Early Moonshine languages

The Proto-Moonshine people broke away from their parent empire, the Crystals, in the year 3958.

Background

The Crystals originated in the tropics of Amade, tracing their roots to the 1500s, before the rise of true party politics. They had no distinct language, speaking the languages of their home nations within the Star Empire.

The Crystals conquered the dark-skinned aboriginals of Baeba Swamp in the year 3370, introducing them to the Crystal homeland language, Trunkwater. These aboriginals had originally been favorable towards nearby Dreamland, but when those aboriginals who supported Dreamland fled into Dreamland for safety, they were turned back by the Dreamers, and so the aboriginals submitted to Crystal rule with little bloodshed.

Eventually the Crystals ruled an empire stretching for thousands of miles, and including both Baeba Swamp and their original homeland in Amade. They spread their language throughout this entire territory and even to a few areas outside their territory. The proto-Moonshine people thus spoke the same language as the Crystals in Baeba Swamp.

In the 4100s, the Leapers defeated the Crystals and an alliance of third parties which had come to rule areas in and around Baeba Swamp. The Leaper language became the official language of Baeba Swamp. The Leapers briefly controlled much of the Crystals' remaining territory as well, but were pushed out by the various other armies fighting for control; by this time, an entirely new power called the Thunder Empire had come and gone, and because the climate had warmed, the Thunder territory was the most important prize for these many armies.

The proto-Moonshine culture broke away from the Crystals in 3958, and though their language was Crystal (Trunkwater), many Moonshines also spoke the Leaper language for diplomatic purposes. The Moonshines migrated through Thunder territory and reached the polar regions as a fully bilingual population.

Star Empire Crystal (1900) to Middlesex Baeba Crystal (3370)

Men and women spoke separate idiolects, and the rate of change was very slow, as the men's and women's speech registers held each other back. The shared language can be called Middlesex in the literal sense of a language intermediate between men's and women's speech, but no adults actually spoke in such a manner; this was an abstract form of the language used for written communication.

1. The voiceless fricatives h hʷ shifted to x h.
2. The fricatives d dʷ ž shifted to r w y.
3. Then the postalveolar fricative š shifted to s.
4. The consonant clusters ll nn, which occurred primarily in loanwords, shifted to ḷ ṇ.
5. The labialized coronals nʷ lʷ shifted to ṇ ḷ.
6. The nasals mʷ ŋʷ shifted to m̄ n̄ ŋ̄.

   This language is well to the east of Pabahais, so these may be dummy sounds that later merge into /m/.