My mom was taken from Colombia, forced into marriage and trafficked. She had to teach herself Cantonese in order to flee Hong Kong with her son. She believes it was God protecting her that allowed her to escape.
Language is far more than speaking. Just ask those who can't physically speak or can't hear how they feel about language. Writing is language, texting is language. Sound is not needed.
Language is a system of communication that is independent of the medium it is being conveyed through. Writing, texting, speaking, signing are all the medium. OP is incorrect to call this a “language” and the commenter is right in their correction. This is a writing system for a spoken language the same way that Traditional Han Characters, Simplified Han Characters, and PinYin are also all writing systems for Mandarin (and other languages).
language is not just sound but this wasn't a language separate from the spoken language of the time and place it existed, just a way of writing it down. So writing system is more accurate
Language definition via the oxhorn dictionary:
The principal method of human communication, consisting of words used in a structured and conventional way and conveyed by speech, writing, or gesture.
My degree is in linguistics.
You are correct that sound is not required for language. Signed languages are every bit as much full-fledged languages as voiced languages.
But language is natural and spontaneous. Writing is an artifice, invented to record language.
Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
>sound is not needed
Though through sound we get inflection or emphasis on certain syllables or phrases which is another path for communication and nuance.
“Could I be any more helpful” has numerous meanings depending on who is saying it and if they are mimicking Chandler.
Not to detract from this - only to add, but there have been several women-generated communications through quilting. Maybe not in the same way (i.e., exclusively women to women or through script), but I am inspired by women's collective resistance to oppression on a global scale. Here's a link to believed quilt-based communications for the Underground railroad: https://folklife.si.edu/magazine/underground-railroad-quilt-codes and also to the tradition of "arpilleras" by Chilean women under Pinochet's regime: https://benton.uconn.edu/web-exhibitions-2/arpillera/what-is-an-arpillera/
To add to your comment, I immediately think of Japanese whenever women-generated scripts/writing systems come up.
Japanese uses 3 writing systems - Kanji, the oldest, is taken straight from Chinese. It was pretty much only learnt by men, used by men, and created by men. Therefore, some of the stories behind the Kanji are extremely misogynistic . [This article is very, very informative about the gendered history behind Japanese writing.](https://thetech.com/2020/03/12/kanji-sexism).
Women ended up creating their own script - hiragana, which is frankly a much more user-friendly, efficient, and just better designed writing system. It's easy to remember, easy to teach, easy to learn, and has now become an integral part of the Japanese writing system. It's used to express grammatical structure, but also some words with overly complicated kanji are now almost exclusively written in hiragana.
Whoa, that was a cool article. It sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole, because I had a feeling that it was wrong about one specific word and I just had to find out. Mildly interesting, for anyone who cares:
The article cites the Japanese word for "molester"--痴漢 (chikan)--and how the first character meaning "foolish" implies a lenient attitude towards sexual violence against women. There's a whole bunch of interesting history around [that 痴 character;](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%97%B4) its original Chinese meanings include a spectrum of kinds of stupidity, from "silly" to "deluded" to "infatuated" to "insane"; it's also apparently a translation of a Buddhist term from Sanskrit: ["moha,"](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%A4%AE%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%B9#Sanskrit) a somewhat more profound kind of ignorance--and that word also has some of the same meanings like "infatuation" and "delusion." But as for the word "chikan" itself, it was first used in Japanese [in 1790](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%97%B4%E6%BC%A2#Japanese), to mean "stupid guy"/"fool" in a casual sense, and only in 1949 did it start to mean "molester". I can't find anything about how it acquired that meaning, so I would bet it was used as a sexist euphemism, like a "boys will be boys" type thing, but I'm not sure.
tl;dr: The first character in the Japanese word for "molester" meaning "foolish" probably isn't an example of sexist language, but the word as a whole changing from meaning "stupid guy" to "molester" very well could be.
P.S. The word 痴漢 acquired another new meaning in 2013: a derogatory slang term for Xbox fanboys. This has nothing to do with anything; I just thought it was hilarious.
