bloodyrosemccoy | Girl Talk

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Well, now. They’ve expanded the online material on Láadan while I was away.

Láadan is a conlang I found back in the day when I was first discovering other people’s work online. I was reminded of it now that I’m in gender and lingusitics class, but the truth is that I would study it for all the wrong reasons.

Have you ever looked at Láadan? It’s loopy, and it's getting even loopier over the years. It’s a language with an agenda, all about how the patriarchal language of English is inadequate for expressing what women want to say. And apparently, what women want to say is that women are a bunch of sots.

I was prejudiced against it almost from the beginning, largely because my reaction to a claim of the latest oppressive force--the produce aisle, say, or squares or whatever--is to roll my eyes. But the first strike against it came right from the introduction page, in which the author, Suzette Haden Elgin, gripes about how nobody likes her language and why does stupid Klingon get all the press?* Yeah, don’t mess with Klingon, bitch, or I bite you, feminism or no.

And now they’ve got a dictionary online, and my first impression turned out to be accurate. This language is nuts. It’s got all the features of crazy feminism: words for being put-upon by other people, a whole pile of words for things like menstruation and qualified love,** a diatribe against the verb “marry” as implying that somebody’s doing something to somebody, and my personal favorite, the apotheosis of female sexual organs and experiences through bizarre compound words.*** This is what’s important to women? Angry feminism combined with a fluffy celebration of Femininity? Why would they need a language that explains their body language, when she says that it’s the men who misunderstand body language? Hell, even the sounds are Gurly. There’s some awkward stuff with strings of identical vowels and open consonants and phonemes that make it sound like an elflang. Actually, that’d be interesting to study: what someone thinks should be a woman’s language.

I will say one thing, which is that I like the idea of the speech act being clearly defined in the act itself. But I always thought that had the potential for being a lot more fun. I did play around with built-in moods in Yōyōtī Kuitē, which was fun. But to make that a feature of women's language?

So why did Klingon catch on instead? Well, my bet is that it’s because there’s no agenda in Klingon. And it sounds better.

“Elvish.” Sheesh.

*Also, she calls Tolkien’s languages “Elvish,” which a conlanger just shouldn’t do.

**“I love you. Not in the way of the ancient Greeks, but in the way a robot loves a human, a human loves a dog, and occasionally, a gorilla loves a kitty.”

***Who can take a language seriously when its word for “clitoris” literally means “fragrant jewel”?

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Also, Klingon has the fandom of a pop culture juggernaut behind it. Marketing.

Heh heh heh, yeah. Their only real agenda is money. Sometimes I think that's a nice pure motive, frankly.

I tried to read it and was SO confused.

...at least Esperanto makes sense ;_;.

oh, dear. What a load of hooey!
You do not defeat a male-centric society by making a dippy language that makes you and your side of the argument look stupid and crazy!

Also, "Elvish"? Good lord who let her near linguistics?

"Dippy" is the PERFECT descriptor.

Fragrant jewel? I like clitores pretty damned swuft (as the personal language goes), but that made me go D:

It amuses me that she made her word for "man" as a suffix onto the word for "woman."

Take THAT, manocentric maleocracy!

A blindingly concise and effective strike for the glory ofthe vagina!

*twitch* That's so many kinds of stupid! And she has a Ph.D. in Linguistics? Good gods.

Okay, so I'll admit that "fragrant jewel" is a little much, at least for me, as I don't go in for elaborate metaphors all that much, and it seems to me that maybe "woman" is getting equated a little too much with "feminine" or perhaps "femininity" as classically defined -- refined, elegant, frilly, etc.

On the other hand, I actually rather like the idea of a woman's language, because everything--everything--is bound up in the patriarchy. The thing is, since right now we live in a patriarchal world, everything is influenced by it--even languages that are created to escape the patriarchy, or subvert it, are still influenced by the patriarchy. *wry* So I don't think there can actually be a true women's language until we live in a post-patriarchal world (whatever that's going to look like), and at that point... will we need one? I hope not.

