Nüshu script
| Nüshu | |
|---|---|
 "Nüshu" written in Nüshu (right to left). |
|
| Type | syllabary |
| Spoken languages | Chinese |
| ISO 15924 | Nshu |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols. |
Nüshu (simplified Chinese: 女书; traditional Chinese: 女書; pinyin: Nǚshū [nỳʂú]; literally "women's writing"), is a syllabic script, a simplification of Chinese characters that was used exclusively among women in Jiangyong County in Hunan province of southern China.[1]
Contents |
[edit] Language
The Nüshu script is used to write a local dialect of Chinese known as Xiangnan tuhua (湘南土话) that is spoken by the people of the Xiao and Yongming River region of northern Jiangyong County, Hunan.[2] The standard pronunciation is that of the countryside outside of the town of Shangjiangxu; in town, the rural pronunciation is preferred.[3] This dialect, which is unintelligible with the Xiang Chinese dialect of southern Jiangyong, is known to its speakers as [tifɯə] "Dong language", and it is only written in the Nüshu script.[4] There are differing opinions on the classification of Xiangnan tuhua, as it has features of several different Chinese languages, with some scholars classifying it under Yue Chinese and other scholars considering it a hybrid dialect.[2] In addition to speaking Xiangnan tuhua, most local people in Jiangyong are bilingual in the Hunan dialect of Southwestern Mandarin, which they use for communication with Hunanese people from outside the area that Xiangnan tuhua is spoken, as well as for some formal occasions.[2][5] If Hunan Southwestern Mandarin is written, then it is always written using standard Chinese characters, and not with the Nüshu script.[5]
Jiangyong County has a mixed population of Han Chinese and Yao people, but Nüshu is only used to write the local Chinese dialect, and there are no known examples of the script being used to write the local Yao language.[6]
[edit] History
During the feudal era, which in China lasted into the 20th century, women were not allowed to go to school, and were therefore kept mostly illiterate until after the turn of the 20th century, when educational reforms took place. Nüshu was therefore invented and used secretly, although only in Jiangyong County, and carefully guarded from men, who used nanshu "men's writing" (standard Chinese writing). Women learned the writing from their "sworn sisters"[clarification needed] and mothers. Sometimes the characters were disguised as decorative marks or as artwork. Most Nüshu literature takes a poetic form with lines of verse in 7 characters, or more rarely 5 characters.[1] Typical contents were autobiographies, letters, folk songs, monody, or narration.[1]
Many of the simplifications have been in informal use in standard Chinese since the Song and Yuan dynasty (13th - 14th century), after characters had been standardized, suggesting the script is no older than that. It seems to have reached its peak during the Qing Dynasty (18th - 19th century).[3]
Outside scholars only discovered the script in 1983, when a report was submitted to the central government.[citation needed] The script was suppressed by the Japanese during their takeover of China in the 1940s, who feared that the Chinese could use it to send secret messages.[citation needed]
During the 20th century, and especially after the Chinese Revolution, literacy in standard Chinese characters spread among women, and Nüshu fell into disuse. In addition, the Red Guard suppressed Nüshu during the Cultural Revolution and destroyed Nüshu artifacts.[7] It is no longer customary for women to learn Nüshu, and literacy in Nüshu is now limited to a few scholars who learned it from the last women who were literate in it. However, after Yang Yueqing made a documentary about Nüshu, the government of the People's Republic of China started to popularize the effort to preserve the increasingly endangered script, and some younger women are beginning to learn it.
[edit] Features
Unlike the standard written Chinese, which is logographic (with each character representing a word or part of a word), Nüshu is phonetic, with each of its approximately 600-700 characters representing a syllable. This is about half the number required to represent all the syllables in Xiangnan tuhua, as tonal distinctions are frequently ignored, making it "the most revolutionary and thorough simplification of Chinese characters ever attempted".[3] Zhou Shuoyi, the only male to have mastered the script, compiled a dictionary listing 1,800 variant charecters and allographs.[8]
Nüshu characters are an italic variant form of Kaishu Chinese characters,[1] as can be seen in the name of the script, though some have been substantially modified to better fit embroidery patterns. The strokes of the characters are in the form of dots, horizontals, virgules, and arcs.[7] The script is written from top to bottom or, when horizontal, from right to left, as is traditional for Chinese. Also like standard Chinese, vertical lines are truly vertical, while lines crossing them are angled from the perpendicular. Unlike Chinese, Nüshu writers value characters written with very fine, almost threadlike, lines as a mark of fine penmanship.