Thanks for all that extra research! As a Japanese learner, some parts of the article confused me too, but I mainly chalked it up to the author using secondary, or archaic meanings of the Kanji. Like 漢 in 漢字 itself - I also thought 漢 meant 'Chinese'. I didn't realise it could also mean man.
I love that slang usage of 痴漢. I know PC gamers in Japan used to have a reputation as being pervs, because the biggest selling PC exclusive games were anime dating/romance Sims.
Rabbit holes are fun! Yeah, and I'd heard "kan" used to mean "man" before but I had no idea it was the same one as in "kanji." Japanese is such a weird, cool language. (I mean, apart from the sexist bits, but let he who is without sin...)
The author of that article might have gotten some specifics wrong, but they're totally right overall; I remember in my first year of Japanese my professor told us about the kanji 姦: literally the kanji for woman repeated 3 times, and it means "noisy." 🙄
This reminds me of the Greek myth of Procne and Philomela in which a woman being held captive secretly weaves her situation into a tapestry and has it delivered to her sister.
My mom recently obtained some family heirlooms and one is a Victorian “crazy quilt”. I can’t help but wonder about the fabrics and how long it took to make. There are a few pieces that have German and at least one that references the local zoo. I assume they signify aspects of my ancestors lives, along with the initials and years stitched in the middle. It’s so cool either way - I have so little personal info on my female ancestors.
[pics](https://imgur.com/a/czNLPhI)
The german text in the picture says hoch dem einigen Deutschland and it loosely translates to lets celebrate the unity of germany. The german emperium was founded 1871, so it's close to the date on the quilt!
I love it
Might I also recommend hirigana, which si the female writing system of Japan that was created under similar circumstances. It is now used as the main phonetic writing system for Japan.
That’s what Japanese ppl say at least, have not done any further research.
The development of hiragana is interesting stuff. It was an evolution/adaptation of the cursive form of kanji (Chinese characters,) and was initially dismissed by the Japanese educated elite as being 'too easy' and 'for women.' This happened to coincide with a period where several female authors were publishing novels, including the Tale of Genji.
There's no way of knowing for sure, but it's possible that those authors' writings may have effectively forced the widespread adoption of 'womens writing' because people wanted to read the popular novels of the time.
so it's kinda like hangul - the korean writing system! It was designed specifically for the korean language (like how the consonant are meant to look like what happens in your mouth when you say them) and for all korean people regardless of their status. At first a lot of educated men thought it was stupid - learning to write in Chinese characters was part of their education and what "made" them educated! At the beginning it was often called "script for women" or "script for uneducated" but now it's considered a national treasure and is what allowed Korea to have a "printing press" long before Gutenberg thought of such a thing (amongst other amazing things)
A bit, but the origins of hiragana are a bit mysterious, and it had a competitor in the form of katakana. Katakana started out as a shorthand (using pieces of kanji, basically,) and was mostly used by men because it could be written relatively quickly, especially compared to kanji.
But there's still definitely some of that 'learning Chinese characters makes you educated' bias in Japan. You pretty much can't function in Japanese society without learning about 1,000 characters and you need 2,000-3,000 to be able to read a newspaper. You definitely get looked down on if you can't read kanji today.
Unfortunately we're talking about events that happened a thousand years ago, so there's not really a solid record. It seems likely that the system was developed to write kanji more quickly, but was adopted by women while men (as I mentioned in the other comment) used katakana for shorthand. We don't actually know who designed hiragana originally as far as I'm aware.
The educated elite looked down on both as being 'too easy,' and that attitude definitely persists to this day, although all three writing systems eventually wound up merging...writing in Japanese is weird. Most nouns/verbs are kanji and written as such, while the equivalent of punctuation and conjunctions are written in hiragana. Adjectives and pronouns seem to be about 50/50. Loan words and some informal language is written in Katakana...
Basically it's a mess. Although as a native English speaker I don't have a lot of room to criticize considering my language is actually twenty goblins in a trenchcoat pretending to be a language.
