Láadan
| Láadan | |
|---|---|
| Created by | Suzette Haden Elgin |
| Date | 1982 |
| Setting and usage | experiment in feminist linguistics, and featured in Elgin's novel Native Tongue |
| Purpose |
constructed language
|
| Sources | a priori language, with influences from Navajo and English |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
|
Linguist list
|
ldn |
| Glottolog | None |
Láadan is a feministconstructed language created by Suzette Haden Elgin in 1982 to test the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, specifically to determine if development of a language aimed at expressing the views of women would shape a culture; a subsidiary hypothesis was that Western natural languages may be better suited for expressing the views of men than women. The language was included in her science fiction Native Tongue series. Láadan contains a number of words that are used to make unambiguous statements that include how one feels about what one is saying. According to Elgin, this is designed to counter male-centered language's limitations on women, who are forced to respond "I know I said that, but I meant this".
Láadan is a tonal language. It utilises two distinct tones:
The word "Láadan" has three syllables: "lá-" with the short vowel /a/ plus high tone; "-a" with the short vowel /a/ and no tone; and "-dan".
Láadan does not allow any double [i.e. long] phonemes. Whenever two identical short vowels would occur side by side in a single morpheme, one of them has to be marked for high tone. When adding an affix would result in two identical vowels side by side, an epenthetic /h/ is inserted to prevent the forbidden sequence. The language will allow either "máa" or "maá," but not "maa". These combinations can be described as:
(Some people analyze these tone sequences as tonemic as well, for a total of four tones.)
Elgin prefers an analysis of the language as having no long vowels and a single tone, the high tone (distinguished from "neutral, baseline pitch"), but she acknowledges that linguists using other formalisms would be justified in saying that there are two tones, high and low (or unmarked or mid).
Láadan has five vowels:
Láadan lacks the consonants /p, t, k, ɡ, s/. However, it uses b, d, sh (/ʃ/), m, n, l, r, w, y (/j/), h with the same phonetic value as English. In addition to these, three digraphs require further explanation:
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