About half of Nüshu is modified Chinese characters used logographically.[dubious ] In about 100, the entire character is adopted without little change apart from skewing the frame from square to rhomboid, sometimes reversing them (mirror image), and often reducing the number of strokes. Another hundred have been modified in their strokes, but are still easily recognizable, as is nü 'woman' above. About 200 have been greatly modified, but traces of the original Chinese character are still discernable.
The rest of the characters are phonetic. They are either modified characters, as above, or elements extracted from characters. There are used for 130 phonetic values, each used to write on average ten homophonous or nearly homophonous words, though there are allographs as well; women differed on which Chinese character they preferred for a particular phonetic value.[3]
[edit] Nüshu works
A large number of the Nüshu works were "third day missives" (三朝書, pinyin: sānzhāoshū). They were cloth bound booklets created by "sworn sisters" (結拜姊妹, pinyin: jiébàizǐmèi) and mothers and given to their counterpart "sworn sisters" or daughters upon their marriage. They wrote down songs in Nüshu, which were delivered on the third day after the young woman's marriage. This way, they expressed their hopes for the happiness of the young woman who had left the village to be married and their sorrow for being parted from her.[9]
Other works, including poems and lyrics, were handwoven into belts and straps, or embroidered onto everyday items and clothing.
[edit] Recent years
Yang Huanyi, an inhabitant of Hunan province and the last person proficient in this writing system, died on September 20, 2004, age 98.[10][11]
The language[clarification needed] and locale have attracted foreign investment with money from Hong Kong building up infrastructure at possible tourist sites and a $209,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to build a Nüshu museum scheduled to open in 2007. However, with the line of transmission now broken, there are fears that the features of the script are being distorted by the effort of marketing it for the tourist industry.
Lisa See describes the use of Nüshu among 19th century women in Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.
Nüshu is currently under proposal[1] for encoding in Unicode, in the Supplementary Multilingual Plane, with 385 basic characters from U+1B000 to U+1B180, and 64 allographs from U+1B181 to U+1B1C1.
[edit] See also
- Compare with hiragana, a phonetic writing of Japanese used initially exclusively by women, that wrote such major works as The Tale of Genji.
- Láadan, an engineered language created to better express women's modes of expression
- Gender role in language
[edit] Notes
- ^ a b c d e Proposal text, slides), 2007-9-17
- ^ a b c Zhao 2006, p. 162
- ^ a b c d Zhao Liming, "The Women's Script of Jiangyong". In Jie Tao, Bijun Zheng, Shirley L. Mow, eds, Holding up half the sky: Chinese women past, present, and future, 2004:39ff
- ^ Chiang 1995, p. 20
- ^ a b Chiang 1995, p. 22
- ^ Zhao 2006, p. 247
- ^ a b Additional text - Chapter 12, An Introduction to Language and Linguistics, Jeff Connor-Linton and Ralph Fasold, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9780521847681
- ^ Last inheritress of China's female-specific languages dies
- ^ A language by women, for women, Washington Post, Feb 24, 2004
- ^ Language dies with woman
- ^ Jon Watts, The forbidden tongue, The Guardian 23 September 2005
[edit] References
- Zhao Liming 赵丽明 (2006) (in Chinese). Nüshu yongzi bijiao 女书用字比较 [Comparison of the characters used to write Nüshu]. Zhishi Chanquan Chubanshe. ISBN 9787801982612.
- Chiang, William Wei (1995). We two know the script; we have become good friends. University Press of America. ISBN 9780761800132.
[edit] External links
- Nüshu texts (in Chinese)
- Much ado about Nushu, by Laura Miller, 2004 Invited contribution to the weblog Keywords.oxusnet.net
- World of Nushu: a detailed history of Nüshu and numerous illustrations.
- 6-paragraph article of AncientScripts.com
- Details of Nüshu at Omniglot.com
- A documentary about Nüshu on CCTV website
- An audio interview with journalist and culturalist Lisa See on her research of Nüshu
- The secrets of nu-shu, article by Lisa See
- The forbidden tongue (article in The Guardian)
- Chinese women lost for words (article in The Guardian)
- Simple arrangement of an unidentified Nüshu song in MIDI format (explanatory notes are mid-way down this page)
- Nüshu dictionary
