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I have two questions related to the different sex dialects in Barakhinei.

First, how did this evolve?
Second, are there any natlangs that have different dialects for gender? How about other catagories, like age, nationality, etc. ?

1. From different education and experiences. Historically, noble Barakhinei women spent most of their time with each other, running households and engaging in the arts, while the men were involved mainly with war. The men were taught Cadhinor and had a highly traditional outlook; the women were more likely to know Verdurian and to be in touch with the outside world. So there were plenty of reasons for the sexes to diverge socially and linguistically; this was also reinforced by a shared feeling that men and woman should act and talk differently.

2. The whole situation is loosely based on Japanese-- the existence of sex-linked language differences, the primacy of female literature, and the male orientation toward war.

Interesting ... I'm pretty ignorant of all of Zomp's languages because I haven't browsed the site. I had the same idea for my own languages, but I've put it off to the side for now so I can work on making a "winter" language. I'll come back when I need some more ideas.

Curious, that reminds me of the Heian court of classical Japan. Although the difference was principly in writing. Women wrote prose in Hiragana and their literature is that which has survived as the Heian canon, men wrote various dry works in classical Chinese, which have generally not survived. Although the seperation was a matter of cultural institution and expections within the court rather than the men being preoccupied with war. But there is a degree of difference in male and female language in modern Japan, if this had its origins in the Heian court, I do not know.

Delthayre wrote:Curious, that reminds me of the Heian court of classical Japan. Although the difference was principly in writing. Women wrote prose in Hiragana and their literature is that which has survived as the Heian canon, men wrote various dry works in classical Chinese, which have generally not survived. Although the seperation was a matter of cultural institution and expections within the court rather than the men being preoccupied with war. But there is a degree of difference in male and female language in modern Japan, if this had its origins in the Heian court, I do not know.

This reminds me of Nushu

this was also reinforced by a shared feeling that men and woman should act and talk differently.

Interesting. What would happen if a Barakhinei man suddenly began speaking the female dialect, or vice versa?

con quesa wrote: Interesting. What would happen if a Barakhinei man suddenly began speaking the female dialect, or vice versa?

The traditional question such a man asks, upon being ?discovered? (whether willingly or not) is L? ful dh?bras?th z?l p?za? A woman would ask Il naku ful dh?bras?th ma shk??

Ever since the four-year rise and fall of the infamous, yet popular drama troupe ?Georg il Medh er ?ti Olik mencoril? (the bare Verdurian word only serves to illustrate how scandalous they were) urban dwellers are blas? about it, or at least resigned to it. Rural dwellers will now make such a person sing a song from the troupe?s famous repertoire.

con quesa wrote:

this was also reinforced by a shared feeling that men and woman should act and talk differently.

Interesting. What would happen if a Barakhinei man suddenly began speaking the female dialect, or vice versa?

Unless it's clearly a joke, it'd be equivalent to declaring oneself gay. (To be precise, as a queeny man or as a butch woman; macho gay men and femme lesbians don't switch gender dialects.)

Shm Jay, is that a reference to something? I tend to miss TV references...

zompist wrote:Shm Jay, is that a reference to something? I tend to miss TV references...

Boy George and Culture Club, with the question ?Do you really want to hurt me?? Perhaps the reference is too old for most people on the board

Or more probably too culture-specific.

Not at all, I love Culture Club, but only really know one of their songs at all well. You can guess which, probably.

In Chukchi, men pronounce k and rk but women pronounce ts and tsts. Hence "walrus" is kyrky for men, but tsytstsy for women.
But that's a fairly minor difference.

No "k" at all in women's Chukchi? That would be interesting if it was true. At least one site I've found claims that it's "r" that women won't say, rather than "k".

Il naku ful dh?bras?th ma shk??
L? ful dh?bras?th z?l p?za?

Huh? I don't speak Barakhinei.

con quesa wrote:

Il naku ful dh?bras?th ma shk??
L? ful dh?bras?th z?l p?za?

Huh? I don't speak Barakhinei.

