The Berber, or Amazigh, people live in Northern Africa throughout the Mediterranean coast, the Sahara desert and Sahel which used to be a Berber world before the arrival of Arabs. Today, there are large groups of Berber people in Morocco and Algeria, important communitites in Mali, Niger and Libya, and smaller groups in Tunis, Mauritania, Burkina-Faso and Egypt. The Tuareg of the desert also belong to the Berber group. The Berber people speak 26 closely related languages.
Consonants
Berber consonants include:
glottalized consonants, so called because the space between the vocal cords (glottis) is constricted during their pronunciation; implosive consonants produced with the air sucked inward; ejective consonants produced with the air "ejected" or forced out; geminate (doubled) consonants produced by holding them in position longer than for their single counterparts. Click here to listen to a Berber song recorded in Morocco.
Grammar
Noun phrase
Berber nouns have two cases. One case is used for the subject of intransitive verbs, while the other is used for the subject of transitive verbs and objects of prepositions. There are two genders: masculine and feminine. The plural of nouns has a masculine and a feminine form.
Verb phrase
Verbs are marked for tense and aspect. The perfective of the verb is formed by reduplication of the second consonant of the root, or by the prefix -tt-.
Vocabulary
Most of the vocabulary is Berber in origin with borrowings from Latin, Arabic, French, Spanish, and other sub-Saharan languages. There is generally little or no intelligibility between the dialects.
The Berber languages as pointed out by numerous authors is full of vocabulary from other languages. Many Berbers may be descendants of the Vandels (Germanic) speaking people who ruled North Africa and Spain for 400 years. Commenting on this reality Diop in The African Origin of Civilization noted that: “Careful search reveals that German feminine nouns end in t and st. Should we consider that Berbers were influenced by Germans or the referse? This hypothesis could not be rejected a priori, for German tribes in the fifth century overran North Africa vi Spain, and established an empire that they ruled for 400 years….Furthermore, the plural of 50 percent of Berber nouns is formed by adding en, as is the case with feminine nouns in German, while 40 percent form their plural in a, like neuter nouns in Latin.
Since we know the Vandals conquered the country from the Romans, why should we not be more inclined to seek explanations for the Berbers in the direction, both linguistically and in physical appearance: blond hair, blue eyes, etc? But no! Disregarding all these facts, historians decree that there was no Vandal influence and that it would be impossible to attribute anything in Barbary to their occupation” (p.69).
The influence of European languages on the Berber languages and the grammar of the Berber languages indicate that the Berbers are probably of European, especially Vandal origin.
posted
This is garbage the Berbers are Africans, their is no berbers in europe or the middle east. Berber language is African, it is an east African language. Berbers are a ethnically diverse people. You have "Black" Berbers and you have "White" berbers. Hear read this http://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/islam/caliphate/berbers.html
The Berber language originates in east Africa
How do you explain these Berbers
Anyways Berbers are E3b2 Africans they are connected to the rest of Africa via the Pn2 clade all berbers are African Clyde Berbers are Africans
Peace
Posts: 9651 | From: Reace and Love City. | Registered: Oct 2005
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quote: This is garbage the Berbers are Africans, their is no berbers in europe or the middle east. Berber language is African, it is an east African language. Berbers are a ethnically diverse people. You have "Black" Berbers and you have "White" berbers. Hear read this http://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/islam/caliphate/berbers.html
The Berber language originates in east Africa
You are right about one thing there are no Berbers in Europe. But we do find that the Berber language is related to Germanic languages. And the Germanic languages are native to Germany.
This fact, given the Vandal rule of North Africa, explains the Germanic substratum influence in Berber as a result of the German rule in North Africa for 400 years. Vandal rule in North Africa explains the origin of the white speakers of this "language" family.
The experts say that the Berber languages (I am not including Taureg) has elements from numerous European languages I have never seen any discussion of Berber relations to East African languages, Berber languages are related to the Semitic group due to the Arabic speakers that surround them.
I have presented evidence from Diop and others showing a Germanic influence on the Berber languages. Please present the linguistic evidence that proves the Berber languages are related to East African languages as you claim. Your statement affirming this alleged situation will not suffice.
quote: Berber languages as pointed out by numerous authors is full of vocabulary from other languages. Many Berbers may be descendants of the Vandels (Germanic) speaking people who ruled North Africa and Spain for 400 years.
Actually, the light skinned Berber of the Maghreb combine African male ancestry E3b2 with recent Eurasian female ancestry haplotype H.
They are not descendant of the Vandals, although they do have general European plus African ancestry, just like many other people in North Africa, Southern Europe and SouthWest Asia.
Berber langauges exist only in Africa and are Native to Africa -hence are not classified as Indo European by *any linguists.*
It's certainly likely that Berber and European languages have influenced each other - much like the Kemetic influence on Greek language, and the subsequent Greek influence on Coptic Egyptian.
:anguage is culture and cultural exchange between NorthWest AFrica and Southern Europe is quite old - but that doesn't prove that Berber languages originated in Europe.
Linguist Christopher Ehret roots the Berber language in East Africa south of Nubia.
Geneticist Spencer Wells says that prior to the Phoenicians and Arabs the male Berber population was of the same stock as the rest of Africa - what has varied enormously in North Africa, are the female lineages.
That's why Berber don't all look alike..... Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004
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[l]anguage is culture and cultural exchange between NorthWest AFrica and Southern Europe is quite old - but that doesn't prove that Berber languages originated in Europe.
Good point. But the Germanic languages are not spoken in Southern Europe. Germanic languages are spoken in Northern Europe. The only people who could have influenced the grammar and vocabulary of the Berbers were the Germanic speaking Vandals.
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-------------------- C. A. Winters Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote: And there are no Dravidian languages in Africa - for the same reason.
Because Dravidian does not originate in Africa.
And, Berber does not originate in Europe.
And - you know this.
The Dravidian Languages Did Originate in Africa
I am not the first to claim links between Africans and Indians, the evidence for this relationship was first gathered and discussed by Indians themselves.
Below is the work of Dravidian speaking East Indians and other scholars that link Dravidian speaking people to Africa and Africans. Why do you think they claim ties to Africa? Are you saying that these Indians are lying about their history?
The ancient inhabitants of the Indus Valley were the Dravidian speakers. Today Brahui, Malto and Kurukh are Dravidian languages spoken in the Indus area.
B.B. Lal (1963) and Indian Egyptologist has shown conclusively that the Dravidians originated in the Saharan area 5000 years ago. He claims they came from Kush, in the Fertile African Crescent and were related to the C-Group people who founded the Kerma dynasty in the 3rd millennium B.C. (Lal 1963) The Dravidians used a common black-and-red pottery, which spread from Nubia, through modern Ethiopia, Arabia, Iran into India as a result of the Proto-Saharan dispersal.
The Nubian Dravidians were one of the cattle herding groups that made up the C-Group culture of Nubia Kush. Thundy has observed that: "If Kashi the holy place (alias Varanasi) is a Dravidian word, the name was bestowed on the place by the Dravidians after their homeland of Nubia, Upper Egypt, which is called Kush and Kashi in the Semitic languages".
He added that: "...I view the common myth[of Isis and Osiris in Egypt and Kannaki and Kovalan in India] only as supporting the widely held theory that the Dravidians of India came from the Mediterranean region, particularly from Nubia, for ethnically and linguistically, the peoples of the two regions are strikingly similar".
The ancient Indo-Aryan writings make it clear that the Indians were dark-skinned (varna) and had flat noses. (Durant 1935, p.396) This fact is supported by the Ali Tiraavitar (Old Dravidians) who are black as their African brothers with a difference in hair texture. In ancient Tamil poems they are described as mamai (black). In addition, the ancient Dravidians practiced a matriarchal system in Kerala and South Kanara.
Aravaanan (1980) has written extensively on the African and Dravidian relations. He has illustrated that the Africans and Dravidian share many physical similarities including the dolichocephalic indexes (Aravaanan 1980,pp.62-263), platyrrhine nasal index (Aravaanan 1980,pp.25-27), stature (31-32) and blood type (Aravaanan 1980,34-35). Aravaanan (1980,p.40) also presented much evidence for analogous African and Dravidian cultural features including the chipping of incisor teeth and the use of the lost wax process to make bronze works of arts (Aravaanan 1980,p.41).
The Dravidians have maintained their ancient African Heritage. There are numerous affinities between Dravidian and Black African culture and languages.
As in Africa the Dravidians built their both small and large vessels from a single log or planks tied together. This method of boat construction has been common in Africa since the rise of ancient Egypt, and continues today in East Africa, Chad and along the Niger river.
In both Africa and Dravidic India the people were organized into various "caste" or corporations. Many of the corporations such as that of the blacksmiths in Africa and India have corresponding names e.g., Wolof Kamara and Telugu Kamara.
The are similarities in agricultural technic in Africa and India. For example both groups used the hoe for tilling the ground, manuring the ground to fertilize crops, terracing irrigation and canal building. There are also affinities in animal husbandry, and even the names of animals. For example, sheep: Wolof xar, Brahui (Dravidian) xar 'ram'; and cow: Wolof nag , Serere nak, Tamil naku 'a female buffalo' and Tulu naku 'heifer'.
There are also similarities between the Dravidian and African religions. For example, both groups held a common interest in the cult of the Serpent and believed in a Supreme God, who lived in a place of peace and tranquility . There are also affinities between the names of many gods including Amun/Amma and Murugan . Murugan the Dravidian god of the mountains parallels a common god in East Africa worshipped by 25 ethnic groups called Murungu, the god who resides in the mountains .
In addition among the ali tiravitar, the system of inheritance passes from the uncle to his nephews, instead of to his sons (maru makkal Tayam) as in Africa. And in both South India and the Western Sudan of Africa, the dead were buried in terra cotta jars.
Dravidian languages are predominately spoken southern India and Sri Lanka. These languages are genetically related to African languages.
There are around 125 million Dravidian speakers. The Dravidians are remnants of the ancient Black population who occupied most of ancient Asia and Europe.
Many scholars have recognized the linguistic unity of Black African (BA) and Dravidian (Dr.) languages. These affinities are found not only in the modern African languages but also that of ancient Egypt. These scholars have made it clear that lexical, morphological and phonetic unity exist between African languages in West and North Africa as well as the Bantu group.
K.P. Arvaanan (1976) has noted that there are ten common elements shared by BA languages and the Dr. group. They are (1) simple set of five basic vowels with short-long consonants;(2) vowel harmony; (3) absence of initial clusters of consonants; (4) abundance of geminated consonants; (5) distinction of inclusive and exclusive pronouns in first person plural; (6) absence of degrees of comparison for adjectives and adverbs as distinct morphological categories; (7) consonant alternation on nominal increments noticed by different classes; (8)distinction of completed action among verbal paradigms as against specific tense distinction;(9) two separate sets of paradigms for declarative and negative forms of verbs; and (l0) use of reduplication for emphasis.
There has been a long development in the recognition of the linguistic unity of African and Dravidian languages. The first scholar to document this fact was the French linguist L. Homburger (1950,1951,1957,1964). Prof. Homburger who is best known for her research into African languages was convinced that the Dravidian languages explained the morphology of the Senegalese group particularly the Serere, Fulani group. She was also convinced that the kinship existed between Kannanda and the Bantu languages, and Telugu and the Mande group. Dr. L.Homburger is credited with the discovery for the first time of phonetic , morphological and lexical parallels between Bantu and Dravidians.
One of the most interesting studies done to date on the links between African and Dravidian languages was the work of N. Lahovary (1963). Professor Lahovary in his review of the possible link between the languages spoken by the founders of the major ancient civilizations, gives a stimulating discussion of cognates among various African languages and Dravidian (Dr.). He gives numerous lexical examples for the ancient kinship of the Dravidian group and BA languages, including ancient Egyptian, Hausa, Bantu ,Nubian and Somali, to name a few.
By the 1970's numerous scholars had moved their investigation into links between Dr. and BA languages on into the Senegambia region. Such scholars as Cheikh T. N'Diaye (1972) a Senegalese linguist, and U.P. Upadhyaya (1973) of India , have proved conclusively Dr. Homburger's theory of unity between the Dravidian and the Senegalese languages.
C.T. N'Diaye, who studied Tamil in India, has identified nearly 500 cognates of Dravidian and the Senegalese languages. Upadhyaya (1973) after field work in Senegal discovered around 509 Dravidian and Senegambian words that show full or slight correspondence.
Dravidian and Senegalese. Cheikh T. N'Diaye (1972) and U.P. Upadhyaya (1976) have firmly established the linguistic unity of the Dravidian and Senegalese languages. They present grammatical, morphological, phonetic and lexical parallels to prove their point.As a result of the linguistic evidence the Congolese linguist Th. Obenga suggested that there was an Indo-African group of related languages.
Dravidians and Africans-4
The Dravidian and SudanoSahelian Civilisations
CHEIKH TIDIANE N DIAVE
In the year 1933, Et Tuttle published in the “Journal of the American Oriental Society” an artical entitled “Dravidian and Nubin”.1 This Article, is a brief census of facts rather than a detailed study. Nevertheless, it is worthy of mention, because it is really the first attempt to connect Dravidian with an African language. Since 1945, L. Homburger recognised a number of morphemes which are to be met within Several African (Saharan) idioms. Since then, the idea of kinship between the Dravidian Languages and certain Negro - African languages had become dear to her heart. That is why she began to study in succession the Senegalese-Guinean (or Sudano..Sahelian) languages, Mande (another Sudano - Sahelian family of languages), Bantu (an East African family of languages) comparing them with the Dravidian languages. This is what led her to publish, in 1950, and 1951, in the “Journal de la societe des Africanistes”, Paris, the following two articles in turn: “Dravidian elements in Peul” and “Telegu and the Mande dialects”. The point worth noting is that Miss L. Homburger was sure that “the Dravidian languages make it possible to explain the morphology of the Senegalese group-particularly Serer and Peul” (two Sudano ‘Sahelian languages) had aire. ady tried to show relationships between Dravidian and some African languages two great German ethnologists, H. Baumann and
D. Westermann, pointedout “ethnological” relations between South India (the country of most of the Dravidian people) and Black Africa. Therefore, the comparison between the Dravidian and SudanoSahelian civilisations is not arbitray. Better still, the application of the
(1.Nubion is an East African Language. Most of the people who speak it are very similar to the Dravidian type.)
general principles of the comparative method in historical linguistics and ethnology proves that Dravidians and some Sudano-Sahalian ethnic groups speak languages which are genetically related and belong to the same “Knlturkreis” or” “culture circle”.
The lexical resemblance, between Dravidian languages and Wolof is not at all a matter of chance, because of three fundamental arguments which are the following
1. Firstly, it is unlikely that chance is the explanation for these remarkable phonemic semantic resemblances concerning the various and basic lexical categories such as kinship terms, the vocabulary concerning the civil status, the personal pronouns, parts of the body, the biologioal needs, dressing and’habitation, vocabulary denoting rest, names of instruments(for household, agriculture-fishing, hunting and music), the vocabulary concerning alimentation, the kitchen and the commercial exchanges, the vocabulary concerning the activities of the hands, the legs, the head, the nose, the mouth, the sexual organs and the whole body, the vocabulary concerning the moral, politico-social and intellectual activities, the vocabulary denoting states of beings and things, the mythico-magic vocabulary, the vocabulary denoting time, the vocabulary concerning animals, (domesticated and undomesticated) sounds and noises colours, metals, liquid, the earth, the sky and death.
2. Secondly, from the “two principles of the arbitrariness of the sound-meaning cOnnection and the independence of meaningful forms” (of J. H. Grrenberg, “Essays in Linguistcs”), it follows that chance can not explain, for example, ~The fact thati three lexemes for ‘male organ’ and two lexemes for ‘belly’ in Dravidjan are almost the same as their correspondents in Wolof.
3. Thirdly, there are regular rules of’ correspondence between Dravidian and Wolof phonemes which clearly prove that the resemblance between Dravidian and Wolof lexemes is not accidental.
The grammatical resemblance between Drayidjan and Wolof cannot be accidental and is the least subject to borrowing. The reaSons can be summarised as follows:
1. Concerning nominals, Dravidians and Wolof have six same suffixes denoting names of states or qualities, actions and instruments, two similar suffixes for the expression of plurality and the collective motion, two same personal pronouns referring to the first persons singular and plural, two similar personal pronouns referring to the second persons singular and plural, four similar numerals denoting the numbers ‘one’, ‘two’, ‘four’ and ‘ten~, two same locative clitics, four same ‘epideictic’ or demonstrative vowels denoting proximity. remoteness and the intermediate position.
2. As regards verbals, they have the same morphemes denoting the three main moods, i,e. the infinitive, the imperative and the subjuntive-conditional, almost the same morphemes denoting the three main tenses, ie. the past, the present and the future, almost the same morphemes denoting the negative (verbal and adjectival), the ‘expectative’ and the potential modalities.
