Pabappa

Pabappa is the most iconic language of present-day planet Teppala, although not the most widely spoken, either in terms of number of speakers or geographical extent. It is similar to Poswa, but much simpler in almost every way. Since splitting off from Poswa about 3200 years ago, it has changed more quickly than Poswa, again in almost every way. However, the general acoustic impression of Pabappa is closer to that of their shared parent language, Bābākiam, than is Poswa's, because both languages underwent various sound shifts that created new consonants and consonant clusters, but only Pabappa later simplified them back to a system similar to Bābākiam.

Phonology

The phonology consists of five vowels: /a e i o u/, and ten consonants: /p m s b l w r t d n/. If /w/ is analyzed as an allophone of /u/, there are only nine consonants, which rivals but does not quite beat the smallness of the phonology of Late Andanese. For comparison, Bābākiam had four vowels (/a i u ə/) and 11 consonants (/p b m f t n s š ž k ŋ/; note that /w j/ were considered allophones of the vowels), while Poswa has six vowels and 29 consonants. All words are accented on the initial syllable, even if they are very long. About 42% of words in the dictionary begin with /p/, which is also the most common consonant in other positions.

Vowel proportions are as follows: a 42.3%, e 7.4%, i 20.4%, o 10.0%, u 20.0%.

Consonant proportions are as follows: p 32.5%, m 12.6%, s 11.2%, b 11.0%, l 7.5%, r 7.3%, n 6.3%, t 5.6%, w 3.9%, d 2.0%. The sound /d/ occurs in native words only between vowels, and never as a geminate. Not surprisingly, words with /p/ as the only consonant are common:

• pupupopa "umbrella"
• pipapi (place name)
• pupapap "to cry"
• pipipi "municipal, city-level government"
• papapa "to squirm, slither"

But verbal inflections use /p/ more sparsely leading to a less extreme balance in overall text. This is because around 800 years ago Pabappa underwent a rendaku-like sound change whereby /p/ between vowels changed to /b/. Previously there had been even more use of /p/ in the language. At this time the language was called Papapfa. Most occurences of geminate /pp/ in modern Pabappa go back to clusters of dissimilar consonants such as /pf/.

If /w/ is considered an allophone of /u/, then /u/ is the only vowel that can occur in sequences, as other sequences such as /oo/ are shortened to singles in compounds.

The sound change champions

Examples of sound changes:

• rasumptam "frog", from vaipa babu bem žeptam
• pulta "to drink", from beiyabaup mibeas "to destroy thirst"
• wisi "pornography", from žužu žišafu, compare the almost unchanged Poswa cognate žužužišaf

Grammar

Unlike Poswa, Pabappa has a copula verb, pisa, which means that "good ice cream" and "the ice cream is good" are different sentences. It comes from the earlier form pys i bu, where the pys- prefix is related to Moonshine's singular nominative noun markers. Since Pabappa words can never end in two consonants, the -i- of pisa is sometimes elided (it never changes for tense), which leads to the pronunciation -psa, which is sometimes added on to the previous word in the sentence (usually a noun) as though it were a noun inflection that turns the noun into a verb. However, it is generally spelled out in full form.

Sample sentences

• Blumpurpum pesaunamap piliblilabi. "the children walked across the frozen lake".
• Pom map peminiba. "I hear you."
• Pom pempomop peminiba. "I can hear the sea."
• Wipambi wapibup pisa. "The palm tree is tall."

History

Pabappa is the language of a people who have not moved their capital city (Paba) for the last 4000 years. In the year 4200, it was just one of many small cities that were the capitals of independent empires, but Paba is the one that "won" ... not a war, but a peaceful struggle for economic and thus imperial domination that lasted a further 1500 years. From about 5500 onward, Paba was the unquestioned capital of the Padempim empire, but northern extensions of the empire which had broken away were beginning to outgrow the more compact and tightly controlled southern states. But even so, the dialects of these northern states were derived entirely from the dialect of Pabappa, not those of previously competitive rival cities such as Lunila.