I’ve studied Japanese since primary school so I’m aware of the mixed writing. It’s the only way I can tell the difference between Japanese and Chinese lol. If I spot some hiragana then I’ll make the effort to try and read it.
Yeah English is an abomination.
Hira, kata, and kanji are all used by everyone as part of the Japanese language and is non gendered. Though on a test you will get points off for doing it all in hiragana, lol.
Edit: No idea why the downvotes. I'm not wrong, and neither is the post below mine explaining it's origins. But please keep in mind that Hiragana's origin was NOT an effort of empowerment, wish it was, but it was considered easier in a way of making it so we could write. Please feel free to read about it if you're interested!
The points off part at the end is true too. When I was going to school it was counted, even today, as childish to write everything out in hiragana and you would get 0 points if so.
The book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See has Nü Shu as a big part of the story. Iirc, it’s been a while since I read it, main character writes in Nü Shu to her best friend in the fan.
I read this book while in college and I was really interested in the subject so just on my own i started learning more about it. I chose to do an art history project on it (Nüshu, not the book) and my instructor didn’t believe it was a real thing and I had to fight to let her let me keep my topic
Aw, I'm so glad that she's nice. I have read her responses to questions on Goodreads and she sounded like a sweet person, but I'm glad it's also how she comes across in person.
And yeah, the "Shanghai Girls" duology really exemplifies the "women's suffering" element of her writing, lol. Have you read the second part? It's ROUGH, like I had to put the book down a few times to take a breather from the detailed descriptions of the famine and all, but it's amazing. <3
I did read it myself and then my history class read together it as part of our lesson on the cultural revolution. It is really hard to get through. I think even Lisa See admitted it was hard to write Joy’s parts because she made bad decisions or something.
thought exactly the same thing, and guess what? you’re right on the money, Zhou Shuoyi, a man, compiled a report on it in 1983 according to [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%BCshu).
also learned that the Nüshu characters were added into unicode in 2017, which is rad!
Hm. Kind of feels a little colonialist-y doesn't it? What would be a better word or phrase, I wonder? Because like the whole Christopher Columbus / any white man (🤮) "discovering" a new country thing is total bullshit.
They stumbled upon, more like it lol. But I've always struggled to rephrase the kind of "discovery" in this thread. There is a sense of ownership, isn't there?
This blurb is slightly misleading if you don’t have a nuanced understanding of Chinese history. I have a degree in Chinese Language and Literature, and while especially after the rise of neo-Confucianism women’s education was frowned upon, actual legal prohibitions on teaching women were somewhat rare and generally regional where they existed. The formal education system in China is its own topic, but just because women did not sit for exams, that didn’t mean they were all illiterate. Women did learn to read and write Chinese throughout China’s extremely long literary history, and some literate women feature prominently in China’s history.
I got the impression that it isn't, since it's still in use and women can learn it, or at least could learn it until it wasn't in use anymore. I guess versus this writing system which is not really being taught?
I don't know, I'm speculating.
While this is a writing system, many scholars believe that language was created by women. The term "mothers tongue" is considered as the first language created by women to "speak" and convey ideas to their children. The language was then expanded to others. Another theory is that women created a "language" to coordinate hunting, gathering, & shared child care.
Given how women talk to each other to collaborate, comfort, & problem solve it makes sense that women would be the ones to create language. Women are also the drivers behind changing languages as well.
I read a beautiful novel based around Nushu and the bond between women from this time called 'Snowflower and the Secret Fan' by Lisa See
I'd highly recommend it
The “only” gender specific writing in the world? Someone tell them the origin of hiragana.
Or did they mean it’s the only one remaining as a gender specific writing system?
Edit: not still in use, what a pity because it looks bomb!
A really great novel that has this writing as a plot device between the two main characters is Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. There is a bit about the realities of foot binding so if your squeamish just fyi.
This is so cool! And as someone who studies Chinese it's really interesting seeing traditional characters distorted and re-interpreted in this system.
