Hamitic languages
The term Hamitic languages was previously used in linguistics ( African studies ) for the non-Semitic languages of the Afro - Asian language family , previously called Hamito-Semitic , as well as for some other languages of African peoples, which were not viewed as completely "Black African" and thus as higher civilizationally . The term is now considered outdated and ideologically burdened.
The designation of language and ethnic families with names from the biblical table of peoples was typical of the western thinking of the 19th century, which was dominated by ideas of hegemony (see also Hamit theory , Japhetite theory , Semites ). The strong interweaving of “science” and colonial politics meant that wish and reality were not always carefully separated in the early phase of theory formation in African studies.
The individual branches of Hamitic - Egyptian , Berber , Chadian , Cushitic - are now considered independent primary branches of Afro-Asian (in addition there is the Omotic , which was previously classified as "West Cushitic").
Concept history
Early definitions
With regard to languages, the term "Hamitisch" was used for the first time in 1850 by the Württemberg missionary Johann Ludwig Krapf (1810–1881) in general to all black African languages (probably excluding the Nama-Bushman languages). But even he already made a distinction between the "Nilo-Hamitic" Bantu languages and the "Nigro-Hamitic" languages of West Africa. In 1877, F. Müller added the “Nilo-Hamitic languages”, which are now called Berber and Cushitic idioms. He did not count Hausa and the languages that are related to it today as Chadian to the “Nilo-Hamitic languages”.
Hamitic languages according to Lepsius and Meinhof
The Berlin Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius took the decisive step towards the concept of the “Hamitic languages” . In 1880 he restricted it to those non-Semitic inflected languages in Africa that have a gender system. According to this redefinition, he also counted Hausa among the "Hamitic languages".
In the first half of the 20th century, the Hamburg Africanist Carl Meinhof postulated that the Bantu peoples and their language were a fusion of Hamitic (languages with a grammatical gender system) and “Negro languages” (languages without a gender system). The numerous nominal classes typical of the Bantu languages are a cognitively overdifferentiated and therefore primitive amalgamation product as a result of this development. Likewise, the " Hottentot language" (meaning Khoekhoegowab ), which also knows a grammatical gender, is a fusion of the Hamite and the mostly genuseless " Bushman " languages. Where these linguistic assertions, which can no longer be upheld from today's point of view, were unsuitable for the classification of languages, additional racial characteristics were used. The Hamitic languages, considered to be superior because of the gender system, corresponded to “the cultural role of the Hamites” in contrast to the “primitive Negroid” population. This led to the incorrect classification of the Fulfulde and the Maa as Hamitic languages, because the Fulbe and the Maasai as lighter-skinned or taller non-Negroid peoples (they were referred to as the "Hamitic contact race", which is between the European and the Negroid "great race "Formed) due to their allegedly superior" race "also had to speak languages that belong to the allegedly superior" Hamitic language family ". The concept of the Hamitian languages after Carl Meinhof led z. B. on the classification of Maa, Fulfulde and Nama, which, according to today's opinion, belong to three completely different language families (namely Nilo-Saharan languages , Niger-Congo languages and Khoisan languages ), in the group of "Hamitic languages". From today's perspective, these theories can no longer be upheld.
Westermann and Blade Raise
Diedrich Westermann , who in his earlier work wanted to work out the proto- language of the Sudan languages supported by his teacher C. Meinhof , was already convinced in the 1920s that the West Sudan languages were related to the Bantu languages. According to Westermann's research, the contrast between the Hamitic languages and the Bantu languages on the one hand and the unexceptional "Negro languages", which Meinhof calls the Sudan languages, on the other hand, can no longer be maintained. The western Sudan languages have therefore been combined with the Bantu languages to form the Niger-Congo languages since Joseph Greenberg .
The linguistic Hamite theory was also overturned by the work of August Klingenhebens in the 1930s. Blade lifting researched the Fulfulde , which Meinhof added to the Hamitic languages due to the lack of linguistic classification methods because of the “racial morphological” properties of the Fulbe. Through his comprehensive description of the sound structure and the complicated system of the prefix and suffix classes, he removed the Fulfulde from the family of the Hamitic languages and assigned it to the group of the West Atlantic languages . As a result, the lifting of the blades brought down the idea of the Hamitic race , as far as it was based on linguistic considerations.
swell
- ↑ Diedrich Hermann Westermann: The Sudansprachen: a comparative language study. 1911.
- ^ Diedrich Hermann Westermann, Hermann Baumann: The western Sudan languages and their relationships with Bantu. 1927.
- ^ August blade lifting: The language of the Ful. JJ Augustin , Hamburg 1963.
literature
- Herrmann Jungraithmayr, Wilhelm JG Möhlig (Hrsg.): Lexicon of African Studies. African languages and their exploration. Berlin 1983, ISBN 3-496-00146-1 .
- Oswin Köhler: History and Problems of the Structure of the Languages of Africa, From the Beginnings to the Present. In: H. Baumann (ed.): The peoples of Africa and their traditional cultures. Part I: General Part and Southern Africa. Wiesbaden 1975, p. 276ff.
- Johann Ludwig Krapf: Outline of the Elements of the Kisuaheli Language, with Special Reference to the Kinika Dialect. Tübingen 1850. (Reprint: Leipzig 1970)
- Johann Ludwig Krapf: Vocabulary of Six East African Languages. Tübingen 1850. (Reprint: Farnborough 1967)
- Richard Lepsius: Nubian Grammar. With an introduction to the peoples and languages of Africa. Berlin 1880.
- Carl Meinhof: The language of the Hamites. Hamburg 1912.