Lunaria

## Lunaria/Lujai

### Name meaning

"Luj" means "of the moon" in Lunarese, and "Ai" means land. "Lujai" means "Land of the Moon".

## Basic History

### Origin/Founding

Made of a union between smaller tribes who shared the same religion, built roads to connect each other and now share a singular identity.

### Founder

Unknown. Supposedly, the ancestors of the Queen.

### Religion

Isarianism - a native religion focused on the moon and the spirituality related to natality and nature, more on that later.

## Trade

### Currency

golden coins, golden necklaces

Lunaria is a democratic monarchy, its territory consisting of the isle nearest, northest to the volacano at the heart of Lawa.

## Language

### Letters and Phonetics

The Lunarese alphabet is called the Albachnos (Albachet in English). It is written from left to right, starting from the top and ending in the bottom of the page. Sometimes, to save up space, these letters are written stuck together, connecting the consonants through the line in the middle, spacing out the ones that don’t follow that rule. All of these are sharp letters with a couple of curves because the first form of writing took place through carving stone. However, thanks to trade and technology, this society no longer relies on that to write, and instead import paper and ink, making some of the older letters a little more curved in informality, although these symmetrical shapes are considered the most proper way of scripture.

The letters are: a, bo, ok, do, fo, go, yo, jo, lo, mo, no, na, wo, po, ro, so, to, wu, zru, cho. Their pronunciations in the attached image of the document.

You might have noticed that Lunarese does not have a letter for the “e” sound, or h, v, y or w.

 -> The “e”, “v” and “h” sounds are not present in the language at all.

 -> The “w” sound does exist. However, it doesn’t have its own letter because the “u” letter has that function when put next to another vowel. The same is true for the “y” sound using the “i” letter.

Here is what this language considers difficult to pronounce:

 -> e, h, v

  -> m or n with a vowel other than o.

 -> k, f, l, r or t with a j after.

Here are some unusual sounds that this language considers common:

 -> g, d, b, p, s, and zr followed by a j.

 -> ch followed by l.

 -> j is the most common consonant sound, while w is the least.

### Words and Rules

#### Pronouns and prepositions

How to use them:

* Personal pronouns (she, he, it)
* Indefinite pronouns (anything, no one, nobody, nowhere, etc)
* Reciprocal pronouns (each other, one another, etc)
* Subject pronouns (I, you, we, etc)
 * Relative pronouns (which, where, when, why, etc)
* Interrogative pronouns (what, who, when, where, etc)
 * Reflexive pronouns (yourself, herself, oneself, themselves, etc)
* Object pronouns (him, her, them)
 * Possessive Pronouns (my, his, hers)
F’mo (My man)

#### Nouns

\*updated regularly

Nouns in Lunarese are often made up of other words or suffixes. This allows for easier translations to other languages by taking the equivalent meaning of these smaller words and putting them together to naturally translate them into another language.

-> A lot of the nouns are short so that they may be combined into longer ones that refer to more complicated concepts. Most items in nature have a two to five letter word or more, whereas things like “government” might only have one spelling with more than ten letters.

-> By adding a k to the end of a word, it becomes plural. This rule is universal throughout the entire language. If the word ends with k, f, l, r, or t, both the k and that letter will be replaced by “ch”.

#### Adjectives

The “j” at the end of nouns turns them into adjectives. The word “Lu” (moon) with a “j” at the end is now “Luj” (of the moon).

  -> Additionally, if the noun ends with k, f, l, r, or t, that letter and the adjective defining “j” are replaced by a “ch”.

  -> For lack of a better way to put it, the “ism” of this language are the “abo”. It describes ideologies, sciences, practices, etc. However, there are exceptions for specific fields.

  -> For a handful of very specific words, typically those associated with religion, the make up of adjectives may vary and be entirely unique. For example, the noun “F’aja” means God. Instead of the typical rules that apply to adjectives, the word for “holy” is “F’ajmoach”. “moach” is a suffix that means ‘he who loves’.

#### Verbs

Much like adjectives, verbs follow a similar logic; a noun is turned into a verb through particular additions to the word. Unlike them, however, the use of prefixes determines the action, not suffixes.

You could say it is a rather simple system, because verbs have no gender, time, or pronouns implied on their own, but are instead added in the sentence to add information if needed be, despite this not being the norm in other languages. There is one major complication that makes it harder to learn, nonetheless: there are many prefixes that can be used to turn a noun into a verb, and the meaning of the verb is different depending on which one is used.

