Re: CHAT: Conlang and Writers

Sally Caves <scaves@...> wrote:

> I've been looking at Terry Donnelly's summation of
> Tsolyani  (beautiful lacy script),but while I like Barker's development of
new
> "gender" categories (noble, ignoble, and non-
> classifiable), I can't say I like their application:  basimkoi, "man"
(noble);
> humedhikh
> "woman" (ignoble)!  Terry says it's rigidly patriarchal and hierarchical, and
> then adds
> somewhat humorously ("why don't more women study it, don't you think"?)
This reminds me of the lang I'm working on. Nouns can have
one of three genders, called "air", "water", and "earth", in
that order. The society is also rigidly divided into three
"genders" called this way, and is in principle patriarchal
and hierarchical. But the "air people", who are the most
important, are women. They take care of all religious matters.
They have to be unmarried and virgin. They have absolute power
as regards religion, and they consider all human beings in the
lower classes inferior. The "water people" are the men, and the
"earth people" are the married non-religious women. The married
woman is considered just a bit more than an inalienable possession
of the husband. I wanted a patriarchal society for a change
(from my other cultures, I mean), but I felt I couldn't do that
to *all* women.

>
> Well... I can see inventing a language that recreates all the errors of the
> world--my
> own Teonaht turned its "gendered" articles--male and female--into determiners
> of
> agency--volitional and non-volitional respectively.  Artlangs don't have to
> redress
> and improve upon the social problems of real cultures (as some of us perceive
> them!).
Exactly. It's too much work to design a perfect culture
(even if you really have what it takes to do so :-)


--Pablo Flores

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
 Ginsberg's Restatement of the Three Laws of Thermodynamics:
   You can't win.
   You can't break even.
   You can't quit.