posted
The study of language, like the study of history, falls within the realm of Social Science and Social Science is heavily imbued with ideology. Contrast this with Applied Science which is virtually void of ideology - who debates whether or not 2 + 2 = 4?
The modern classification of languages began in Western European society. The grouping of "Indo-European" as a separate and distinct group began as an abstract notion of a European family that had to be proven; the "Indo" part could have just as easily been called "Aryo" for Aryan; the Aryans being Iran, India (Hindu), etc. By the same token, the grouping of Niger-Congo also began as an abstract notion to enforce the ideology of a distinct Africa-south of the Sahara!
Ideological reaction to this 'Europeanization' of languages can be seen in recent moves by some people in South Africa who want to change the name "Bantu" into something else because of its negative use during Apartheid...the next step could be the ban of the word Kaffir (non-Muslim) because it too, has been 'Europeanized' into a racial pejorative...
Afro-Asiatic; Afrasan; Hamito-Semitic are all aberrations of Western European pseudo-social science because:
a) The birth of the Semitic languages was in the environs of modern day Ethiopia
b) The other divisions of this "Afro-Asian" language are also indigenous to Africa!
c) None of these grouped languages, including Arabic, had an origin outside of Africa.
And were it not for ideology, this phylum would simply be called African.
Posts: 3344 | From: Berkeley | Registered: Oct 2003
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The thing that bothers me most is that once lies like this become accepted on this scale, it may take decades before the silent consensus (if there even is one yet) transforms in a loud spoken one. Even then it will take years before it'll rub of to the mainstream, where everybody likes to have their little opions about Africans without feeling the slightest need to backup their claims.
It would prolly help if they (the east africans) would start to embrace their african nature instead of claiming that they or their ancesters came from Arabia, or saying things like: we aren't African, we aren't Arabians, We're Nubians. I've heard that statement alot, not only from Egyptians but also from Nubians and Somali's.
Maybe the unjust European habit of clustering East Africans (genetically, linguistically, and Skeletally) with western Asians and Europeans would stop if they would make the same noise the Egyptians made when it was announced that an African American black with similar colouring as Anwar Sadat would portray him in a movie. The Egyptian gouvernment even banned the movie and they sued Colombia Pictures. Just Imagine what would happen if African gouvernments and their people would consistently do that in the opposite, truthful direction. Just look at how Egypt has Europeans by the balls and walking on toes when it comes to doing excavations in Egypt. What if.. hmmmmm.....
Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009
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There is also the notion that Nilo-Saharan is not too well understood and the reconstruction of members in that phylum is poorly done / Incorrect.
Another notion is that Niger Congo is the largest member of Nilo-Saharan. Anyone ever hear this idea? As a matter of fact where is the proposed homeland of Nilo-Saharan? In the north or in the south?
Posts: 2463 | From: New Jersey USA | Registered: Dec 2007
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...and there's Diop, Obenga, and others who elaborate on this European pseudo-science regarding "Afro-Asiatic"...
Posts: 3344 | From: Berkeley | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
I winder about the group "Indo-European" languages. What is the strength of this grouping, that such a massive cluster would be made, while African languages are sliced and diced into things like Afro-Asiatic. Is there s super language phylum uniting several African language groupings- something similar to "Indo-European" so we are not using double standards in different places? I mean, do we have something like "Africoid" languages and/or can such a super macro group be credibly created similar to "Indo-European"?
-------------------- Note: I am not an "Egyptologist" as claimed by some still bitter, defeated, trolls creating fake profiles and posts elsewhere. Hapless losers, you still fail. My output of hard data debunking racist nonsense has actually INCREASED since you began.. Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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posted
There are a couple of threads discussing Obenga's Negro-Africaine superphylum. It includes nearly all African languages with the exception of San, Khoi-Khoi, "Berber," and Semitic languages.
posted
This is how I figure it: like genealogy, and physical bio-anthropology, linguage lineage too is quite likely to be as diverse, if not more diverse, as that of the most linguistically diverse regions of the globe, outside of Africa.