For ethnology, H. Baumann and Westermann said that ‘the NeoSudaneseculture circle spreads from Senegal to Abissinia(or Ethiopia) over the paleonigritic culture circle. The people who belong to it are the Wolof, the northern Mandeng, the Mossi, the Haussa, the preislamic Bagirmi, the Ashanti, the Yoruba and the Peul. The main cultural elements would be: the working of gold mines, the metalurgy of brass and bronze—, the making of glass, the cotton weaving---, long dresses, the organisation of the state having officers, the deification of the supreme ruler, etc. The origins of this culture circle are part ticularly complex. The prominent feature is its links with the great states which are found on the same latitude throughout Sudan; beside that, there are visible relationships between this group of elements and the ancient eastern civilisations of Arabia, Syria, Mesopotamia and mainly Inda (of ~les Peuples et las Civilisatjons de I’ Afrique’, Paris, 1948).
In conclusion, as J. H. Greenburg says, ‘the presence of fundamental vocabulary resemblances and resemblances in items with grammatical function, particularly if recurrent through a number of languages, is a sure indication of genetic relationship.’ In addition to that, if the speakers of genetically related languages belong to the same culture circle, we have a good example where ethnology comes in support to historical linguistics. There are the facts that lead us to say that Dravidians and some Sudano-Sahelian peeple were originally related. To explain this relationship, three hypotheses can be given:
1. Firstly:
Proto-Indo-African (?spoken inEast Africa or
Proto Dravidian South Africa)
I I I I I
NDr CDr SDr some Sudana Sahelian
languages
(North (Central (South Wolóf, Pular, Serer, etc.,
Dravidian) Dravidian) Dravidian)
2. Secondly:
Proto-Libyan (spoken in West Africa)
or Proto-Saherian
Proto Tekrurian Proto Dravidian
I I I
Senegalese languages NDr CDr SDr
(Wolof, Pular. Serer, etc.,)
3. Thirdly:
Proto-Dravidian (spoken in India)
NDr CDr SDr
Sudano-Sahelian Sudano-Sahelian Sudano-Sahelian
I I I
x y z
(Pre-Serer-Pular) (Pre — Wolof) A
II At~ A
I I I
For the first hypothesis, there is neither linguistic nor historical evidences in support to it.
Regarding the second hypothesis, one may also be tempted to hold it because. J,T. Cornelius published, in 1955, an article entitled ‘Linguistic evidence for the Lybian origin of the Dravidians’ (Cf,Proceedings and Transactions of the All India Oriental Conference, XVIII Session, Annamalainagar). This article, inspite of its title, does not give any linguistic evidence.
The archaeological evidence and some linguistic arguments show that the third hypothesis is the best, that is to say, SudanoSahelian languages such as Wolof, Pular, Serer, etc., are brought in West Africa by black people and brownish people like the two Dravidian types. In other words, Wolof, Pular, Serer etc., should be classified as ‘Dravidoid’ languages, that is to say ‘languages derived from dravidian’ just like the Romance languages are derived from Latin. Their differences with Dravidian can be explained by the influence of some African languages with which they have been in contact from East to West. There is a historical evidence that the inhabitants of Maurilania in the first Century B.C. came from India (Of. Strabo, L. XVII). There are also some traditions, among Wolof people, which consider Mauritania as one of the ancient homes of the ancestors. Better still, the last Thierno Amath Mbengue, said that the Lebu family Mbengue (/mbeng/) came from Bengal (North East of India) and that their name is derived from this word.
Dravidians and Africans-5 The Languages of Africans and Dravidians
A BIRD’S EYE VIEW*
S. R SANTHARAM,
A language can adopt and create as many words as it pleases without changing its character, but it cannot alter its grammar, its syntax, without becoming another, for grammar represents the innate made of thought over which the Individual person or nation has no real control By Gustove Appert.
- This assumption applies to each and every language in the world. No doubt, the African and Dravidian languages are also governed by this assumption. Before going to know about these languages, we must have some ideas about Africans and Dravidians.
Who are the Dravidians? Who are the Africans? Whether they belong to the same family? or they are closely related to each other ? etc. Solutions are yet to be found out.
Who are the Dravidians? Even today research Works are going on to get the solution for this problem. Till we get the correct Solution, we may probably define, that the Dravidians are those who speak Dravidian languages. [Notes: I am indebted to 1Dr. S. Agasthiyalizngom based on whose Writing this article has been produced.]
Dravidian languages: A family of languages spoken by more than 1,10,000,000 people, primarily in Southern India. There are seven major Dravidian languages spoken in India: Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Gondi, Kurukh, and Tulu; minor Dravidian languages are Kota, Toda, Budaga, Irula, Kolamj, Naiki, Puriji, Konda, Gadho, Pemzo, Manda, Kui, Kuvi, Matta and Kodaga, all spoken in India.
Among these languages Tamil is the oldest of the Dravidjan language. Basham states-Tamil has undergone change as follows. Tamil
l Dramizha
l Damila
l Dramila
l Dravida
Africans:
African peoples vary in racial origin and stand at many different cultural levels. From the ethnic point of view there is both a white and a black Africa, but the first important human occupation appears to have been by Negroes or Negroid people, several types of whom, probably entered the Continent from Arabia and spread over the land south of the Sahara Desert. They probably inhabited the Sahara also, for in the glacial period it was well watered and fertile. Northern Africa, however was penetrated by the invasion from Europe or Western Asia of Caucasian (white) people at a later date. These Caucasian peoples are broadly classed as Bamitic and include an important type referred to as Berber, as well as the Tuareg. Semitic people at a later date penetrated Africa. They are the Arabs, who established themselves in Northern and East Africa. The Phoenicians who founded Carthage were Semites. Madagascar shows a remarkable intrusion of Malayo Polynesian people, Who crossed the Indian Ocean, perhaps by way of island stepping-stones; probably more than two thousand years ago and settled on the island, which may or may not have had an earlier Negro population. It may be noted that neither Greek nor Roman left any permanent ethnic mark upon Africa.
The modern period has seen the settlement of large numbers of Europeans.
African Languages:
Languages indigenous to the African continent that belong to the Hamito-Semitic, Niger-Congo, (or Niger-Kordopfanian) Chari-nil (or Nilo-Saharan) and Khoisan language families. The number of African languages has been estimated at between 800 and 1000. In Northern Africa, languages of the Hamitic Semitic family are spoken. Arabic is most widespread of these. Important sub-Saharan languages included are Swahili, Fulani, Yoruba and Zulu of the Niger-Congo group. Nulian of the Chari-Nile group, and Bushman and Hottentot of the Khoisan family.
Similarities:
Besides language similarities, physical and cultural similarities appear between these two continents. Frobenjusa German ethnologist identified some cultural similarities between Africa and Ancient India. Baumann, Westermaun and CheikAnta Diop have also stated the same opinion.
Physical Similarities:
In Tamilnadu, the suppressed people are called “aati Draavidaa” (Old Dravidians). The size of head, forehead, nose, ear and the colour of body, hair and eyes are common between these “aati-Dravidida~i” and African. The main two differences are Africans have curling black hair and slightly thick lips, but “aati-Dravidaas” do not have them.
Cultural Similarities:
Cultural similarities appear between these countries. The legend of Lord Kannan, killing Kamsaa is reflected in African legend. “Soni Ali Ber”. in which “Burgo” appears as the hero in the place of Krishnaa. [. Dr K P. A. clearly compares these legends in his book~ Senthamtil, Sene~al, Senghor P. 18.]We can expand the above similarities and other similarities further more. But confining to our topic on languages, we can deal with particular reference to languages.
Niger Congo Languages:
Niger-Congo group is the largest among the African language families. “Bantu” which were once treated as a separate group are also now included in this group. Though there ate about thirty divisions Geenberg classifies them nto 6 major divisions. They are as follows :
I. Western Atlantic languages, 2. Mamde languages. 3. Gur languages. 4. Kwa languages. 5. Adamawa-Eastern languages. 6. Benue-Congo-languages.
West Atlantic Languages:
These are classified as Northern and Southern languages. The most important among these is ~Fulani, Wolof and Temme come next to it. More than,56,00000 people speak Fulani. In Fulani there is no distinction of gender in nouns. To indicate sex the suffix male or female is added to the nouns. For example in Tamil the sex of a horse is indicated by suffixing male or female before the nouns.
aaN Kulirai PeN Kutirai
In Fulani the sex of human beings are indicated as follows.
biddo debbo (girl) biddo gorko (boy)
In Tamil the verb endings do not recognise gender of the non-human category. To denote the female or male horse the pronoun “That” is used. But the classification human and neuter category is also found in Fulani. The changes which a noun may undergo to show the plural primarily depend on to which of the two comprehensive classes the noun belongs, to the personal, or human class, or to the non-personal, or non-human and thing, class. This division is extremely important for it is the fundamental principle at the genious of the language. Neuter gender has got three different persons. They occur only in plural form. In Tamil Tholkappiar has also included first person within the scope of human category. Indicative pronouns that indicate human category and neuter gender are always of different kinds. In this language by suffixing endings to a verb we can obtain so many verbs
In this language by suffixing endings to a verb we can obtain so many verbs
For Example:
o Janaki - he read 0 Janahithi - be read very well
o fiyi - he beat 0 fifini - he beat badly.
This characteristic phenomena, seen in Tamil language is also found in the “Bantu” languages. As in Tarnil, active voice becomes passive voice, by the mere modification of the verb. Wolof: Wolof language is notable language, among the languages that are existing in Senagal Democratic Nation. Just like in Tamil we can see the doubling of the consonants.
Example:
i, ii; k, kk; m, mm; n, nn; Since there are no verbs to indicate gender in this language, a separate word is used to indicate gender. As far as the numerals are concerned, there are only two i.e. singular and plural. The units that indicate the numbers also occur by the side articles and indicate numerals.
Example: fas w-i - the horse fas y-i - the horses a-w fas - a horse a-y fas - some horse
In interrogative forms too we can find the difference between singular and plural.
w-an fas which horse.
y-an fas which horses.
In several aspects this language resembles Tamil language. It also has its own specialities. The articles which are not seen in Tamil are found in this language. This is a major difference between these languages. Ki, Ka, Gi, Ga - are the units that stand for the artic1e~ In the same way as, ag, a, aw, ab and so on serve as Common indications.
Mande Languages: These languages are spoken by more than 70 lakhs of people. This group is often called “Mali” or “Mantonga” group. Though in these groups there are about 22 languages, Malinda-Bambara, Soninde, Mande, Susu-Dyal onke, Vai, Loma, Kpela are considered as important.
North West - Languages: Mande: In this language there is no discrimination of genders. But a difference is seen between human category nouns and neuter gender nouns.
Nouns of Mande have got the two numerals both singular and plural. Common nouns by addition of suffix “nga” and proper nouns by the addition of suffix “sia” indicate plural numerals. Apart from this there is third numeral. This plural form is made up of the indefinite plural + i + - - + - - Sia. This form is much rarer than the other two and is normally found only with a few words referring to human beings and domestic animals.
Just like in Tamil, in Mande language there are indications to point out nearer and farther. But it does not have separate words for adjectives.
The verbs of Mande languages, show tense, negative and so on. Past tense, present tense, future tenses are shown by the verbs. When tenses change the noun also undergoes a change. (When it occurs in three persons.) Interrogative verbs occur in second person both in plural and in singular which is similar to Tamil In Tamil we can say to a person or to many persons “Let us go”. But in this language we cannot say like this. If we address one person means, we have to say “Muli”, if many persons means we have to say “amuli”. (Let us go) Kwa Languages :- Yoruba: This language is familiar in Nigeria. The nouns of this languages have got two genders and two numerals. Separate words show separate genders as in
laba father
cya - mother Sometimes by the addition of suffixes they show different gender.
aburo - ikonrin brother aburo - ilnrin sister Nouns have no cases in Yoruba. The cases are supplied by the use of prepositions. This is the main difference between this language and Tamil language.
III case si, ba (Preposition)
IV case : - si, fun Example : Si odo to river fun mi to me
V case :- (ti)
ti ile from the house
VII case :- (ni)
ni ile in the house
Bantu Languages :- This group contains more than five hundred languages. These languages have simple voice system. A, E, U, these three vowels are the basic. Though there are plenty of prefixes and suffixes no prepositions are to be seen. The cases as found in Tamil are not found in these languages. There is no distinction of masculine and feminine, it is not merely that nouns have no femine terminations, but there are not even separate pronouns corresponding to ‘be’ and ‘she’. There is however a set of distinctions quite strange to us, nouns being devided into a number of classes. (Usually eight or nine) distinguished by their prefixes.
A unique concord is seen, which is not to be found in any other language. All the words in a sentence are affixed with the noun having the function of subject which replaces the prefix. This reappearance of the prefix before every word in agreement with the noun is called the Alliterative concord, which is not found in Tamil.
a-na, a~nga, a-ngona, a-ia, a-tayika.
Those, my little children were missing
This “Nyanja” sentence shows this Alliterative concord,
The repetitive morpheme (irattaikilavikal) which are less frequent in Tamil are found in Bantu in abundance,
A lot of verbal variations are found in Bantu. The ideas expressed by Tamil in many words are brought out by less number of suffixes.
Example :- Bantu Tamil English
Mona Kalaku Shake
Monesa Palamaaka Kalaku Shake violently
Luganda or Ganda :- The main difference between Tamil and Luganda is the absence of differentiation of gender in the latter.
Comparatively simpler verbs show the past, future and present tenses. Within the past tense there are three divisions viz., without any time limit and just within last 12 hours and past continuous. Example :-
nn - a - lake - saw
nn - a - labye - saw (just within 12 hours) n - o - dabye - had seen
In future tense there are separate words for denoting happenings, which are to happen within 24 hours and after 24 hours, which are novel to Tamil.
Example :-
nnaa - laba - will see (within 24 hours) n-di-raba - will see
In imperative verbs take three forms.
I. To be done at once, 2. To be done continuously 3. To be done in the prescribed hour. Example:-
Soma - Read at once
o soma - Read quickly
Somanga - Read continuously
Muba musoma - Read in the evenings
These are not found in Tamil
Swahili :- It is an important language in North-Eastern region. In Tamil diminutives are denoted by small adjectives. The same pattern is well followed in Swahili. In this language the nouns that occur in all the three persons as they occur in Tamil. Third person singular and plural show neither category nor gender. This also happens in Malayaalam Example
mimi I we we you ye ye He/She/it si si We ninyi You (Plural) Wao They
Adjectives come after the nouns, as in other ‘Bantu’ languages. There is a concord between adjectives and noun -the prefixes of the adjectives undergo change, with reference to the prefixes to the nouns.
There are articles to point out nearness and distance. The root -‘le’ points out nearness. But with reference to the noun that occurs, this root takes various prefixes and becomes an indicative:
adjective. - ki - suki - le sword (near by) wa - tura - le Those people vy - amba - vile Those trees.
In second person interrogative verbs indicate singular, plural -and negative, which is also the case with Tamil.
Example :- -~ big-a beat (Singular) big-eni beat (Plural)
Nyanja :- As in ancient Tamil, in Nyanja there are three classes or demonstratives which point out different degrees of distance or reference like adjectives. Similar to Tamil the nouns of all the three persons will occur. In first person plural, there is no inclusive numbers. In the third person singular, there are not divisionsuch feminine gender, masculine gender; human category, non human category and so on.
Example :-
ine - I iwe - You lye - He/She/It ife - We ma - You (PluraJ) iwo - They/those
In the commanding verbs of Tamil, they do not point out whether the command should be obeyed immediately or to be done later. But the commanding verbs in the language point out urgency and so on,
Example :-
tatenga - take immediately
Zulu :- Gender is not a grammatical feature in Zulu. That is to say, the fact that any particular noun may indicate the masculine, feminine, common or neuter idea does not in any way influence a Zulu sentences grammatically, the form of the prefix of the noun ruling the concordial structure.
In Zulu there are three positional types of demonstrative pronoun. The first demonstrative signifies “this” “these” indicating proximity to the speaker. The second demonstrative signifies ‘that’ ‘those’ indicating relative distance from the speaker. The third demonstrative signifies ‘Yonder’, that ‘yonder’ indicating distance from the speaker and the one spoken to, but also indicating that the object is within sight and may be pointed to.
Apart from these features, there are some specialities too. The grammatical feature that are revealed, by the use of three or more words in English and in Tamil, is revealed by the use of verb in this language.
Doubling of the verb is commonly seen in Tamil, when a particular action is to be emphasised.
“ati ati yena atittaan” (beaten violently)
The intensive form in Zulu indicating intensity or quickness of action, is expressed by suffixing - isisa in the place of final vowel of the stem. The dimunitive form of the verb, formed by a reduplication of the stem, indicates a dimunition of the action to do a little.
The reciprocal form of the verb denotes that the action is reciprocated, and is similar to the form expressed in English adjectively by one another. In Zulu the derivative is formed by suffixing -ana in place of the final vowel of the verb form.
Khoisan Languages :- The word Khoisan can be written as Khoy-sa-n and its meaning is as follows.
Khoy People Sa in search of food is an affix to indicate plural.
Hence Khoisan means “food searching people”. Further the sound of “click” is often heard where these languages are used, people called these languages as “click languages”.
Though so many people have conducted researches, C.R. Lepsius, classified these languages in his “Standard Alphabet” as two main divisions. He not only classified these languages as
1. Hottentot
a. Nama b. Kora
2. Bushman
but also called them Hemittic languages.
