Female writing tradition (女书)

Discussion of natural languages, or language in general.
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din
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Female writing tradition (女书)

Post by din »

I just came across this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWhhqHypoxw

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%BCshu_script

A Chinese writing system used exclusively by women.

I know there are certain styles favoured by either gender in both spoken and written languages. Some languages have, for instance, gender-specific pronouns. Never seen this, though. Are there any other examples of spoken or written language or dialect used exclusively by one group of people?
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Yng
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Re: Female writing tradition (女书)

Post by Yng »

Sumerian had a dialect (or rather sociolect) which IIRC is called Eme-Sal (possibly Eme-Šal, I forget). In legends and whatever female characters speak in it, and priestesses' lines were all written in it in rituals. I have a feeling that female priests may've written in it, too, which would vaguely fit with your definition.
كان يا ما كان / يا صمت العشية / قمري هاجر في الصبح بعيدا / في العيون العسلية

tà yi póbo tsùtsùr ciivà dè!

short texts in Cuhbi

Risha Cuhbi grammar

Bob Johnson
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Re: Female writing tradition (女书)

Post by Bob Johnson »

I assume you already followed the links to hiragana there. That was historical; in modern Japanese there are still word choice and structural differences between gender-associated speech styles.

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Re: Female writing tradition (女书)

Post by LinguistCat »

I think I read a book once that involved this kind of writing but I haven't seen anything from a scholarly source about it.
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