Last inheritress of Chinese female-only language dies

[swag]

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-09/23/content_2012172.htm

CHANGSHA, Sept. 23 (Xinhuanet) -- China's last inheritress of the mysterious Nushu language, probably the world's only female-specific language, died at her central China home earlier this week. She was in her 90s.

Yang Huanyi learned to read and write the language as a little girl. Chinese linguists say her death has put an end to a 400-year-old tradition in which women shared their innermost feelings with female friends through a set of codes that were incomprehensible to men.

Yang was born in Jiangyong County, where many people believe the language originated. Before her marriage, she used to exchangeletters in Nushu with Gao Yinxian, the eldest of the seven sworn sisters in the county who were the most authoritative speakers andwriters of the female-only language.

Though Yang herself did not join the sworn sisters, she did spend three years with them to learn the language, and became its only surviving inheritress by the end of the 1990s, after all the seven sisters had passed away.

. . . mas

[bif]

1. Was that a secret language like "Ob" talk that girls spoke

at my high school?

[baldguy]

2. And I thought it was just me that couldn't understand women.

[CarolynEC]

3. What were her last words?

:D

[Demonaut]

4. whats new?? Few men really understand wimmin anyway

lol

[liontamer]

5. how sad that the language was lost

I wonder why she didn't teach it to any girls while she was still alive

[La Lioness Priyanka]

6. will be funny when the lost language is in english

and the nuclear waste stlll has warnings in english