I haven't actually read Elgin's books, mind you, so this is all off-the-top-of-my-head reaction. *shrug*

I can see where some concepts of a woman's language are appealing. As I said, what brought this back to mind was that I'm in a gender and linguistics class right now.

There is definitely a bias toward males in some aspects of language--I've always loathed the "-ess" suffix, and even terms of address are different among males and females. However, she implies that language itself, instead of certain linguistic forms, is somehow male. She also ignores important nonverbal aspects of language, such as intonation.

I suppose what annoys me the most, besides the vocabulary itself, is her premise that linguistic change facilitates social change. This is definitely not true--look at attempts at creating politically correct terms for a good example of it NOT working. Language change tends to lag behind social change. This is the same as your commment that there can't actually be a women's language until we live in a post-patriarchal world.

Thanks for the input, though. I'm glad to get some different opinions!

I kind of like the idea of the language. But this one seems to be something done in reaction to patriarchy, rather than an attempt to create a language that really reflects women's experiences and women's emotions. Hmmm. That may not make sense.

ampersand pointed out that the word for 'man' is a suffix on the word for 'woman.' There - the language even copies the pattern of making one gender an afterthought to the other. It assumes that men and women are radically different and that the genders can be described in terms of how they're not like the other. Why not make the terms neutral?

Yeah, she claims the language is not JUST for women, but she gets a little bit overzealous about fixing it. I actually prefer neutral terms--in the conlangs I make for more gender-neutral societies, they simply make no distinction between words for genders (there is no distinction like handsome vs. beautiful, for example).

Ohh, the reactionism, it burns us, precious...

If one contends that one problem of the current society from a woman's perspective is that "Men don't understand us", how exactly is making a totally new and separate language going to help? Judicious addition of new vocabulary - sure, I can see that working. New language? Please... this smacks of that "herstory" movement, which makes me seethe. Know thy etymology! She writes that no language of which she is aware (note my hot grammaring!) adequatley describes a woman's experience. Couldn't we say, actually, that no language captures the enormity of anyone's experience, male or female? We respect brilliant authors in part because they find a way to describe our experience in a way that escapes us.

What kind of grammatical form do they recomend to replace things like "to marry"? Do they at least acknowledge that in proper usage, only a priest or judge marries? Brides and grooms are married TO one another. The direct object usage is for the performance of the service.

In general, I'm leary of any linguistic tendency that might do away with my fav linguistics pick up line - "Hey, baby, wanna go back to my place and do something reflexive?"

As for the fragrant jewel, I preffered Suzie Bright's "devil button." At least she knew she was being funny! On the other hand, their verb for 'To give birth, to bear' is wooban. Say it out loud a few times - it makes me giggle. Woooooban!

One of my favorite jokes about the "herstory" business was actually in Legally Blonde. It's a little background moment where the radical feminist is talking about biased language. "Look at the term 'semester,'" she says. "Even that is subliminally showing the superiority of semen! That's why I'm petitioning to have the next academic term referred to as an 'ovester.'" I laughed a lot harder at that than you'd expect.

I'm with you--it's a blanket declaration that all language is sexist. There's definitely some stuff that could bear changing in English, but it's a very small amount, and it's been happening as social change happens anyway.

I'll just give you their replacement for marry: eba - spouse ("Bíi eril X i Y meheba wa." [X and Y got married. (More literally, "X and Y spoused.") The verb gets the plural prefix and an epenthetic H.] Láadan wouldn't allow "X married Y" or "Y married X," which presuppose that marrying is something one person can do to another. It has to be a joint action, done together.) Apparently they DON'T acknowledge the proper usage ...

I'm guessing the o's in wooban are long, but still.

lol... there are 15 words for "you", and only one word for "me"... thats a woman's language alright.

but then again... 13 words for love, no word for hate, and only one word for war? in a woman's language?

-zing-

Also - a verb for "to menstruate joyfully?" Is she serious?

Bah! people like this make me embarrassed to be a feminist...

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Feminist, getting more radical every day, checking in.

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