Wil sha!

Welcome to the WikiBook on Láadan!

The purpose of this WikiBook is to provide a resource for learning Láadan that is under a Creative Commons license. There exist other resources, but may be expensive (the original print book) or hard to find (lessons on webpages that have since gone down), but due to lack of licenses being stated in the works, they cannot be freely shared and preserved.

As a creative commons work, you are free to use this WikiBook as you wish. Please share, add, and help keep Láadan alive!

About

Láadan

Láadan is a language that was constructed in 1982 by Suzette Haden Elgin, a science fiction author, self-help author, feminist, and linguist. She built Láadan to explore the idea of an “undefinable other reality” that we have no vocabulary for. As a science fiction author, she knew of stories that were “Matriarchies” and “Androgynous” presented as an alternative to our traditionally Patriarchal society, but she wondered about some third alternative, where it wasn’t a fight between men vs. women for power, but something else completely. [1]

This as well as her own personal experiences with using language for human communication, her perceived difficulties that women experience trying to express themselves with certain limitations (how to more easily describe concepts that are common among women but have no terms, how men react to the language women use and write off concerns, etc.), this caused her to think about a language by and for women.

Láadan went along hand-in-hand with her Native Tongue series of books. In the book series, a group of women who are sent to the “Barren House” once no longer useful to their society end up creating Láadan in secret. In reality, Suzette created Láadan as an experiment, curious whether women would become interested in it, or at least inspire women to build a better language.

Klingon and Láadan were both created in the 1980s. After ten years passed, Láadan did not gain much popularity, and Suzette saw the Klingon language being more widely adopted as… well, it was something. She declared the Láadan experiment a failure.


Wikibook author's thoughts

I think that the concept of Láadan is easier to portray to those who have grown up queer and sheltered like me. For people from my generation and before, if you’re not quite the same as others – whether sexuality-wise or gender-wise – it feels alienating. And, without that community, you aren’t aware of the words that exist to describe your experience (Dysphoria, Asexuality, etc.) In this case, we can see that there was clearly a lack of vocabulary to describe our experiences, but it has since been created and a community built up.

Likewise, some words in Láadan help describe certain experiences that all people have, though its emphasis as a woman’s language is in how it tries to be more soft, perceptive, and in-tune with feelings. Of course, people of all genders can use and appreciate this language if they are interested; Suzette never meant for it to be “just for women” even if she created it for women. Similarly, so many movies are made with male leads but meant for everybody, while we still assume movies with a female lead are often movies “for women”. Something made for women can still be for everybody. [2]

In a comparison between Klingon vs. Láadan, I think you would have to compare how they were presented and backed – Klingon had a television show it belonged to, and with the TV show came merchandise to popularize Klingon characters and keep it alive long-term. Suzette had a series of three novels and purposely did not try to market it in such a way.

On the downsides of Láadan, I have to mention the lack of queer vocabulary. This can be remedied, but it is not something that I am comfortable doing myself and I would like to have more people join my efforts in working with Láadan, so that we may expand the dictionary to cover more perceptions and experiences.

Overall, I believe that studying Láadan and about how and why it was created has ultimately changed my own perception of the world, and possibly how I think of a more ideal world, though I still find it hard to put my own thoughts into words. Láadan as a language and as a concept means a lot to me. Over all of history, womens' work and accomplishments have been swept under the rug. I see this as somebody with a computer science background, and somebody interested in learning about womens' history. My attempt to preserve and document Láadan is just a small way I'm trying to keep one woman's accomplishment of writing a language from disappearing.

-- Rachel Wil Sha Singh

Native Tongue

Native Tongue is a three-book science fiction series, created as a ten-year experiment, along with the language created "within" the series, Láadan. [3]

Native Tongue is set in the 22nd century, where the Equal Rights Amendment was defeated in the 1980s. At the same time, Earth is dealing with many alien species, and has need for translators.

These translators come from special "Linguist lines", whose lives revolve around studying alien languages and acting as interpreters.

Within one of the Linguist houses, a group of women secretly construct a language for women...

Suzette Haden Elgin

Suzette Haden Elgin (1936-2015) was a linguist and sci-fi author. She first began writing science fiction novels to help her pay for tuition for grad school. She taught linguistics at San Diego State University until 1980. [3]

Learning Láadan

Part 1: Basic Sentences

  1. Sounds, tones, and euphony
  2. What is it? What is it doing?
  3. Speech Act morpheme, Evidence morpheme, and verb negation
  4. Time, adjectives, and plurals
  5. Pronous, objects, and multiple verbs, to try to [VERB]

Part 2: Relations

  1. The Goal and Source markers (to, from)
  2. The Association marker and Beneficiary marker (with, for)
  3. The Instrument marker and the Location marker (per/by means of, at)
  4. The Manner marker, the Reason marker, the Purpose marker, and the To-Cause-To marker (in this manner, because, in order to, to cause to)
  5. The Path marker (Through, across)

Part 3: Perception

  1. Ways to perceive
  2. Possession markers
  3. Relationships
  4. Degree markers
  5. Duration markers and Repetition morphemes
  6. State of Consciousness
  7. Additions to the Speech Act morphemes
  8. Noun declensions
  9. Comparisons

Part 4: Additional

  1. Who, what, when, where, why?
  2. Embedding sentences
  3. Passive voice
  4. Numbers and quantity
  5. If... then...

Reference

Grammar Reference

Grammar Reference

A quick-reference list of grammar rules and examples.

Phrase Book

Phrase Book

A list of categorized phrases in Láadan

Word Lists

Word Lists

Categorized word lists to quickly find useful words.

Practice Material

  1. Text Stories - Short stories for practicing reading Láadan text.
  2. Comics - Graphical comic strips and art that uses Láadan.

Additional Resources

Authors and contributors

This Wikibook is written by:

  • Rachel Wil Sha Singh

Notes

  1. ↑ Why a Woman is not like a Physicist, WisCon talk March 1982, Suzette Haden Elgin
  2. ↑ http://laadanlanguage.org/node/21
  3. 1 2 http://www.sfwa.org/members/elgin/
This article is issued from Wikibooks. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.