Láadan
“I used to be withid. Then they changed what -id was.”
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[1] 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[edit | edit source]
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, through a time machine, 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. Láadan became the second language of feminists everywhere, and was soon adopted at a number of women's colleges in the U.S. After it had spread to all of them, the language expanded to liberal arts colleges. Eventually it spread to universities, and by the 21st century, Láadan was official in the majority of universities in the English-speaking world.
Grammar[edit | edit source]
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 many in the community, particularly as Láadan already has a word for penis, lhobom.
Pronouns[edit | edit source]
Of course Láadan has pronouns. Still, Láadan lacks gendered pronouns (everyone and everything is be). This makes things a lot easier for queer people who don't mind learning an otherwise absurdly complicated auxiliary language.
For example, each personal pronoun has three numbers: singular, paucal, and plural. Paucal is 2-5 while plural is greater than 5. Why is Láadan like this? That's a patriarchal question, don't you think?
Also, 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.
Cases[edit | edit source]
“Ho ve! Kaj oni riproĉas nin pri akuzativo!”
Láadan has more case endings than most natural languages, as a way of torturing men with their inferior language skills.[2] If you think Latin or Russian is too hard, you're not going to like Láadan. Most English speakers are liable to want to give up upon realizing Láadan rivals the Oogry-Moogric languages for number of cases, but they can't, because it's mandatory in universities.
Sure, there's no gender or vowel harmony, which makes it easier, but it's still an intimidating number of cases for an auxiliary language. Especially when all the learning materials are in English, so your average learner is a native English speaker. Just more evidence Láadan is a torture device meant to establish female dominance.[3]
Pitch accent[edit | edit source]
Why not, right? The á in Láadan is pronounced in a higher tone than the other syllables.
Sample[edit | edit source]
| 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. |
Useful phrases[edit | edit source]
- Bóo nédi ne. Please respond.
Footnotes[edit | edit source]
- ↑ Which is, of course, radically different from female thought in some way other than "different experiences of the world."
- ↑ Indeed, everything feminists do is about men.
- ↑ But not in the fun way, unless you like the idea of a gender-swapped John Cleese acting out the Latin grammar scene from Life of Brian.
 | This article needs to be grown |