Re: Láadan and woman's speak

Herman Miller wrote:

>>        But perhaps that is why some of us conlang, to provide those
>>missing words.
>
>In some cases, I think that might be so. I have a few words of that sort,
>like "ghaidja", a general word for the kind of reckless and inconsiderate
>drivers that always try to get ahead of everyone else, weaving back and
>forth between lanes, taking advantage of random gaps by passing on the
>right, squeezing in in front of you without signaling, and generally acting
>as if they're on a race track rather than a public highway.
Tokana has a few such words.  There's a word (can't remember it)
which means "the love that one feels for someone one doesn't respect".
There's also a word meaning "to be strong yet flexible, like a blade
of grass that bends in the wind" (very Taoist, I know...).

I once wrote a short story for a school literary journal which
consisted of a word-list for an alien language, Enifian, that included
words for all sorts of bizarre concepts.  (The idea was stolen from
Brian Aldiss's story "Confluence".)  Included in the list was a verb
meaning "to buy a present which conforms more to the tastes of the
giver than to those of the recipient", another verb meaning "to
be attracted to someone of the opposite sex than one is normally
attracted to", and another verb meaning "to exchange shared
pop-culture references in an oblique fashion".  There was also an
expression (used as an informal greeting by speakers of this language)
which translated as "the realisation that there is a fine line between
joy and despair".  Culture-specific terms included a noun meaning "a
ritual prohibition against asking non-rhetorical questions".  Probably
my favourite was a verb which had three meanings:  (1) "to become
suddenly vividly aware of part of one's body, as if it no longer belonged
to one", (2) "to stare at oneself in the mirror so long that one no longer
entirely recognises one's own face", and (3) "to give birth".

>>        By the way: is anyone who has read the description of Láadan
>>slightly miffed at how she describes "lh" (which, from the description,
>>sounds like an exagerated lateral fricative, like Welsh "ll") as "not
>>especially pleasant to hear"?
>
>I've always liked the sound of lateral fricatives. I used a voiceless
>*palatal* lateral fricative in one of my Elvish languages.
Tokana also has this sound.  Actually, it's more of a postalveolar
lateral fricative (same point of articulation as English /S/).

Matt.