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Keita on Hawass and Diop
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Asar Imhotep: [QB] I appreciate it Dr. Winters. As I stated in the Bantu Is A Language thread in the Ancient Egypt forum: [QUOTE]Originally posted by Asar Imhotep: [qb] Exactly. The people making objections to a relatedness to Bantu don't study Bantu languages. Diop, Obenga and Bilolo have argued the Egyptian to be a Bantu language where major features became non-operational. I think Dr. Rkhty Amen (Linguist and Egyptologist) argues the same thing. As Robert Blench states in his paper [i]New Developments in the Classification of Bantu Languages and their Historical Implications[/i], quoting Greenberg (1963:35), “Supposedly transitional languages are really Bantu.” In other words, many languages without the features of Bantu are in fact genetically affiliated with Bantu.” Blench mentions afterwards that Greenberg’s view remained “exiguous” at the time of publication. However, through a process of reexamination he states that, [QUOTE]Within this perspective, “Bantu” can no longer be defined by topological characteristics – Bantoid languages may or may not share the features of narrow bantu, This is essentially the interpretation of GREENSBERG’s somewhat casual remark about transitional languages.[/QUOTE]The proponents against a Mdw Ntr – Bantu affiliation assume that in order for the Egyptian language to relate, it has to possess a developed noun class system. As we all know now, this is not the case. The reason you don't see a full-out noun class system, just traces, is because Egyptian was a lingua franca and by nature lingua francas do not possess full noun and verbal systems as the original languages. It is high time people reevaluate what they think they know about African languages. [QUOTE]Originally posted by Brada-Anansi: [qb] I said in the dreaded Bantu thread that language folks should review Diop's statement that the Kemites made use of Bantu prefixes,and I agree one family in one dynasty does not make all the ancient Kemites Bantu,but if words like hbny kemetian = ebony Nilo Saharan and both Bantus and Nilo Saharan shared the same location on the Great Lakes I don't know why people remains overly skeptical. [/qb][/QUOTE][/qb][/QUOTE]We have to understand that languages that become a pigeon or lingua franca loses many of its features. The Kongo-Saharan noun class system is still detectible in Egyptian, but it is severely reduced and not as productive as a modern Bantu language. But as noted by Blench, a Bantu/Bantoid language doesn't need all of the features to be considered a Bantu language. Even Diop considered, in many respects, Wolof to be Bantu. Obenga was/is on the right track in calling for a reevaluation of the Egyptian language and how we categorize African language families. We should keep this in mind, however, that there are some pigeon/lingua francas in Africa that maintain full noun-class features. That is because the communities are still surrounded by Bantu speaking people. This wouldn't be the case in Ancient Egypt. So just like Sumerian, it would reduce this feature severely in order to communicate with all of the different language groups. Another clue that this was a lingua franca is that there isn't that many words in the Egyptian language. James P. Allen in his book The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (2005: 13) reaffirms this notion when he states that, “Egyptian [the language] is rich in allegory and metaphor, but relatively poor in vocabulary.” If you check out my article on Htp (Hotep) you will see that Egyptian has dozens of variations of the same words in its lexicon. For me this is evidence of many language groups in the area and dialectical variations. http://www.asarimhotep.com/documentdownloads/reevaluationOfHotep.pdf [/QB][/QUOTE]
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