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A review by kmartinix
Native Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin
4.0
The plot of this book is pretty much exactly what the book summary is. Hundreds of years in the future, after all women's rights are revoked, they work to create their own language. And the whole time I'm reading it I'm thinking "how is talking in a coded language going to help much? Everyone around you is a master language translator they'd not last long sending coded messages
But that really isn't the point of this. The whole book is subtly reminding us what language does, it allows communication. And languages aren't 1 to 1, they're created from experiences and thoughts. If one people group have different experiences then others, their language might not just have different words for things, but different concepts and this didn't fully click with me until the end of the book.
I still think this book has a lot of problems, way too much time spent from the men POV discussing how flawed women are or business, and the women POV seem to be single-note. Characters don't change much through the book, theres one chapter where a POV character has an emotional arc, but other than that it's pretty lowkey.
But that really isn't the point of this. The whole book is subtly reminding us what language does, it allows communication. And languages aren't 1 to 1, they're created from experiences and thoughts. If one people group have different experiences then others, their language might not just have different words for things, but different concepts and this didn't fully click with me until the end of the book.
I still think this book has a lot of problems, way too much time spent from the men POV discussing how flawed women are or business, and the women POV seem to be single-note. Characters don't change much through the book, theres one chapter where a POV character has an emotional arc, but other than that it's pretty lowkey.