Let’s start off simple. Let’s say you want to make a verb out of the word “ach” (love). You can add the prefix default of “pot”, which has no tone. “Potach” (to love) has no tone, and is considered rather formal, because it is so unemotive. If you wanted to make the verb more affectionate, you would use “pil” -> “pilach”. And if you wanted to describe it to describe it in a negative light, you would use “yozr” -> “yozrach”.

In other words…

“pot”   -> neutral, often formal or polite.

“pil”    -> with emotion, or simply put in a positive tone.

“yozr” -> strictly spiteful / negative.

### Sentence structure

#### Basics

Sentences in Lunarese are not very complex. The structure is simple:

Pronoun/object/person     +     action     +    descriptor (optional)    +    time (optional)

Let’s say “She looks”.

she       pot + look = looks

Bo        potdazr.

What if we want it to be continuous?

“No” means continuously. We add it in front of a verb to change it.

Bo        potdazr no.

she                is looking.

Now adding a description goes always AFTER the action:

she       pil +  look + continuously = is looking                  bimo (flower) + j = beautiful (like a flower)

Bo        pildazr        no               bi mochj.

Now, we can add time.

Time specifiers are “nomodat”, “nomoba”, and “nomozra/no” (past, present, future). These are entirely optional and are only used if the time is relevant to what is being said. The same can be true for adjectives.

she   is looking    beautiful         (past)

Bo pildazr no       bimochj       nomodat.

she      was looking    beautiful

What about adding another person?

she    was looking   beautiful        to     him.

Bo        pildazr no       bimochj       nomodat     tono    mo.

Lunarese has no verb to be. In order to make a sentence where a subject is described, this is the structure:                  Subject        +        Adjective

It works for verbs too, as demonstrated in the previous section.

she     beautiful

Bo       bimochj.

Additionally, this language has no “the” concept. It is implicit.

Future tense is speculative.

Past is imperative.

#### Questions

The interrogative pronouns are in here.

Fu bimochj?  - What is beautiful?

Futuk wu asagk bimochj? - Which of these is beautiful?

Fulozr bimochj? - Who is beautiful?

Funomo bo bimochj nomodat? - When was she beautiful?

Fuf bimoch? - Whose beauty?

Fuj bimoch? - Where is the beauty?

Fai bimoch? - How is the beauty?

As you can see, the structure is the same, with only the added word at the start to make it into a question. In the second example, “wu asagk” was added. It means “of these”. You can find these words separately in the Pronouns and Prepositions sheet. Any additional information can be built with more words to specify. To make them past sentences, “nomodat”, “nomoba”, or “nomozra” makes the tense change. However, present is not specified unless it’s to be emphasized.

#### Punctiuation

Before the era of isolationism in Lunaria ended, scripture was considered very important. In a way, it was a privilege, because few could afford to learn the art, and those who did were often of the upper class or the religious institutions. Towns often had a big carving of a unique symbol for their people that represented them and cemented pride. Wealthy families that could afford to also had large rocks that would be placed just out of reach with a unique carving for their lineage.

Surnames could be written in ways that the matriarch of the family decides, with characters that were unique to it, with spellings that don’t follow grammatical rules, etc. Most of the families spelled them normally for convenience, but it brought a sense of pride to a handful of Lunarians to pass down a particular spelling through generations. Some just threw the Albachet out entirely and invented a symbol that had nothing to do with it. However, those families were the most powerful and famous, as people recognised their name without having to have it written there.

Once the era of constant war ended, the Lunarians opened their borders to trade again, allowing them to re-enter the world economy. With that came the imports of paper, which in turn made scripture universally accessible to every class, and writing became commonplace. Before then, punctuation was practically nonexistent, because you would only write down a name or short phrase. The only example of long pieces of text were the religious registries, which had no punctuation at all. Thus, with globalization came new grammatical rules. For this reason, the Lunarese inherited the same rules that most use:

The stop “.”, comma “,”, colon “:” and semicolon “;”. These are used in the same way the English ones are. Additionally, in informality it is not rare to see the commas be used strictly to dictate where the speaker must pause their speech rather than when a sentence is split in two.

### Numeric System

1- Pi

2- Wan

3- Ju

4- Gor

5- Fa

6- Li

7- Sjano

8- At

9- Noa

0- Chu

To make a number times ten, you add “Chu” before it.

