Sudan languages
Sudan languages are an outdated term for those African languages spoken in the Sahel region from Ethiopia in the east to Sudan to Senegal in the west. The term was used from the beginning to the middle of the 20th century and the associated populations were called “ Sudan Negroes ”, until the 1960s, this race- theoretical term remained common. According to current knowledge, the so-called "Sudan languages" do not form a genetic unit , but rather belong in part to the Niger-Congo languages , the Nilo-Saharan languages and the Afro-Asian languages .
The Sudan languages were after the German Africanists Carl Meinhof (1857-1944) genus loose and nominal classes loosely African languages, which differ from the Bantu languages in the south with noun class system and from the northern Hamitic languages differed with gender system. But the German ethnologist Diedrich Westermann (1875–1956) already demonstrated the relationship between the West Sudan language branch and the Bantu languages.
Sudan languages according to Meinhof
As a researcher of the Bantu languages, Carl Meinhof subsumed all languages that had no pronounced nominal class system and were not Hamitic or Semitic under the group of Sudan languages. The concept of the Sudan languages must also be seen in the context of the notion of the Hamitic race . If the linguistic classification patterns, which are incorrect according to today's ideas, were not sufficient for the classification of languages, Carl Meinhof resorted to racial criteria. In contrast to the Negroid population, who were supposed to speak the Sudan languages, the Hamites, known as the “Athiopid contact race”, should speak the “higher-quality” inflected “Hamite languages” with a gender system. This led, for example, to the incorrect classification of the Maa and the Fulfulde . Because their speakers, the Maasai and the Fulbe , were taller or fairer-skinned, their languages were assigned to the "Hamitic languages" in the absence of useful linguistic methods, although these belong to the Nilo-Saharan or Niger-Congo language family, which was then used Sudan languages were mentioned belong. That should correspond to "the cultural role and superiority of the Hamites". On the other hand, Meinof Hausa counted among the Sudan languages, which according to today's knowledge as Chadian language is part of the Afro-Asian (Hamitosemitic) language family.
Research by Westermann and Blade Lifting
Diedrich Westermann , a student of Carl Meinhof, carried out comparative linguistic research on the Sudan languages during the first half of the 20th century and established the division between East and West Sudanese languages in 1911, which is roughly comparable with the current distinction between Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan Languages is. His collaboration with Hermann Baumann in 1927 was dedicated to the historical reconstruction of the West Sudanese language branch. He compared his research results on the Ur- Sudan (the scientifically no longer relevant original language of the Sudan languages) with the Proto-Bantu that Carl Meinhof had worked out. Westermann failed to draw the obvious conclusion that there is a linguistic genetic relationship between Proto-West Sudanese and Proto-Bantu. French linguists such as Maurice Delafosse and Lilias Homburger, who were not affected by the theory that the nominal class system divided Bantu and Sudan languages, made quite clear statements about the unity between Sudanese and Bantu languages, mainly on the basis of lexicostatistical data. Homburger z. B., noted in her comparative work Noms des parties du corps dans les langues Négro-Africaines of 1929 that “some German Africanists […] proposed a Bantu group and a group of Sudan languages, and the scholars concerned did so late came to recognize the unity of Bantu-Sudanese ”. It was not until 1935 that Westermann finally laid out the relationship between the Bantu languages and the Western Sudanese languages in his work Character and Classification of the Sudan Languages. However, he stuck to a "common basic attitude" of the Sudan languages.
August blade lifting dealt with Fulfulde in the 1930s. Through his comprehensive description of the sound system and the complicated system of the prefix and suffix classes, he removes the Fulfulde from the family of the Hamitic languages and assigns it to the group of the West Atlantic languages. With the separation of Fuldfulde from the Hamitic languages, the concept of the Sudan languages became less and less suitable for linguistically describing non-Hamitic languages and non-Bantu languages of the Sahel zone.
Abandonment of the Sudan languages by Greenberg
Joseph Greenberg incorporated the West Sudanese languages into the Niger-Congo languages and renamed them the Volta-Congo languages . He treated the East Sudanese languages as a language family different from the West Sudanese / Niger-Congo languages, which he introduced under the name Nilo-Saharan language family.
Despite the lack of a linguistic foundation, the group of Sudan languages is still used today as a geographical name for the languages in the Sahel belt. One example is the Diercke World Atlas from Westermann Verlag, which is often used as a school atlas.
The Sudan languages can be very different and are divided into:
- western Sudan languages with:
See also
literature
- Lilias Homburger: Noms des parties du corps dans les langues Négro-Africaines , Champion, Paris 1929
- Diedrich Westermann: The Sudan languages: a comparative language study . Friederichsen, Hamburg 1911
- Diedrich Westermann and Hermann Baumann: The western Sudan languages and their relationship to Bantu . Announcements from the seminar for oriental languages, Berlin 1927
- Diedrich Westermann and Hermann Baumann: Character and classification of the Sudan languages. Africa , 8, 1935, pp. 129-148.
Individual evidence
- ^ Spiegel editorial team: Sudan / Civil War: Victims of the North. In: Der Spiegel . No. 13, March 24, 1969, accessed on August 27, 2014: as a designation for the black , non-Arab population of South Sudan : “The Sudan negroes, led by their Christian educated intelligentsia, revolt against a state whose Arabized Muslims -Most of the blacks of the south still see 'our natives' and understand Sudan as an Arab country. "
- ↑ "quelques africanisants allemands [...] avaient posé [...] un groupe bantou et un groupe soundais, et ce n'est que tout dernièrement qu'ils ont reconnu l'unité bantou-soudanaise".
- ^ August blade lifting: The language of the Ful. JJ Augustin , Hamburg 1963