Láadan

Láadan
Created by	Suzette Haden Elgin and collaborators
Date	1982
Setting and usage	experiment in feminist linguistics, and featured in Elgin's novel series beginning with Native Tongue
Purpose	Constructed language artistic and philosophical language fictional language Láadan
Sources	a priori language, with influences from Navajo and English
Language codes
ISO 639-3	ldn
Linguist List	ldn
Glottolog	laad1235

Láadan (Láadan pronunciation: [ˈlɑ˦ɑˈdɑn] ^ⓘ) is a gynocentric constructed language created by Suzette Haden Elgin in 1982 to test the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, specifically to determine if development of a language aimed at expressing the views of women would shape a culture; a subsidiary hypothesis was that Western natural languages may be better suited for expressing the views of men than women. The language was included in her science fiction Native Tongue series.

Láadan contains a number of words that are used to make unambiguous statements that include how one feels about what one is saying. According to Elgin, this is designed to counter male-centered language's limitations on women, who are forced to respond "I know I said that, but I meant this".

Motivation, development and publication history

Elgin was a writer of both fiction and nonfiction book series. Láadan and the ideas underpinning its creation were described in several series:

It was included as a language portrayed diegetically within the speculative fiction novel trilogy Native Tongue (1984), The Judas Rose (1987), and Earthsong (1993). The role of the language in the plot of the overall story is as a transformative project, whose development changes the social roles of an extended family of linguist characters.

After the publication of the second novel, A First Dictionary & Grammar of Láadan (1988) was published in the hopes that a community of speakers could form, and the validity of the project from the novels might be tested in real life. The grammar book was advertised in literary and feminist magazines, and feedback led to a second edition and posthumously a third edition.

Before conceiving of Láadan, Elgin had published a self-help book The Gentle Art of Verbal Self Defense (1980) which was developed into a series of books focusing on the workplace, romantic relationships, and so on. It postulated that at least in English, phrasing often allowed for an ambiguous hostility which could be used as a sort of verbal abuse especially in competitive environments, and discussed which defenses might be effective and which not; see verbal self-defense § Influential contributors. To allow for the means to express nuanced emotion and other distinctions, features combine to create and modify meanings.

Phonology

Tones

Láadan is a tonal language. It utilises two distinct tones:

• lo – /lō/ or /lò/, a short, medium or low tone, represented by a single unmarked vowel
• ló – /ló/, a short, high tone, represented by a single marked vowel

The word "Láadan" has three syllables: "lá-" with the short vowel /a/ plus high tone; "-a" with the short vowel /a/ and no tone; and "-dan".

Láadan doesn't allow any double (i.e. long) phonemes. Whenever two identical short vowels would occur side by side in a single morpheme, one of them has to be marked for high tone. When adding an affix would result in two identical vowels side by side, an epenthetic /h/ is inserted to prevent the forbidden sequence. The language will allow either máa or maá, but not *maa. These combinations can be described as:

• loó – /lǒː/, a long, low-rising tone, represented by a double vowel, the second of which is marked
• lóo – /lôː/, a long, high-falling tone, represented by a double vowel, the first of which is marked

Vowels

Láadan has five vowels:

• a – /ɑ/, an open back unrounded vowel (as English calm),
• e – /ɛ/, an open-mid front unrounded vowel (as English bell),
• i – /ɪ/, a near-close near-front unrounded vowel (as English bit),
• o – /o/, a close-mid back rounded vowel (as English home),
• u – /u/, a close back rounded vowel (as English boon).

Consonants

		Labial	Dental / Alveolar		Postalveolar / Palatal	Glottal
			median	lateral
Nasal		m /m/	n /n/
Plosive		b /b/	d /d/
Fricative	voiceless		th /θ/	lh /ɬ/	sh /ʃ/	h /h/
	voiced				zh /ʒ/
Approximant		w /w/	r /ɹ/	l /l/	y /j/

Láadan lacks the consonants /p, t, k, ɡ, s, z, f, v/. It uses b, d, sh (/ʃ/), m, n, l, r, w, y (/j/), h with the same phonetic value as English. Three digraphs require further explanation:

• th – /θ/, a voiceless dental fricative (always as in English think, never as then),
• zh – /ʒ/, a voiced postalveolar fricative (as English pleasure),
• lh – /ɬ/, a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative (as Welsh llan).