1    ->    10

Pi       Chu Pi

For the numbers in between, you say “Chu” first, then the last number, then the first:

1    ->    10     ->    12

Pi       Chu Pi     Chu Pi Wan

To add more zeroes, you can add as many Chu as you’d like, or summarize them by saying how many they are using another number:

100                       10.000

Chu Chu pi          Gorchu Pi

This is how complicated numbers work:

1.345

Juchu pi juchu ju wanchu gor fa

## Society

### Power

Lunaria is a theocratic monarchy. They have a royal family that has all of the privileges in society as a result of their bloodline. Their faith is the main justification for the figurehead they have. It is believed that the Queen is the personification of their deities on Earth, and thus they are best suited to lead the nation, and must be pleased at all times to avoid summoning the ire of the Gods. The matriarch of the royal family holds all the power, above everyone else in the family and in the country as a whole. However, there are advisors who, if banded together to hold a vote, are able to overrule the decisions of the monarch. If there is good evidence that the Queen is devoid of faith in some regard, she may be substituted with another member of the royal family, or even have her be replaced by a promoted priestess if there is no other alternative. Religion is strictly tied to the government.

The land is divided into sections. Sections have representatives. These people have positions of power over the typical citizen. There is a hierarchy in place to federalise the country. At the top, the royal family and their advisors. Under, the representatives of sections, named chasak, whose voice is expressed through independent decisions and suggestions for her highness in the form of projects and letters. Under them, there are the representatives of towns and cities. Each needs one religious leader and one secular leader. The two of them are in charge of their peoples' wellbeing, limited by the laws from above them on the hierarchy. In order to be elected into these positions of power, there are two ways: to become a mother superior, one must undergo religious training in their local temple, and after many years, they may become elected by the previous mother, when they die or retire. In order to become a secular leader, one must be elected, or duel the current leader and win. Elections happen only when the current leader is nearing death or retiring, too. Duels may happen at any time.

Within these towns, people are divided into families by last name. Within these families, the matriarch holds the most power. They own the rights to the communal house, the right to exile a member for any reason they see fit, and are the one who must officiate any wedding, adoption or birth, or any other means by which a new child enters the family. Should they refuse, the kid will not be recognised by the law as belonging to the bloodline, and all rights related to such by extension.

### Culture

Lunarians are thoroughly engrossed in traditions. They may be related to religion, but not always. There are many rituals they value. Their beliefs favor much of the same their faith does, such as modesty, wisdom, nature, kindness. But they also value being a good host, humor, dancing, learning from travelers, the comforts of life. The Lunarians may be welcoming, but they can also be, by extension, fake, pushovers, weak-willed, etc. Because there is a culture of modesty, people tend to seek attention not by extension of how they act, but how they look, which can be excused as not being related to immoral behavior. They tend to overproduce, to look as good as they can to fish for a particular result. And the fakeness around people makes them come up with codes to imply things instead of saying them out loud. This may confuse foreigners the first time, to discover such beautiful, kind and welcoming people may be under a veil of false appearance and be vile in secret, manipulating them subtly to use them or control them. Not all is bad news though, of course! Lunarians are sweet and loyal to those they consider family. If you manage to get their trust, enough for them to invite you to your home, they will drop their mask, and you may meet their real self. If they approve of you then, you have made yourself a lifelong friend. Once you are family, you are in for a treat.

Lunarians' lives are full of expectations, much like in any other society. During childhood, they are not allowed to leave their home or be seen by the outside world. All kids are raised the same, with a number of trials to prepare them for the tasks their family are responsible for in their town or city. Once they begin to hit puberty, they are considered adults. They have an introduction to the outside world named Tajomo (Coming of age). It consists of an exploration of their surroundings inside the city, accompanied by their peers, and then, an exploration in a radius around the wilds of the area by themselves. After coming of age, the expectation is that a child should work for their community, participate in all the religious phases of their development, and to carry on their bloodline. However, unlike our society, the expectation is not necessarily to find a partner of the opposite sex to have children, but simply to bring new members to the family. This may be achieved by adoption, signing a blood pact with another to turn them into siblings, marrying and bringing in new people by extension. Marriage is not limited to heterosexual relationships, or even sexual relationships at all, or a single spouse. It is possible to marry two people of your same sex and have no sexual relations, for example. More on marriage in the religion section. If the Lunarian lives past a certain age and has already secured their bloodline, they may retire. As an elder, they must take care of their descendents through means of sharing their wisdom and emotional support.