Hottentot: The adjectives precede nouns, likewise in Tamil also it happens to. The adjectives do not undergo any change regarding the noun. But the possessive nouns differ from Tamil to certain extent. One speciality which is not to be seen in Tamil is the indicative of gender, both in the first person and second person. The possessive nouns that occur in all the three persons, they accept divisions of gender and numerals as in Tamil, Verbs are so simple. To indicate tense there are different prefixes. Unlike in English and in Tamil, the tense shown in this language are not limited to completed actions, continuing actions, alone, but even in completed actions, the exact time of the completion of the action is revealed by the use of various prefixes.
A structural feature of this (Korana) language is the use of double verb or a series of more than two verbs. The function of one of the verbs-the subsidiary one is to modify the action of the other verb-the principal one with reference to circumstances of time, place, manner, or any other circumstances which may effect the verbal action. In other words, the subsidiary verb is in an adverbial function of the principal verb, In Tamil also this type of feature can be seen.
Bushman Languages: These languages are classified into three groups. Called Northern, Central, and Southern languages, there are the divisions of singular and plural.
In certain languages plurality is revealed by the use of different verbs and in some languages, by the doubling of the singular verbs, which is in tune with Tamil.
mum - stone. mum-si - stones.
The possessive pronouns, occur, before nouns in northern and southern languages in accordance with Tamil, but in the central languages they occur after the noun. In certain languages separate syllables are used to indicate possessiveness. Example:
mha - my father mtail - my mother Certain languages know, no distinction of tense, mood or voice.
Saharan Languages - Kanuri: In many of the languages existing now, even though the nouns occur by the side of adjectives only nouns accept ‘case’ prepositions. In Tamil also this is the case. But in Kanuri language the nouns do not accept case prepositions but adjectives accept case prepositions.
In this language the commanding verbs, occur both in second person plural and singular which is in concordance with Tamil
But a speciality is that this language shows commanding nature even in first person plural.
Eastern Sudanic Languages: These languages are spoken by more than nine lakhs of people who live in the southern part of Sudan.
In alignment with Tamil, ‘Dinka’ also has the division of singular and plural. By the modification of the vowels, by the modification of ending and by the tuse of various words plural is shown,
Examples yic - ear yit ears moe man ror men
Lwo Languages: Shilluk: The distinction between singular and plural is noted like in Tamil. This distinction is produced by: affixes, and by the modification of verbs. There is no distinction of genders in this language. Adjective often follows nouns. Though most of adjectives show the distinction between singular and plural without undergoing any change some undergo change with reference to the noun which show the distinction of singular and plural.
Example: Won duong Big house Woti dono Big houses.
Verbs of Shilluk languages are so simple. They show tense and voice. As in Tamil, past tense, present tense and future tense are seen, though there are some minor differences.
Eastern Nilotic Languages: Masai: The nouns of all the three persons can be divided as a first person singular and plural, second person singular and plural and third person singular and plural, which is similar to Tamil. Among them, the third person nouns do not show any distinction between masculine gender and feminine gender.
Central Sudanic Languages Cendu :-~ The adjectives occur preceeding the noun and they are unaffected. We can see the same phenomena in Tarnil also. During formative years of Tamil language there are three demonstratives. These demonstratives do not serve as nouns, but they serve as adjectives. Verbs show subject and passive voice. Verbs of Sudanic language do not show tense as Tamil or English.
General
We met with various stages in African languages, viz- which possess singular, plural; singular, dual, plural; singular, plural and great quantity and singular, plural and small quantity. For Example:- Singular, plural and great quantity are denoted n the “Chwana” language or “Bantu” as follows
Cbwana Tamil English n kn aatu lamb
ii - nku aatukaL lambs
ma - nku pala aatukal many lamps
The classification of singular and plural are not to be seen in some of the African languages. But the material is considered as a compound entity and a single unit is deemed a constituent part of it. In certain language the suffixes indicating plurality have a meaning of their own. Example:
Ewe Tamil English
wo avarkaL They
ati maram Tree
ati wo marang~kaL Trees
Gender: In Hottentot languages besides the masculine and feminine genders common gender is also seen. Some of the languages indicate gender in plural condition also while others abandon it.
In some languages, the suffixes denoting the gender have the meaning of male, female, mother, father, men and women etc.
Kanda Tamil English
Se - gwanga ceval cock
na - gwanga petal hen
Verbs: In some languages verbs do not undergo any transformation, while others like Tamil, exhibit grammatical structureslike tense and numerals. Thematic variations effected by various words in Tamil are effected by a single suffix in Wolof.
Wolof Tamil Engilsh
Jeka un eat
lakati ciritu un eat a little
In Tamil there are words which have no meaning of their own which accentuate the characteristics of verbs. Similar phenomena are seen in African languages.
Example: Zo ka ka walk up right
Zo dze dze An assayed and energetic gait.
In Zande language such words are found. But in “Bongo” language a triplet occurs.
Example: Lan mokonya wakka wakka wakka. (The cloth is very black)
Conclusion: So far we have seen the similarities between the languages of the two groups of people. Further cultural, anthropological and linguistic studies will throw light on the affinities during the early times.
REFERENCE BOOKS:
1, Dr. Agasthiyalingam Aafrica Mozhikal (Tamil) Paari Nilayam, Madrasi. 1974.
2, Dr. Agasthiyalingam Dravida Mozhikal (Tamil) Paari Ni!ayam, Madras-i. 1976.
4.Rt. Robert Caidwell A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages. University of Madras, 1956.
5.Suggate L. S. Africa, George G. Harrap & Company Ltd., London-Bombay-Sydney. 1920. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Dravidian and Negro-African
(Ethnic and LinguisticAffinities)
By U.Pupadhyaya Susheela O.Uphadyaya
The language spoken in the Indian sub-continent are classified into four groups. Among these four families of languages, the Dravidian, spoken mainly in South India occupies the second place next to Indo-Aryan sub-branch of the Indo-European family according to the number of speakers it has, but it occupies an equal - if not more important - position because of the contribution made by it to the totality of the literary and cultural heritage of India. Though the native tradition considers all these languages as derived from Sanskrit, modern scholarship has proved a century ago the four literary languages of the South, together with at least a score in the North-West and Assam in the East belong to a distinct linguistic stock different from the other three linguistic families namely Indo-Aryan, Austro-Asiatic and Tibeto-Burman.
From he beginning of the 19th century, modern scholarship began to investigate the structure and parentage of the Dravidian family of languages. In the early decades of the century, William Carey, a missionary from Bengal noted that the languages of South India should be differentiated from the Aryan languages of the North. His opinion was further supported by the great linguists of those days Max Muller, Ellis and Stevenson. The epoch-making work of Bishop Robert Caldwell in 1856 named “ A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian languages” proved beyond doubt the existence of a separate language family and laid the foundation for a new era of linguistic scholarship in India. He not only proved that these languages belong to a distinct genetic group, but also showed the structure and characteristic features of this family of languages. In spite of the fact that the twentieth century scholarship has modified many of the conclusions arrived at by Caldwell, the monumental work produced by him proves to be an indispensable companion for a modern scholar because of the wealth of information contained in it.
Since then these languages have been considered to belong to a separate stock and the scholars have been interested in penetrating into the origin and antecedents of this linguistic and ethnic group. Were they really the autochthonos or the original inhabitants of India? If not, from where did they come to India? To which other ethnic stock of the world are they to be related? What were they like in their linguistic and cultural habits in the remote past? What is the nature of their contact or confrontation with other linguistic or ethnic groups within and outside India? What was their contribution to the evolution of pan-Indian civilization?
Of the four major ethnic groups of India, the Austrics are believed to be oldest inhabitants. This long-headed and medium sized race is considered to be one of the oldest offshoots of the so-called Mediterranean race, tough on their way from the Mediterranean to India they were much mixed with other peoples and acquired new characteristics. Before the Austrics there were certain Negrito people whose identity and origin is yet to be investigated. Dravidians and Sino-Tibetans came later, the former from the North-West and the latter from the east. Aryans, one of the sub-groups of the Indo-European stock, are the last to enter the sub-continent whose confrontation with the earlier inhabitants is now almost an accepted fact and also recorded in their literature. It is also believed that the composite culture of India is the creation of the incoming Aryans and the already established Dravidians.
The presence of Dravidian languages throughout the length and breath of the sub-continent, e.g. Brahui in Baluchistan and Afghanistan, Kudukh and Malto in the Eastern part of India and the numerous tribal languages spread throughout the hilly regions of Central India proves it beyond doubt that the Dravidians are not simply the inhabitants of South India, but have, at one time occupied the entire region of the sub-continent. The excavations of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro have also brought to light the fact that Dravidian Civilization reigned supreme in the North-Western part of the sub-continent in a period about three to four millennia before the Christian era : a period before what is termed the Aryan invasion of India. These factors have indicated the possibility of the Dravidians having come to India - if at all they came from outside - from the North -Western frontiers.
If this is to be taken for granted, which part of the North-Western region did they come from? Who are the kinsmen of these Dravidians who were left behind or who might have migrated to some other direction? Are they related to the ancient races like Aegean, Sumerian, Caucasion, Finnish, Elamite, Pelasgian, Basque etc? Or to the Proto-Hamitic-Semitic population whose descendents now occupy the North-West Africa and Arabia? Or to the Negro-Africans who are now completely extinct by the onslaughts of other races and hence whose descendents now survive only in India?
Caldwell, the pioneer of Dravidian linguistics is not unaware of the problem of the affiliation of these languages. He has discussed in some length the possible relationship of the Dravidian languages with what he termed Scythian tongues, the numerous languages once spoken in the Middle East region. The idea first expressed by a Danish scholar Rusk was elaborated by Caldwell in considerable detail. The translation of the inscriptions discovered at Behistun in Western Media in the language of the Scythians has thrown some light on the connection of the Dravidian languages with the Scythian group.
[ Note:The cover term Scythian of Caldwell includes the languages like the Finnish, the Turkish, the Mongolian, and the Tungusian families. But the later research has grouped the Finno-Ugric under a separate family and the Turkish, Mogolian, Tunguz and Korean are considered as belonging to the Altaic family.]
Caldwell cites instances like the presence of retroflexes, presence of stop consonants as voiceless in the initial position and as voiced in the medial position of a word, genitive forms ending in na and nina, dative suffixes ikki/ikka, accusative forms ending in un/in, use of relative participles etc. etc. which lead him to conclude: “ The Pre-Aryan inhabitants of the Deccan should appear, from the evidence furnished by their language alone, in the silence of history, in the absence of ordinary possibilities, to be allied to the tribes that appear to have overspread Europe before the arrival of the Teutons and the Hellenes and even before the arrival of the Celts”
Caldwell has also noted that in the vocabulary of certain Dravidian languages, a few Semitic analogies may also be discovered which appeared to him to be of no significance and hence might be due to the contact of the Dravidians with the Semitic people their arrival in India. He also discusses the possibility of some relationship of the Dravidian languages with an African language Bornu and some Australian tongues, but this was not elaborated further due to the lack of information about these languages.
Up to the first few decades of the 20th Century, our sources of information were limited tot eh Dravidian languages and the history of Dravidians in South India. The advances made by the sister-disciplines like Archaeology and Anthropology during the middle of this century with development of the technique of historical reconstruction in Linguistics have thrown a flood of light on the problems connected with Dravidian ethnology
The Indus valley excavations and the interpretation offered by a host of scholars right from Father Heras to modern scholars like Asko Parpola of Scandinavia together with many other excavations conducted in different areas of middle East, Egypt and other Negro-African regions by the bands of English, German and French scholars during the first half of our century have widened the horizons of modern scholarship and directed our thinking about peoples of prehistoric times in an altogether new line. One of its great contributions is to uphold the supremacy of “ancient civilizations” which led us to believe that the Indo-European and Semitic races are not the only leaders of civilization in the world and numerous tribes spread over the vast continents of Africa, Europe and Asia had their own well-developed civilizations in Pre-Indo_European and Pre-Semitic times. This has not only led the scholars to estimate the contribution of these ancient civilizations in forming the composite cultures of these regions in the post-Christian era, but also focused the attention of the world on the possible links of these ancient civilizations which form the substrata.
Mohenjodaro and Harappa excavations have revealed the existence of well-organized urban civilization in India before the entry of Indo-Aryans. It has been an admitted fact that when Aryans came to India they were like semi-nomads whereas Dravidians at that time formed a settled community of agriculturists and herdsmen. They lived in cities with fortifications and they had many amenities of advanced city life like public bath, drainages etc. Exactly in the same manner Schlieman’s discovery of Pre-Hellenic Pelasgian sites among the ruins of the old cities of troy in Asia-Minor and in Mycenae in Greece revealed the existence of a highly advanced urban civilization in those regions. Similar Archaelogical excavations conducted in Egypt, Nubia, Ur and many other African, Mediterranean and Middle-eastern regions have proved the existence of advanced city civilizations in the regions from Africa to India.
As a result of these excavations the scholars in the first half of this century tried to link the Ancient Dravidians with the Mediterranean races of he Neolithic era. Nilakantha Sastri and Suniti Kumar Chatterjee the two great authorities on South Indian History and Indian linguistics respectively have demonstrated the identity of the Dravidian race with the Mediterranean races based on anthropological and linguistic evidences. Lahovary has cited a number of linguistic evidences as well as toponymic evidences to prove the racial unity of the Basques, Caucasians and Dravidians. Though not organized systematically Lahovary’s work merits a serious consideration because of the wealth of information it contains about some phonetic and morphological features and hundreds of lexical items as well as toponymic items gathered from many ancient languages of the Middle East. He has rightly focused the attention of the scholars on the fruitfulness of toponymic studies in determining historical relations. As he observes” “ In toponymy there can be no questions of cultural or commercial loan-words, nor of fortuitous resemblances, for it is the direct and faithful mirror of the language of the people of a country at a given time and even long outlast it” Ramaswamy Aiyar too has noted many similarities between the toponymy of Dravidian India and Persia. Sadasivam has attempted to prove the common parentage of Dravidian and Sumerian languages and Tuttle has cited many lexical and grammatical resemblances between Nubian and Dravidian. Zvelebil attempted to prove that the Dravidians were a highlander folks who lived, sometime around 4000 BC in the rugged mountainous regions of North-East Iran where they were in contact with the Ural_Altaic people and from there they migrated into the Indian Sub-continent and played a leading role in the ethnographic composition of the Indus Valley peoples before they ultimately reached Southern India. McAlpin has cited many lexical and grammatical points to indicate the relationship of the Elamite and Dravidian.
Some French, German and African scholars have also attempted to trace the common heritage of ancient Dravidian India and Negro Africa in culture, language and civilization. As early as 1897 the German ethnologists Frobenius noticed some cultural similarities between Negro Africa and Ancient India. Baumann and Westermann in their monumental work on African ethnology and civilization have noticed the influence of Indian Culture on Neo-Sudanese Culture. Cheik Anta Diop has traced many resemblances between Negro-Africa, Egyptian and Oriental Civilization. Cheik Tidiane N’Diaye has shown that many words and expressions denoted by the Indus Valley Script can be related to Dravidian as well as Senegalese languages like Wolof and Pular.
L. Homburger had brought to light for the first time, some phonetic, morphological and lexical parallels between certain African languages and Dravidian languages. Though her studies were limited to a few isolated languages of these groups, they have drawn the attention of the linguists and the statesmen like L.S. Senghor to make a deeper probe into the prehistoric ties of Negro-Dravidian-Mediterranean races which have laid the foundations of civilizations much before the dawn of modern western civilizations. The researches being carried out now at the “Institut Fundamental d’Afrique Noire” of the university of Dakar and the Center of Advanced Study in Linguistics of the Annamali University are expected to provide very strong linguistic evidence to support the hypothesis formed by the ethnologists about the ancient ties of these races which once occupied the entire region from Negro-Africa to south India through the Mediterranean and Middle-East.
Though the present inhabitants of the peninsula India and Negro-Africa have very few common physical characteristics due to mixture with different races, the pre-historic excavations go to prove the racial and cultural unity of these peoples. As Dravidians are considered to have come from the North-West of India and not to be original inhabitants of South India , it is also recognized that the Negroes of Africa are not the original inhabitants of their regions, though they have evolved in that region for a considerable period of time in the history of the continent. It is generally recognized that the Pygmies and Bushmen of the equatorial forests and the Kalahari desert are the survivals of the races which were spread over the whole of Africa before the arrival of Mediterranean peoples in the North and of darker skinned people in the North-East. The brown or black population seems to have invaded Africa from the East and tradition points to the regions east of the upper Niles as being those from which they spread South and West.
It is now generally accepted that in the Neolithic and early metal ages about 8th to 3rd millennia BC, the vast region of Western Asia with its extensions up to Niles and Indus, was occupied by what may be called a blackish race with its local variations like Proto-Mediterranean, Mediterranean and Hamite. This race is characterized by blackish brown complexion, long head, long straight and narrow face etc. The racial features of these peoples are testified not only by anthropological considerations but also by the homogeneity of cultural considerations by the study of their monuments artifacts and tools unearthed in those regions. As Lahovary, points out, the Neolithic Civilizations, which have so profoundly influenced human evolution have had a single origin and a single center of diffusion-- namely the Near est. This region endowed with a good climate and blessed by the river irrigation facilities, contributed much to the evolution of civilizations and it was here that the arts of agriculture, cattle breeding, weaving and pottery developed and later spread into Europe and other regions through migration. It is from this area that Bronze-Age civilization was carried to and spread in Europe before the advent of the Indo-Europeans. A series of migrations in different directions from that center until the break in the development of this civilization, was well testified by the archaeological discoveries. In spite of some local differences like the Prot-Mediterranean type in Egypt and India, Hamitic type in East_Africa and Ibero-insular Mediterranean type from Anatolia to Western India, we can see, on the whole a fundamental racial and cultural unity in all this part of the ancient world which is rightly called the ‘cradle of civilization”.