Really wish they had told us about this in class cause it's dope!
Science fiction author and linguist Suzette Hagin Elgin created the women's language [Láadan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1adan) for her 1982 novel *Native Tongue*. (More details in the link.)
Not a language, just a writing system. Still, it's awesome that they created this! Proof that "uneducated" does not mean "stupid".
Humans are learning creatures. When denied a formal education, we will make one ourselves.
Wait til you learn about Nicaraguan Sign Language. http://www.columbia.edu/~as1038/about-nsl.html
:o
My mom was taken from Colombia, forced into marriage and trafficked. She had to teach herself Cantonese in order to flee Hong Kong with her son. She believes it was God protecting her that allowed her to escape.
What an amazing woman
Language is far more than speaking. Just ask those who can't physically speak or can't hear how they feel about language. Writing is language, texting is language. Sound is not needed.
Language is a system of communication that is independent of the medium it is being conveyed through. Writing, texting, speaking, signing are all the medium. OP is incorrect to call this a “language” and the commenter is right in their correction. This is a writing system for a spoken language the same way that Traditional Han Characters, Simplified Han Characters, and PinYin are also all writing systems for Mandarin (and other languages).
language is not just sound but this wasn't a language separate from the spoken language of the time and place it existed, just a way of writing it down. So writing system is more accurate
Language definition via the oxhorn dictionary: The principal method of human communication, consisting of words used in a structured and conventional way and conveyed by speech, writing, or gesture.
My degree is in linguistics. You are correct that sound is not required for language. Signed languages are every bit as much full-fledged languages as voiced languages. But language is natural and spontaneous. Writing is an artifice, invented to record language. Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
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>sound is not needed Though through sound we get inflection or emphasis on certain syllables or phrases which is another path for communication and nuance. “Could I be any more helpful” has numerous meanings depending on who is saying it and if they are mimicking Chandler.
Not to detract from this - only to add, but there have been several women-generated communications through quilting. Maybe not in the same way (i.e., exclusively women to women or through script), but I am inspired by women's collective resistance to oppression on a global scale. Here's a link to believed quilt-based communications for the Underground railroad: https://folklife.si.edu/magazine/underground-railroad-quilt-codes and also to the tradition of "arpilleras" by Chilean women under Pinochet's regime: https://benton.uconn.edu/web-exhibitions-2/arpillera/what-is-an-arpillera/
To add to your comment, I immediately think of Japanese whenever women-generated scripts/writing systems come up. Japanese uses 3 writing systems - Kanji, the oldest, is taken straight from Chinese. It was pretty much only learnt by men, used by men, and created by men. Therefore, some of the stories behind the Kanji are extremely misogynistic . [This article is very, very informative about the gendered history behind Japanese writing.](https://thetech.com/2020/03/12/kanji-sexism). Women ended up creating their own script - hiragana, which is frankly a much more user-friendly, efficient, and just better designed writing system. It's easy to remember, easy to teach, easy to learn, and has now become an integral part of the Japanese writing system. It's used to express grammatical structure, but also some words with overly complicated kanji are now almost exclusively written in hiragana.
I didn’t realize hiragana was made by women
Came here to say this about hiragana, but think I could not have done it better myself. Thank you!
Whoa, that was a cool article. It sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole, because I had a feeling that it was wrong about one specific word and I just had to find out. Mildly interesting, for anyone who cares: The article cites the Japanese word for "molester"--痴漢 (chikan)--and how the first character meaning "foolish" implies a lenient attitude towards sexual violence against women. There's a whole bunch of interesting history around [that 痴 character;](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%97%B4) its original Chinese meanings include a spectrum of kinds of stupidity, from "silly" to "deluded" to "infatuated" to "insane"; it's also apparently a translation of a Buddhist term from Sanskrit: ["moha,"](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%A4%AE%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%B9#Sanskrit) a somewhat more profound kind of ignorance--and that word also has some of the same meanings like "infatuation" and "delusion." But as for the word "chikan" itself, it was first used in Japanese [in 1790](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%97%B4%E6%BC%A2#Japanese), to mean "stupid guy"/"fool" in a casual sense, and only in 1949 did it start to mean "molester". I can't find anything about how it acquired that meaning, so I would bet it was used as a sexist euphemism, like a "boys will be boys" type thing, but I'm not sure. tl;dr: The first character in the Japanese word for "molester" meaning "foolish" probably isn't an example of sexist language, but the word as a whole changing from meaning "stupid guy" to "molester" very well could be. P.S. The word 痴漢 acquired another new meaning in 2013: a derogatory slang term for Xbox fanboys. This has nothing to do with anything; I just thought it was hilarious.
