Nǚshū 女書 / 女书, a women's script in China

Victor Mair has a fascinating article in Language Log about a women's script, Nüshu, used primarily in Jiangyong County in Human Province. Here are his concluding remarks:

Jiangyong Nüshu is essentially premised on the simplification and stylization of standard Chinese characters. The women who created it chose one character to stand for one sound in their language (in contrast to standard Sinographic writing, where one sound may be represented by dozens or scores of discrete characters. In this way, the memory load on the users of the script was much reduced.

In addition, Nüshu adheres to the principle of what I call "rhomboidization", whereby the square shapes of Sinographs are tilted diagonally. Another noticeable feature of Nüshu is its exaggeratedly long, curved strokes to suit the particular medium they may be using, e.g., embroidery, one of the chief forms in which the script is practiced.

In some respects, Jiangyong Nüshu is distinctive, but it is not an utterly unique specimen of a script that was originally used primarily by women. Another is the Japanese cursive syllabary called hiragana, which was also known as onnade 女手 ("women's hand / writing"). Genji Monogatari (The Tale of Genji), one of the great novels of the world, written in the early 11th century by the noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu, was written in hiragana.

Hobos, doctors, plumbers, electricians, highway engineers, architects, mathematicians — all have their own symbols for writing in specific circumstances. When they wish to be extremely terse and convey highly specific, expert, insider information, people who are not privy to their practices cannot make hide nor hair of what these specialists have written.

Here at Language Log, I have paid particular attention to the jargony writing of Chinese restaurant workers. As I wrote in the conclusion to this post, "Chinese restaurant shorthand, part 5" (5/15/19):

It's interesting that, in this case, the phonophores of the two characters for the name of the dish serve as the phonetic annotation and shorthand for its sounds. As the women who invented nǚshū 女書 ("women's script") and various other phonetically astute individuals throughout Chinese history have realized, the Sinographic system has within it the potential to develop into a practicable syllabary.

Human writing develops more complex or simpler forms in accord with the needs of those who use it. In some cases, part of its purpose is to impress or even intimidate, in which case it will take on more elaborate and even ornamental forms. In other cases, writing is for sheer, bare bones practicality, in which case it is as lean and efficient as possible. Jiangyong Nüshu found itself somewhere in the middle between these two poles.

The whole post is worthwhile.

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A final note: I neither speak nor write Chinese or, for that matter, Japanese, but I am interested in language. For the last several years and more Victor Mair has been writing fascinating articles about Chinese mostly, but also Japanese, at Language Log. I always look at them, and read many/most of  them all the way through.