[Linganth] A Language by Women, for Women

[Maggie Ronkin]

This is terrific, thanks for the pointers to Endo's website and problems
with Cody's front-page article.
Cheers
Maggie




>From: "Laura Miller" <lmille2 at wpo.it.luc.edu>
>To: <linganth at cc.rochester.edu>, <ronkinm at hotmail.com>
>Subject: [Linganth] A Language by Women, for Women
>Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 11:13:06 -0600
>
>Thank you Maggie, for the recent news report on Nushu. For those who are
>interested in this unusual script, a good website with better information
>and some beautiful examples of the spidery writing is Endo's "World of
>Nushu" at
>http://www2.ttcn.ne.jp/~orie/home.htm
>
>Edward Cody's  Washington Post article contains some inaccuracies, so for
>those who want more reliable information, see also:
>Chang William Wei,  We Two Know the Script; We Have Become Good  Friends,
>University Press of America, 1995 (based on his 1991 Yale dissertation).
>
>A few of  the problems with Cody's article are:
>-the confusion of  "language" with "writing"
>-his claim that it is "never, ever shared with the men and boys." Chang
>says that men knew about the script and some read it in the past, but it
>was denigrated as women's "ant writing" or "mosquito leg writing" and so
>was considered beneath male effort or attention.
>-his description of the mostly syllabic characters as "letters"
>-his description of Chinese as "ideograms" that only represent "ideas."
>
>The commodification of Nushu as emblem of local identity and for the
>creation of tourist goods was already underway when Chang did his
>fieldwork.
>Best,
>Laura
>

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