Three principle waves of migrations may be specially noted here. The first of these possessed no common name for metal and introduced Neolithic civilization into Europe together with the ribboned and incised pottery and a little later the painted ware. The second and third series of migrations gave Europe megalithic civilization and that of the first metal and bronze ages. The fourth series of migrations gave writing to Europe.
The fundamental unity of these Pre-Indo-European civilizations spread over this vast area from Dravidian India to Negro-Africa can be observed by the resemblances noticed in anthropological traits, social customs, religious beliefs, artifacts and linguistic features. Though due to pressure or onslaughts of the incoming races like Semites and Indo-Europeans many of them are either completely exterminated or survive in some remote corners in the mainland (like the Basques, Elamites, Caucasians etc), those who had earlier migrated into distant places like India and Africa survived preserving and developing their age-old customs and civilizations. These primitive people contributed a major share in the creation of the composite culture of the later periods with Indo-Europeans and Semitic peoples.
Anthropologists have shown many similarities between the human skeletons unearthed in Dravidian India and the Western regions of Neolithic times. Most of the skeletons found in Mohenjo Daro were very much like those of the megalithic civilizations of the Mediterranean regions. The skeletons found in Sialkot present great analogies with those of the pre-dynastic Egypt and of Mesopotamia. The conclusions arrived at by the Indus valley excavations are further supported by the epoch making discoveries made by the excavations at Jericho, Upper Galilee, Northern Iran, Egypt, Kenya, Tangkanyika and other regions.
The ancient matriarchal system of this civilization is found even today among the Dravidians, especially in Kerala and South Kanara, the Basques of Pyrenees, the Berbers of Sahara and many communities of Negro-Africa, where inheritance is transmitted through women.
The Cult of Serpent
The Cult of Serpent is another prominent feature of Dravidian India, Pre-Hellenistic Mediterranean world and Negro-Africa. Almost every village in Dravidian India, especially the wets coast belt, has what is known as sarpa-kavu or naga bana, a bush or a piece of land surrounded by the thick growth of trees and bushes wherein the stone-idols of serpents are worshipped. This is also associated with a variety of rituals in which we also find, among other things, dialogues between priest possessed by the serpent-god and the devotee. Many of the rituals associated with snake-worship in Africa find their parallels in the practices noticed in the Western Coast of South India. As the dead body of a serpent is cremated in Dravidian India with due funeral rites, it is buried by many Africans tribes with ritual formalities.
Mother-Goddess
Worship of the Mother Goddess is an important religious rite commonly noticed among the followers of this culture and we find this custom practiced throughout this region. The later Indo-European ancestors of the Greeks and Aryans brought with them the worship of the gods who lived in the sky and who were just anthropomorphized forces of nature, In contrast with these heavenly gods the Dravidians, Aegeans and other folks of these regions worshipped primarily the great Mother Goddess residing on the earth. This goddess has a male counterpart who is a passive figure. The concept of Shakti and Shiva in India grew out of this Dravidian belief. It is worth noting here that she is considered as Black Goddess (kali) in India as well as the Pre-Hellenistic Greece. She is the source of all life and also the goddess of death. Some of the Sumerian rituals relating to the marriage of the Mother Goddess with the Moon g=god find their parallels in the temple rituals of South India especially in the marriage of the Mother Goddess with Shiva. The god Nyame of the Ashanti and other peoples of West Africa is considered to be female, the great mother who gives life to all and is symbolized by the moon. The name Great Mother is one of the epithets given to the supreme being in African regions. Murugan, the god of mountains, the son of the mother goddess is a prominent and typical deity of the Dravidian India. It is interesting to note that at least twenty-five tribes in East Africa worship ‘Murugu” as supreme god, and like the Dravidian god Murugan, the African Murungu resides in the sacred mountains.
During the first millennium BC, the cult of the mother goddess gradually lost its primacy in the Mediterranean regions and in the Middle East under the influence of religious transcendentalism and of the patriarchal culture of the Semitic and Indo-European peoples. Dravidian India and Northern Africa, comparatively less affected by these influences, have kept these ancient beliefs with some local modifications. Even today, in almost all villages of Southern India a form of the mother goddess is worshipped as a village deity and she is specially worshipped to ward off evil spirits and contagious diseases or epidemic and the rituals associated with this worship do not bear any influence of the Aryan customs and the Brahmanical ways of worship. The word amma used to refer this village goddess as well as the disease of small-pox etc caused or cured by her will have its parallel in the same word amma used by the Dogons of the French Sudan. As in Dravidian India, altars are built in those parts of African also for sacrifice and communal worship for the deity amma.
It is worth noting the contrast between the patriarchal system and the male gods of the later Indo-European culture and the matriarchal system and the mother goddess of the ancient cultures of this region.
The offering of hair by women for fulfilling a vow to god and the practices of offering a maiden to the service of gods in temples ( the so-called sacred prostitution or Devadasi System) are some of the rituals noticed in Ancient South Indian temples, Middle East and the Mediterranean areas. Similarly the worship of tress -- fig, oak, or peepul - to fulfil a vow or to get boon , is also a common practice in Dravidian India, Mediterranean and African regions.
It is also believed that the cult of animism originated in Ancient Babylonia and made its way to Sub-Saharan Africa via the Carthaginian Civilization which called it the cult of Astarte. This cult was later on introduced to South America by African slaves. It is likely that some of the above mentioned beliefs common to Dravidian and Negro-Africans originated from the same source.
The practice of placing the dead body in terra cotta jars was current in Ancient South India, especially in the regions of Pondichery even up to the late iron Age. A similar practice was brought to light by the excavations in Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean regions. It may be noticed here that resurrection is an important belief of the religions of this area and the departed soul will come back in course of time. The jar is perhaps believed to be womb of the mother goddess.
It is perhaps this belief in resurrection that led to ancestor worship. As in the case with Dravidian India, the Ancestral spirits play a prominent role in African and Mediterranean thought. The practice of offering sacrifice to ancestors at regular intervals is noticed in almost all African tribes from South Africa to Sahara. The Ancestors are believed to have survived death and to be living in a spiritual world, but still taking a lively interest in the affairs of their families. The Ancestors who have not received proper burial or funeral rites become ghosts and wander between this world and the next, causing considerable harm to the members of the family. But those who are properly buried according to accepting rituals attain divinity and rank with other gods and look after their descendents on the earth.
The common features noticed in the areas of religious and social customs find their parallel in art and architecture also. As early as 1918, James Hornett noticed similarities existing between the South Indian boat designs and the Ancient boat designs of the Nile and Mesopotamia. He observed that before splitting off from the original stock the Dravidians living around Mesopotamia borrowed or invented the circular coracle and the reed raft. Coomarasamy has noticed that the ancient ritual and decorative designs of the Aegeans and the Dravidians are very much alike. In the technique dying, jewellery and in the making of metal weapons the West African Peuls and the Dravidians show remarkable resemblances. The Gonds of Central India, a Dravidian tribe, even now erect the houses similar to those erected by the Gallas of Somaliland.
Archaeologists have also noticed resemblances between the megalithic structures, tombs and monuments of the Dravidian regions and the Mediterranean regions. The objects found in the Megalithic monuments of Hyderabad are similar to the objects discovered in the Egyptian regions belonging to the second dynasty. The ornaments of gold discovered in the tombs of Adichanallur of Dravidian India resemble those discovered in Enkomi, Cyprus and the surrounding regions of the Bronze Age. Nilakanta Sastri hs shown the existence of numerous analogues between certain types of pre-historic tombs of pre-dynastic Egypt and South India as well as between the Stone urn burials of South India and Syria. The bronze bowels discovered in Nigiris (South India) show remarkable resemblances to those found in Ur (Sumer) of the third millennium BC and Assyria.
The art of making pottery with various designs on it, one of the achievements of the Paleolithic period, also aids us in discovering the possible relationship of these ancient races. Many archaeologists have noted resemblances between the pottery designs of Dravidian India and the Mediterranean regions)
In this vast territory of great civilizations, we can distinguish at least three important linguistic types. Of these three the Indo-European an inflectional type is evidently brought by the later conquerors of these regions. Hittite is the only one which is now considered to be related to the Indo-European family. The other ancient languages which show agglutinative and inflectional tendencies may be considered as belonging to two separate families. Of these two, the proto-Semitic forms the upper layer. Other languages which show an agglutinating tendency with invariable roots using chains of detachable suffixes belong to the still earlier inhabitants of this region who founded the earliest civilizations.
It is perhaps due to the pressure of the Semitic stock that the earlier inhabitants speaking these agglutinative languages were dispersed from this area and went in eastern directions towards India and in Western directions towards Africa. The speakers of the Dravidian languages and the Negro-African languages represent these branches and hence continue to retain many of their original linguistic features in these remote areas. Other peoples of the same stock, who remained in their own regions were either completely assimilated to the conquering race or partially assimilated (like Hamites) and thus lost their linguistic heritage, or took refuge in distant mountain regions of the Caucasus, Pyrenees etc, preserving their languages like Caucasian, Basque and other languages which are now termed Asiatic languages.
Linguistic resemblances noticed among the Dravidians, Negro-African, Basque, Caucasian, Elamie, Sumerian, Nubian, Scythian and a host of other languages of this area go to prove this fact. It is true that certain points of resemblance may be noticed between Hamito-Semitic languages and the above-mentioned languages also. But these resemblances only lead us to postulate the impact of the Hamitic-Semitic languages on these languages due to socio-cultural contacts and hence mutual borrowing must have taken place. If the composite culture of India is the creation of the already settled Dravidians and the incoming Aryans, and the Greek culture is the creation of the earlier inhabitants like Aegeans and the incoming Greeks, the composite culture of Negro-Africa may also be considered as the creation of the already settled Negroes and the the incoming Semites and Hamites. Due to such cultural contact, conflict, coexistence and fusion, linguistic borrowing also might have taken place to a very large extent.
Linguitic similarities noticed among different language groups are to be considered as due to any one of the following (i) accidental similarity in certain vocabulary items, (ii) typological similarity due to parallel phonetic, morphological or syntactic structures, (iii) areal similarity due to convergence in linguistic features on account of geographical contiguity and mutual inflow of communication through a considerable period of time, and (iv) resemblance due to genetic relation because of their having developed from the same source. Since the resemblance noticed among the Dravidian, Negro-African and other ancient languages of the Near and Middle East are so numerous the first possibility is ruled out. The second possibility is also ruled as the resemblances are not typological alone but are also in the root elements relating to vocabulary items and grammatical structure. Since the languages under consideration are separated by geographical boundaries the third possibility is automatically ruled out. We are left with no other alternative but to accept the fourth possibility namely the genetic relationship. Since the languages share not only lexical and grammatical features but also display sound correspondences as described in the following pages our assumptions about common heritage is very much strengthened.
If the linguistic evidences go to strengthen the assumptions made by the anthropological and archaeological studies, the common parentage of the Dravidians, Negro-Africans and other ancient races of these region can be proved with convincing evidence.
It will be of interest to postulate that even after the original stock was dispersed in different directions towards India and Africa the member communities maintained contacts with one another through sea-route. After the Indus Valley Civilization of Dravidians was destroyed by the incoming Aryans – or the natural calamities as believed by some – the Dravidian Speakers must have come towards the south along the western coast. The maritime front of the Indus Civilization is well known. The great Dravidian Kings of South India had maritime relations with Mesopotamia, Arabia, Egypt and East Africa. They had excellent trade relations with the countries across the Arabian sea. Egyptian merchants were in the habit of trading on the Indian Ocean. The archaeological excavations conducted on the Arabian Coast, the Persian Gulf and other regions go to prove this fact.
One of the generals of Alexander the Great travelled through these coasts and recorded the presence of foreign traders in those regions. The fact that the burnt bricks were used both by the architect of Mohenjo Daro and those of the Egypt of the first dynasty is evidence of the mutual contact or the common origin of these peoples. The presence of a few Kannada words and sentences in a Greek play preserved in an Egyptian papyrus of the second century AD, further strengthens our assumptions. It is interesting to note that when Vasco da Gama reached Mombasa he found Indians already settled there and it was an Indian pilot who took him to Goa. The contributions made by the Dravidian immigrants in evolving the New Sudanic Civilization is rightly acknowledged by great historians like Baumann.
The examples of phonetic, morphological and lexical parallels between the Dravidian languages and the Senegalese languages like Wolof, Serer, Pular ( Fulani) and Joola (Dyola) and hints about sound correspondences presented in the following pages are based on the observations made during the course of about a year’s field wok carried out in Senegal with a view to making a comparative study of the Dravidian languages and the above-mentioned four languages belonging to the West-Atlantic sub-group of the Niger-Congko family.
The present study is not without its obvious limitations. First of all it is based on preliminary observations and a detailed study is being made. Many of the observations made now are subject to modifications after further analysis. The purpose of this preliminary report is only to indicate the possibilities and the fruitfulness of a detailed study which is being made now. It must also be noticed here that many pre-requisites are yet to be fulfilled before the parentage of the different groups of languages can be ascertained. Reconstruction of the Prot-Language of the hundreds of Negro-African languages based on systemic synchronic descriptions and the methods of reconstruction - which will be the work of reconstructed proto-language is to be compared with the reconstructed proto-language of the Dravidian family. Though linguists have made some progress in reconstructing the Ancient Dravidian speech forms, practically no work of any significance is available so far for a bewildering variety of the Negro-African languages of this vast area. Any result obtained until that time is only tentative and subject to modifications. But however, it is hoped that the efforts now being made may certainly contribute towards that goal and stimulate further efforts in this direction to make a deeper probe into the subject.
For such ancient languages with poor documentation o written record, separated by geographical boundaries and having independent course of development or evolution over some millennia, any attempt to find rigid equivalences is bound to be met with failures. Or, within the frame-work of comparative linguistics, to what extend a regular sound correspondence can be set up or strict morphological parallels can be utilized and validated in the case of languages separated by such a long geographical and temporal gap is also a point open to dispute. It is only a rough approximation of general tendencies in their phonetic and morphological behavior that can be aimed at, at this stage of our understanding of these languages, which may help us to postulate the relationship and the original source of these linguistic features. Linguistic laws are not irrefutable because of the various disturbing factors.
During the course of their survival and evolution over some millennia, many losses and innovations might have taken place due to contact, borrowing, independent development etc. It is with this caution that the broad tendencies noticed among these languages specially in their phonetic, morphological and lexical elements are presented in the following pages. Syntactic features are not taken into consideration in this study because the order of the constituent elements is more free in the higher stage of construction in the immediate constituent hierarchy and the order of constituents is more susceptible to change due to areal convergence and hence may not prove to be a useful tool in determining genetic relationship.
Agglutinating tendency, absence of grammatical gender, absence of inner vowel-change, use of post-positions or prepositions instead of flexion are some of the prominent features in which the Negro-African and Dravidian languages differ from the Indo-European and Hamito-Semitic group. Other features shared both by the Negro-African and Dravidian are : a simple system of five basic vowels with short-long contrast, vowel harmony, absence of initial clusters of consonants, abundance of geminated consonants, distinction of inclusive and exclusive pronouns in the first person plural, absence of the degree of comparison for adjectives, lack of adjectives and adverbs as distinct morphological categories, consonant alternation or nominal increments noticed among the nouns of different classes, distinction of completed action and incomplete action among verbal paradigms as against specific tense distinctions, two separate sets of paradigms for declarative and negative forms of verbs, use of reduplicated forms fro emphasis etc. At the same time, the Negro-African languages also show some marked differences from the Dravidian languages especially in their baffling noun-classification system, consonant alternation, wealth of derived forms to modify the sense of verbs, use of wide variety of personal terminations for verbs etc.
[ Abbreviations used for language names:
Sn.= Senegalese languages. NA = Angro-African Land=gauges Dr. = Dravidian languages PDr. = Proto-Dravidian MDr. = Modern Dravidian SDr. = South Dravidian CDr. = Central Dravidian. W. = Wolof P. = Pulaar(Fulani) S. = Serer. J. = Joola(Dyola) Ta. = Tamil Ma. = Malayalam Ko. = Kota To. = Toda Ka. = Kannada KoD. = KoDagu Tu. = Tulu Te. = Telugu Kol. = Kolamai Nk. = Naiki Pa. = Parji Ga. = Gadaba Go. Gondi Konda. = Konda Kui. = Kui Mal. = Malto Br. = Brahui Bas. = Basque Su. = Sumerian Cau. = Caucasus Ber. = Berber]
Both Sn. And Dr. have a system of five basic vowels with a three-fold distinction of tongue-height (high, mid and low), a three-fold distinction of tongue-position (front, central and back), a two-fold distinction of lip rounding (rounded and unrounded), and a two=fold distinction of duration (short and long)
I u ii uu
e o ee oo
a aa
Some languages belonging to both these groups have developed slightly lower or higher counterparts like I, E, U -- -- -- (Note: could not type for lack phonetic symbols) . These sounds are noticed at phonetic level in some languages whereas in some other languages either some of them or all of them attained phonemic status. With very slight modifications this basic system can be noticed in all languages belonging to Sn. And Dr. group. All these can occur as short or long in all positions of a word and pronounced evenly. Neither word-stress nor pitch is a phonologically distinct feature in these two groups of languages.