Grammar

Mandatory parts of speech

Most Láadan sentences, and all formal sentences in the language, contain three particles:

• The speech-act particle – this occurs at the beginning of the sentence and marks it as either a statement (bíi), a question (báa), et cetera; in connected speech or writing, this particle is often omitted. They are:

  Bíi

  Indicates a declarative sentence (usually optional)

  Báa

  Indicates a question

  Bó

  Indicates a command; very rare, except to small children

  Bóo

  Indicates a request; this is the usual imperative/"command" form

  Bé

  Indicates a promise

  Bée

  Indicates a warning

• The grammatical tense particle – this occurs second in the sentence and marks it as either present tense (ril), past tense (eril), future tense (aril) or hypothetical (wil); without the tense particle, the sentence is assumed to have the same tense as the previous sentence.
• The evidence particle – this occurs at the end of statements and indicates the trustworthiness of the statement. They are:

  wa

  Known to speaker because perceived by speaker, externally or internally

  wi

  Known to speaker because self-evident

  we

  Perceived by speaker in a dream

  wáa

  Assumed true by speaker because speaker trusts source

  waá

  Assumed false by speaker because speaker distrusts source; if evil intent by the source is also assumed, the form is waálh

  wo

  Imagined or invented by speaker, hypothetical

  wóo

  Used to indicate that the speaker states a total lack of knowledge as to the validity of the matter

Word order

Láadan has two syntactic orderings. In active voice, it is a verb–subject–object (VSO) language; the English example sentence in the following table would read in Láadan: Bíi eril yod Sham doyuth wa. In passive voice, it is an object–verb–subject (OVS) language; the sentence would read in Láadan: Bíi eril doyuth yod Shameshub wa. In either case, it uses a minority word order type among languages of the world.

Order	Example	Usage		Languages
SOV	"Sam apples ate."	45%		Ainu, Akkadian, Amharic, Ancient Greek, Armenian, Aymara, Bambara, Basque, Bengali, Burmese, Burushaski, Chukchi, Cushitic languages, Dravidian languages, Elamite, Hindustani, Hittite, Hopi, Itelmen, Japanese, Korean, Kurdish, Latin, Lhasa Tibetan, Manchu, Mongolian, Munda languages, Nahuatl, Navajo, Nepali, Nivkh, Northeast Caucasian languages, Northwest Caucasian languages, Pali, Pashto, Persian, Quechua, Sanskrit, Sinhala, Tamil, Tigrinya, Turkic languages, Yukaghir
SVO	"Sam ate apples."	42%		Arabic (modern spoken varieties), Chinese, Estonian, Finnish, Hausa, Hebrew, Indonesian, Kashmiri, Malay, most European languages, Pa'O, Swahili, Thai, Vietnamese, Yucatec Maya
VSO	"Ate Sam apples."	9%		Arabic (classical and modern standard), Berber languages, Biblical Hebrew, Celtic languages, Filipino, Geʽez, Kariri, Mayan languages, Polynesian languages
VOS	"Ate apples Sam."	3%		Algonquian languages, Arawakan languages, Car, Chumash, Fijian, K'iche, Malagasy, Otomanguean languages, Qʼeqchiʼ, Salishan languages, Terêna
OVS	"Apples ate Sam."	1%		Äiwoo, Hixkaryana, Urarina
OSV	"Apples Sam ate."	0%		Haida, Tobati, Warao
Frequency distribution of word order in languages surveyed by Russell S. Tomlin in the 1980s ()

Verbs and adjectives are interchangeable. There are no articles, and the object is marked by the -th or -eth suffix. The plural number is shown only by the me- prefix to the verb. The particle ra following a verb makes it negative. Separate clauses are joined by the particle hé.

