Re: Caste Languages

Eric Norton wrote:

 >Out of lurking because this makes me wonder, "where did I run across
 >this..."
 >Anyone know the name of the natural language which is pronounced
differently
 >based on gender?
 >Can't recall where I saw the info.
 >Men and women speak with significantly different pronunciation to the
point
 >where, to an outsider, the languages would appear to be dialects.
 >Sound familiar or did I dream it?

Here are a few more examples that I know of (from my intro linguistics
book, so
I am not an expert):

Koasati, a Native American language from Louisiana, has different forms
of words
for men and women, which basically differ by the presence of a final /s/
in the
mens form, although there are more complicated rules about when it
appears. Ex.
lakaw -women, lakaws -men, "he is lifting it"; i:p -women, i:ps -men, "he is
eating it". Both men and women use the form appropriate for the original
speaker
when quoting someone of the other sex.

Many Australian languages have special forms for speaking to certain kin
groups.
For instance, Dyirbal has a mother-in-law speech which is to be used when
speaking in the presence of ones mother-in-law. It has a completely
different
vocabulary from the normal language.

Thai has distinct forms of the first person pronoun for use by men and
women.


 >-----Original Message-----
 >From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:CONLANG@L...]On
 >Behalf Of Hiro M.
 >Sent: Thursday, November 14, 2002 7:44 AM
 >To: CONLANG@L...
 >Subject: Caste Languages
 >
 >
 >I remember an episode of Babylon 5 where Delenn told
 >that each of the three Minbari castes (Worker Caste,
 >Warrior Caste, and Religious Caste) had its own
 >language.
 >
 >Has anyone ever attempted to create a language that
 >splits into three similar but distinct dialects due to
 >a cultural schism? Or what the three languages would
 >look like after thousands of years?
 >
 >--
 >Hiro2k


I'm working on a language which is to have a fairly complicated caste
distinction. I work slowly and I got interested in the proto-language so
all I
have right now are my plans. It will encode both gender distinctions and
class
distinctions. So I plan to have: men addressing higher class, men addressing
same class, men addressing lower class, women addressing higher class, women
addressing same class, women addressing lower class, and anyone addressing
royalty or the divine.

The mens and womens dialects will have somewhat different phonology and
vocabulary. Women in their society are mostly confined to the home and
meeting
with neighbor women and some of their slang has become codified as distinct
vocabulary.

The class differences I imagine will be largely grammatical, with
complicated
circumlocutions when speaking to people of higher class. But there may
be some
other differences such as special vocabulary.

All of this is also going to result in LOTS of pronouns with complicated
rules
for their use which I have been putting off dealing with.

So I have been very interested in this thread. I need more ideas, so send in
more examples if you've got them.

I'll let you know when I've got more on this. Right now I'm working on a
basic
form of the language which will probably be men addressing same class,
and like
I said, I got interested in the proto-language and have been working
more on it.

David Stokes

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