Thank you everyone for your time, my inquiry relates to whether the Bantu languages possess any mutually intelligible words, and whether those words have any gentilic value.
The purpose of my search lies within the goal of writing an entity that revolves around a Pan-African organization, one which lies separate of the Arab League, thus I resolved towards seeking a word that could properly aid in the description of this union outside of the romance and antipodean demonyms the western world has doted.
I'm really thankful for any responses I can receive; African languages are a personal fascination of mine and I seek any resources that can aid me towards learning more about them.
Any speakers of Shona or other local languages who are interested?
I'm just a layman, so forgive me if this question is so stupid it makes your blood boil. If you look at English, it looks like the odd one out with respect to other Germanic languages. It has comparatively simple grammar (no gendered nouns, SVO, almost complete absence of cases, relatively little inflection) while having a vocabulary that's all over the place and very open to borrowing from other languages. Could it be that modern English was born out of a Proto-Germanic creole?
NOTE: This is an extension of a question that I've posted in Quora last year.
DETAILS:
>In his personal page (now through Internet Archive; the original link that I've posted as link in my Quora question had long gone), linguist Andrew Hsiu hypothesized that proto-Hmong-Mien (and by extension, proto-Tai-Kadai) was a creole language formed in northern Hunan (in case of proto-Tai-Kadai, Pearl River Delta) involving "Old Middle Yangtze" substrate, Austroasiatic, a missing Sino-Tibetan branch called "Donor Hmong-Mien" and Old Chinese (in the case of proto-Tai-Kadai: pre-Austronesian, "Old Middle Yangtze" substrate, Austroasiatic and Old Chinese). In fact, it seems that in another post, he also compared both proto-Hmong-Mien and proto-Austroasiatic (the hyphenated link is also archived). What's your personal thoughts on such hypothesis. By the way, here's the updated version of Andrew Hsiu's personal site. Thanks!
So I am working to improve Toltheng, and I am starting with a retry on the protolang. when making the original toltheng, I would just end up realizing i need a certain feature way later on and have to make something vastly different from the protolang.(because it was supposed to be there from the beggining). so i am going to make a fuller protolang first, then evolve it more carefully. This is where I am starting:
>SOV language
>nouns are often single root, but can have two roots combined for precision (water-container>bucket). they can additionally have a prefix such as "fear of" and a marker at the end for gender. (a maximum length "word" would be something like "FEAR OF+BONES+PERSON+FEMALE" for the fear of female skeletons.).
>verbs are prefixes attached to the very back of an Object. they are generally two roots such as "jump over" being "Go PAST"+"JUMP"
>adjectives are a thing now, Wich they weren't in toltheng. they are one root, but more adjectives can be added to the back of a word infinitely. they go before the noun but after the verb.
>particles are used to determine key things in the sentence, and go between the Verb and the Subject. for example, "Cat IS Naughty" vs. "Cat ISN'T Naughty". they are also what is used to show past or future tense.
>I am still working out the kinks in phonology, but here is my rough draft:
edit: added /k, g/ and rounded Ι°!
| labial | alveolar | palatal | velar | uvular | glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plosive | p b | t d | c Ι | k g | q Ι’ | Κ |
| nasal | m | n | Ι² | |||
| fricative | f v | s z | x Ι£ | Ο | h | |
| approximate | ΙΉ | j | Ι£Μ (rounded Ι°) | |||
| lateral approximate | l | Κ |
| front | central | back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| high | i | u | |
| high-mid | e | o | |
| low-mid | Ι | Ι | |
| low | a | Ι |
I have several questions:
- Am I Being Dumb and is there another, much easier and more naturalistic way to do this?
- I am striving for at least 1,000/5,000word roots, how would I disperse them between noun roots, particles, adjectives, verb roots, noun modifiers, gender markers, etc?
- any advice on what to expand on such as asking questions, making demands vs. requests, or other grammatical pieces?
- any advice on phonology?
Anatolian is usually described as the "first to branch off" from Proto-Indo-European, but what that really amounts to is that Proto-Indo-European split into two branches: one which would became Proto-Anatolian, and one which would became Proto-Non-Anatolian (the ancestor of English, Russian, Tocharian, etc.).
But what actual differences are there between PIE and Proto-Non-Anatolian ('PNA')? One that I've heard is the development of the feminine gender. But what about sound changes? Surely over the centuries between PIE and PNA there must have been various sound changes?
e.g. are there some distinctions that existed in PIE, but were lost in PNA? Or maybe a consonant split?
As far as I have understood the Bantu languages have split relatively recently around 3000 to 2000 years ago. How easily can you understand other Bantu languages and is there a difference between written to spoken language?
