Secret Women's Language

[Grant Barrett]

>From http://www.smh.com.au/news/9910/12/text/world5.html

A clandestine language developed over hundreds of years by women in southern China is dying out, a Vancouver-based filmmaker says in a new documentary.

Yang Yue-qing says there are only two people left who can write the language, which is called Nu Shu, or "women's language". Villagers Yang Huang-yi, 89, and He Yan-xin, 55, both learnt Nu Shu as girls.

The language survived two world wars, the Chinese civil war of the late 1940s and the Cultural Revolution. But Nu Shu has been in decline since China started giving more freedom to women, including lifting the barriers that kept them from an education.

"Not many Chinese people know about Nu Shu," said Yang. "These women never got an education, so they created their own language. The men just called it witchcraft."

Yang said the language was developed in secret by the women of Jiangyong county in landlocked Hunan province. It consists of 700 to 1,000 characters. Traditional Chinese writers use between 3,000 and 5,000 characters.


--
Grant Barrett

http://www.worldnewyork.com/