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Post by nilotic on Jun 16, 2015 9:07:40 GMT -5
I know that most linguists and scholars now regard Africa to be the birthplace of the Afro-Asiatic language group, so what evidence is there that Afro-Asiatic originated outside Africa? What do you think of Elias on Forumbiodiversity? I also find it strange that Encyclopedia Britannica still talks of a non-African origin for Afro-Asiatic.
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Post by anansi on Jun 16, 2015 15:50:14 GMT -5
I know that most linguists and scholars now regard Africa to be the birthplace of the Afro-Asiatic language group, so what evidence is there that Afro-Asiatic originated outside Africa? What do you think of Elias on Forumbiodiversity? I also find it strange that Encyclopedia Britannica still talks of a non-African origin for Afro-Asiatic. Some African linguist are now calling into question the whole Afroasiatic phylum but really I haven't looked into the non African Afro Asiatic origins of the language put in place by Greenberg. |
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Post by asante on Jun 17, 2015 11:59:08 GMT -5
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Post by africurious on Jun 18, 2015 2:44:09 GMT -5
I know that most linguists and scholars now regard Africa to be the birthplace of the Afro-Asiatic language group, so what evidence is there that Afro-Asiatic originated outside Africa? What do you think of Elias on Forumbiodiversity? I also find it strange that Encyclopedia Britannica still talks of a non-African origin for Afro-Asiatic. The evidence of Asian origin for afroasiatic was never very strong. It seemed to be driven by prejudice i.e. anything found both in Africa and outside Africa must've originated outside Africa because Africans have no influence outside Africa and only left it as slaves. They don't explicitly say this (at least not after the early 1900s) but you can tell that's their line of thinking. They even do this with genes, for example the e3b haplogroup was in the beginning regarded as African but after they discovered it extensively outside Africa some scholars began to say it's Asian. Now they all acknowledge its African because the evidence is overwhelming. Read about archaeological findings particularly writings more than a few decades back and you'll see the same bull. Later scholars who claimed Asian origin for afroasiatic said it was cuz there was a common vocabulary for farming related things/food in afroasiatic and said vocab was from Asia. That claim has been countered by many linguists hence the vast majority say the origin is African. Brittanica just needs to update their info. Also you'll find many if not most non-linguists still say afroasiatic is Asian origin but they aren't the authorities on the subject anyway. |
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Post by africurious on Jun 18, 2015 2:53:36 GMT -5
I know that most linguists and scholars now regard Africa to be the birthplace of the Afro-Asiatic language group, so what evidence is there that Afro-Asiatic originated outside Africa? What do you think of Elias on Forumbiodiversity? I also find it strange that Encyclopedia Britannica still talks of a non-African origin for Afro-Asiatic. Some African linguist are now calling into question the whole Afroasiatic phylum but really I haven't looked into the non African Afro Asiatic origins of the language put in place by Greenberg. Anansi, which linguists have questioned the existence of afroasiatic? I know there is wide disagreement on the relationships of subphylae within Afroasiatic but they all agree on the phylum's existence. Or am I misunderstanding what you meant? |
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Post by anansi on Jun 18, 2015 6:07:57 GMT -5
Some African linguist are now calling into question the whole Afroasiatic phylum but really I haven't looked into the non African Afro Asiatic origins of the language put in place by Greenberg. Anansi, which linguists have questioned the existence of afroasiatic? I know there is wide disagreement on the relationships of subphylae within Afroasiatic but they all agree on the phylum's existence. Or am I misunderstanding what you meant? T. Obenga for one , Ausar Imhotep is a linguist that post here have his doubts, the term itself they claim is a misnomer as what is called Afroasiatic is simply African, even Eret want to call it something else to lessen the impact of the so-called Asia part, but the best he did was to come up with Afrasian,in this view Semitic is simply African. www.ankhonline.com/ankh_num_16/ankh_16_t_obenga_ancient%20egyptian%20and%20modern%20yoruba.pdfA good link^ |
