularly, "argamsja" is actually preferred over hansja in Kriseon Lunarian, because it is technically romasja and thus illegal, even though the Lunatic Court ruled that Arabic numerals were legal in Josutⱥ v. Lunatic Language Correction Facility, owing to their rising use in Japanese.