Bammam Pampobapi

Bammam Pampobapi, "the War of the Toe", was an event that happened late in history when sailors from the empire of Falo invaded the southwest corner of the Pabap Empire by ship in order to claim more land for themselves. They anticipated an easy victory because many of the people in Bamma were already immigrants from Falo and the Pabaps in that area held no particular animosity for them. Moreover, the next state over was "majority-minority" and the Faloans felt it would be a barrier for Pabap soldiers that would help Falo more than it would hurt. But the Poswobs found out about the invasion and sent reinforcements over the mountains to help. However, the natives of Bamma did not like being used as a battleground for two warring empires, neither of which seemed to care how many Pabaps died. They figured that the Faloans would not want to kill them, and at worst would make them slaves. And so the Pabaps, under the command of a woman named Papsada, actually switched sides and helped the Faloans, bringing the war to a quick end with a victory for Falo. However the Faloan pirates did not actually act on behalf of Falo and thus did not attach their newfound land to Falo; they merely became the new rulers of it, and it remained nominally inside the Poswob Empire so that it could still be protected by the treaty from invasion by yet another power.

Dialects

Historically Pabappa was divided into two main dialects: Piris Pabappa, or "Blonde Pabappa", centered in the city of Paba, and Tarpabappa, "Tara Pabappa", which encompassed everything else (Tara was an ethnic name). Tarpabappa really is not close enough to be considered a dialect, but it was grouped with Pabappa for political purposes.

Genetically, Blonde Pabaps had more in common with the Poswob Empire to their north than with the so-called Tarpabaps, and their hair color was evidence of that. But Poswobs had little interest in Paba and considered them at best a rival in the goal of peaceful domination of the world. In the year 7414, Blop launched a "pacifist war" called Poblwopab against Paba, and installed many Poswob governors in the rural areas of the empire, and the Tarpabaps mostly came to identify as Poswobs and gave up their language, leaving only Piris Pabappa.

Geography

Pabappa is spoken in warm climates, considered to be tropical because they are on the south coast, although temperatures are not as high as those associated with the tropics on Earth. Vegetation rather than temperature determines whether a given climate qualifies as tropical or not. It is largely urban, with most speakers living in the cities of Paba or Lunila (Lunila is an Andanese city).

Paba

Largest city in the lowlands; it is over 4000 years old.

Lunila

The city of Lunila was where the god Lun was worshipped by the Andanese. (Sometiems the whole are was called "land of the gods", but the other parts of the empire didnt like this,.) The god's name in Andanese was Ini, and the city was named Ini Ilasa. Lasa = temple, cognate to Pabappa pala.

Recently Pabaps in despair at their land being swarmed and assimilated into the Poswob Empire have begun moving out of the empire, generally into other tropical areas. Even though by doing so they are giving up their citizenship, for many emigrant families, this seemed like the right thing to do.

Culture

The Pabaps are pacifist feminist nudist vegetarian environmentalists. They symbolize these five tenets with a five pointed star (tatsa pabi) which gives the empire's primary political party its name: Tatsapabiusa. This logo is sometimes also called a Peace Sphere (moromadup), and was not invented by the Pabaps, but rather taken from the indigenous Moonshine people inhabiting the mountains to their north.

The idea behind the image is that the sphere is a bubble protecting humans from all evil and painful things, and the five points of the star symbolize the human body (arm, leg, leg, arm, head). However the Pabaps have found danger even in that imagery, saying that the symbol could be seen as a human trapped inside an egg or crushed against a round object. Thus they prefer to think of the five points of the star not as human limbs but as five pillars denoting their philosophy:

• Pacifism: Pabaps cannot attack anyone at any time in any place for any reason. They cannot defend themselves against wild animals in their homes, or against being robbed while out on the street, or even when they're in a foreign land. They cannot own or manufacture weapons beyond the simple wooden knives they use to cut fruit and some hard furniture to sit on which is mostly too heavy to use as a weapon. In contrast to the Poswobs, and indeed, all of the other pacifist nations in the world, they reject the idea that violence in self defense is sometimes necessary for survival. They have survived for 4000 years without being conquered by enemies for several reasons:

• They are poor, and not many enemies would want to conquer them anyway,
• most of the immediately adjacent tribes are pacifists too, so they're sort of a buffer,
• Paba itself is a walled city;
• Despite being on the mainland, there are tall mountains surrounding the Pabaps on three sides, and so the only way to get in is from the east (where the Saks live) or by ocean;
• and there are plenty of other natural dangers such as wild animals keeping others out. However these animals have sometimes turned against the humans, and there are cases of lone animals such as pigs eating dozens of humans who had nothing to defend themselves with.