Can anyone provide any (preferrably non-paywalled) resources on the most up-to-date material on Proto-Bantu? I cannot seem to find anything decently comprehensive on it β the reconstructed lexicon is few and far apart, and grammatical reconstructions even scantier. Thanks in advance!
I had always assumed there was some documented Cushitic languages spoken in the Kingdom of Kush but going through the wikipedia page on the kingdom and looking around the internet a bit I can't find a name of a documented cushitic language from the kingdom of Kush. Meroitic doesn't seem to have enough evidence to make any convincing classification within known language families. And the Nubian languages seem firmly within the East Sudanic language family.
So what happened here? Did the name in the bible come from the historically attested kingdom and get assigned to a group of languages?
Also, either much is not publicly accessible or much is not known about proto-Cushitic. I can't seem to find anywhere that states what the first attested Cushitic language is. And I know this might be going too far for a linguistics subreddit but does anyone here happen to know some solid linguistic-genetic-archeological connections between pastoral expansions in Africa and the Cushitic languages? It seems all the Cushitic groups are pastoralists.
Lastly, if any of the above has already been asked here please point me to the posts.
Thank you!
When I learn a language, I like to not only speak and study individual pieces of grammar but try to get some basic intuition for how the language works on a higher level.
Eg as an English speaker learning Spanish, if your mindset is to constantly convert English to Spanish in your head, you will progress slower and your Spanish will be unidiomatic. To truly understand how Spanish works, it's critical to realize that, compared to English, in Spanish there is a much stronger reliance on verbs being conjugated to contain information that has to be communicated through other means in English. There's also word classes (el and la) which verbs and adjectives have to agree with.
Reading about Bantu languages, there's a lot of talk about how they have lots of word classes, eg Shona having 21 mupanda. But do eg verbs and adjectives have to be conjugated to agree with the mupanda? Eg in Spanish el chico lindo vs la chica linda
Or are the mupanda literally just categories of things that don't really affect the rest of the sentence eg in German der schΓΆne Mann vs die schΓΆne Frau (junge being a der word and frau being a die word not really affecting the rest of the sentence)
- Other than word classes, what are some other critical things to understand about Bantu languages in general and Shona in particular?
The example I have in mind is Sino-Tibetan, when Old Chinese hasn't even been reconstructed yet (at least, no agreed-upon reconstruction). Are there any more examples of language families whose components (genera?) have no reconstructions?
Hi guys, I've been reading a controversial book called "Black Athena" by Martin Bernal and in the introduction he says "I therefore believe that there must once have been a people who spoke Proto-Afroasiatic-Indo-European". He says that the split between Afroasiatic and Indo-European probably happened between 50-30,000 years before present, but it could've occurred earlier.
I don't known much about linguistics, but I've never heard of anyone saying that there was ever a "Proto-Afroasiatic-Indo-European" language. Was this ever a real language?
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... keep reading on reddit β‘So I'm an amateur linguist and language creator. I've been wondering if there are any reliable academic sources on the words and origins of the proto-Dravidian languages that preceded modern-day Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam (along with smaller languages such as Kurukh, Gondi, Brahui, Tulu, and Malto).
Hi guys, I've been reading a controversial book called "Black Athena" by Martin Bernal and in the introduction he says "I therefore believe that there must once have been a people who spoke Proto-Afroasiatic-Indo-European". He says that the split between Afroasiatic and Indo-European probably happened between 50-30,000 years before present, but it could've occurred earlier.
I don't known much about linguistics, but I've never heard of anyone saying that there was ever a "Proto-Afroasiatic-Indo-European" language. Was this ever a real language?
When I learn a language, I like to not only speak and study individual pieces of grammar but try to get some basic intuition for how the language works on a higher level.
Eg as an English speaker learning Spanish, if your mindset is to constantly convert English to Spanish in your head, you will progress slower and your Spanish will be unidiomatic. To truly understand how Spanish works, it's critical to realize that, compared to English, in Spanish there is a much stronger reliance on verbs being conjugated to contain information that has to be communicated through other means in English. There's also word classes (el and la) which verbs and adjectives have to agree with.
Reading about Bantu languages, there's a lot of talk about how they have lots of word classes, eg Shona having 21 mupanda. But do eg verbs and adjectives have to be conjugated to agree with the mupanda? Eg in Spanish el chico lindo vs la chica linda
Or are the mupanda literally just categories of things that don't really affect the rest of the sentence eg in German der schΓΆne Mann vs die schΓΆne Frau (junge being a der word and frau being a die word not really affecting the rest of the sentence)
- Other than word classes, what are some other critical things to understand about Bantu languages in general and Shona in particular?
