15.2899, Sum: Nushu Language

[LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-15-2899. Thu Oct 14 2004. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 15.2899, Sum: Nushu Language                                                                                                                                                                                          

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1)
Date: 11-Oct-2004
From: Gabriela Pérez Báez < gp22 at buffalo.edu >
Subject: Nushu Language 
 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2004 01:38:57
From: Gabriela Pérez Báez < gp22 at buffalo.edu >
Subject: Nushu Language 
 
As part of my work teaching a course entitled Language in its Social 
Setting, I researched the topic of Nushu. I was introduced to the topic by 
a BBC article published on the web on 9/23/04 reporting that 'la anciana 
Yang Huanyi murió a sus más de noventa años de edad, y con ella se llevó 
el único idioma en el mundo hablado solo por mujeres' (my translation: 
Yang Huanyi, in her nineties, passed away, taking with her with only 
language in the world spoken only by women). 

A first pass at resources on the web showed that Nushu (or Nu Shu) is in 
fact a writing system invented by a community of women in the Hunan 
province of China at a time when literacy education was forbidden to them. 
In researching the subject, a number of LinguistList readers contributed 
sources of information. Below, I am including a list of resources 
suggested by them, along with some other I was able to pinpoint. I hope 
this is useful, although not much will be news to those who have looked 
into the topic in the past.

INTERNET:
Sites I consulted on the topic did not provide content of scholarly 
quality, unfortunately. In particular, mass media articles were 
particularly misleading in clarifying whether Nushu is a written or spoken 
system of communication. 

There are a dozen or so sites devoted to the topic, and the most useful is 
http://www2.ttcn.ne.jp/~orie/home.htm
maintained by Prof. Orie Endo of Bunkyo University in Japan.

REFERENCES
Prof. Endo's website has a list of references 
http://www2.ttcn.ne.jp/~orie/reference.htm

Peter T. Daniels suggested a Yale Dissertation:
Chiang (?) We Too Know the Script. 
A review of this dissertation was written by Wm. S. Y. Want in the 
journal Written Language and Literacy

MJ Harman offered a thesis by a student:
Qifeng Zan NUSHU: A WOMEN'S WRITING SYSTEM
1994 M.A. in Linguistics
University of Florida, Gainesville, FL

In addition, I came across the following:
Lin-Lee Lee. 2002. Creating a female language: symbolic transformation 
embedded in Nushu. Chinese communication studies : contexts and 
comparisons. Ed. by Xing Lu, Wenshan Jia, and D. Ray Heisey. Westport, 
CT : Ablex Pub.

Zhao, Liming. 1998. Nushu: Chinese Women's Characters. International 
Journal of the Sociology of Language, 1998, 129, 127-137

Silber, Cathy Lyn. 1996. Nushu (Chinese Women's Script) Literacy and 
Literature. Dissertation Abstracts International, A: The Humanities and 
Social Sciences, 1996, 56, 12, June, 4779-A

Shi, Dingxu (Review of: Xie, Zhimin). 1993. The Myth of Jiangyong Female 
Writing. Language, 1993, 69, 1, Mar, 174-178

VIDEO:
Mary Bucholtz mentioned the video called ''Nu Shu: A Hidden Language of 
Women in China''. It can be ordered through Women Make Movies at 
www.wmm.com/catalog/pages/c473.htm

DICTIONARY AND EXHIBITION
It appears that the Chinese government has taken an interest in Nushu. The 
site Beijing This Month reports on a public exhibition that opened in late 
April 2004 showing artifacts with the Nushu writing. The site also reports 
on a dictionary of some 1,800 Nushu characters compiled by Zhou Shuoyi, 
who studied the language while he worked for the Cultural Bureau in 
Jiangyong County. This report can be consulted at 
www.btmbeijing.com/contents/en/btm/2004-04/hot/womenway

Gabriela Pérez Báez
Linguistics
University at Buffalo 

Linguistic Field(s): Sociolinguistics



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