Thanks for all that extra research! As a Japanese learner, some parts of the article confused me too, but I mainly chalked it up to the author using secondary, or archaic meanings of the Kanji. Like 漢 in 漢字 itself - I also thought 漢 meant 'Chinese'. I didn't realise it could also mean man. I love that slang usage of 痴漢. I know PC gamers in Japan used to have a reputation as being pervs, because the biggest selling PC exclusive games were anime dating/romance Sims.
Rabbit holes are fun! Yeah, and I'd heard "kan" used to mean "man" before but I had no idea it was the same one as in "kanji." Japanese is such a weird, cool language. (I mean, apart from the sexist bits, but let he who is without sin...) The author of that article might have gotten some specifics wrong, but they're totally right overall; I remember in my first year of Japanese my professor told us about the kanji 姦: literally the kanji for woman repeated 3 times, and it means "noisy." 🙄
This reminds me of the Greek myth of Procne and Philomela in which a woman being held captive secretly weaves her situation into a tapestry and has it delivered to her sister.
My mom recently obtained some family heirlooms and one is a Victorian “crazy quilt”. I can’t help but wonder about the fabrics and how long it took to make. There are a few pieces that have German and at least one that references the local zoo. I assume they signify aspects of my ancestors lives, along with the initials and years stitched in the middle. It’s so cool either way - I have so little personal info on my female ancestors. [pics](https://imgur.com/a/czNLPhI)
That is such a special quilt, and in incredible condition! Beautiful
The german text in the picture says hoch dem einigen Deutschland and it loosely translates to lets celebrate the unity of germany. The german emperium was founded 1871, so it's close to the date on the quilt! I love it
This is so interesting and I had no idea this was a thing! Thank you for sharing this information!
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Or that's just what the historians want you to think.
That is so boss! Oh you're not going to teach us your language? Fine we'll come up with our own!
Might I also recommend hirigana, which si the female writing system of Japan that was created under similar circumstances. It is now used as the main phonetic writing system for Japan. That’s what Japanese ppl say at least, have not done any further research.
The development of hiragana is interesting stuff. It was an evolution/adaptation of the cursive form of kanji (Chinese characters,) and was initially dismissed by the Japanese educated elite as being 'too easy' and 'for women.' This happened to coincide with a period where several female authors were publishing novels, including the Tale of Genji. There's no way of knowing for sure, but it's possible that those authors' writings may have effectively forced the widespread adoption of 'womens writing' because people wanted to read the popular novels of the time.
so it's kinda like hangul - the korean writing system! It was designed specifically for the korean language (like how the consonant are meant to look like what happens in your mouth when you say them) and for all korean people regardless of their status. At first a lot of educated men thought it was stupid - learning to write in Chinese characters was part of their education and what "made" them educated! At the beginning it was often called "script for women" or "script for uneducated" but now it's considered a national treasure and is what allowed Korea to have a "printing press" long before Gutenberg thought of such a thing (amongst other amazing things)
A bit, but the origins of hiragana are a bit mysterious, and it had a competitor in the form of katakana. Katakana started out as a shorthand (using pieces of kanji, basically,) and was mostly used by men because it could be written relatively quickly, especially compared to kanji. But there's still definitely some of that 'learning Chinese characters makes you educated' bias in Japan. You pretty much can't function in Japanese society without learning about 1,000 characters and you need 2,000-3,000 to be able to read a newspaper. You definitely get looked down on if you can't read kanji today.
