Category Archives: significant female influence

Gyaru-moji — 2000 AD?, Japan

Posted on September 28, 2011 by ducky

Gyaru-moji is sort of like a Japanese Leet: a variant orthography for Japanese.  Unlike Leet, which was developed in the predominantly male hacker culture, Gyaru-moju (which means “girl characters”) appears to have been developed by schoolgirls.  In both cases, by … Continue reading →

Posted in Logograms, private or secret, Rating: 5 "Whoa!!", significant female influence, Syllabaries | Leave a comment

Gond — 2010 AD, India

Posted on September 26, 2011 by ducky

It is not very common for someone to create a new script.  Cherokee, Ol Chiki, Pin Cin Hau logograms, Gurmukhi, Hangul are just a few of the scripts which we know were created or invented more-or-less from scratch. However, in … Continue reading →

Posted in Abugida, inventor known, Rating: 2 "Not all that interesting", significant female influence | Leave a comment

Zetian characters — 690 AD, China

Posted on March 16, 2011 by ducky

There was one female ruler of China, Wu Zetian, who, among other things, mandated use of around twenty new characters.  (These characters were presented to her by a junior relative, Zong Qinke, but she went along with it.) She took … Continue reading →

Posted in government-mandated, inventor known, Logograms, Rating: 5 "Whoa!!", significant female influence | 2 Comments

Nushu — 1300 AD?, China

Posted on March 14, 2011 by ducky

While Hiragana and Hangul were considered “women’s scripts”, nobody actively prevented the men from using the script as well, and eventually the men came around.  However, in China, women were actively prevented from learning Chinese script, so they went underground … Continue reading →

Posted in Logograms, private or secret, Rating: 5 "Whoa!!", significant female influence, Syllabaries | 2 Comments

Hiragana — ~800 AD, Japan

Posted on March 4, 2011 by ducky

It was easier to write Japanese with Manyogana than with exclusively Chinese logograms, but it was still difficult because the same glyph would represent a word in one place and a sound in another. For their next attempt, the Japanese … Continue reading →

Posted in previous script didn't quite work, Rating: 5 "Whoa!!", significant female influence, Syllabaries | 9 Comments