Women-specific 'artlang', invented by Suzette Haden Elgin. Lojban's evidentials are inherited from it (although of course, Láadan in turn got them from Amerindian human languages.)

What does it mean for a language to have a gender? - la kreig.daniyl.

Check out http://www.interlog.com/~kms/Laadan/, and you tell me!

Another "test of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis" language.

It has words for womanly things. That doesn't make it womanly, just gender-neutral. English may be "male" in some way, but laadan strikes me as neither.

Láadan is clearly feminine; see the pretty purple they used for the web page? It looks like a breast cancer site.

But is the vocabulary purple also? (The vocabulary is indeed worth examining; it has specific terms for things like "discord in the home", "anger, for good and not futile reasons", "pain or loss which comes as a relief by virtue of ending the anticipation of its coming", "contentment despite negative circumstances", "the female sexual act", and "the act of relinquishing a cherished/ comforting/ familiar perception".)

I despair of this ThreadMode discourse ever congealing into DocumentMode , but the foundational assumption of Láadan is that women's perception of the word is fundamentally incommensurable with men's. So if purple meta-means what I think it meta-means, the answer is yes.

Lojban got its evidentials from Láadan, but they are organized quite differently:

Láadan Evidence Act Morpheme Approximate Lojban equivalent
wa za'a/se'o/ju'a
wi li'a
we se'o
wáa .iati'e
waá .ianaiti'e
waálh .ianaiti'e.iunaidai? (There must be a better word for malicious intent.)
wo da'i/ru'a
wáo ju'ocu'i/pe'icu'i

This brings up an interesting question: What is the correct evidential in Lojban (assuming normal experiences) for a sentence like "mi xagji"? za'a? se'o?

Extract from a Wikipedia article

• lo – /lō/ or /lò/, a short, medium or low tone, represented by a single unmarked vowel
• ló – /ló/, a short, high tone, represented by a single marked vowel

• loó – /lǒː/, a long, low-rising tone, represented by a double vowel, the second of which is marked
• lóo – /lôː/, a long, high-falling tone, represented by a double vowel, the first of which is marked

• a – /ɑ/, an open back unrounded vowel (as English calm),
• e – /ɛ/, an open-mid front unrounded vowel (as English bell),
• i – /ɪ/, a near-close near-front unrounded vowel (as English bit),
• o – /o/, a close-mid back rounded vowel (as English home),
• u – /u/, a close back rounded vowel (as English boon).

• th – /θ/, a voiceless dental fricative (always as in English think, never as then),
• zh – /ʒ/, a voiced postalveolar fricative (as English pleasure),
• lh – /ɬ/, a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative (as Welsh llan).

• The speech-act particle – this occurs at the beginning of the sentence and marks it as either a statement (bíi), a question (báa), et cetera; in connected speech or writing, this particle is often omitted. They are:

  Bíi 

  Indicates a declarative sentence (usually optional)

  Báa 

  Indicates a question

  Bó 

  Indicates a command; very rare, except to small children

  Bóo 

  Indicates a request; this is the usual imperative/"command" form

  Bé 

  Indicates a promise

  Bée 

  Indicates a warning

• The grammatical tense particle – this occurs second in the sentence and marks it as either present tense (ril), past tense (eril), future tense (aril) or hypothetical (wil); without the tense particle, the sentence is assumed to have the same tense as the previous sentence.
• The evidence particle – this occurs at the end of statements and indicates the trustworthiness of the statement. They are:

  wa 

  Known to speaker because perceived by speaker, externally or internally

  wi 

  Known to speaker because self-evident

  we 

  Perceived by speaker in a dream

  wáa 

  Assumed true by speaker because speaker trusts source

  waá 

  Assumed false by speaker because speaker distrusts source; if evil intent by the source is also assumed, the form is "waálh"

  wo 

  Imagined or invented by speaker, hypothetical

  wóo 

  Used to indicate that the speaker states a total lack of knowledge as to the validity of the matter

• Gender role in language

1. ^ Elgin's blog

• Elgin, Suzette Haden, & Diane Martin. A First Dictionary and Grammar of Láadan. Madison: Society for the Furtherance and Study of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1988.
• Jones, Mari C. and Ishtla Singh, Exploring Language Change: Routledge, 2005; pp. 169–182.

• Official Láadan website
• Láadan Conlang Profile
• Elgin's Láadan introduction
• Láadan lessons (moderately paced lessons in Láadan)
• A Láadan Sampler
• Some Láadan (PDF) (The text says that "wo-" is a plural marker. This is an error; the plural marker is "me-", "wo-" is a relativizer.)
• Lesson One of Láadan Made Easier
• Láadan Working Group
• How to count in Láadan