OBJ:object REQ:request ST

Some basic sentences in Láadan

bíi statement ril PRS áya be_beautiful mahina flower wa observed-truth bíi ril áya mahina wa statement PRS be_beautiful flower observed-truth The flower is beautiful

báa Q eril PAST mesháad PL-go/come with woman báa eril mesháad with Q PAST PL-go/come woman Did the women go/come?

bíi statement ril PRS lámála stroke/caress with woman ruleth cat-OBJ wa observed-truth bíi ril lámála with ruleth wa statement PRS stroke/caress woman cat-OBJ observed-truth The woman strokes the cat

bóo REQ wil HYP di speak/say le I neth you-OBJ bóo wil di le neth REQ HYP speak/say I you-OBJ I would like to speak with you, please.

bíi statement aril FUT meleyan PL-be_brown ra NEG lanemid dog wáa received-truth bíi aril meleyan ra lanemid wáa statement FUT PL-be_brown NEG dog received-truth I hear the dogs will not be brown

bíi statement ril PRS an know le I hé embedded-clause-marker eril PAST bethudeha cave-at ne you wa observed-truth bíi ril an le hé eril bethudeha ne wa statement PRS know I embedded-clause-marker PAST cave-at you observed-truth I know that you were at the cave

Morphology

Láadan has an agglutinative morphology, and uses a number of affixes to indicate various feelings and moods that many natural languages can only indicate by tone of voice, body language or circumlocution.

Affix	meaning	example
(-)lh(-)	disgust or dislike	hahodimi: "pleasantly bewildered"; hahodimilh: "unpleasantly bewildered"
du-	to try to	bíi eril dusháad le wa: "I tried to come"
dúu-	to try in vain to	bíi eril dúusháad le wa: "I tried in vain to come"
ná-	progressive aspect	bíi eril dúunásháad le wa: "I was trying in vain to come"
-(e)tha	natural possessor	lalal betha: "her mother's milk"
-(e)tho	customary or legal possessor	ebahid letho: "my husband"
-(e)thi	possessor by chance	losh nethi: "your money (gambling winnings)"
-(e)the	possessor by unknown provenance	ana worulethe: "the cats' food"
-(h)id	denotes male (otherwise female or gender neutral)	thul: "mother/parent"; thulid: "father"

The speech-act particle, at the beginning of a sentence, can also carry several suffixes, which expand on the overall state of the sentence. For example, bíi begins a statement, but bíide begins a statement that is part of a narrative; bóoth begins a request made in pain; báada begins a question that is meant in jest.

Pronouns

Pronouns in Láadan are built up from a number of constituent parts. The consonant l marks the first person, n the second person and b the third person. Usually, these are followed by the vowel e. The vowel a is used to designate someone who is loved (lhe- is prefixed to describe someone who is despised). The suffix -zh is used to mark a plural pronoun for numbers up to four, and -n for numbers beyond that. Therefore, lazh means "we, several beloved", and lheben means "they, many despised".

Reception

Anthony Burgess mentioned Láadan in a 1985 review of A Feminist Dictionary in The Observer, calling it "ingenious" and stating he was "highly sympathetic" of its aims, but asserting that "it's not going to work" because "[n]ot enough women care sufficiently".

See also

• Language and gender
• Muted group theory

Further reading

• Elgin, Suzette Haden, & Diane Martin. A First Dictionary and Grammar of Láadan. Madison: Society for the Furtherance and Study of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1988.
• Jones, Mari C. and Ishtla Singh, Exploring Language Change: Routledge, 2005; pp. 169–182.

External links

• Official website
• Elgin's Láadan introduction

  Lesson One of Láadan Made Easier

  A Láadan Sampler

• Elgin’s critique of others’ analysis of Láadan:
  • Myths About Láadan
  • Just One More Láadan Myth
• Láadan lessons (moderately paced lessons in Láadan by A.M.J. "Amberwind" Barnhart; archived from prior URL)
• Some Láadan (PDF) (The text says that "wo-" is a plural marker. This is an error; the plural marker is "me-", while "wo-" is a relativizer.)
• Láadan Working Group
• How to count in Láadan
• Conlang Critic on YouTube: a critical video review of the basics of Láadan as an artlang
• Essays and guides about Láadan, a group blog