Though we assign six series of stop consonants for PDr., only five, namely bilabial, dental, retroflex, palatal and velar form a perfect system. Alveolar R in Dr. has a limited occurrence and it is restricted to certain positions only. Though the distinction between voiced and voiceless stops was at phonetic level only in PDr., almost all modern Dravidian languages have this distinction at phonemic level also. We find approximately a similar system in Sn. With the exception that in the place of dental and retroflex series, Sn. Have a single tip-alveolar series, which, to the ear of a Dravidian speaker sound more like the retroflex of Dr. Implosives stops --(?), d and y noticed in certain Sn. Languages like Pular and Serer must be later innovations. Both Sn. And Dr. do not also employ a wide variety of fricatives. As MDr. Developed some fricatives like s, s and h, Sn. Too developed f,x and h. Of these, some may perhaps be considered as due to Semitic borrowings while some like f may be due to borrowing as well as developments from primitive sounds like P. The two important features in which Sn. and Dr. together form a group as opposed to hamito-Semitic and Indo-European are the (i) absence of aspirated stop consonants and (ii) relatively little use of stops and fricatives in post-velaric regions.
Like Dr., Sn. too have a series of nasal corresponding to all stop consonants and the abundance of these nasals (including n like its counterpart in Malayalam even in word initial position) resemble Dravidian tendency. A more or less similar system of vovwels and consonants is noted for the ancient languages of the Mediterranean and Middle East regions also, especially Basque, Ligurian, Sumerian etc. The only exception is the Caucasion group which displays a wide variety of consonants different from the systems noted above.
The syllable pattern of Dr. and Sn. show many resemblances. We have in both the systems a greater tendency towards open syllables and avoidance of non-identical consonant clusters. Generally the accent falls on initial syllable of a word in both these groups. Since only a few languages of the Niger-Congo family bear phonologically significant tones it is doubtful whether it is to be attributed to the proto language of this family. Hiatus is avoided and prothetic vowels or the vowel glides are employed. Initial clusters of consonants are absent in both these groups. The sole exception is the presence of some nasalized stops in the initial position in Sn. as well as the entire Niger-Congo group. It is likely that they might have developed from an earlier cluster by the loss of preceding vowel or due to later innovations.
Abundance of medial geminated consonants is a popular phenomenon noticed in Dr. and Sn. It is due ti their preference for open syllables that the final consonants are very rare in these languages. As opposed to Indo-European and Hamito-Semitic the verbal roots in Dr. have a vocalic ending. According Meinhof Proto-Bantu roots have all a vocalic ending. Nubian too has this tendency. Though we find some liquids and nasals in the word-final position in some Dr. languages, many languages of this group have a tendency to add a vocalic release at that end. We have also come across a good number of cases with consonantal endings in Sn. But two points deserve special mention here. First of all, the exact nature of the single stop consonants in the final position is not clear. The contrast between voiced and voiceless stop consonant in the final position is neutralized in many cases. It occurs as voiceless when followed by another vowel. When a slightly geminated, aspirated or tense consonant occurs in the final position a vocalic release can be noticed, in which case it is considered as geminated. This may lead us to postulate that originally these languages might have had a greater tendency towards vowel-ending words.
Vowel harmony in some form or other is a tendency noticed in the phonology of the Negro-African, Dravidian and many other ancient languages of the Mediterranean and the other regions of West Asia. In Te. the final ‘u’ or ‘i’ of many suffixes like dative, accusative, pronominal etc. depends on the stem-final vowel preceding it; e.g. tammuni-ki, ‘to the brother’ qurramuna-ku ‘ to the horse’; kottina-nu ‘ I struck’ unti-ni ‘ I was’. The stem-final ‘i’ is assimilated to the following ‘u’ of the plural suffix ‘lu’ ; e.g katti “knife’ kattu-lu “knives’. The enunciative vowel ‘u’ or ‘i’ in many Dr. languages depends on the vowel in the preceding syllable; e.g. Tu. and- I ‘yes’, undu ‘this’, Ta. kotu ‘to give’, pati ‘to lie down’ etc. In NA languages vowel-harmony is noticed in the case of the respective tongue-heights of the vowels in consecutive syllables. Greenberg suggests that relative height is basic to all African systems of vowel harmony. Hence the vowels can be divided into two mutually exclusive sets like higher and lower or tense and lax, and the vowel is assimilated to the following or preceding vowels. (Notes: the examples omitted because lack of relevant phonetic symbols)
Some prominent sound correspondences may be noted here. Alternation b & v is noted in Dr. e.g. Ta. v and Ka. b. W. b corresponds to Dr. b & v in a number of cases;
e.g W. baaram’ finger’, Ka. Beral; T. viral; W. biig ‘evening’; Ka. Bayqu; Ta. vayku; W. biir ’belly, pregnancy’ ; Ka.basaru, Ta. vayiRu, Ma. Vayaru, Tu. Banji; W. benn ‘one’ Ta. (wo_onRu; W.bey “tocultivate, cultivation’, Ka. Bele, Ta. viLay, Ma. Vila; W. bunt ‘door’, Ka. Baagilu, Ta. vaacal; W. bant ‘stick’, Ka. Badige, Tu. Badu, Ta. vati; W. bind ‘to write’ , Ka. Bare, Ta. vari etc.
W. f & Dr. p.
e.g. W. fukk ‘ten’, Ta. ma. Patti, Te. Padi, Tu. Patti; W. fekk “to find’ , Ta. piti ‘to hold’, Ka. Pidi, Tu. Patti; W. fab ‘to pick up’ , Kui.pebga, Kod. Pori, Ta. perukka, Tu. Peji; W. fen “to tell lie’, Tu.pani ‘to tell’, Ta. peecu; W. fog ‘to shake’ , Ta. pandi,; W. feex ‘fresh, cool’, Tu. Paji.
W. f & Dr. c/t/k.
W. juroom ‘five’, Par. Cem, Go. Sayyum, Kui. Singi; W. jaan ‘snake’, Ta. cereal, Ka. Keere; W. jiit “scoprpion’, Ta. Ma. TeeL, Ka. Ceel; W. jaay ‘to sell;, jar ‘to cost’, Ta. celavu, Ma. Celka; W. jam ‘to piere’, Ta. ceruku, Ma. Cerutu, Ka. Cuccu.
W. & Dr. k
W. xar ‘sheep’ , Ka. Kuri, Ta. Ma. Kori, Kod. Koi; W. xeer ‘rock’ , Ta. Ma. Kal “stone’, Ka. Kallu, Br. Khal, Pa. Kel; W. xenx ‘red’, Ka. Tu. Kempu, Br. Khiisum; W. xerem ‘salt’, Ka. Kaar ‘pungent, saltiest, hot’ Br. Khareen ‘bitter’; W. xetti ‘to tear’, Ta. Kati ‘to cut’, Ma. Katikka, Te. Kaatu, Br. Gat; W. xarit ‘friend’, Ta. KeeLanm Ka. Keleyea, geleya; W. xuuge “hunch-back’, Ta. Ma. Kuuna, Ka. Guuna; W. xam “to know’, Ta. Kal ‘to ;earn’, Ka. Kali; W. xaar ‘to wait’, Ta. Kaay, Ka. Kayyu; W. xel ‘heart’, Ma. Karai, Ka. Karalu; W. xur ‘valley;, Ta. Kuri, To. Kos; W. xaj ‘dog’, te. Kukka. Also note: S. xoox ‘head’, Kur, kukk, Mal. Kuku.
Though Dr. does not display any system of noun classification similar to the one noticed in NA, some traces of such a system can be imagined for Dr. because of the augment apparing after nouns before case-suffixes and post-positions are added. Special mention may be made of the augment Ta. Ma. tt, Te. ti ti. Ka. d etc. occurring after non-human nouns ending in ‘a’, augment ‘n’ in most of Dr. languages after human nouns ending in ‘a’ etc. e.g. Ta. mara-tt-ai ‘the tree’(acc), Ka. Mara-d-a “tree’s’. Consomnant alternation when the membership of a root is changed into adifferent class or when suffixes are added may be noticed in instances like Ka. oodu ‘to run’, oota ‘running, race’ kodu, ‘to give’, kottano ‘he gave’, biilu ‘to fall’, bidd ‘ ‘fallen’ participle. In Sn. languages in general and S. and P. in particular the system of consonant alternation is highly developed, e.g. P. modo ara ‘I came’, eden ngara ‘we come’, hoore ‘head’, koye ‘heads’, S. gar ‘to come’ o ngara ‘they came, bind ‘to write’ o pind ale ‘writng;, xon ‘ todie’, o kon ohe ‘dead; and W. bind ‘to write’ , mbind ‘writing; garab ‘tree’ , ngarab ‘bush’.
Demonstrative bases in Sn. and Dr. show striking resemblances as can be seen from the following table. These are prefixed to the elements indicating person, place, manner etc in Dr. whereas they are suffixed in the case of Sn.
[* The Dr. ‘u’ is still in usage among Ceylon Tamils. Tolkappiyam and Cankam literature mention this ‘u’ - Editor]
The following participial and abstract noun formative suffixes of Sn. Corresponds to Dr. suffixes of similar signification.
P. -o past participial and -oowa agentive; J. -a agentive, Dr. -a, ava, e.g P. windudu ‘written’, windoowo ‘writer’, janginoowa ‘teacher’, J. leb ‘to talk’, allaba ‘talkative’, tep ‘to build’ , ateba ‘builder’, Ka. Bareda ‘written’ baredava ‘ one who wrote’ etc.
W. aay and J.ay abstract noun formative and Dr. ay. Ta. Ay K. e etc, e.g. W. baax ‘good’, baaxaay ‘goodness;, rafet ‘be beautiful’, raftetaay ‘beauty’, gudda ‘be lomg’ , kudday ‘length’; J. apala ‘friend’ bapalay ‘friendship’, leb ‘to tak’ mulebay ‘scandal’; Ka. Hiri ‘big’ , elder’ hirime ‘greatness’, Ta. Nal ‘good’, nanmay ‘goodness’
W. it, iit abstract noun formative suffix and Ka. ita, ta . e.g W. deg ‘to cut’ degit ‘sharpness’, des ‘to remain’ desit ‘residue’, Ka. hari ‘ to cut’, harita ‘sharpness’, kuni ‘ to dnace, kunita ‘dance’.
W. kaay and P. iki formative suffix and Ka. ike e.g. W. faj ‘to nurse’ fajukaay ‘hospital’, ate ‘to judge’, attekeay ‘tribunal’ , bind ‘to write’ bindukaay ‘instrument for writing, pen’ , P. and ‘to knoe’, andiki ‘knowledge;, wind ‘to write’ , bindiki ‘writng’, yar ‘to drink’ , jarki ‘drinking’, Ka. Haasu ‘to spread’ haastike ‘bed’, aalu ‘to rule’, aalike ‘ domination, rule’.
P. past tense suffix ‘i’ ‘finished action’ corresponds to Dr. I, it/id past tense suffix and ‘i’ past participial suffix, e.g. P. a wari ‘ he came’ a andi ‘ he knew’ o tuuri ‘ he vomited’ and Ma. pooyi, went Ka. maadi ‘ having done‘ .
W. wul, ul ‘negative suffix’ and J. ul ‘suffix for negative derivation for verbs; correspond to Dr. al, il, illa etc, and P. a, ata ‘nef=gative suffix’ corresponds to Dr. a, ate, ade, ada ‘ negative participial/ gerundial suffix’. E.g. W. bey ‘ to cultivate’, beyul ‘negative’, indi ‘to bring’ indiwul ‘did not bring’; J. kik ‘to stich’, kikul ‘to unstich’, gadul ‘to unhook’, fehlul ‘to untie’; Old ta. Nill al-an ‘ he will not stand’, Ka. Nill-alla “does not stand’. P. war ‘to come’ warata ‘not coming’ , ta. Var ‘to come’, varaata’ not coming’, Tu. Bori ‘to milk’, boriyada ‘don’t milk’; Old Ma. Ceyyaa ‘ I will not do’ and P. mi andi ‘ I knew’ mi andaa ‘ I do not know’ , Ka. Maadu ‘ to do’, maada ;he may not do’.
W. al/l ‘imperative suffix’ corresponds to Dr. ali, la, le , alaam ‘imperative/permissive, e.g W. bindal ‘write’, indil ‘bring’ Tu. barela ‘write’ , barele ‘write’, (pl) Ka. bareyali ‘let . . . . . write’, Ta. varalaam ‘may come’
Many pronouns and pronominal elements in verbal constructions (like personal suffixes) in the two groups of languages contain common elements, e.g. W. man ‘I’ naa I. P.sg; Ka. naan ‘I’ ne/nu I.p.sg.; W. yew ’you’, ya II.p.sg., nga II.p/sg, ngeen IIp.pl. J. aw, nu ‘you’ g., Tu. ii’you’, Ta. niinga ‘you’ nga IIp.hon., sg.; W.meen ‘he’, nae III p.sg., P. omo ‘he’ J. e “he’, Ta. avan ‘he’ etc.
J. e, ere ‘reflexive suffix’ and P. o to form middle voice (with reflexive meaning) correspond to Dr. o, onu, ollu, kollu etc , e.g. J. buj ‘to kill’ bujere ‘to kill oneself’; P. laata “to become’ , laato ‘to become’, middle voice; Ka. Oodu ‘to read’ oodika ‘read oneself’; Tu. Bare ‘to write’ bareyonu ‘write oneself’.
Both Dr. and Sn. Employ reduplication of these bases to emphasize meaning or to modify the sense in a similar manner. E.g. J. fan ‘more’ fanfan ‘very much’; funak ‘day’ funako-funak ‘every day’; W. xam ‘to know’, xam-xam ‘knowledge’; siin ‘region of Sine”, siin-siin ‘native of Sime’; gam ‘to hurt’, gaam-gaam ‘wound’; Ka. Beega ‘quick’, beega beega ‘veru quick’, maadi ‘having done’, maadi-maadi ‘having done again again ‘, ondu ‘one’ ondondu ‘one each’ .
A few sample lexical items from the basic vocabulary list are given below. The numbers at the end denote the corresponding entries of the Dravidian Etymological Dictionary by Burrow and Emeneau.
In Pular and Serer entries the slash separates singular and plural forms.
Nature, Flora and Fauna
Village, settlement. P. wuro, Ta. Ma. Nk. uur id. Ka. Tu. Te. uuru id. Br. ura id. 643, Su. uru id.
Mountain, rock. P. haayre, Ka. hare ‘rock’, Kuwi. hooru id. 2356
Valley, pit. W. xur, S. xulub id. Ta. Ma. kuri id. Tu. quri id. Pa. kurub id. 1511.
Stone W. xeer, Ta. Ma. kal id. To. kas id. Ka. kallu id. Pa. kal id. Br.khal id. 1511
Mud ,clay W. ban, Ta. Ma. maN id. Ka. mannu id. Ta. mannu id. 3517.
Cloud , water (i) W. niir “cloud’ , Ta. Ma. niir ‘water’, ka. Ta. niiru id. Br. Diir id 3057. (ii) W. ndox ‘water’ P.ndiiyam id. Br. diir id. Ta. Ma. niir id. 3057.
Stream W. wel, J. kal id. Te. velli id. Ko. kolli id. 4529, 1777.
Dawn W. fajarm, S. fajar id. Ta. pular, pularcci id. Ma. pularuka id. Te. pulva id. 3531
Day-time , warmth W. beceg, Ka. beccaqe id.
Evening . W. W. biiq, Ka. bayqu id. Tu. bayya id. Ta, Ma. Vaiku id. Te. veequ id . 4570
Snake (i) fangool/ pangool , Ta. Ma. paampu id. Te. paamu id. Pa. baam id. Ko.paab id. To. poob id 3361. (ii) W. jaan id. P.njaawa id. Pa. jeeri id. Go. seeri id. Ko.jeeringga id . 2314.
Spider W. jargon, P. njabale id. Ta. jaadajeeda, Tu. jaadye id.
Lizard P. pallardi, ta. Ma. Palli , 3294
Scorpian W. jeit Ta. Ma. teeL id. Ka. Tu. ceel id.
Tortoise (i) P. amere/ame Ta. aamai id. Ma. aama id. Ka. aamaa id. Tu. eeme id 4282 (ii) J. ekub id. Kur. ekka id. Mal. eke id. 660
II. Household and Agriculture
House, hut (i) P. galle J. elun id. Te. illu id. Ta. il id. Tu. ill id. Nk. ella id. 420. Bas. ili id. Nu. il (ii) W. ker id. Ta. kuti kuticai id. Ko. kurji id. Kui. kuuri id. Tu. kotta ‘hut’ 1713. Br. Kur id.
Door P. baafal W. bunt id. Ka. baagil id. Ta. vaacal, vaayil id. Ma. vaatil id. Te. vaakili id. 4386.