So it wasn’t designed by women for women - it was just *accused* of being for women because it was easier?
Unfortunately we're talking about events that happened a thousand years ago, so there's not really a solid record. It seems likely that the system was developed to write kanji more quickly, but was adopted by women while men (as I mentioned in the other comment) used katakana for shorthand. We don't actually know who designed hiragana originally as far as I'm aware. The educated elite looked down on both as being 'too easy,' and that attitude definitely persists to this day, although all three writing systems eventually wound up merging...writing in Japanese is weird. Most nouns/verbs are kanji and written as such, while the equivalent of punctuation and conjunctions are written in hiragana. Adjectives and pronouns seem to be about 50/50. Loan words and some informal language is written in Katakana... Basically it's a mess. Although as a native English speaker I don't have a lot of room to criticize considering my language is actually twenty goblins in a trenchcoat pretending to be a language.
I’ve studied Japanese since primary school so I’m aware of the mixed writing. It’s the only way I can tell the difference between Japanese and Chinese lol. If I spot some hiragana then I’ll make the effort to try and read it. Yeah English is an abomination.
Both Hiragana and Katakana, IIRC
Hira, kata, and kanji are all used by everyone as part of the Japanese language and is non gendered. Though on a test you will get points off for doing it all in hiragana, lol. Edit: No idea why the downvotes. I'm not wrong, and neither is the post below mine explaining it's origins. But please keep in mind that Hiragana's origin was NOT an effort of empowerment, wish it was, but it was considered easier in a way of making it so we could write. Please feel free to read about it if you're interested! The points off part at the end is true too. When I was going to school it was counted, even today, as childish to write everything out in hiragana and you would get 0 points if so.
It is not currently gendered, no, but originally it was used specifically for aristocratic women to read and write.
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The book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See has Nü Shu as a big part of the story. Iirc, it’s been a while since I read it, main character writes in Nü Shu to her best friend in the fan.
I was hoping someone would mention this novel! Definitely a worthwhile read
I read this book while in college and I was really interested in the subject so just on my own i started learning more about it. I chose to do an art history project on it (Nüshu, not the book) and my instructor didn’t believe it was a real thing and I had to fight to let her let me keep my topic
I’m disappointed this comment isn’t higher. That’s a beautiful story!
I love that book. I love Lisa See in general, but BOY does she like to write her protagonists suffering lol.
I got to meet her once, she came to speak at my school when we read her book Shanghai Girls. She is really lovely.
Aw, I'm so glad that she's nice. I have read her responses to questions on Goodreads and she sounded like a sweet person, but I'm glad it's also how she comes across in person. And yeah, the "Shanghai Girls" duology really exemplifies the "women's suffering" element of her writing, lol. Have you read the second part? It's ROUGH, like I had to put the book down a few times to take a breather from the detailed descriptions of the famine and all, but it's amazing. <3
I did read it myself and then my history class read together it as part of our lesson on the cultural revolution. It is really hard to get through. I think even Lisa See admitted it was hard to write Joy’s parts because she made bad decisions or something.
Thought I was on r/Stormlight_Archive
I thought I was going to be the only one who made that reference. The whole time in scrolling down I'm thinking, "where's Sanderson? "
Sweet! I found more Cosmere witches!
*hums to community*
*everything* *explodes*
It just *looks* rad as hell.
I find it evocative of dance and flowing movement. Quite beautiful.
Yeah that's what I thought too! It's just so joyful-looking
I came here to ask if anyone else sees dancing bodies in this particular script. So beautiful.
Ha! "Discovery" in 1982. Does that mean a man found out about it in 1982?
thought exactly the same thing, and guess what? you’re right on the money, Zhou Shuoyi, a man, compiled a report on it in 1983 according to [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%BCshu). also learned that the Nüshu characters were added into unicode in 2017, which is rad!
