In 1984, Bill Muir of
The Hamilton Spectator described the book as "a highly controversial novel that's sure to arouse charged emotions". In 1985, Kelvin Johnston writing for
The Observer stated "[...] though it is not as ponderous and overintellectualised as
Doris Lessing's ventures into the genre, it is of that category". In 1986, Barry Seddon of the
Manchester Evening News called the book a "
didactic bore". Elgin has said about the book: {{Blockquote|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. == Awards and adaptation ==