Women-Only Language Reemerges

[Joshua Fishman]

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?
> >
> >
>
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> > It's fast, it's easy and it's free. Get MSN
> Messenger today!
> > http://www.msn.co.uk/messenger
> >
>


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