Sam languages

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As Sam languages or East Omo-Tana languages are the Somali referred and related languages. These languages ​​form the eastern branch of the Omo-Tana languages , which in turn belong to the lowland East Cushitic branch of Afro-Asian languages .

The linguist Bernd Heine coined the term Sam in 1978 for the three languages ​​Somali, Rendille and Boni and reconstructed a common precursor language of the three languages, the Proto-Sam. The name is derived from the word * sam for "nose", which can be reconstructed for the Proto-Sam.

Other researchers have criticized both the name "Sam" and Heine's classification.

Classification according to Heine

Language history according to Heine

All other Omo-Tana languages ​​are spoken exclusively between Lake Abaya and Lake Turkana in southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya . Heine therefore assumes that the speakers of the Sam languages ​​have spread from the southern Ethiopian highlands into their present-day areas; this view is shared by other linguists. Heine's assumptions about the further spread of the Sam speakers are, however, controversial.

Heine assumes that the common precursor language of the Sam languages, the Proto-Sam, is between 2300 and 1700 years old and was therefore spoken around the turn of the ages. The speakers of the Proto-Sam are said to have already lived in the lowlands in northern Kenya at this time, perhaps in the area around today's Marsabit . According to Heine (as well as according to Harold Fleming and Günther Schlee ) they were nomadic cattle breeders. Specialized vocabulary in connection with cattle breeding and especially with camels can be reconstructed for the Proto-Sam. The Proto-Sam probably took over camel husbandry after immigrating to the lowlands, but it is unclear by whom.

Terms related to sheep and goats can also be found in the Proto-Sam vocabulary. The vocabulary for cattle is much less detailed, so these animals may have been less important. Agriculture was known to the Proto-Sam (there is a common basic word for “dig” or “cultivate”), but it does not seem to have been practiced by them (West and East Sam have different basic words for “garden”). Since there are words for "iron" (* bir) and "blacksmith" (* tumaal), iron processing seems to have been known. Other words in the Proto-Sam language indicate that circumcision was performed and the dead were buried. There are also words for a wide variety of vessels and containers and for wood carving. Three different words for water points indicate that these were already of existential importance for the Proto-Sam.

According to Heine, the separation between East and West Sam should be between 300 BC. BC and AD 200, with the forerunners of the Rendille remaining in the north of what is now Kenya, while the eastern Sam moved further south-east. Between 200 and 600 of them were separated from the bonuses who became hunters and gatherers in coastal forest areas in what is now Kenya and southern Somalia. Of the rest of the Eastern Sam, the forerunners of the Somali, part between the Jubba and Shabelle Rivers in southern Somalia went over to a combination of agriculture and stockbreeding, while the rest of the Somali moved further north and (until around the year 1000) the whole Populated Horn of Africa.

Other researchers' views

Marcello Lamberti does not classify Rendille and Boni as languages ​​in their own right, but as dialects of Somali. In its classification, the Rendille forms one of six dialect groups, the Boni, together with the Garre, forms another.

Günther Schlee criticized Heine's model for the spread of these languages, which is based too much on their current spread and ignores historical developments between the initial spread of the Proto-Sam and the current situation. According to him, it is much more likely that the speakers of Somali and related languages ​​spread radially from southern Ethiopia to the south (into what is now Kenya) and east (what is now Somalia and the Ogaden area ). In this wide area, the Sam languages ​​formed a dialect continuum , which was split up from the 16th century onwards by the advance of the Oromo (especially Borana ). It was only through this expansion of the Borana that Rendille and Somali were separated. Other Somali dialects are likely to have disappeared in the course of the Oromo expansion. The Gabbra and Sakuye , who today speak the Oromo of the Borana and were mostly regarded as Borana linguistically, probably originally spoke such dialects, because culturally they are still much closer to the "Proto-Rendille-Somali" culture reconstructed by Schlee than the Borana.

Schlee also rejected the naming of the language group chosen by Heine after the reconstructed word for "nose": It should be considered to abandon this insulting name. ("Consideration should be given to giving up this offensive label.")

See also

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  • Bernd Heine : The Sam Languages. A History of Rendille, Boni and Somali. In: Afroasiatic Linguistics 6 (2). 1-92, 1978
  • Bernd Heine: Linguistic Evidence on the Early History of the Somali People , in: Hussein M. Adam (Ed.): Somalia and the World: Proceedings of the International Symposium , National Printing Press , Mogadischu 1979, pp. 23-33
  • Bernd Heine: Some cultural evidence on the early Sam-speaking people of Eastern Africa , in: Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika 3, 1981, pp. 169-200
  • Günther Schlee: Somaloid history: oral tradition, Kulturgeschichte and historical linguistics in an area of ​​Oromo / Somaloid interaction , in: Herrmann Jungraithmayr and Walter W. Müller: Proceedings of the Fourth International Hamito-Semitic Congress, Marburg, Sept. 1983. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamin BV (Vol. 44 of the series Current issues in Linguistic Theory), 265-315.