Corner W. kon S. koon id. Ta. koonai id. Ka. kone id. Ma. Konna id. 1808
Pestle. P. unugal Ta. ulakkai id. Ma. ulaka id. Ka. onake id . 580
Pot W. paana ‘metal pot’ Ta. paanai ‘eathern pot’ , Ma. pane id. Ka. bane id. Kod. paani id. Tu. paani id. 3394
Charcoal W. kerin P. kaata id. Ta. Ma. kari id. Ka. Tu. kari id. Ta. karu ‘black’ 1073
Smoke W. saxaar, J. fakor id. Ta. Ma. pukai id. Ka. Kod. poge id. Te. poga id. Nk. pog id. 3483
Salt W. xoron Ta. kaar “to be saltish, pungent’, kaaram id. Ma. kaaram id. Ka. kaara id. Te. kaaru ‘salt’ Br. Khareen ‘bitter’ 1227
Clarified butter S. new Ta. Ma. Ka. Tu. ney id. Pa. nev id. Go. In id. Kui niiju id. Kuwi niiyu id 3104
Cultivation W. bey ‘to cultivate’ mbey ‘cultivation’ ambey ‘crop’ Tu. bey ‘ to cultivate’ benni ‘cultivation’ bule ‘crop’ Ka. bele ‘crop’ ‘to grow’ Ta. vilay id. 4473, 4464
Manure J. aroka Ta. eru id. To. Eruvu id. Ka. erubu, eeru id. 696
Net W. mbaal S. mbaal id. J. mabal id. Ka. bale id. Ta. valai id. Ma. Vala id. Ga. Valla id. 4326
Boat raft W. gal Ta. kool, koola id. Ka. kool id. Te. koolamu id. Pa. kulla id 1853
Rice W. eeb Ta. Ma. cooru ‘cooked rice’ 2360
Millot W. suuna, P. sunna id. Kol. sonna id. Kuwi. zoona id. To. joona id. Pa. jenne id. Go. jonaa id. 2359.
III Kinship Terms and Body Parts.
Person J.an S. kin id. W. nit id. Ta. Ma. Ka. aan ‘person, male’ , an ‘masculine suffix’ 342.
Mother W. yaay, S. yaay id. J. inaay id. Ta. aay, yaay, naay, taay id. Ka. aavi, taavi id. Ga. Aava id. Mal. avva id. 308, 53
Father W. baay, P. baaba id. S. baab id. J. ampa id. Ka. appa id. Ta. appan id. Te. appa id. Go. aapa id. 133 Su. ab id. Cau. ab id.
Child J. anil/kunil Ma. kunnu, kunci id. Ko. kuni id. Kod. kunni id. 1371.
Husband J. ata Ta. attaan ‘husband’, ‘maternal uncle’s son’ ‘ man of eminence’ ‘sister’s husband’ 121
Grandfather W. maammaat ‘great grand-father’ maam ‘greandfather’ P. maamiraado id. S. maamkor id. Ta. maama ‘uncle’ ‘a term of address to eladers’ muuttaar ‘aged persons’ mutu ‘aged, old’ Ka. mudimi id. 4057
Maiden W.janx, J. ajana id. W. jeeg ‘married woman’ Tu. jeevn ‘maiden’ 2311.
Friend W. xarit S. kuud id. Ma. kuuraan id. Ka. keleyan 1577, 1678.
Body W. yaram S. cer id. Ta. uru id. uruvam id. To. urp id. Kol. urp id 566.
Head (i) S. xoox J. fu-ko id. Kur. kukk id. Mal. kuku id. 1358. (ii) W. bapp id. Te. burra id. Ka. burude id. 3553. Bas. Buru id. (iii) P. hoore id. Ka. hore ‘head-load’ hour ‘to carry on head’.
Lip W. tun P. tondu id. Ta. Ka. titi Go. tote id. Kui. Tooda id. 2698
Eye-lash J. kamoy/umay Ta. imay id. Ka. Tu. ime id. 2097.
Ear J. kaos Br. khaf id. Ka. kivi id. Tu. kebi id. Kur. khebda id. 1645.
Neck P. geenul S. goddul id. Te. gontu id. Ka. gantalu id. 1428
Hand (i) J. kangen, kaban S. kand id. Ta. Ma. Ka. kay 1681
Finger W. baaram, Ka. beral id. Ta. Ma. viral id. Ko. bera id. 4436
Heart W. xol J. xoor id. Ko. karl id. Ma. karal, kari id. Ka. karul id. 1070
Blood W. deret Br. Ditar id. Go. nattur id. Te. netturu id. Ka. nettaru id. 3106.
Belly W. biir Go. piir id. Ko. viir id. Ta. vayiRu id. Ka. basaru id. 4299.
Leg P. kovngal Ta. Ma. Kaal id. Ka. kaalu id. Na. kaalu id. Tu. kaari id. 1238.
Skin P. nguru/guri Ta. uri, urivai id. Ma. Uri id 561.
IV Verbs of Common Action etc
Eat , lick W. an ‘eat’ naam’ lick’ P. naam ‘eat’ S. naam id. Ta. Ma. un ‘eat’ nakku’lick, Ka. unnu ‘eat’ nakku ‘lick’ Te. naaku id. Pa. neek id. Kui. Naaka id. Ka. nanju id. 516, 2945, 2956
Drink P. var S. var id. J. raan id. Ta. paruku id. Ma. parukuka id. Tu. par id. 3279.
Come P. ar , wara S. gari id. J. rin id. Ta. varu id. Ma. Varuka id. Ka. baru id. Br. Bar id. Mal. hare id. 4311.
Say W. ne Ta. en id. Ma. ennuka id. Ka. en id. Ta. an id. Mal. anc id. Kur. aannaao id. 737.
Learn J. kaliken Ka. kali id. Tu. kalpu id. Ta. Ma. Kal id. 1090.
Beget , give birth to W. jur J. eron id. Ta. peru id. Ma. peruka id. Ka. per id. Kod. per id. 3622.
Die W. saay ‘to die’ used for king’s death. P. sooyta id. Ka. saay id. Tu. say id. Ta. caay id. Ma. caaka id. Ga. say id. Kui. Saava id. 2002.
Hope P. kori Ta. kooru id. Ma. kooruta id. Ka. Ta. kooru id. Ga. koor id. 1848
Want, desire W. begg Ka. beeku id. Tu. boodu id. Ta. veenum id. 4548.
Spill, vomit W. tuur, P. tuur id. Ka. Te. tuuru id. Ta. tuppu id. Te. tuppukku id. 2795, 2725.
Steal J. kuut S. kuud ‘thief’ Ka. kadi ‘to steal’, kalla ‘theirf’ Ta. kal ‘to steal To. Kol id. Tu. kalu id. 1156.
In Summary, the Dravidian speakers came from the Fertile African Crescent, where they made up one of the Temehu ethnic groups which are called C-Group people by archaeologists. This explains the close relationship between Dravidian and Black African languages.
These Nubian Dravidians came to India from two directions. The Proto-Tamils and northern Dravidian speakers settled the Indus Valley. The Malayalam speakers probably early separated from the Tamil speakers and migrated southward from the Indus Valley after 1700 B.C. The Tamil went on to settle Central Asia, and migrated from this area and China to settle India after 500 B.C.
-------------------- C. A. Winters Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:I am not the first to claim links between Africans and Indians,
Links? Sure - I'll claim that. As for Dravidian being and African language, or Berber langauges being European - you are not the 1st to claim it - but.....you may be the last
Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004
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The Berber languages as pointed out by numerous authors is full of vocabulary from other languages. Many Berbers may be descendants of the Vandels (Germanic) speaking people who ruled North Africa and Spain for 400 years. Commenting on this reality Diop in The African Origin of Civilization noted that: “Careful search reveals that German feminine nouns end in t and st. Should we consider that Berbers were influenced by Germans or the referse? This hypothesis could not be rejected a priori, for German tribes in the fifth century overran North Africa vi Spain, and established an empire that they ruled for 400 years….Furthermore, the plural of 50 percent of Berber nouns is formed by adding en, as is the case with feminine nouns in German, while 40 percent form their plural in a, like neuter nouns in Latin.
Apparently for all his 'knowledge' on linguistics, Winters must have forgotten that feminine nouns and names in Afrasian languages also end in a vowel followed by a 't'!!
For example, Egyptian female names like Aset (Isis), Maat, Nofret, Merit etc.
Semitic female names like Benet --meaning daughter, Anat, Astoret etc.
Even Cushitic names like the common Somali name 'Asha' was most likely derived from Ashait.
Ironically, this coincidental similarity to German was one of the "evidences" used by past Eurocentric scholars in their attempt to place the origins of Afroasiatic outside of Africa, and is no doubt still being used by Nostraticists!!
LMFO Apparently Winters has bought their nonsense as well!
Posts: 26322 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by rasol: Links? Sure - I'll claim that. As for Dravidian being and African language, or Berber langauges being European - you are not the 1st to claim it - but.....you may be the last
I wouldn't count on that, Rasol! After all, there are others with his mentality and it seems the guy has follwers.
As long as there is ignorance you will always have folks who believe in such nonsense.
Posts: 26322 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
The goal is to get African scholars utilising science, not reacting against it.
Please everyone - study the recent works of Dr. Shomarka Keita. He is far and away the most influential African scholar around today and for good reason. He has mastered scientific method, he is creative and objective - and so uniformly respected.
Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
With some 80,000 Vandals in North Africa, I'm sure there was some influence on Berbers likely genetic and ligusitic, though certianly not to the extent to claim that Berber is European origin etc. It is strange that academia reluctant to address this. But I suspect it may be more for fear of going againt the politically correct sentiment which would like to see North African history clustering mostly with the rest of the continent with minimal influence from Europe.
Posts: 682 | From: East Coast | Registered: May 2011
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The Berber, or Amazigh, people live in Northern Africa throughout the Mediterranean coast, the Sahara desert and Sahel which used to be a Berber world before the arrival of Arabs. Today, there are large groups of Berber people in Morocco and Algeria, important communitites in Mali, Niger and Libya, and smaller groups in Tunis, Mauritania, Burkina-Faso and Egypt. The Tuareg of the desert also belong to the Berber group. The Berber people speak 26 closely related languages.
Consonants
Berber consonants include:
glottalized consonants, so called because the space between the vocal cords (glottis) is constricted during their pronunciation; implosive consonants produced with the air sucked inward; ejective consonants produced with the air "ejected" or forced out; geminate (doubled) consonants produced by holding them in position longer than for their single counterparts. Click here to listen to a Berber song recorded in Morocco.
Grammar
Noun phrase
Berber nouns have two cases. One case is used for the subject of intransitive verbs, while the other is used for the subject of transitive verbs and objects of prepositions. There are two genders: masculine and feminine. The plural of nouns has a masculine and a feminine form.
Verb phrase
Verbs are marked for tense and aspect. The perfective of the verb is formed by reduplication of the second consonant of the root, or by the prefix -tt-.
Vocabulary
Most of the vocabulary is Berber in origin with borrowings from Latin, Arabic, French, Spanish, and other sub-Saharan languages. There is generally little or no intelligibility between the dialects.
The Berber languages as pointed out by numerous authors is full of vocabulary from other languages. Many Berbers may be descendants of the Vandels (Germanic) speaking people who ruled North Africa and Spain for 400 years. Commenting on this reality Diop in The African Origin of Civilization noted that: “Careful search reveals that German feminine nouns end in t and st. Should we consider that Berbers were influenced by Germans or the referse? This hypothesis could not be rejected a priori, for German tribes in the fifth century overran North Africa vi Spain, and established an empire that they ruled for 400 years….Furthermore, the plural of 50 percent of Berber nouns is formed by adding en, as is the case with feminine nouns in German, while 40 percent form their plural in a, like neuter nouns in Latin.
Since we know the Vandals conquered the country from the Romans, why should we not be more inclined to seek explanations for the Berbers in the direction, both linguistically and in physical appearance: blond hair, blue eyes, etc? But no! Disregarding all these facts, historians decree that there was no Vandal influence and that it would be impossible to attribute anything in Barbary to their occupation” (p.69).
The influence of European languages on the Berber languages and the grammar of the Berber languages indicate that the Berbers are probably of European, especially Vandal origin.
..
The link in your post did not work.
Anyway, I know Berber people and in understand German. They do not sound alike, nor did I ever recognize words. But they could be classical? What does cluster this Germanic phylum are Dutch, English and Yidish.
And actually there are multiple dialects, so maybe it's Influece is in a certain dialect and location. Depending on where the Berber is spoken.
quote:Originally posted by KoKaKoLa: Oh gosh! another Clyde fantasy...
We don't always have to agree on everything.
Diversity and different point of views is a healthy process.
Posts: 22244 | From: האם אינכם כילדי הכרית אלי בני ישראל | Registered: Nov 2010
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posted
^Strength is in sharing knowledge. Thinking you know everything, all by yourself, brings weakness.
Posts: 22244 | From: האם אינכם כילדי הכרית אלי בני ישראל | Registered: Nov 2010
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posted
Well it is certainly a fantasy that Vandals "ruled North Africa and Spain for 400 years." What good are points of view which are false? "Berbers are probably of European, especially Vandal origin" How can this be true when war is recorded between iMazighen and Vandals?
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: Well it is certainly a fantasy that Vandals "ruled North Africa and Spain for 400 years." What good are points of view which are false?
Dr Anna Leone, PhD, Durham University.
Senior Lecturer in the Department of Archaeology
-Member of the Centre for the Study of the Ancient -Mediterranean and the Near East -Member of the Durham Centre for Roman Culture -Member of the Institute of Medieval and Renaissance
"I have been working for a long time and published several articles on Roman pottery in Rome, Italy and North Africa. I have a good knowledge of all the classes of pottery that circulated in the Mediterranean from the Republican period to the 7th/8th century AD and beyond
The period in question from AD 300 to AD 700, spans more that political transitions: it sees the adoption of Christianity (during the Las Imperial period and the Byzantine times), the Vandal rule and the adoption of Arianism and the Arab/Muslim imposition."
North Africa (which is north Tunisia and eastern Algeria at the period of the vandal) became a Roman province again, from which the Vandals were expelled. "Most of the Vandals went to Saldae (which is called today Béjaïa in the Kabyl land in north Algeria) where they integrated themselves with the Berbers." Some other were put into imperial service or fled to the two Gothic kingdoms (Ostrogothic Kingdom and Visigothic kingdom), some vandal women married Byzantine soldiers settled in north Algeria and Tunisia. The choicest Vandal warriors were formed into five cavalry regiments, known as Vandali Iustiniani, and stationed on the Persian frontier. Some entered the private service of Belisarius" Bury, John Bagnell (1923), History of the Later Roman Empire, from the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian (A.D.395 to A.D. 565). Volume II
Posts: 22244 | From: האם אינכם כילדי הכרית אלי בני ישראל | Registered: Nov 2010
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posted
Wishful thinking is no alternative to valid history. Promotion of a 400 year Vandal rule is pure folly.
The quote from Leone fails to establish the Vandal entry and fall in North Africa. In the period she gives, 300 - 700 CE, Byzantines, Vandals, Arian Christianity, and Arab/Muslims are all within it. One can't extract Vandals and force them to be Leone's only subject of that 400 year period.
Historical facts assign Vandal dominance to ~100 years.
429 CE - Vandals cross Gibraltar under Genseric 533 CE - Byzantine Belisarius wipes out Vandal authority. deGraft-Johnson African Glory New York: Walker & Co., 1954 pp. 53, 56
P. Salama From Rome to Islam in M. elFasi (ed) General History of Africa vIII Paris: UNESCO, 1981 pp 500-503 Brett & Fentress The Berbers Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1996 pp 65, 76
quote:Originally posted by Troll Patrol:
quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: Well it is certainly a fantasy that Vandals "ruled North Africa and Spain for 400 years." What good are points of view which are false?
Dr Anna Leone, PhD, Durham University.
Senior Lecturer in the Department of Archaeology
-Member of the Centre for the Study of the Ancient -Mediterranean and the Near East -Member of the Durham Centre for Roman Culture -Member of the Institute of Medieval and Renaissance
"I have been working for a long time and published several articles on Roman pottery in Rome, Italy and North Africa. I have a good knowledge of all the classes of pottery that circulated in the Mediterranean from the Republican period to the 7th/8th century AD and beyond
The period in question from AD 300 to AD 700, spans more that political transitions: it sees the adoption of Christianity (during the Las Imperial period and the Byzantine times), the Vandal rule and the adoption of Arianism and the Arab/Muslim imposition."
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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posted
Maybe I get you wrong here, but are you saying she is lying?
quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: Wishful thinking is no alternative to valid history. Promotion of a 400 year Vandal rule is pure folly.
The quote from Leone fails to establish the Vandal entry and fall in North Africa. In the period she gives, 300 - 700 CE, Byzantines, Vandals, Arian Christianity, and Arab/Muslims are all within it. One can't extract Vandals and force them to be Leone's only subject of that 400 year period.
Historical facts assign Vandal dominance to ~100 years.
429 CE - Vandals cross Gibraltar under Genseric 533 CE - Byzantine Belisarius wipes out Vandal authority. deGraft-Johnson African Glory New York: Walker & Co., 1954 pp. 53, 56
P. Salama From Rome to Islam in M. elFasi (ed) General History of Africa vIII Paris: UNESCO, 1981 pp 500-503 Brett & Fentress The Berbers Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1996 pp 65, 76
quote:Originally posted by Troll Patrol:
quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: Well it is certainly a fantasy that Vandals "ruled North Africa and Spain for 400 years." What good are points of view which are false?
