#nushu

[lascitasdelashoras]

escritura nüshu

[linguistcaly]

Welcome back to me writing unorthodox sentences in foreign scripts.

Day five - Nüshu

[hey-there-you]

POV : You are a Yao woman who was so fed up of patriarchy that you invented an entire script that let you communicate with your gal pals about it.

Formal education for women was banned in ancient China which facilitated the need for a script made by women, for women. This allowed women to talk and write freely about the misogynistic and patriarchal norms without being persecuted by men.

In short, these women were heroes and their contributions to language and culture are worth remembering.

[sunweek]

unpopular opinion: being 5'2" doesnt necessarily mean im a short king. if you round off the 2 to a that's basically 5"6" whcih tbh is a great height

if u round off 5 to a 10 ur basically 10 feet tall after which we can comfortably say we've rescued gulliver from his travels

[aranelchan]

Nüshu: China’s secret female-only language

Throughout history, women in rural Hunan Province used a coded script to express their most intimate thoughts to one another. Today, this on

[introspectiveresearchdiary]

‘Nüshu is a phonetic script read right to left that represents an amalgamation of four local dialects spoken across rural Jiangyong. Each symbol represents a syllable and was written using sharpened bamboo sticks and makeshift ink from the burnt remains left in a wok. Influenced by Chinese characters, its style is traditionally more elongated with curved, threadlike strokes sloping diagonally downwards and was sometimes referred to as “mosquito writing” by locals because of its spindly appearance.

Nüshu provided a way for women to cope with domestic and social hardships and helped to maintain bonds with friends in different villages. Convivial words of friendship and happiness were embroidered in Nüshu on handkerchiefs, headscarves, fans or cotton belts and exchanged. Though Nüshu wasn’t spoken, women at social gatherings sang and chanted songs or poems that varied from nursery rhymes to birthday tributes to personal regrets or marriage complaints using Nüshu phrases and expressions. Older women often composed autobiographical songs to tell their female friends about their miserable experiences or to promote morality and teach other women how to be good wives through chastity, piety and respect.

Though Nüshu is now understood as a means of communication for women who had not been afforded the privileges of reading and writing in Chinese, it was originally believed to be a code of defiance against the highly patriarchal society of the time. Historically, it was not socially acceptable for Chinese women to openly talk about personal regrets, the hardships of agricultural life or feelings of sadness and grief. Nüshu provided an outlet for the women and helped to create a bond of female friendship and support that was of great importance in a male-dominated society.’

Find source article here.

Further reading here.

[ablueorangeintheocean]

In olden days, Nüshu was taught by elderly women to girls at home because female children weren’t allowed to attend formal school. During gatherings in villages, women used the characters to write poems or song lyrics to express their emotions that were hidden from men.

[vexic929]

nothing saddens me more right now than the fact that I’m probably never going to be able to learn nüshu and there’s nothing I can do about that