I have about four hundred messages to go... let me read the other remarks
about LAadan, and see if there is anything left for me to add my two cents
to!  <G>

Sally Caves
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http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/teonaht.html
Niffodyr tweluenrem lis teuim imo an   Gospel of Bastet
Even the gods have retractible claws.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Clark" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, November 27, 2002 2:33 PM
Subject: Láadan was Re: Computer Language Question


> On Wednesday 27 November 2002 08:42 am, Amanda Babcock wrote:
> > I would add to that "tlhIngan is a tie-in to a popular mass-media
> > phenomenon" and, most annoyingly, "Láadan does not allow free access
> > to the grammar and vocabulary".  If you want something to be a success,
> > *don't copyright it*.
> >
> > (I know, tlhIngan was commercial too, but we're back to that mass-media
> > thing then.)
>
>         Well, it seems as though Suzette Haden Elgin has pretty much
abandoned it.
> She originally intended it to provide both a realistic setting for her
> novels, and as an experiment to test some '70s feminist theories that
> languages are inherently unsuitable for women to express themselves in,
> because of the patriarchal system (<quote source="Monty Python and the
Holy
> Grail">Come see the the patriarchy inherent in the system!</quote>). Elgin
> explains the nitty-gritty on her site:
> http://www.sfwa.org/members/elgin/Laadan.html
>         Personally, I don't Láadan woman-centric enough. A couple of
months ago, I
> asked my wife what she thought of it and she agreed--the grammar, to be
> certain, doesn't offer enough of an advantage to overcome the work
involved
> in learning a second language. I still have not found a list of
> "woman-centric" words, but after asking my wife how English vocabulary
could
> be improved, she initially said that emotion words could use more shading
of
> meaning--until she began to list some emotion words and realized that for
the
> most part, English has an overabundance of nuanced emotion words; gaps she
> tends to fill in with Japanese loans. She suggested that the reason that
she
> doesn't use them is because they sound to lofty and erudite; if woman (and
> men, for that matter) were to use them more, they probably would not seem
so
> "high."
>         I (and my wife, when she read Elgin's essay) found the underlying
theory
> deeply flawed and rather offensive to women in general, especially the
first
> premise: "Those languages lacked vocabulary for many things that are
> extremely important to women, making it cumbersome and inconvenient to
talk
> about them." There seems to be no sociological constraint on the invention
of
> new words, besides the necessity that other listeners understand them. My
> wife feels free to borrow from Japanese and Romanian whenever the English
> word eludes her, and we manage to understand each other just fine. One
would
> think that if women in general found an unnamed concept important enough
to
> name, they would do so--assuming a feminist critique, it would not even be
> necessary for the word to be accepted by the male half because it would
still
> carry currency with the female half.
>         That said, I would be interested in ideas for a "woman-centric"
language.
> What do the doubly-blessed X chromosomers think?
>         :Peter
>
>
>
>