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Post by africurious on Jun 18, 2015 10:46:35 GMT -5
Anansi, which linguists have questioned the existence of afroasiatic? I know there is wide disagreement on the relationships of subphylae within Afroasiatic but they all agree on the phylum's existence. Or am I misunderstanding what you meant? T. Obenga for one , Ausar Imhotep is a linguist that post here have his doubts, the term itself they claim is a misnomer as what is called Afroasiatic is simply African, even Eret want to call it something else to lessen the impact of the so-called Asia part, but the best he did was to come up with Afrasian,in this view Semitic is simply African. www.ankhonline.com/ankh_num_16/ankh_16_t_obenga_ancient%20egyptian%20and%20modern%20yoruba.pdfA good link^ Oh, I was afraid you would say Obenga. I don't see how he can be considered a linguist when he has no degree in the field. He has knowledge of linguistics yes but that doesnt = professional linguist. He isn't paid attention to much among linguists because his lack of credentials and his ideas are wacky. Frankly, they're driven by his ideas of race and who is a "negro". That's no better than when white linguists tried to classify African languages based on who they thought was white or influenced by whites. He's popular among some lay blacks because they like what he says but that isn't objective study. Ausr Imhotep's credentials I am unaware of but I'm familiar with his ideas and they are also wacky and driven by his race ideas and his need to closely connect west Africans with ancient Egyptians. Standards are important. Anyone can find work by dubious linguists published in dubious sources showing crazy language relationships that make little sense. |
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Post by Tukuler al~Takruri on Jun 18, 2015 22:05:14 GMT -5
Gee, now why didn't the other linguists for the UNESCO realize that and nix him instead of lauding his excellent linguistic skills? from: africana.sfsu.edu/people/faculty/theophile-j-obengaTheophile J ObengaProfessor Emeritus  Biography: Born in Brazzaville, Congo (Central Africa), Théophile Obenga has studied a wide variety of subjects and has obtained a wide range of degrees. His degrees include: - M.A. in Philosophy (University of Bordeaux, France)
- M.Ed. (University of Pittsburgh, U.S.A.)
- M.A. in History (University of Paris, Sorbonne)
- Advanced studies in History, Linguistics, and Egyptology (University of Geneva,
Switzerland); in Prehistory (Institut de Paléontologie Humaine, Paris), and in
Linguistics, Philology, and Egyptology (University of Paris, Sorbonne, and College de France)
Théophile Obenga holds the Ph.D. in Letters, Arts and Humanities from Montpellier University, France. He is a member of the French Association of Egyptologists (Société Française D’Egyptologie) and of the African Society of Culture (Présence Africaine). He contributed as part of the United Nations Educational and Scientific Cultural Organization (UNESCO) program, to the writing of the General History of Africa and the Scientific and Cultural History of Humanity. He was, until the end of 1991, Director General of the Centre International des Civilisations Bantu (CICIBA) in Libreville, Gabon. He is the Director and Chief Editor of the journal Ankh. From January 28 to February 3, 1974 at Cairo, Egypt, Théophile Obenga accompanied
Cheikh Anta Diop as Africa’s representatives to the UNESCO symposium on “The
Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Deciphering of the Meroitic Script.” This meeting
remains one of the single most important and famous defenses of African intellectual
and historical integrity in the modern era. unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0003/000328/032875eo.pdf Dr. Obenga’s most recent work is African Philosophy: the Pharaonic period 2780-330
B.C. Dr. Obenga retired from San Francisco State in 2009. |
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Post by africurious on Jun 22, 2015 11:54:04 GMT -5
^^ I don't know to what lauding of his linguistic skills you are referring so I can't comment on that. But the best judge of what scholars think of another scholar's work is using a scholar's work as support to advance a theory/argument or giving the time to dispute in formal writing a scholar's theory because they disagree with it but said scholar has some standing in the field or his ideas have caused well known controversy in the field. None of those apply to Obenga. He is largely ignored by mainstream linguistic scholarship just as many others with poor linguistic arguments have been ignored. None of those degrees you've shown are in linguistics. I didn't say he had no degrees at all.