Dr Anna Leone, PhD, Durham University.
Senior Lecturer in the Department of Archaeology
-Member of the Centre for the Study of the Ancient -Mediterranean and the Near East -Member of the Durham Centre for Roman Culture -Member of the Institute of Medieval and Renaissance
"I have been working for a long time and published several articles on Roman pottery in Rome, Italy and North Africa. I have a good knowledge of all the classes of pottery that circulated in the Mediterranean from the Republican period to the 7th/8th century AD and beyond
The period in question from AD 300 to AD 700, spans more that political transitions: it sees the adoption of Christianity (during the Las Imperial period and the Byzantine times), the Vandal rule and the adoption of Arianism and the Arab/Muslim imposition."
Posts: 22244 | From: האם אינכם כילדי הכרית אלי בני ישראל | Registered: Nov 2010
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posted
Let me understand something. Are you calling deGraft-Johnson, Salama, and Brett&Fentress liars?
The Vandals ruled the Tell for 104 years (429-533 CE).
Leone does not say Vandals ruled NA for 400 years you're the one saying it and twisting Leone who says:
quote: The period in question from AD 300 to AD 700, spans more that political transitions: it sees 1 - the adoption of Christianity (during the Las Imperial period and the Byzantine times), 2 - the Vandal rule and the adoption of Arianism and 3 - the Arab/Muslim imposition.
There is no 400 year Vandal rule of NA by any historian's account. Winters gives us what is either Diop's error or Cook's mistranslation.
You have no point to argue. Admit you've been duped and move on.
posted
Did I call anyone a liar? Not that I know of. But I do know that their sources are somewhat older.
However, if you call "her" theory invalid and a fantasy. I assume you're telling, she not telling the truth.
quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: Let me understand something. Are you calling deGraft-Johnson, Salama, and Brett&Fentress liars?
The Vandals ruled the Tell for 104 years (429-533 CE).
Leone does not say Vandals ruled NA for 400 years you're the one saying it and twisting Leone who says:
quote: The period in question from AD 300 to AD 700, spans more that political transitions: it sees 1 - the adoption of Christianity (during the Las Imperial period and the Byzantine times), 2 - the Vandal rule and the adoption of Arianism and 3 - the Arab/Muslim imposition.
There is no 400 year Vandal rule of NA by any historian's account. Winters gives us what is either Diop's error or Cook's mistranslation.
You have no point to argue. Admit you've been duped and move on.
They ruled for a small period of time, but I am speaking of descendants and influences...thats something else. How and where did I twits any of her words, when I quote her words, exactly as is written?
Posts: 22244 | From: האם אינכם כילדי הכרית אלי בני ישראל | Registered: Nov 2010
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quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: Well it is certainly a fantasy that Vandals "ruled North Africa and Spain for 400 years." What good are points of view which are false? "Berbers are probably of European, especially Vandal origin" How can this be true when war is recorded between iMazighen and Vandals?
The name Berber appeared for the first time after the end of the Roman Empire.The use of the term Berber spread in the period following the arrival of the Vandals during their major invasions.
The Vandalic War was a war fought in North Africa, in the areas of modern Tunisia and eastern Algeria, in 533-534, between
the forces of the Eastern Roman Empire
and the Vandal Kingdom of Carthage.
Roman rule in Africa was strengthened, but the fighting continued against the Moorish tribes (Mauri) of the interior.
During the first part of the Second Punic War, the eastern Massylii under their king Gala were allied with Carthage, while the western Masaesyli under king Syphax were allied with Rome. However in 206 BC, the new king of the eastern Massylii, Masinissa, allied himself with Rome, and Syphax of the Masaesyli switched his allegiance to the Carthaginian side. At the end of the war the victorious Romans gave all of Numidia to Masinissa of the Massylii
Posts: 42951 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: Well it is certainly a fantasy that Vandals "ruled North Africa and Spain for 400 years." What good are points of view which are false? "Berbers are probably of European, especially Vandal origin" How can this be true when war is recorded between iMazighen and Vandals?
The name Berber appeared for the first time after the end of the Roman Empire.The use of the term Berber spread in the period following the arrival of the Vandals during their major invasions.
The Vandalic War was a war fought in North Africa, in the areas of modern Tunisia and eastern Algeria, in 533-534, between
the forces of the Eastern Roman Empire
and the Vandal Kingdom of Carthage.
Roman rule in Africa was strengthened, but the fighting continued against the Moorish tribes (Mauri) of the interior.
During the first part of the Second Punic War, the eastern Massylii under their king Gala were allied with Carthage, while the western Masaesyli under king Syphax were allied with Rome. However in 206 BC, the new king of the eastern Massylii, Masinissa, allied himself with Rome, and Syphax of the Masaesyli switched his allegiance to the Carthaginian side. At the end of the war the victorious Romans gave all of Numidia to Masinissa of the Massylii
What wave and route did they take to get into North Africa?
Or did they just popup and appeared all of a sudden?
Posts: 22244 | From: האם אינכם כילדי הכרית אלי בני ישראל | Registered: Nov 2010
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posted
Leone clearly writes the Vandal period was from 429 - 534 CE as the title of the second chapter of her book makes plain though you choose to overlook, ignore, or refuse to accept she does not advocate any 400 year Vandal anything.
A lie is when one knowingly states that which is neither true nor factual. Twisting facts to suit oneself can be accomplished by deliberately omitting damning evidence from a so-called quote.
As I explained twice already your Leone "quote" on the time period 300 - 700 CE applies to the succession of Roman, Vandal, Byzantine, and Arab rule over the North African Tell and the Catholic, Arian, and Muslim religions.
You know full well Leone does not say the entire time spread of 300-700CE was one of Vandal rule, hegemony, or influence over the North African Tell. To prove it I will reference Leone in context and underline the important sentences you cut out and put your tiny disjointed snippets in italics.
quote: Pottery I have been working for a long time and published several articles on Roman pottery in Rome, Italy and North Africa. I have a good knowledge of all the classes of pottery that circulated in the Mediterranean from the Republican period to the 7th/8th century AD and beyond. I am interested in all the aspects related to the pottery studies (economy, trade, consumption, problems of chronologies etc.). I have however experience on the study oof a number of artefacts, including glass, marble decoratioons.
You purposely hid the the underlined portions, not even using ellipses to indicate what you cut out.
You tried to use Leone to contradict my statement
quote: Well it is certainly a fantasy that Vandals "ruled North Africa and Spain for 400 years." What good are points of view which are false?
by twisting Leone pretending not to comprehend her.
On top of that, once shown Vandal rule extended only ~104 years, you depart from the issue, and start dissembling about me insinuating Leone is a liar, the beginning of your face saving tactics, rather than admit my statement is sound, valid, and factual.
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: Leone clearly writes the Vandal period was from 429 - 534 CE as the title of the second chapter of her book makes plain though you choose to overlook, ignore, or refuse to accept she does not advocate any 400 year Vandal anything.
A lie is when one knowingly states that which is neither true nor factual. Twisting facts to suit oneself can be accomplished by deliberately omitting damning evidence from a so-called quote.
As I explained twice already your Leone "quote" on the time period 300 - 700 CE applies to the succession of Roman, Vandal, Byzantine, and Arab rule over the North African Tell and the Catholic, Arian, and Muslim religions.
You know full well Leone does not say the entire time spread of 300-700CE was one of Vandal rule, hegemony, or influence over the North African Tell. To prove it I will reference Leone in context and underline the important sentences you cut out and put your tiny disjointed snippets in italics.
quote: Pottery I have been working for a long time and published several articles on Roman pottery in Rome, Italy and North Africa. I have a good knowledge of all the classes of pottery that circulated in the Mediterranean from the Republican period to the 7th/8th century AD and beyond. I am interested in all the aspects related to the pottery studies (economy, trade, consumption, problems of chronologies etc.). I have however experience on the study oof a number of artefacts, including glass, marble decoratioons.
You purposely hid the the underlined portions, not even using ellipses to indicate what you cut out.
You tried to use Leone to contradict my statement
quote: Well it is certainly a fantasy that Vandals "ruled North Africa and Spain for 400 years." What good are points of view which are false?
by twisting Leone pretending not to comprehend her.
On top of that, once shown Vandal rule extended only ~104 years, you depart from the issue, and start dissembling about me insinuating Leone is a liar, the beginning of your face saving tactics, rather than admit my statement is sound, valid, and factual.
Lets try it again.lol
Where did I say the Vandals ruled 400 years?
Did I not ask you to look at my posts prior to this one?
What did you read:.....?
Anyway,
Quote:
"The period in question from AD 300 to AD 700, spans more that political transitions: it sees the adoption of Christianity"
" the Vandal rule and the adoption of Arianism and the Arab/Muslim imposition."
When did Arabs enter? How were they, the Vandals able to adopt?
Posts: 22244 | From: האם אינכם כילדי הכרית אלי בני ישראל | Registered: Nov 2010
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I'm interested in correcting the erroneous notion in the parent post that Vandals ruled 400 years which I successfully did thus negating your idea that "Diversity and different point of views is a healthy process." when such viewpoints are falsehoods. Anything else, like imagining some undisclosed "theory" from two out of context sentences by Leone is irrelevant and immaterial and is questionable why even given in reply to me.
Your dissembling left field questioning is just troll bait non-sequitur material that I'm not falling for.
Quit your game playing it's not advancing the knowledge.
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Troll Patrol: Dr Anna Leone, PhD, Durham University.
Senior Lecturer in the Department of Archaeology
-Member of the Centre for the Study of the Ancient -Mediterranean and the Near East -Member of the Durham Centre for Roman Culture -Member of the Institute of Medieval and Renaissance
"I have been working for a long time and published several articles on Roman pottery in Rome, Italy and North Africa. I have a good knowledge of all the classes of pottery that circulated in the Mediterranean from the Republican period to the 7th/8th century AD and beyond
The period in question from AD 300 to AD 700, spans more that political transitions: it sees the adoption of Christianity (during the Las Imperial period and the Byzantine times), the Vandal rule and the adoption of Arianism and the Arab/Muslim imposition."
in repsonse to this?
quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: Well it is certainly a fantasy that Vandals "ruled North Africa and Spain for 400 years." What good are points of view which are false?
Did you do it to confirm or disconfirm? Just why did you post it tacked onto my post?
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: You're playing games.
I'm interested in correcting the erroneous notion in the parent post that Vandals ruled 400 years which I successfully did thus negating your idea that "Diversity and different point of views is a healthy process." when such viewpoints are falsehoods. Anything else, like imagining some undisclosed "theory" from two out of context sentences by Leone is irrelevant and immaterial and is questionable why even given in reply to me.
Your dissembling left field questioning is just troll bait non-sequitur material that I'm not falling for.
Quit your game playing it's not advancing the knowledge.
Diop said they ruled Africa and Spain--not just Africa.
This does not dispute the evidence of Berber languages being influenced by Germanic. Since the Vandels spoke a Germanic language they greatly influenced the Berbers.
posted
Then why is there no evidence from prehistoric times of a single Berber settlement outside Africa?
Posts: 318 | Registered: Dec 2004
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quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: You're playing games.
I'm interested in correcting the erroneous notion in the parent post that Vandals ruled 400 years which I successfully did thus negating your idea that "Diversity and different point of views is a healthy process." when such viewpoints are falsehoods. Anything else, like imagining some undisclosed "theory" from two out of context sentences by Leone is irrelevant and immaterial and is questionable why even given in reply to me.
Your dissembling left field questioning is just troll bait non-sequitur material that I'm not falling for.
Quit your game playing it's not advancing the knowledge.
Once again, can you show me where I stated that the Vadals ruled 400 years? I am waiting for this?
Next,
"The period in question from AD 300 to AD 700, spans more that political transitions: it sees the adoption of Christianity"
" the Vandal rule and the adoption of Arianism and the Arab/Muslim imposition."
When did Arabs enter North Africa? How were they, the Vandals able to adopt?
Can you anwer this question, please?
Posts: 22244 | From: האם אינכם כילדי הכרית אלי בני ישראל | Registered: Nov 2010
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quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: You're playing games.
I'm interested in correcting the erroneous notion in the parent post that Vandals ruled 400 years which I successfully did thus negating your idea that "Diversity and different point of views is a healthy process." when such viewpoints are falsehoods. Anything else, like imagining some undisclosed "theory" from two out of context sentences by Leone is irrelevant and immaterial and is questionable why even given in reply to me.
Your dissembling left field questioning is just troll bait non-sequitur material that I'm not falling for.
Quit your game playing it's not advancing the knowledge.
Diop said they ruled Africa and Spain--not just Africa.
This does not dispute the evidence of Berber languages being influenced by Germanic. Since the Vandels spoke a Germanic language they greatly influenced the Berbers.
.
Yes, I agree they entered North Africa via Spain.
Posts: 22244 | From: האם אינכם כילדי הכרית אלי בני ישראל | Registered: Nov 2010
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quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: OK then let's try it again, lol!
Why did you post this
quote:Originally posted by Troll Patrol: Dr Anna Leone, PhD, Durham University.
Senior Lecturer in the Department of Archaeology
-Member of the Centre for the Study of the Ancient -Mediterranean and the Near East -Member of the Durham Centre for Roman Culture -Member of the Institute of Medieval and Renaissance
"I have been working for a long time and published several articles on Roman pottery in Rome, Italy and North Africa. I have a good knowledge of all the classes of pottery that circulated in the Mediterranean from the Republican period to the 7th/8th century AD and beyond
The period in question from AD 300 to AD 700, spans more that political transitions: it sees the adoption of Christianity (during the Las Imperial period and the Byzantine times), the Vandal rule and the adoption of Arianism and the Arab/Muslim imposition."
in repsonse to this?
quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: Well it is certainly a fantasy that Vandals "ruled North Africa and Spain for 400 years." What good are points of view which are false?
Did you do it to confirm or disconfirm? Just why did you post it tacked onto my post?
I posted it, because the notion is that they were killed off, had no offspring etc...or some how died out. While DNA in North Africa shows the opposite in autosomals.
They had offspring and they did mix in with the native population and did influence the native population, be it linguistically or traditionally.
This is why I quoted that part. It shows their presence, long after a time when they once ruled.
Posts: 22244 | From: האם אינכם כילדי הכרית אלי בני ישראל | Registered: Nov 2010
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posted
Despite this thread's title, Berber languages are not of European origin because Berber languages are spoken nowhere in Europe. This is not to say Berber does not have any infusions from pre-modern European languages which of course they may.
Any Germanic infusions would only affect the lects spoken in the Rif, the Tell, and possibly Nefusa but not the plateau, the rest of the vast Atlas, the swath of the Sahara, nor the Siwa Oasis.
Diop says nothing about Vandals ruling Africa and Spain.
Cook's translation of Diop says
quote: ... German tribes in the 5th century overran North Africa via Spain and established an empire that they ruled for 400 years. (33)
(33) Cf. Hardy, Histoire d'Afrique, pp. 28-29.
Perusing Hardy will help determine if the 400 year rule error is Diop's/Cook's or Hardy's. It is an error as no historians give anything but a 428/9 start date and a 534/5 finish date for North African Vandal rule.
To disconfirm an ~104 year span of Vandal rule please cite at least three historians as I did with the Ghanian deGraft- Johnson, the Algerian Salama, and the Euros Brett&Fentress.
Leone says nothing about 300 years of Vandal influence after their 100 year rule. It's not my fault if someone fails to see that after having explained it three times already. And I invite disconfirmation by citing Leone giving examples of any Vandal influence in Byzantine ruled NA (534-698 and earliest Arab dominated NA (647-835).
The portion of Vandals remaining in Africa who did not become shipped off Byzantines conscripts lost all their own identity becoming absorbed into the Maur populations.
If not then please produce primary documents from 600-835 mentioning Vandals. While you're at it try to rustle up some documentation for Vandals in Africa between 300 and 400.
Succeed in those tasks and maybe someone other than you will believe in Vandal influence in Africa between 300 and 700 other than the well known era of their rise, fall and immediate aftermath of no more than a few decades.
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Trollkillah # Ish Gebor:
quote:Originally posted by melchior7:
quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters: Anthropologist and linguist continue to perpetuate the myth that the Berbers are remnants of the alleged paleo-whites who have always been in Africa, But the contemporary Berbers are not remnants of a paleo-white population, their ancestors was the Vandals. .
But where is the evidence of Vandal Y-dna in Berbers and survivals of germanic language or customs? From I understand some Vandals did settle in Tunisia and Western Algeria and may have mixed to some extent with the Kabyle tribes. But how do you explain the Eurasian phenotype of other Berber groups like the Riffians from Northen Morocco?
quote:
The general analysis (based on historical sources, epigraphy and archaeological evidence) focuses on transitions in town and country and economy from Roman to Vandal and to Byzantine rule and observing patterns and facets of continuity and change.
Background: The most recent Alu insertions reveal different series of characteristics such as stability that make them particularly suitable genetic markers for human biological studies.
Subjects and methods: Forty-seven Berbers from Sejnane and 33 from Takrouna were sampled. Alu insertion polymorphism was analysed using PCR with loci specific primers.
Results: A similar level of gene diversity was detected in Sejnane and Takrouna populations. PC results revealed genetic affinities between these two populations and some Eurasian populations ( Germany, Genova and Syria). In contrast, there is a differentiation between these two Berber communities and North African and Iberian populations.