• Feminism: Women should be in control of men, because women are more morally pure than men. This does not mean that men are slaves, just that they are best kept under the watch of a woman, be it their wife, their girlfriend, or a sort of religious advisor. "Police" watch the cities so thickly that the whole state feels like an oversized elementary school, with people asking the police for permissions to do simple things such as staying out alone at night to reach a relative's house on the other side of town. There is a group of police called the "people of the night" (pasapta) who are the only ones allowed to be outdoors after dark. The police are usually men because they are seen as being better able to handle physical threats. (The ultra-feminist Pabaps feel that true feminism means that although nobody should ever have to fight, if there is no alternative, men should be the ones doing it.) Just like everyone else, Paba's police are weaponless, but they tend to be people who are stronger than average.
• Nudism In the distant past Pabaps spent lots of money on clothes. The Poswobs still do, but the Pabaps dont because it's against the law to wear clothes unless absolutely necessary (such as in mountain areas when it gets cold). Thus it is impossible to rob someone, since they cannot carry money or anything else that they could give.
• Vegetarianism Hand in hand with pacifism comes the ideal that Pabaps, being human, should not be eating animals even if they die of natural causes with no human effort. Even an animal that died of natural causes is taboo. The ideal diet consists entirely of fruits and vegetables with not even little insects added in. Those, they say, who eat meat are cursing themselves into a life of disease.
• Environmentalism This word is difficult to translate, since the level of technology is so low and the human population so small that Pabaps would not have to worry about things such as deforestation and environmental pollution even if they tried their hardest to destroy the world around them. Instead this fifth pillar of their belief system states that humans should stay within their natural "habitats", within which they can do anything they want, but they should never even venture outside even with peaceful intentions unless they are sure they will not be intruding on some other animals' living space. Thus there are no roads in the woods, or bridges across lakes, etc. in Pabap territory. This makes the city difficult to reach and adds to their protection.

Their culture is an extreme example of a pacifist hyper-egalitarian society, in which people are not allowed to be violent even towards dangerous animals, women are in control of men, and people wear no clothes, not to show their beauty or to be closer to nature, but because people had historically used expensive clothes to show their social status and Pabaps wanted to prevent that from happening again. (It stops them from carrying concealed weapons as well, although in reality, nudism is only mandatory in summer, because even though Paba is at 28N and has a climate similar to the US Gulf coast, it can get quite chilly in winter.) They also do not share the Poswob opposition to homosexuality or abortion, or the seemingly paradoxical traits of Poswob pacifism such as trapping and starving snakes so that they would be "fresh" when the Poswobs were ready to eat. To a Western eye, they might seem to be a parody of modern Western liberalism, except for the fact that they generally have strong religious beliefs and see all their traits as "conservative" from the point of view of their religion. On the other hand, these traits are mostly just social attitudes, in contrast to the Poswob empire, where similar "pacifist/feminist" ideas have proven unstable and need to be enforced by strict government regulations, often tied to the religion.

To a citizen of Earth the Pabap culture seems very emasculated; and many of the other cultures on the planet Tebbala would agree. But it should be noted that in a society with so little technology as this, everyday life was full of physically demanding tasks, and that there were essentially no healthy men who did not have to perform at least some athletic work to get by each day, even people with positions such as politicians. This is due to the prevalent egalitarian ideology which states that no human (or animal) should be forced to be a servant for another, even if that other person's time could be more productively spent working on non-physical tasks.

On a different mindset, Pabaps might say that having a large family is a sign of masculinity, and though not everyone had large families, many did, such that throughout history the Pabaps have been constantly expanding out of their homeland as it became overcrowded (at least by the standards of Tebbala), and moving into places where humans could barely survive. See Pabap culture for more info.

Since the Pabap homeland (called "Pabi Padempim" or "Isiblol") is governed by the Poswob empire, things such as abortion and homosexuality that have been ruled illegal in the central government are technically illegal here as well. But because of the technology (comparable to medieval Europe at best) there is no feasible way to enforce these laws, and in any case the central government has far greater problems to worry about, such as the huge holes in its territory inhabited by openly hostile armies who do not even allow the Poswob governors to visit, let alone enforce the laws. But even so, the central government has occasionally launched civil wars against the rebellious Pabaps, figuring that it would be safer to attack a weak ally than a strong enemy. The Pabap term for this is pampobapi, meaning "war", since it is the only form of war they know of.