What people often fail to get is that you can show relationships with many different languages by finding random words that look like they are cognates. Sometimes these words aren't even pronounced similarly but because they're spelt alike so a dubious linguist will assume they sound a like. Also it's poor linguistic skills to use a modern language such as youruba to show a linguistic relationship with ancient egyptian. Yoruba didn't exist as a language when AE was being spoken thousands of years ago. To show the relationship, one would have to attempt to recreate predecessor language of the family of languages that Yoruba is in and was being spoken at the same time as AE. Then you would check to see if there is a relationship between root meanings in the ancient yoruba predecessor and AE. Obenga and these other linguists who pick their favorite w african language to show a close relationship to AE do not do this. Actually, if they even tried to do this the relationship they tried to show would fall apart because the root word in the ancient language would no longer sound or even mean something similar to the AE root. Another thing they often fail to do is show similar gramatical features between AE and their fave w african language. It's clear that Obenga is using his racial views to guide his linguistics hence he says the berber languages aren't related to the other african languages. That is so laughable. Aside from many vocab similarities to other afroasiatic languages, berber langs have similar grammar. Grammar shows a closer relationship than vocab anyway but he ignores this because it is inconvenient to his argument. He and Diop say berbers aren't negros and came from outside africa so their languages must be from outside too.
If Obenga had strong linguistic arguments or any standing in the linguistic field he would not be ignored even if scholars disagreed with him. Blench or Bender (I can't remember) argues that semitic languages arose in the ethiopian region contrary to vast majority of other linguists but yet they don't ignore him.
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Post by snakepit on Jun 27, 2015 11:28:15 GMT -5
^^
Proto-Afrasian/Afro-Asiatic has never been reconstructed, so how exactly, can it be a language group?
Besides, the history of certain (actually a lot) ethnic groups ties well into the fact that their current day languages are related to Ancient Egyptian, so it's not like they're (Obenga, Jean Claude Mboli, Asar Imhotep, GJK- Campbell Dunn) are pulling it out of thin air.
As for the whole "Berber issue", "Berber" has become a blanket term of several different peoples of several different ethnicities speaking the same language (Languages?) . Obviously, the pale-skinned folks aren't native to the continent, but that doesn't change the fact that they've been there (in the coastal parts of North Africa) for quite some time. It's perfectly possible that during the intermixing, the native Africans adapted vocabulary/grammar of the foreign settlers/invaders. I've heard that the Tuareg speak the most "ancient" form/dialect of the berber language (languages?) m but I can't vouch for that.
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Post by nilotic on Jul 17, 2015 5:10:30 GMT -5
Some African linguist are now calling into question the whole Afroasiatic phylum but really I haven't looked into the non African Afro Asiatic origins of the language put in place by Greenberg. Anansi, which linguists have questioned the existence of afroasiatic? I know there is wide disagreement on the relationships of subphylae within Afroasiatic but they all agree on the phylum's existence. Or am I misunderstanding what you meant? Thank you for your detailed response. I remember all the talk about how E3B was 'Asian' and not African but like you said incontrovertible evidence prevailed over prejudice. That doesn't happen all that often. Semitic is apparently the only branch of the Afro-asiatic family that doesn't have its origins in Africa, but exactly how strong is the evidence for an Asian origin for this language group? Q uestion: How close is the Coptic language to the ancient Egyptian language spoken 3500 years ago? I would imagine that the pronunciation of words has changed significantly since then and since the ancient Egyptians didn't have vowels in their written form I imagine that it would be difficult to reconstitute the language in its pure, pristine form. So, could the language be revived? I've read that ancient Egyptian is more closely related to Chadic than to any other language group within Afro-asiatic -- is this correct? |
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Post by nilotic on Jul 18, 2015 10:36:31 GMT -5
africurious:
You mentioned Blench with regards to the origins of Semitic but he seems to have been arguing that Afro-asiatic is African but said the opposite for Semitic. Is ancient Egyptian more closely related to Chadic or Semitic? I read on Egyptsearch that Beja is the closest language to ancient Egyptian but I don't know if this is true or not.
