Nu-Shu

[Lynne Murphy]

--On Tuesday, February 20, 2001 10:57 pm -0800 Kim & Rima McKinzey <rkm at SLIP.NET> wrote:

> Have any of you heard of Nu-Shu (I think that's how it was
> transliterated)?  I missed the documentary film the other night.  It
> is supposedly a secret women's language in China - Jian-yong county,
> developed at a time when they were denied educational opportunities
> and isolated.
>
> There was a science fiction book several years ago (and,
> embarrasingly, mind like a steel sieve, I can remember neither the
> title nor the author right now) that involved linguists and supressed
> women developing their own secret language.


I edited a special issue of _Women and Language_ in 1991 that dealt with women's constructed languages.  Nu-shu is one of the ones that I came across in my research, but I don't have any real references on the subject.

The SF language is Suzette Haden Elgin's Láadan, which was introduced in her _Native Tongue_ series (3 books).  A grammar of the language is available, and ten years ago there were clubs of people who were dedicated to using and expanding it.  The special issue of W&L was dedicated to the 10th anniversary of Láadan.

Lynne


M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

phone +44-(0)1273-678844
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