-------------------- The Complete Picture of the Past tells Us what Not to Repeat Posts: 7516 | From: Somewhere on Earth | Registered: Jan 2008
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posted
Members of this forum should check out Dr. Modupe Oduyoye's book Words and Meaning in Yoruba Religion: Linguistic Connections Between Yoruba, Ancient Egyptian and Semetic. He clearly demonstrates (and in earlier works) that Yoruba, a Niger-Congo language, is related to the Afro-Asiatic branch: thus questioning the whole phylum as a whole.
Then you have linguists like Dr. GJK Campbell-Dunn who demonstrates the relatedness of Indo-European to Niger-Congo. A few of his papers you can download from his website.
I've peeped the discussions regarding Obenga's classification schema and I recently came across a linguistic paper written by a European who is making the argument that Nilo-Saharan and the Niger-Kordofonian languages should actually be grouped together. This is a reality closer to what Obenga has been addressing for years.
This is why it is critical for "us" to study linguistics in a serious way to be able to establish a more accurate grouping.
In regards to Obenga, Obenga's central argument is that Afro-Asiatic has never been reconstructed to a common ancestor and therefore no proof of a language family. The Semetic branch has, but not one connecting Berber, Semetic, Chadic and Egyptian for example.
Modupe reminds us that many of the Niger-Congo branches haven't "proven" to be related or a proto-language reconstructed, yet linguist bunch these groups together.
I am still perfecting my linguistic skills as I would like to be able to challenge effectively a lot of these claims made by European linguists.
I think everyone needs to start off with these two books at least:
The Linguistic Students Handbook by Laurie Bauer, and Teach Yourself Comparative Linguistics by Robert Lord.
I have many other works, but these are good to start off with. Learning linguistics is the best tool to have outside of doing archeological digs.
Posts: 853 | From: Houston | Registered: Nov 2007
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quote:Originally posted by Kalonji: It would prolly help if they (the east africans) would start to embrace their african nature instead of claiming that they or their ancesters came from Arabia, or saying things like: we aren't African, we aren't Arabians, We're Nubians. I've heard that statement alot, not only from Egyptians but also from Nubians and Somali's.
From what I see, I don't even think Arabians are that closed with their identity. Many see strong ties with Africa and even, India. I know many, from the Eastern Provinces to Hejaz, look identical to South Asians. Most European colleagues have a hard time differentiating between the two.
The same goes for Red Sea-based populations and Yemenites who look identical to fellow East Africans. I think the only difference between myself and Habeshas is language. If we spoke the same language, we'd be virtually identical. I doubt children would be able to notice that.
Unfortunately some may try to look to Syria and claim ties on that side. However it's clear differences exist or as my Gulf brother suggests, "northern European admixture" amongst Levantine and Turkish populations.
That could suggest Arabo-centrism (despite that suggestion being quite accurate), however, eventually, people are going notice the immense differences in person. Mestizos are not viewed the same as whites even clustering quite closely to that population.
quote: Maybe the unjust European habit of clustering East Africans (genetically, linguistically, and Skeletally) with western Asians and Europeans would stop if they would make the same noise the Egyptians made when it was announced that an African American black with similar colouring as Anwar Sadat would portray him in a movie. The Egyptian gouvernment even banned the movie and they sued Colombia Pictures.
The problem with East Africa is limited economic power. Nations in the region are not at their height. The same goes for East African migrants who still haven't established a significant political force within Western nations.
Also I find that protest ironic. Most African-Americans aren't even that dark. I mean, most that I've seen in Buffalo, Chicago, Detroit, LA, NYC and what not. I know some living in the South as well, and we're talking about a complexion and most are outside the Sadat range. Nothing scientific, but I don't remembering being told that they're Mulattoes.
Saying that, the "Sammy Sosa" skin tone and black/blue skin tone are probably most commonly found in Chad, Egypt, and Sudan. I've seen probably the blackest people from those regions, with Australian Aborigines and some South Asians following up. I mean, how many here are darker than her?