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Post by africurious on Jul 21, 2015 18:28:15 GMT -5
^^ Proto-Afrasian/Afro-Asiatic has never been reconstructed, so how exactly, can it be a language group? Besides, the history of certain (actually a lot) ethnic groups ties well into the fact that their current day languages are related to Ancient Egyptian, so it's not like they're (Obenga, Jean Claude Mboli, Asar Imhotep, GJK- Campbell Dunn) are pulling it out of thin air. You will need to read work written by professional linguists (i.e. ppl with professional qualifications and/or employed in the field of linguistics by reputable institutions) to understand the answer to your question. But, in short, one doesn't need to recreate a proto language to deem a group of languages to be in the same family. One can demonstrate all languages in the proposed family descended from a common ancestor language by showing they have similar grammar (i.e. the rules of the languages are the same) and have similar root vocabulary. Both of these have been sufficiently demonstrated with afro-asiatic, which is why all professional linguists agree on the family's existence. Among the ppl you listed whose names I recognize are those who aren't professional linguists, some of them aren't even professional scholars in any relevant social study, making their opinion irrelevant. The "history" of ethnic groups doesn't automatically = speaking languages that are in the same family. The Berber lang family and "Berber" ethnic identity are 2 different things so I don't why are you're conflating them. As I suggested, read professional linguistic work. Or you can stay ignorant and read work by unqualified ppl who happen to espouse claims that suit your preconceived notions. |
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Post by africurious on Jul 21, 2015 19:00:19 GMT -5
Anansi, which linguists have questioned the existence of afroasiatic? I know there is wide disagreement on the relationships of subphylae within Afroasiatic but they all agree on the phylum's existence. Or am I misunderstanding what you meant? Thank you for your detailed response. I remember all the talk about how E3B was 'Asian' and not African but like you said incontrovertible evidence prevailed over prejudice. That doesn't happen all that often. Semitic is apparently the only branch of the Afro-asiatic family that doesn't have its origins in Africa, but exactly how strong is the evidence for an Asian origin for this language group? Q uestion: How close is the Coptic language to the ancient Egyptian language spoken 3500 years ago? I would imagine that the pronunciation of words has changed significantly since then and since the ancient Egyptians didn't have vowels in their written form I imagine that it would be difficult to reconstitute the language in its pure, pristine form. So, could the language be revived? I've read that ancient Egyptian is more closely related to Chadic than to any other language group within Afro-asiatic -- is this correct? Ehret and Keita wrote a response to a book review on the book "first farmers" in which they explain why the asiatic origin of afro-asiatic is no longer held by linguists. See if you can find it via google and that will explain things. Coptic is closely related to Ancient Egyptian as it is a directly descended later version of the AE language. Without knowledge of Coptic, the heiroglyphs maybe wouldn't have been deciphered. An important thing to note is that languages are in constant change which is why there are so many languages. There is no such thing as "pure" or "pristine" when it comes to language. The AE language didn't remain constant during AE's 3k year history. Also, some of the changes are probably hidden because we are seeing only the written version and not all aspects of sound are captured in written language. Also, the language we know as AE that is on heiroglyphs was only spoken by a segment of the population who were the elites and/or natives to the specific area of egypt where the AE language originated or other areas where it became dominant. The rest of AE ppl in the kingdom would've spoken languages close or more distantly related to AE. Heck, maybe there were AE ppl who spoke nilo-saharan languages. We can't tell because they're no records. As far as AE's relation to other sub-phylae in afro-asiatic, yes chadic and semitic (perhaps berber) are the ones I've seen mentioned by linguists as being more closely related to AE than the others. I don't know enough to say which is closest. The language can definitely be revived as happened with hebrew. But, note, just like hebrew the revived version will not be identical to the original. |
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