Re: Constructed natlangs

On 2-12-99, Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> wrote: "Are there any languages
that have a special women's form without a special men's form?  I would
suspect that they evolved out of vocabulary, etc. which was used mostly by
women or men.  Much as in Japanese certain pronouns are used only by men
(such as boku) or only by women (watashi?), as well as certain words."

I think the Japanese term for a female I is watakushi; it is frequently
elided to 'watakshi.' Watashi is common 'gender' (Japanese doesn't have
grammatical gender, so it's not really gender). Japanese does display
different speaking forms for men and women, but as far as I know this
hasn't been classified as a language with a femlang subdialect. It may
warrant it; I went to Japan in high school and lived with a family in
Kyushu. I spent my time with the women of the family, as the son was at
school all the time, and when I returned to the US, my Japanese teacher
nearly died laughing when I spoke, as I spoke 'just like a woman.' Thanks,
Shimizu-sensei. Anyway, there are significant word-choice differences in
Japanese like the boku-watakushi split. (To this day, I still can't seem to
get used to 'boku;' I don't use it ever!)

Not to be snide, any language which has a form for 'one gender' technically
has separate male & female forms. But you are correct - in Chukchee, the
perception of native speakers is that there is a Chukchee norm from which
the femlang is derived; technically, there is Chukchee and a Chukchee
femlang.

It might be argued that Eme-ku is standard Sumerian, and Eme-sal is the
derived femlang form. I don't think we have enough info to really claim
this is true, as Eme-sal *seems* to have words which demonstrate a more
complicated evolution; perhaps it is a dialect of Sumerian not derived from
'standard' Eme-ku but from proto-Sumerian, thus equal in status to Eme-ku
as a full dialect. This would be 'separate men's and women's languages,'
where both Eme-ku and Eme-sal are derived forms. This, however, is
exceedingly unlikely.

The Lardil example demonstrates a masclang, a derived form of the standard
Lardil that is spoken by men. Technically, then, there is standard Lardil
and a derived Lardil masclang.

BB
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