Native Tongue

Native Tongue is the first novel in Suzette Haden Elgin's feminist science fiction series of the same name. The trilogy is centered in a future dystopian American society where the 19th Amendment was repealed in 1996 and women have been stripped of civil rights. A group of women, part of a worldwide group of linguists who facilitate human communication with alien races, create a new language for women as an act of resistance. Elgin created the language, Láadan, and instructional materials are available.

Contents

Summary

"Native Tongue" follows Nazareth, a talented female linguist in the 22nd century - after the repeal of the 19th Amendment. Nazareth is part of a small group on linguists "bred" to become perfect intergalactic translators.^[1]

Nazareth looks forward to retiring to the Barren House - where women past childbearing age essentially go as they wait to die - but learns that the women of the Barren Houses are creating a language to help them break free of male dominance.

Author's comments

Elgin has said about the book:

Native Tongue was a thought experiment, with a time limit of ten years. My hypothesis was that if I constructed a language designed specifically to provide a more adequate mechanism for expressing women's perceptions, women would (a) embrace it and begin using it, or (b) embrace the idea but not the language, say "Elgin, you've got it all wrong!" and construct some other "women's language" to replace it. The ten years went by, and neither of those things happened; Láadan got very little attention, even though SF3 actually published its grammar and dictionary and I published a cassette tape to go with it. Not once did any feminist magazine (or women's magazine) ask me about the language or write a story about it.

The Klingon language, which is as "masculine" as you could possibly get, has had a tremendous impact on popular culture -- there's an institute, there's a journal, there were bestselling grammars and cassettes, et cetera, et cetera; nothing like that happened with Láadan. My hypothesis therefore was proved invalid, and the conclusion I draw from that is that in fact women (by which I mean women who are literate in English, French, German, and Spanish, the languages in which Native Tongue appeared) do not find human languages inadequate for communication.^[2]

Of course, there are other equally valid ways of interpreting the results of Elgin's experiment: that women find their natural languages entirely adequate for self-expression; or so forth. Klingon is also tied into the Star Trek universe, which has a larger fan base than Elgin's novel.

Publication history

• August 1984, United States, DAW Books, ISBN 0-87997-945-3 (paperback)
• July 1985, Great Britain, The Women's Press, ISBN 0-7043-3971-4 (paperback)
• February 1987, United States, DAW Books, ISBN 0-88677-121-8 (paperback)
• March 1990, United States, DAW Books, ISBN 0-88677-459-4 (paperback)
• October 2000, United States, The Feminist Press at the City University of New York (CUNY), ISBN 1-55861-255-6, (Hardcover)
• November 2000, United States, The Feminist Press at CUNY, ISBN 1-55861-246-7, (Trade paperback)
• September 2003, Australia, Spinifex Press, ISBN 1-876756-05-5 (paperback)

Quotations from the book

• ...Showard began a steady dull cursing, bringing Job's beard into it as well as the private parts of the Twelve Apostles and a variety of forbidden practices and principles. —DAW 1984 edition, page 46.
• ...religion offers one of the most reliable methods for the proper management of women ever devised; religion offers a superb cure for the woman who might otherwise tend to be rebellious and uncontrolled. —DAW 1984 edition, page 130.
• Women had always had to be up and down all night long; if there weren't sick children, there were sick animals or sick people of advanced age. If there were none of those, there would be children with a bad dream, or a storm that meant someone had to get up and close windows—there was always something. A nurse only extended her ordinary female life when she learned to be instantly awake at a call, on her feet and functioning for as long as she was needed, and instantly asleep as soon as she could lie down again. It had never kept nurses, or women of any kind, from listening respectfully as the physicians whined about how their vast incomes were justified by the fact that they were awakened during the night to see patients. They would have said, "It's not the same thing at all!" As of course it was not. Women had to get up much oftener, stay up longer, and were neither paid nor admired for doing it. Certainly it wasn't the same thing. —DAW 1984 edition, page 210-211.
• Gentlemen, let me tell you what gynecology is. What it really is. Gentlemen, it is health care for your fellow man—whose women you are maintaining in that state of wellness that allows the men to pursue their lives as they were intended to pursue them. As this country desperately needs them to pursue them. There are few more distasteful burdens, few more severe impediments, a man can find himself saddled with than a sick wife, an ailing mother, a disabled daughter—any female in poor health. It is the gynecologist who sees to it that a man does not have to bear that burden or struggle against that impediment. Gentlemen . . . I know that you have all heard jokes about the gynecologist "serving" women. They are ignorant jokes. By keeping women healthy, the gynecologist serves man; few duties are more essential to this nation and its people. —DAW 1984 edition, page 225-226.
• ...he was not a brilliant man, but he was not so foolish that he didn't know how large an account of bitterness he'd run up with her in the years of their marriage. He'd had a lot of fun doing it, but he knew it hadn't ever been any fun for Nazareth; like all women, she had no sense of humor whatsover. Like being colorblind, or tonedeaf. A curious deformity. —DAW 1984 edition, page 235.
• Then consider this, please: to make something "appear" is called magic, is it not? Well, . . . when you look at another person, what do you see? Two arms, two legs, one face, an assortment of parts. Am I right? Now, there is a continuous surface of the body, a space that begins with the inside surface of the fingers and continue over the palm of the had and up the inner side of the arm to the bend of the elbows Everyone has that surface; in fact, everyone has two of them.
    I will name that the "athad" of the person. Imagine the athad, please. See it clearly in your mind—perceive, here are my own two athads, the left one and the right one. And there are both of your athads, very nice ones.
    Where there was no athad before, there will be one now, because you will perceive the athad of every person you look at, as you perceive their nose and their hair. From now on. I have made that athad appear . . . now it exists.
    Magic, you perceive, is not something mysterious, not something for witches and sorcerers . . . magic is quite ordinary and simple. It is simply language.
    And I look at you now, and I can say, as I could not say three minutes ago,—"What lovely athads you have, grandmother!" (from "The Discourse of the Three Marys," author unknown) —DAW 1984 edition, page 242.
• It won't be hard for them to teach the babies that elderly women and barren women are witches, horrid old repositories of wickedness to be feared and avoided—that's been done before, and it's always been a smashing success! —DAW 1984 edition, page 251.

See also

Novels portal

• Nü Shu, the Chinese system of women's writing
• The Handmaid's Tale, a dystopic speculative fiction novel by Margaret Atwood

References

Notes

External links

• Native Tongue trilogy homepage
• Láadan language
• Native Tongue publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• "We have always spoken Panglish" (Panglish appears in Native Tongue)