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\tIn 1983, after the announcement of finding Women’s script \uff08\u5973\u4e66n\u01da sh\u016b \uff09<\/strong>in Jiangyong County, Hunan Province to the world, it was very astonishing and attracted broad interests from many national and international academics, specialists and the media.<\/p>\n \tNushu<\/em>(women's script) is composed of very strange characters, which feature strange shapes, a strange way of marking, strange social functions and history.<\/p>\n \tNushu <\/em>was popular in the valley of the Xiaoshui River in Jiangyong County of Hunan Province, and is still used by some senile women nowadays. There are several local sayings about the origin of this women's script.<\/p>\n \tOne saying has it that since ancient times, women in the valley of the Xiaoshui River in Jiangyong County have liked to gather together for embroidery and weaving. They could not afford schooling to learn men's script (they called the square Chinese characters as men's script). In order to record their hard life, they jointly created the women's script based on the patterns they wove and embroidered.<\/p>\n \tNushu<\/em>was derived from square Chinese characters, and were variations of the later. Researches show thatNushu<\/em>had more than 1,000 characters, among which 80% were created based on Chinese characters, and only 20% were coinages with unknown origin. Its characters took the shape of rhombus, and were higher on the right part and lower on the left part. They are slender and beautiful, look like oracle-bone inscription\uff08\u7532\u9aa8\u6587<\/strong> ji\u01ce g\u01d4 wén \uff09at first glance, and retain much familiar trace of Chinese characters.<\/p>\n \tThe investigations and researches done by linguists these years show the way of recordingNushu<\/em>is not the Hunan dialect, Southwest official language or the dialect of the Yao nationality, but a local dialect prevalent along the Jiangyong area. Different from Chinese ideographic characters,Nüshu <\/em>characters are ideographic characters that have a single syllable and indicate their sound.<\/p>\n \tNushu <\/em>was the tool of cultural communication for local countryside women, especially middle- and old-aged women. It played its unique social function, and was basically used to create women's works and record women's songs. The songs it recorded were generally composed of seven-character lines\uff08\u4e03\u5f8b\u4f53q\u012b l\u01dc t\u01d0 \uff09<\/strong>. The longest ones of their works had four to five thousand characters, and the shortest ones only had dozens of characters.Nushu <\/em>works normally were written on delicately made manuscripts, fans, handkerchiefs and pieces of paper.<\/p>\n \tNushu <\/em>has academic value from the perspectives of philology, linguistics, sociology, ethnography, and history, etc. Therefore, it is reputed as a wonderful discovery and a wonder in the history of Chinese characters by scholars home and abroad.Women’s script culture is a precious spiritual legacy. \t \t Key words\uff1a<\/strong><\/p>\n \t\u5973\u4e66n\u01da sh\u016b: Women’s script
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\t\u7532\u9aa8\u6587ji\u01ce g\u01d4 wén\uff1a oracle-bone inscription
\t\u4e03\u5f8b\u4f53q\u012b l\u01dc t\u01d0\uff1a seven-character lines<\/p>\n