Women-Only Language Reemerges

Joshua Fishman joshuaafishman at yahoo.com
Wed Mar 31 00:42:39 UTC 2004


Nushu actually appears to be a "female script"
rather than a female language. There may very
well be other female scripts.
Several years ago (c. 1950?) Mary Haas reported
extensively on a female language (spoken) among
Siamese royalty.
Until the early-19th century Yiddish had a
special Hebrew typeface initially intended for
women (but clearly also used for men who were not
sufficiently learned to follow longer Hebrew
texts in the traditional square-shaped "assyrian"
letters. This typeface was/is referred to as
"vayber-taytsh" (women's script). An edition of
the Pentateuch originally printed in
vayber-taytsh was/is known as "taytsh khumesh".
These names are still in use in Ultra-Orthodox
circles, although Yiddish per se is now written
exclusively in square letters.
"square letters"












--- "P. Kerim Friedman" <kerim.list at oxus.net>
wrote:
> I don't know of similar languages, but here is
> more information on
> Nushu:
>
> <http://keywords.oxus.net/archives/000406.html>
>
> -kerim
>
> On Mar 30, 2004, at 5:40 AM, Educational
> Linguistics wrote:
>
> > Women-Only Language Reemerges:
> >
> >
>
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20040329/womenlanguage.html
> >
> > Do you happen to know of (anybody who might
> know) any similar language
> > elsewhere in the world?
> >
> >
>
_________________________________________________________________
> > It's fast, it's easy and it's free. Get MSN
> Messenger today!
> > http://www.msn.co.uk/messenger
> >
>


=====
____________________________________________________________
HOME: 3616 Henry Hudson Pkwy., Apt. 7B-N, Bronx NY 10463
home tel: 718-796-8484; home fax: 718-796-8155 (3 page limit); OFFICE tel: 718-430-3850; office fax: 719-430-3060.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time.
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html



More information about the Lgpolicy-list mailing list