Apparently it was like [Pig Latin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_Latin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_Latin), where it wasn't really so much "secret" as

Apparently it was like [Pig Latin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_Latin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_Latin), where it wasn't really so much "secret" as much as it was a linguistic buffer: > When Nüshu was first discovered by people outside of Jiangyong in the 1980s, the media sensationalized the script as an invented, secret language that women could use to spite men and a patriarchal society. This is what initially drew Silber to study Nüshu. But what she found was that men were well aware that women had been writing in the script. It wasn’t an entirely new, made-up language but actually a writing system for the local dialect, and if men heard Nüshu read aloud they most likely would have been able to understand. Men mostly just didn’t care to learn how to write in women’s script. More generally, these seem to be examples of ["secret" languages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argot) or [language games](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_game). This seems to happen in modern-day American schools, too, where certain groups -- e.g., gender-specific, but also other types -- would select a foreign language that other students don't normally pick. Or, in the case of anime/manga fans, they might pick up Japanese during their free time. It's not that the foreign language was secret, but others' unfamiliarity with the language would still give the in-group a linguistic buffer. I guess video-gamer jargon, 1337, and even sports metaphors can be seen as examples of this.