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<p>Posted by <b><!--poster-->Mark Rosenfelder</b>
on <!--date-->14:12 5/9/02
<p>In reply to: <a href="384.html">Laadan</a> posted by Frank Legros</b> on 17:39 5/9/02
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Nice review... Haden Elgin often generates controversy, tho' I enjoyed her
book <i>The Language Imperative</i>. Descriptions I've read are often
at a loss to explain what's so female-oriented about Laadan.
<p>There's a page in her book where she gives a set of words which might
be useful for expressing female experience. Maybe I'll type in some of it
at home. In general they struck me as the sort of labored contrivance
people invent for humorous effect-- <i>Sniglets</i> or <i>The Meaning of
Liff</i> are full of them. I actually did something like this for
Verdurian: I invented a number of words for describing varieties of
aesthetic experience or attitude toward life-- this is one reason there's
three words for 'cynical'.
<p>One thing I never quite got in her theories is why she seems to
think that existing languages don't reflect female experience... don't
women produce at least half of all utterances?
<p>As for the pronouns... I agree with you about necessary hypocrisy...
I kind of suspect that Haden Elgin is a child of the '60s, when people
thought they'd try total honesty, with mixed results.
<p>I'm not sure that "beloved" affixes wouldn't work, though. I expect
they'd work like diminutives in Spanish; and perhaps her "despised"
affixes would work like the pejorative ones in Russian. You can tell
exactly how someone is feeling about you when they say your name in
Russian. :) I might also mention the useful old word "Sirrah" in English.
<p>Conlangers sometimes assume, I think, that people will actually use the
words according to their dictionary definition. But people go well beyond
this, with all sorts of metaphorical extensions, nonce expressions, and
ironies. Surely "na" ('beloved thou') could also be used in sarcasm,
and "lhene" ('despised thou') in affectionate banter?
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<b>Mark Rosenfelder</b>
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