Women's script
Women's writing ( Chinese 女 書 / 女 书 , Pinyin nǚshū or 江永 女 書 / 江永 女 书 , Jiāngyǒng nǚshū ) is a writing system that was developed in the southern Chinese province of Hunan in the 15th century and was used exclusively by women.
With this script, which - unlike the on logograms constructive Chinese standard font - on phonetic Syllabogrammen builds, especially letters were written and recorded stories. Each of the approximately 600–700 characters represents a syllable of the local Chéngguān dialect.
In 2006, the Chinese government declared writing a national cultural heritage.
meaning
For centuries in Chinese history, women had few rights and were forcibly married off by their parents . In order to weaken this oppression and to be able to keep in contact with other women, they developed their own script . They used this, for example, to exchange information about daily worries and stories about their husbands and in-laws. During religious meetings, nǚshū was used as the language for singing and prayer.
Typeface
In some ways nǚshū is reminiscent of the Chinese written language, as if its characters had been modified and drawn out. Nǚshū is also written from top to bottom in rows from right to left. But a closer look reveals the fundamental difference: While Chinese characters are based on morphemes, nǚshū is phonetic - the characters represent sounds, namely those of the region's Cheng Guan Tuhua dialect.
Research into women's script
Since 1982, the nǚshū characters based on the Hanzi characters have been researched by Chinese linguists . It is assumed that the women copied the characters learned only by men and changed them for their own needs, such as by simplification or artistic design. There are approximately 1,500 nǚshū characters and 20,000 words known today.
There are hardly any finds of nǚshū texts, as these were traditionally buried or burned with the dead. Many family heirlooms were also destroyed by Japanese soldiers in the 1930s. In the course of the Cultural Revolution women were banned from religious and spiritual activity and the Red Guards destroyed many documents.
As a result of the upheavals in China that began in the second half of the 20th century, more and more girls went to school in rural areas and the n langsamshū script slowly died out. The last woman who used the women's script died on September 20, 2004, at an age estimated by neighbors to be 98 years.
A team from Tshinghua University in Beijing is preparing a calligraphy dictionary of women's handwriting , which will appear [out of date] in 2017 and will offer an English translation for the first time. Since June 2017, it has been supported in the corresponding Unicode block women's font with 396 characters.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Natalie Mayroth: Secrets Among Women , Süddeutsche Zeitung of October 10, 2016, p. 16.
- ↑ a b ( page no longer available , search in web archives: Nüshu at randomhouse.de, accessed on January 17, 2010 ) (the current page is different)
- ↑ Unicode 10.0.0. Retrieved April 2, 2019 .