Take a look at Shm Jay's explanation above: the phrase is "Do you really want to hurt me?", quoting Boy George and Culture Club; the top line in your quote ("Il naku ful...?") is the question in "male" speech (in Jay's example, as spoken by an "outed" woman), and the second ("Le ful...?") is the same question in "female" speech, as asked by an outed man.

Hope that helps clear things up.

p@,
Glenn

Incidentally, if I'd been truly on the ball when I saw Jay's joke above, I might have figured out eventually that Georg il Medh = Boy George. Sheesh...

p@,
Glenn

In a completely unrelated manner, I just came across Pirah?, in which women use /h/ where men use /s/.

Or Beijing Mandarin, where girls and young women often pronounce the alveolopalatal consonants as palatalized alveolar ones. (It gives speech a very "flittering" quality.) This is known as "N?3guo2yin1" - "female national pronunciation" - national pronunciation probably referring to the "national" nature accorded to Beijing pronunciation, and is generally considered rather feminine (or effeminate, if coming from boys or men.)

Eddy: What's there to "let off the hook" in simulating real world phenomena?

Ran wrote:Or Beijing Mandarin, where girls and young women often pronounce the alveolopalatal consonants as palatalized alveolar ones. (It gives speech a very "flittering" quality.)

Emesal, a dialect of Sumerian, was apparently both a women's language and a specialized literary register -- an interesting resonance with the Japanese situation that inspired Barakhinei. Hmmm.

Ran wrote:Or Beijing Mandarin, where girls and young women often pronounce the alveolopalatal consonants as palatalized alveolar ones. (It gives speech a very "flittering" quality.) This is known as "N?3guo2yin1" - "female national pronunciation" - national pronunciation probably referring to the "national" nature accorded to Beijing pronunciation, and is generally considered rather feminine (or effeminate, if coming from boys or men.)

Heh, I love the way women Mandarin speakers sound...

Eddy the Great wrote:I didn't think it was that common.

Eddy, clicks aren't common either. Ehat's wrong with using something which is uncommon?

Eddy the Great wrote:I didn't think it was that common.

I'm pretty sure that this occurs in every language. I can't give any specific examples for English, but haven't you ever felt that certain speech habits of certain people make them "sound like" a guy or a girl?

I've noticed the (extremely annoying) female Taiwanese accent before, but I hadn't heard that about mainland female speech before. I bet that's why Anna in my Classical speech talks like that. She's a native speaker from Singpore and ta mama si song Zongguo lai de...

(If you can't speak Chinese, that means "her mother is from China" and ought to be pronounced "ta mama SHi Cong ZHongguo lai de.)

Ah, Classical Chinese... also featuring Zhen Yong, who is also a native speaker and feels the need to prove this to us waiguoren by talking faster and with more Beijing slang each week than the week before. Between the two of them, it's a wonder I have any idea what the hell is going on in there,

--John

John wrote:I've noticed the (extremely annoying) female Taiwanese accent before, but I hadn't heard that about mainland female speech before. I bet that's why Anna in my Classical speech talks like that. She's a native speaker from Singpore and ta mama si song Zongguo lai de...

(If you can't speak Chinese, that means "her mother is from China" and ought to be pronounced "ta mama SHi Cong ZHongguo lai de.)

Well.... Singapore is a totally different matter altogether -- "j q x" is "z c s" for both guys and girls and that's taken to be a Southern feature, not a feminine one.

I've noticed those changes in Southern pronunciation before, but she transforms her retroflexes as well, zh->z sh->s ch->c, which I've not heard before much. Will a Southern accent do that? I think my Daoism prof does it too, and she learned more in Taiwan and northern mainland than the South, IIRC.

(I'm very clear on it, because zhi1 is a very common word in Classical and she *always* says zi, ie zizize buru haozize, haozize buru lezize. (instead of Zhizhizhe buru haozhizhe etc) Her voice also goes up a couple octaves when she speaks Chinese instead of English, but I've noticed that in lots of people.)

--John

John wrote:Her voice also goes up a couple octaves when she speaks Chinese instead of English, but I've noticed that in lots of people.)

It's also common in France and Russia, to my knowledge, for women to speak above their natural pitch.