Languages of Africa
The majority of the Sinjic languages of Africa have two distinctive features: they have musical tones (the number of them can go up to nine) and a special system of classes of nouns. Musical tones help distinguish words in Chinese, and in African, and in a number of Austrian languages. About grammatical classes worth telling a little more. For example, in the Bantu languages, each noun’s name belongs to one of the classes, whose indicator is a special prefix that indicates to which class the given object, phenomenon, living entity belongs.
In Russian, there is also a division of nouns into categories: these are the three kinds – masculine, feminine, middle. In African languages, for example, in the Bantu group, the division into classes is much more fragmented. The number of classes here often reaches 20. And these classes are distinguished by a great diversity.
We will open the grammar of the Swahili language, the most widespread of all Bantu languages
Archaeologists and anthropologists say that once in North Africa two races lived side by side – Negroid and Caucasoid. Linguists unite all the languages of this part of the continent into one family, Semito-Hamitic (Afrasian). But, penetrating into the deepest depths of Afrasian languages, and in them you can find
Semito-Hamitic languages include the so-called Chadian languages: Hausa (north of Nigeria and the south of the Republic of Niger) and small languages in Nigeria, in the north of Cameroon and in the west of the Republic of Chad. The Semito-Hamitic family includes the Cushitic languages of Somalia, Ethiopia and neighboring countries.
In the Chadian and Cushitic languages there are sounds unknown in the remaining branches of the Semito-Hamitic family (among the Semites, Egyptians and Berbers), characteristic of the Zindzh languages of West Africa. Sounds these linguists call glottalized injections, or preglottled. Here’s how, for example, the glottalized injectable D. is spoken. First, the vocal cords are closed and simultaneously the tongue is pressed against the gums – the mouth is closed. Then, holding the mouth closed, they begin to push the jaws apart. In a closed cavity a low pressure is produced, the vocal cords begin to vibrate: they pronounce D. Then the tongue breaks away from the gums, and due to the lowered pressure in the mouth, a little air gets there.
Such peculiar sounds appeared in the Chadian languages, undoubtedly under the influence of Sinj.
And this influence is felt where the Caucasians speaking Afrasian languages mingled with African blacks. As a result of this confusion in the languages of the Semito-Hamitic or Afrasian family, nowadays both Caucasians and representatives of the Negroid race speak. And most clearly the influence of the Zinjian substratum is seen when the Semito-Hamitic languages of the tropical regions of Africa are compared to the Semito-Hamitic languages of Asia.
However, we will talk about the various languages of the Afrasian family, spread from the Atlantic, the “western limit” of the inhabited world of antiquity, and to the Euphrates River in the east, in the next chapter. The history of this family can be traced from written monuments up to the III millennium BC. e. Thus, for linguists it is the most ancient of the known language families. The earliest texts in the Indo-European language, the Hittite, refer to the eighteenth century BC. e. The earliest texts in Semito-Hamitic languages-Ancient Egyptian and Akkadian-are older than them by almost a millennium and a half!
The Biblical legend of the origin of the peoples of the Earth says that the whole human race leads from the three sons of the righteous Noah – Ham, Sim and Japhet. To the descendants of Sima, the ancient Jews, the creators of the Bibles, referred to themselves and the peoples who were in friendship or union with them. To the descendants of Ham – the people are hostile. And to the descendants of Japhet – neutral.
In the list of descendants of the Simovs fell many people who spoke in languages related to the Hebrew. In the 18th century, the term “Semitic languages” was introduced, meaning a group of closely related adverbs. Semitic languages include not only Hebrew and the ancient languages of present-day Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, which have now disappeared, but also Arabic, Ethiopian, Akkadian and others.
The homeland of the Ethiopian and some other Semitic languages of Ethiopia is Arabia. They got to Africa later. But when the hieroglyphs of Egypt were read, many peoples of the North coast of Africa, the Sahara, the Sudan, the Somali Peninsula, the non-Semitic peoples of Ethiopia were discovered and studied, it turned out that the languages of these inhabitants of Africa – and the very ancient inhabitants – are also related to Semitic languages, forming a large family of languages. African languages, related to Semitic, began to be called Hamitic. And the whole family is Semito-Hamitic. You remember that in the previous chapter, this family was called in a different way – Afrasian, ie, widespread in Asia and in Africa. Why are linguists not satisfied with the traditional name – Semito-Hamitic? The fact is that no special “Hamitic” languages really exist!
In the Afrasian family there is a Semitic branch, and besides it, four other independent and equal branches, whose languages are common in Africa: Egyptian, Berber, Cushitic and Chad. Four – not one Hamitic! But the mythical “Hamites” many Western researchers have sought not only in North and Central, but even in South Africa!
The “model” of such searches was, in principle, uncomplicated. Many African peoples in the anthropological type are mixed; in them there are features of two races – Negroid and Caucasoid (for example, such are Fulbe, living in the savannas of West Africa). Historians of the past believed little in the ability of African peoples to independent, without outside interference, the creation of high civilizations and mighty states. Therefore, where traces of ancient cultures were found on the territory of Africa – for example, on the banks of the Gulf of Guinea, in the Nile Valley, on the African coast of the Mediterranean, in South Africa (Cyclopean buildings of Zimbabwe) – historians and linguists tried to find the activity of the fair-skinned “Hamites” . And since the classification of the Sinj adverbs is complicated and confusing, a number of Hamitic languages were enrolled in a variety of languages,
But, as you know, you can not identify language, culture and race. The Aryan myth crashed – and, after him, the Hamitic myth. In fact: the fulcbe mentioned by us, judging by their relatively light skin, the shape of the nose and other features, retains the traces of confusion with the Europoid race. But their language is typically Sinj. And the neighbors of Fulbe, Hausa, are black Negroids, but they speak a language related to Semitic and other Afrasian. Obviously, in the extreme antiquity in Africa, complex processes took place, as a result of which an exchange took place: light-skinned Fulbe began to speak Sinj in the language, and dark-skinned Hausa – in Afrasian.
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