by Lian Slayford-Wei

Created on: October 20, 2009

The History of the Nushu Language

A unique and fascinating ancient writing system used exclusively by local women in the mountainous areas of Hunan Province in central China, Nushu (known as woman's language) is a language that can give us a fascinating insight into the lives of ancient Chinese women.

For the most part in Chinese history, women and their lives were pushed to the background. Chinese society, both in ancient times and even today, is a very patrilineal society. Women were expected to follow the men in their lives - their fathers before they were married, then their husbands and afterwards their sons. Women were not expected to learn to read and write, this was left for the men of the house to learn.

Nushu employs a unique script based on the shapes of the Chinese characters but comprising neither ideographs nor phonetic letters. It differs from that of Nanshu (male writing) and the origins of this type of writing is still unknown. According to some scholars, they suggest that it is the "vestige of an ancient language dating back to the early Qin dynasty, while others see it as a special written code that local women created during the Min or Qing dynasty from Chinese characters and traditional decorative designs in order to record the local dialects".

The Nushu written language is a record of oral works that have been passed down from generation to generation among the local people of Jiang Yong region in Hunan Province, and thus they preserve their original nature as oral literature. The language is based "on Xiangnan tuhua, the language of everyday use in ten counties of southeast Hunan, including Jiangyong County. Nushu culture is specific to the Shangjiangxu region in northern Jiangyong County. Xiangnan tuhua belongs to the Han Chinese language group, although it betrays the influence of neighbouring non-Han minority languages".

The language, both written and oral, is based on the existing spoken language of the region, but it can be spoken in older pronunciations based on classical Chinese (wenyan) that would have to be taught to each generation of women in the region.

According to the few scholars that have undertook the daunting task of deciphering the language, the Nushu script is not divided into lines - only by vocalising the characters can the language become 'readable' and the women who speak Nushu do not distinguish between reading and writing it.

The scholar Xie Zhimin states that Nushu is a language that is remnant of the oracle

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