Nüshu script

Woman writing (Chinese女 书/女 书, pinyin or chinese nǚshū江永 女 书/江永 女 书, pinyin Jiāngyǒng nǚshū ) is a writing system that was developed in the southern Chinese province of Hunan in the 15th century and used exclusively by women.

With this script, which - unlike the building on logograms Chinese default font - based on phonetic Syllabogrammen, were mainly written letters and recorded stories. Each of the approximately 600-700 characters representing a syllable of local dialect Chengguan.

Importance

In Chinese villages women had for centuries little rights and were forced into marriage by their parents. To mitigate this oppression and to keep in touch with other women, they developed their own writing. This they used for example for the exchange of daily worries and stories about their husbands and in-laws. While religious meetings nǚshū was used as the language for singing and prayer.

Typeface

In some ways nǚshū reminiscent of the Chinese written language, as if the characters changed and elongated. Nǚshū is also from top to bottom in rows written from right to left. But on closer inspection, the basic difference opens up: while Chinese characters based on morphemes, is nǚshū phonetically - the characters thus represent sounds, one being that of Cheng- Guan - Tuhua dialect of the region.

Exploration of the woman writing

Since 1982, based on Hanzi characters nǚshū - characters to be explored by Chinese linguists. It is believed that the women copied the learned only by men characters and modified for their own needs, such as by simplifying or artistic design. Today, about 1,500 nǚshū characters and 20,000 words are known.

There are few remains of nǚshū texts, as these were traditionally buried or burned with the dead. Also, many family heirlooms were destroyed by Japanese soldiers in the 1930s. During the Cultural Revolution, women were forbidden religious and spiritual activity and by the Red Guards many documents were destroyed.

Due to the upheaval in China since the second half of the 20th century, more and more girls also went to school in rural areas and the nǚshū font slowly died out. The last of the users individual woman writing died on 20 September 2004, at an estimated age of neighbors of 98 years.