Adnanite or Rashaida woman with child
Note: I acknowledge that there are plenty of studies suggesting a complexion-hierarchy in Western society. However sports with low start up costs, such as basketball, seem to quite the reverse. Blacks who'd be the lowest within their own social group (i.e. darkest) may probably be the most competitive. The more marginalized, the more aggressive.
Posts: 1080 | Registered: Aug 2008
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posted
The gist of my opening statement, but only implied is that we should stop parroting this pseudo-scientific nonsense! One shouldn't suffer the delusion that using these terms demonstrates ones 'learnedness' of the subject, rather it demonstrates a naivety...
In applied sciences this seldom is the case:
ie, Electronics
Knowing that the farad is a unit of capacitance...and named after this English physicist guy Michael Faraday...picoFarad, microFarad...
or that the collector, base, and emitter are the names for the terminals of a transistor...
or, in Computer(ese)
Knowing that a Terabyte = approximately one trillion bytes...
demonstrates a familiarity with the subject.
-- this does not work so easily in the ideological minefields of social science. Thus to parrot the expression "Afro-Asiatic" or any of its variances is the equivalent of wearing the Dunce cap!Posts: 3344 | From: Berkeley | Registered: Oct 2003
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Obenga made it clear that AfroAsiatic does not exist and you can not reconstruct the Proto-language.
This is true. Ehret (1995) and Orel/Stolbova (1995) were attempts at comparing Proto-AfroAsiatic. The most interesting fact about these works is that they produced different results. If AfroAsiatic existed they should have arrived at similar results. The major failur of these works is that there is too much synononymy. For example, the Proto-AfroAsiatic synonym for bird has 52 synonyms this is far too many for a single term and illustrates how the researchers just correlated a number of languages to produce a proto-form.
Radcliffe commenting on these text observed:
quote: Both sources reconstruct lexical relationships in the attested languages as going back to derivational relationships in the proto-language. (In at least one case OS also reconstruct a derivational relationship-- an Arabic singular-plural pair qarya(tun), qura(n)-- as going back to lexical ones in Proto-Afroasiatic, reconstructions 1568, 1589.) E does this in a thorough-going way and the result is proto-language in which the basic vocabulary consists of a set of polysemous verbal roots with abstract and general meanings, while verbs with more specific meanings, and almost all nouns are derived by suffixation. Further all consonants in this language can serve as suffixes. I would argue that both points are violations of the uniformitarian principle. In general the underived, basic vocabulary of a language and specific and concrete, while abstract words are formed by derivation. Further it is rare for the full consonant inventory of a language to be used in its productive derivational morphology. Finally, given the well-known homorganic cooccurence restrictions on Afroasiatic roots (Greenberg 1950, Bender 1974), each suffix would have to have at least one allomorph at a different point of articulation and a hideously complex system of dissimilation rules would be needed to account for their distribution. E’s justification for this is revealing “With respect to triconsonantal roots in Semitic, a[n] ... explanation of the third consonant as lexicalized pre-proto-Semitic suffixal morphemes has now been put forward (Ehret 1989).... It has been applied here without apology because, quite simply it works.” This is the worst possible argument in favor of the hypothesis. As the above calculations have shown, such a procedure should indeed work quite well as a way of generating random noise.
posted
There is no such thing as Afroasiatic languages. The language is either African in origin or Asian in origin.
Posts: 2088 | Registered: Feb 2007
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posted
Blacks who'd be the lowest within their own social group (i.e. darkest) may probably be the most competitive. The more marginalized, the more aggressive.
^^Actually Jackie Robinson had quite a dark complexion and was certainly not the "lowest" in his group.
ANd the very dark Michael Jordan was anything but "marginalized."
He had several years of college in the 1940s, much more than most black or even white Americans, and was a member of the famous 761st Tank formation though never deployed as he was fighting trumped up charges brought by whites when he refused to toe the line on segregation. In short RObinson
-------------------- Note: I am not an "Egyptologist" as claimed by some still bitter, defeated, trolls creating fake profiles and posts elsewhere. Hapless losers, you still fail. My output of hard data debunking racist nonsense has actually INCREASED since you began.. Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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