Conclusion: The results of this study confirm the heterogeneity of Berbers in North Africa, which suggests their diverse origins. In the case of Sejnane and Takrouna populations, these results are in line with an ancient Euro Mediterranean background that has already been studied by archaeologists, particularly for the population of Sejnane.
Assessing human genetic diversity in Tunisian Berber populations by Alu insertion polymorphisms
S. Frigi, H. Ennafaa, M. Ben Amor, L. Cherni and A. Ben Ammar-Elgaaied
quote: The period in question from AD 300 to AD 700, spans more that political transitions: it sees the adoption of Christianity (during the Las Imperial period and the Byzantine times), the Vandal rule and the adoption of Arianism and the Arab/Muslim imposition. It is also a period of archaeological and material transition: towns and economic system change, public structures (but not churches) decay. I have analysed how classical towns changed through centuries, how building were reused and progressively transformed.
quote: The existing linguistic evidence. There is no record left of a text in the Vandalic language long enough to contain agroup of phrases forming at least one complete sentence. The unfortunatecircumstance that no written text in Vandalic has survived (if this language was everactually written down) has certainly not helped draw the attention and interest of scholars over the years toward the language of the Vandals. And, above all, it hassurely prevented our acquisition of sufficient knowledge of this language, whichhowever must have belonged, like Gothic, to the East Germanic group.As is also the case with the language spoken by the Lombards, the limitedexamples of existing Vandalic mostly consist of scattered, isolated words andpersonal names. In a sense, the extant records of the Vandal language are even less,and less important, than those of the Lombard language, since no legal terms are left,no corpus of Vandal laws remain, and no hints of Vandal juridical institutions ortraditions seem to exist. What we have instead are a few religious expressions, veryfew single words mentioned in Latin or Greek texts, and one hundred and fortypersonal names. Owing to the religious debate that took place in North Africa duringthe fifth and sixth centuries between Catholics and the Arian Church of the Vandals, it is not surprising that some of the Vandalic terms we can find in late antique sourcesare related to religious life and Christian liturgy.So the only complete sentence that has been handed down to us is a two-wordreligious formula, the acclamation “Domine Miserere” (in Greek Κύριε ελέησον, inEnglish “Lord have mercy”), which was rendered as froia arme in Vandalic. We knowabout this from an anti-Arian tract, written in form of a debate, usually referred to as Collatio beati Augustini cum Pascentio ariano, dating back to the first half of the fifthcentury (approximately between 430 and 450 AD). It is supposed to have beencomposed at Hippo Regius, and was attributed to Vigilius of Thapsus, but actually its author is unknown.
quote: The Vandals spoke a language closely related to Gothic, with a few characteristics of its own. Gothic is well known through the translation of the Bible made by Wulfila in the 4th century. Like Gothic, the Vandal language belonged to the East Germanic group. It had conservative features, due to the early date of the evidence: the 5th and 6th centuries. There is no full record left of this language, since no written text in Vandalic has survived; but we know a religious expression and very few single words mentioned in Latin or Greek texts of the time; most information comes from 140 personal names. Almost all linguistic evidence comes from the Vandal kingdom of North Africa. In such a peripheral position, far from its sister languages of the Germanic family, Vandalic preserved archaisms on the one hand and underwent an early process of Romanisation on the other.
Like Gothic, the language disappeared soon, and was lost about the time of the Byzantine conquest (534). It had begun to fall into disuse in certain sectors of African society as early as the second half of the 5th century. A bilingual period is however to be assumed for the descendants of the Vandals, who could also speak Latin, especially in big towns such as Carthage. From the analysis of personal names we can deduce the existence of multilingual realities in North Africa. In churches, bilingual liturgies had to be adopted for Romans and Vandals, and that is how we know about a Vandal liturgical formula.
The only complete sentence handed down to us is a two-word religious formula, the acclamation “Domine Miserere” which was rendered as froia arme in Vandalic (cp. Gothic frauja ‘lord’). The Vand. formula froia arme ‘Lord have mercy’ appears in a Latin text as . froia . arme . quod interpraetatur “Domine miserere” and is preserved in a 6th-century rr manuscript now in Turin (Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria, MS G.V. 26, fol. 15 -27 ), and recently studied by Tiefenbach [fig. 1].
Five more Vandalic words are mentioned in the Epigram No. 285 of Anthologia Latina (a 6th-century collection of Latin poems put together in Carthage), entitled “De Conviviis Barbaris”, which says: Inter ‘eils’ gothicum ‘scapia matzia ia drincan’ / non audet quisquam dignos educere versus. They are usually understood as ‘hail!’ (eils), ‘to shape’ or ‘create’ (scapia), ‘to eat and drink’ (matzia ia drincan), and the verse apparently alludes to barbarian feasting. To African contemporaries gothicum ‘Gothic’ could be just another name for ‘Vandal’, as they believed them to be the same language; but there were some differences. Both the Vandalic froia arme and the Epigram were well known to Wrede, the scholar who in 1886 collected all surviving traces of the Vandal language.
But since then new linguistic materials have emerged from the inscriptions of North Africa, consisting of ninety more Vandalic personal names recorded on coins, tombstones and other archaeological finds. Among these the following examples occur: Arifridos from a mosaic in Thuburbo Maius (Arifridos in [pace] vixit annos [...] depositvs di[e...] idvs novem[br..] [fig. 2]), Beremud and Beremuda from Carthage, Fridila on an inscription from ancient Caesarea, Guiliaruna on a 5th-century burial mosaic from Hippo Regius (Gvi+liarvna presbiterissa qviebit in pace), Guitifrida was another woman, like Munifrida from Carthage, Scarila a man who lived in the early 6th century, Sindivult from an inscription of Tipasa, Valilu fidelis was a woman from Hippo Regius, and Vilimut from a Carthage inscription.
Just like Gothic names, also the Vandal show both double-stem compounded forms (ex. Ari-fridos ‘army’+’peace’, Guilia-runa ‘will’+’secret’, Vili-mut ‘will’+‘courage’) and one- stem diminutives (like Valilu ‘the little chosen one’, Scarila ‘little armed band’). The latter show the typical East-Germanic suffix -ila (masc.) and -ilo (fem.). The characteristic East Germanic features appearing in Vandalic are as follows: lack of Umlaut. The original Proto- Germanic long vowel *ē is normally preserved, as in the Vand. names Gunthimer, Geilimer. Short *e gives Vand. i (ex. Gibamundus, Stilico; the Roman general Stilico was of Vandal origin). Proto-Germanic *z is always preserved: ex. Gaisericus (in Greek letters also Gezérichos), Geisirith, from *gaiza- ‘spear-point’. All such features, typical of East- Germanic, are also common to Gothic.
In a few cases the original -s ending of nominative masc. singular is preserved, as in vand. eils, and in the kings’ names Hunirix, Hildirix rex and Thrasamunds (on coins); this is clearly a rather conservative feature. Some of the names often have Romanized endings, like Thrasamundus, Gunthamundus, Gibamundus.
The main Vandalic linguistic characteristics which identify the language within the East- Germanic group are the following: the original diphthong *ai can be preserved as ai, then it tends in time to change into ei. For ex. the form Gaisericus (king 428-477) is regularly found in a 5th-century chronicle, but in other historical sources the usual form is Geisericus. Later on, we find the simplified spelling regis Gesiric on a 6th-century African inscription. Also the name of King Gelimer (530-534), son of Geilarith, is officially Geilamir, Geilimer on coins and inscriptions like the one engraved on his silver plate [fig. 3]; then we also find the spelling Gelimer in Procopius.
The adaptation of Vandalic forms to the Latin linguistic environment began rather early in the 5th century. We find for example the typical loss of h-, as in Arifridos, Ariarith, Gunt-ari (from Proto-Germ. *harja- ‘army’). A special kind of Romanisation is the emergence of mixed names, formed with Vandalic elements or suffixes, combined with Latin elements. This process began rather early, and it goes together with the quick Romanisation of Vandalic material culture as shown from archaeology. Hybrid names were formed with Latin and Vand. elements, like Iulia-teus; multiple names of heterogeneous origin are recorded in North Africa, like Flavius Vitalis Vitarit which combines the typical Vandalic name Vitarit with Lat. Vitalis, one of the most frequent names of Roman Africa. Outlining the linguistic forms of Vandalic is still a difficult task, unless new records in this language emerge from archives or from ongoing archaeological excavations.
Further Reference 1- 2- 3- F. Wrede, Über die Sprache der Wandalen, Strassburg 1886. H. Tiefenbach, “Das wandalische Domine miserere”, Historische Sprachforschung / Historical Linguistics 104, 2 (1991), 251-268. N. Francovich Onesti, I Vandali. Lingua e storia, Roma 2002.
--Nicoletta FRANCOVICH Onesti THE LANGUAGE AND NAMES OF THE VANDALS
There is no record left of a text in the Vandalic language long enough to contain a group of phrases forming at least one complete sentence.
Nicoletta FRANCOVICH Onesti THE LANGUAGE AND NAMES OF THE VANDALS
this means you are grossly lacking in evidence to support Vandal language being similar to berber language
Posts: 42951 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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There is no record left of a text in the Vandalic language long enough to contain a group of phrases forming at least one complete sentence.
Nicoletta FRANCOVICH Onesti THE LANGUAGE AND NAMES OF THE VANDALS
this means you are grossly lacking in evidence to support Vandal language being similar to berber language
Granted this is not enough to realize grammatical features, but you might still be able to compare words.
.
It's not enough to declare berber languages are of European origin
and where is a single example of one of these very few known Vandal words being related to a berber word?
Posts: 42951 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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posted
Clyde you say the berbers are European yet at the same time you say there are no haplogroups that are European. Therefore if somebody said berbers have 100% African DNA you would agree, correct?
Posts: 42951 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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Northern European populations, relate closely to Germanic people. Depending on the part of the region.
Thus German, Dutch ... etc. So this does make sense.
Folks like the Vadals are related to Germanic, Nordic Europeans. They invaded Northwest Africa.
quote:Now the Vandals, dwelling about the Maeotic Lake [the Sea of Azov], since they were pressed by hunger, moved to the country of the Germans, who are now called Franks, and the river Rhine, associating with themselves the Alans, a Gothic people [Arkenberg: actually, they were one of the Indo-Iranian peoples].
Ancient History Sourcebook: Procopius of Caesarea: Gaiseric & The Vandal Conquest of North Africa, 406 - 477 CE
The general analysis (based on historical sources, epigraphy and archaeological evidence) focuses on transitions in town and country and economy from Roman to Vandal and to Byzantine rule and observing patterns and facets of continuity and change.
Background: The most recent Alu insertions reveal different series of characteristics such as stability that make them particularly suitable genetic markers for human biological studies.
Subjects and methods: Forty-seven Berbers from Sejnane and 33 from Takrouna were sampled. Alu insertion polymorphism was analysed using PCR with loci specific primers.
Results: A similar level of gene diversity was detected in Sejnane and Takrouna populations. PC results revealed genetic affinities between these two populations and some Eurasian populations ( Germany, Genova and Syria). In contrast, there is a differentiation between these two Berber communities and North African and Iberian populations.
Conclusion: The results of this study confirm the heterogeneity of Berbers in North Africa, which suggests their diverse origins. In the case of Sejnane and Takrouna populations, these results are in line with an ancient Euro Mediterranean background that has already been studied by archaeologists, particularly for the population of Sejnane.
Assessing human genetic diversity in Tunisian Berber populations by Alu insertion polymorphisms
--S. Frigi, H. Ennafaa, M. Ben Amor, L. Cherni and A. Ben Ammar-Elgaaied
posted
I think possibly the Goths/Vandals were originally (proto-persian) from Gath, Canaan, pushed north by boar-totem-taboo herding Hebrews (Joshua), and later returned to Morocco as Europeans.
Northern European populations, relate closely to Germanic people. Depending on the part of the region.
Thus German, Dutch ... etc. So this does make sense.
Folks like the Vadals are related to Germanic, Nordic Europeans. They invaded Northwest Africa.
quote:Now the Vandals, dwelling about the Maeotic Lake [the Sea of Azov], since they were pressed by hunger, moved to the country of the Germans, who are now called Franks, and the river Rhine, associating with themselves the Alans, a Gothic people [Arkenberg: actually, they were one of the Indo-Iranian peoples].
Ancient History Sourcebook: Procopius of Caesarea: Gaiseric & The Vandal Conquest of North Africa, 406 - 477 CE
The general analysis (based on historical sources, epigraphy and archaeological evidence) focuses on transitions in town and country and economy from Roman to Vandal and to Byzantine rule and observing patterns and facets of continuity and change.
Background: The most recent Alu insertions reveal different series of characteristics such as stability that make them particularly suitable genetic markers for human biological studies.
Subjects and methods: Forty-seven Berbers from Sejnane and 33 from Takrouna were sampled. Alu insertion polymorphism was analysed using PCR with loci specific primers.
Results: A similar level of gene diversity was detected in Sejnane and Takrouna populations. PC results revealed genetic affinities between these two populations and some Eurasian populations ( Germany, Genova and Syria). In contrast, there is a differentiation between these two Berber communities and North African and Iberian populations.
Conclusion: The results of this study confirm the heterogeneity of Berbers in North Africa, which suggests their diverse origins. In the case of Sejnane and Takrouna populations, these results are in line with an ancient Euro Mediterranean background that has already been studied by archaeologists, particularly for the population of Sejnane.
Assessing human genetic diversity in Tunisian Berber populations by Alu insertion polymorphisms
--S. Frigi, H. Ennafaa, M. Ben Amor, L. Cherni and A. Ben Ammar-Elgaaied
quote:Originally posted by DD'eDeN: I think possibly the Goths/Vandals were originally (proto-persian) from Gath, Canaan, pushed north by boar-totem-taboo herding Hebrews (Joshua), and later returned to Morocco as Europeans.
They did originate in Central Asia eventually. Or as some white supremacist refer to them, as Aryan people. So technically Persians are proto to them, not the other way around.
But the consensus says Nordic people. Germans are eventually a Nordic people. Vandals hailed from Germany.
quote: By ~6,000–5,000 years ago, farmers throughout much of Europe had more hunter-gatherer ancestry than their predecessors, but in Russia, the Yamnaya steppe herders of this time were descended not only from the preceding eastern European hunter-gatherers, but also from a population of Near Eastern ancestry. Western and Eastern Europe came into contact ~4,500 years ago, as the Late Neolithic Corded Ware people from Germany traced ~75% of their ancestry to the Yamnaya, documenting a massive migration into the heartland of Europe from its eastern periphery. This steppe ancestry persisted in all sampled central Europeans until at least ~3,000 years ago, and is ubiquitous in present-day Europeans. These results provide support for a steppe origin9 of at least some of the Indo-European languages of Europe.
--Wolfgang Haak et al.
Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe
My interest on this aspect started with my PhD, that I have now published. The principal aim of this book is to examine the complex sequence of transition in the selected provinces of Zeugitana, Byzacena and Tripolitana of late Roman North Africa.
The general analysis (based on historical sources, epigraphy and archaeological evidence) focuses on transitions in town and country and economy from Roman to Vandal and to Byzantine rule and observing patterns and facets of continuity and change.
The period in question from AD 300 to AD 700, spans more that political transitions: it sees the adoption of Christianity (during the Las Imperial period and the Byzantine times), the Vandal rule and the adoption of Arianism and the Arab/Muslim imposition.
It is also a period of archaeological and material transition: towns and economic system change, public structures (but not churches) decay. I have analysed how classical towns changed through centuries, how building were reused and progressively transformed.
I am currently working on the publication of the excavation of the Roman and Byzantine shops along the colonnaded street in Jarash, carried out in the '80s by an Italian team.
quote:Originally posted by Ish Gebor: LOL THE ABOVE IS SO DUMB, I DON'T KNOW WHERE TO BEGIN.
I never stated No invasion ever occurred in North Africa.
.
.
quote:Originally posted by Ish Gebor:
Folks like the Vadals are related to Germanic, Nordic Europeans. They invaded Northwest Africa.
LOL
Indeed, lol you racist dumbass.
quote: "• 27 B.C.–14 A.D.The principate of Augustus is established. Rome is transformed into a city of marble. The Roman frontiers are expanded and semiconquered territories reinforced. Augustus reconciles with Parthia (22–19 B.C.), and his campaign against Garamantes in Africa is successful (19 B.C.). Many social and religious reforms are enacted. Gaul and its frontiers are organized (15–13 B.C.). The imperial mint at Lugdunum is founded (15–14 B.C.)."
quote: "The findings challenge a view dating back to Roman accounts that the Garamantes consisted of barbaric nomads and troublemakers on the edge of the Roman Empire.'
quote:"In the Sahara, population agglomeration is also evident in certain areas such as the Libyan Fezzan, which (albeit much later) also saw the emergence of an indigenous Saharan “civilization” in the form of the Garamantian Tribal Confederaion, the development of which has been described explicitly in terms of adaptation to increased aridity (Brooks, 2006; di Lernia et al., 2002; Mattingly et al., 2003)."
--Nick Brooks (2013): Beyond collapse: climate change and causality during the Middle Holocene Climatic Transition, 6400–5000 years before present, Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography, 112:2, 93-104
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