Next message: Chris Jacobs: "Re: websites"
The front page of today's
Washington Post has an article on nushu - a Chinese women's script.
From the article
"Only men learned to read and
write Chinese, and bound feet and social strictures confined women to
their husband's homes after marriage. So somehow -- scholars are unsure
how, or exactly when -- the women of this fertile valley in the
southwestern corner of Hunan province developed their own way to
communicate. It was a delicate, graceful script handed down from
grandmother to granddaughter, from elderly aunt to adolescent niece,
from girlfriend to girlfriend -- and never, ever shared with the men
and boys.
So was born nushu,
or women's script, a single-sex writing system that Chinese scholars
believe is the only one of its kind."
...
"Much remains unknown about nushu. Its origins, reaching
perhaps as far back as the 3rd century, have been the subject of
scholarly exchanges among a handful of researchers in China and
elsewhere. They know it was used in Hunan's Jiangyong County, in south
central China about 200 miles northwest of Guangzhou, and believe it
was limited to what is now Jiangyong's Shungjian Xu Township, which
includes Pumei and these days has a population of around 19,000 people.
But even that is not certain."
It is
online on
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A552-2004Feb23.html . You
have to complete a free registration to read it online. The online
version shows the script on a blackboard in a photograph. The print
version also has a close up of some text.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5
: Tue Feb 24 2004 - 11:05:03 EST