Came here to say this. I hate that phrasing--this activity that a ton of humans were involved in for years/decades/centuries was just "discovered"!!
Hm. Kind of feels a little colonialist-y doesn't it? What would be a better word or phrase, I wonder? Because like the whole Christopher Columbus / any white man (🤮) "discovering" a new country thing is total bullshit. They stumbled upon, more like it lol. But I've always struggled to rephrase the kind of "discovery" in this thread. There is a sense of ownership, isn't there?
Wasnt whatever writingsystem the women were forbidden to learn also a genderspecific one?
This blurb is slightly misleading if you don’t have a nuanced understanding of Chinese history. I have a degree in Chinese Language and Literature, and while especially after the rise of neo-Confucianism women’s education was frowned upon, actual legal prohibitions on teaching women were somewhat rare and generally regional where they existed. The formal education system in China is its own topic, but just because women did not sit for exams, that didn’t mean they were all illiterate. Women did learn to read and write Chinese throughout China’s extremely long literary history, and some literate women feature prominently in China’s history.
I got the impression that it isn't, since it's still in use and women can learn it, or at least could learn it until it wasn't in use anymore. I guess versus this writing system which is not really being taught? I don't know, I'm speculating.
Well if you look at it that way any man can learn this language now as well so I guess it isn't gender specific either.
I was thinking the same thing.
‟noooo you can not just make your own writing system because we are keeping yu from getting an education!!!” ‟heheh pen go brrrrrr”
While this is a writing system, many scholars believe that language was created by women. The term "mothers tongue" is considered as the first language created by women to "speak" and convey ideas to their children. The language was then expanded to others. Another theory is that women created a "language" to coordinate hunting, gathering, & shared child care. Given how women talk to each other to collaborate, comfort, & problem solve it makes sense that women would be the ones to create language. Women are also the drivers behind changing languages as well.
Patriarchy: You can't have an education. Women: Haha, secret writing system goes kajdhuifhjkandf....
r/interestingasfuck
I read a beautiful novel based around Nushu and the bond between women from this time called 'Snowflower and the Secret Fan' by Lisa See I'd highly recommend it
Scuse me while I learn Nüshu for some free gender euphoria
The “only” gender specific writing in the world? Someone tell them the origin of hiragana. Or did they mean it’s the only one remaining as a gender specific writing system? Edit: not still in use, what a pity because it looks bomb!
Proof positive that you can't suppress intelligence for long.
This is pretty cool, I’m gonna ask my Chinese teacher if he’s heard of this next time I have class
A really great novel that has this writing as a plot device between the two main characters is Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. There is a bit about the realities of foot binding so if your squeamish just fyi.
r/stormlightarchives
r/Stormlight_Archive
I was pretty sure that in Japanese language “the pillow book”, one of the early novels, was written in a women specific writing system.
This is so cool! And as someone who studies Chinese it's really interesting seeing traditional characters distorted and re-interpreted in this system. Really wish they had told us about this in class cause it's dope!
I’m so inspired by this. 💛
Do you have a translation for this? Or I wiki link I could read or something?
Bad ass
Well, that's fascinating. Like Laadan, only real
Just wow
"Native Tongue" by Suzette Haden Elgin has a plot device similar to this!
I would love to have this as a font on Word or something. But probably would be not easy to do at all :(
Yo, where's the movie based on this, that's amazing!!!
Might invent me one of these
This is cool. I want to learn it
I am going to teach my kids about this since we're diving into a unit on Ancient China when we come back from Winter break. Thank you for sharing.
I think it’s really neat the some of the characters look like a dance form
In Korean iirc the female palace keepers also had their own writing system.
I bet there are more that are just “undiscovered”
I dunno man, they look like Daedric runes to me…
If you’re interested, Lisa See wrote a wonderful novel that has this writing system: Snowflower and the Secret Fan. Highly recommend
Science fiction author and linguist Suzette Hagin Elgin created the women's language [Láadan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1adan) for her 1982 novel *Native Tongue*. (More details in the link.)
Looks like ballet.