Laadan was Re: Posession

On Tuesday 20 May 2003 12:26 pm, Stone Gordonssen wrote:
> >Natlangs would in this case be a more pleasant source for me.  I don't
> >like Laadan much.  Which natlangs distinguish that?
>
> Sorry for your dislike of Laadan.
        Speaking for myself here, one thing that disappointed me about Láadan was
that it seems more like an IAL (well, I guess that's what S.H.E. secretly
intended to test) than anything profoundly insightful on the linguistic needs
of women. Apart from the base gender being feminine, there really wasn't
anything...interesting...about it. I got a hold of a sample of the vocabulary
and presented it to an expert on women (my wife) and asked her to rate the
items by their utility for a woman. There were a couple that counted as
"hmm...maybe it would be nice to have a word for that" but in the case of all
but one or two words, she could think of short, concise English phrases that
were at least adequate for expressing the concept. We had a discussion a
couple of months ago about this; try the archives for the full story.
        As a side note, both my wife and I found her initial hypothesis (that women
are unable to express themselves adequately with their current language)
distasteful and demeaning to women. If there were a great enough need for a
word, it would be invented or borrowed from another language. Women make up
50% of all language speakers, and with such a large group, I think it rather
absurd to hypothesize that they would somehow be "repressed" from
participating in creating new vocabulary, considering how readily jargon from
smaller minority groups are assimilated into mainstream speech. Plus, it
disturbed me how S.H.E., a professional linguist, could ever fall into what I
call the Academie Français fallacy: that it is even possible for one group to
decide what shall and shall not be permitted to enter the language. Baloney.
But that's more on the political side, and only tangentially related to
Láadan.
        But how could she call /K/ an ugly sound!? Bah! Humbug!
        :Peter

--
Oh what a tangled web they weave who try a new word to conceive!

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