Láadan

Láadan is responsible for the sci-fi feminist utopia we live in today.

“I used to be withid. Then they changed what -id was.”

~ Abe Simpson on modern gender attitudes and Láadan

Láadan is a language created by feminists to force everyone to think like women. Created during the Second Wave of Feminism, it follows the Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis which states that language determines the range of possible thought. Its creator, Suzette Haden Elgin, believed it would be possible to eliminate all male thought by forcing everyone to learn a feminist language under threat of imprisonment.

Currently, Láadan is official in most universities in the English-speaking world, which hold all or most classes in the language and penalize students for speaking others. This has led to a disparity in the number of female and male students, which was precisely the intention. Soon men will be relegated to lifting heavy things, opening jars, fighting wars, and fucking while the women do all the heavy-duty intellectual work for which they are better suited.

History

A feminist talks to an alpha conservative bro about cracking down on sex work.

Láadan was born during the Second Wave of Feminism, when liberal Boomer women gathered regularly with members of the Reagan and Thatcher administrations to make life harder for sex workers. In the course of these meetings, as yet another Baptist pastor was going on a rant about the death of masculinity, an author named Suzette Haden Elgin suddenly had the thought that men should shut the fuck up once in a while. Since that was never going to happen, she began thinking of ways to limit language so their conservative male allies couldn't express their horrific thoughts on the many things about which they disagreed with the feminists.

From this, the language Láadan was born. Still, Haden Elgin knew that constructed international auxiliary languages didn't have a very good track record. She looked at the most popular conlang, Klingon, and figured the best way to spread a language was through entertainment, so she wrote a book called Native Tongue introducing the language.

Her plan worked. Native Tongue ended up selling more copies than the Bible. Soon Láadan was adopted at a number of women's colleges in the U.S., and later expanded to liberal arts colleges in general. Eventually it spread to universities, and by the 21st century, Láadan was official in the majority of universities in the English-speaking world.

Grammar

In Láadan, every sentence begins with a sentence role marker and ends with an evidence marker. The sentence role marker is usually "Bíi", which, according to male linguists, means that the sentence is flirty. The evidence marker is usually "wa," which, again according to male linguists, means that the sentence comes from the mouth of a crazy woman and is completely untrustworthy.

By default, words are feminine, unless the suffix -id is added to them. So "with" means either woman or human, but "withid" means man. Attempts to conclude that "id" means "penis" have been fought by some corners of the community.

Like Thai, there are versions of every pronoun that show how much you like or dislike the person in question. Male linguists believe that every one of these pronouns means "please keep flirting with me." This has led to a lot of misunderstanding.

Sample

Láadan	English
Bíi saoláitear na daoine uile saor agus comhionann ina ndínit agus ina gcearta wa. Tá bauidh an réasúin agus an choinsiasa acu agus dlíd iad féin d'iompar de mheon bhrthreachais i leith a chéile wa.	Today, language. Tomorrow, the world. All men shall weep beneath the new female order. Soon there will be no more men at all. Lord Soros commands it.