North Africa and Latin

[Silentium]

I have found this fascinating post by Andrew Dalby on another thread which I am quoting, as I think it will be a great contribution for this thread:

There is a certain language family, almost as numerous as the Indo-European family and traceable a bit further back in time, called Afroasiatic (an older alternative name, still often used, is Hamito-Semitic).

 

It looks as though proto-Afroasiatic was spoken, ten thousand or more likely fifteen thousand years ago, somewhere around the Horn of Africa (northeast Africa, Kenya/Somalia/Ethiopia). These languages spread gradually westwards, and, in the path of this slow movement, offshoots or subgroups of Afroasiatic can be traced: Nilotic and Omotic languages in southern Ethiopia and Sudan, Chadic languages in Chad and northern Nigeria (Hausa, a major language of Nigeria, is one of these) ... Then, still many thousands of years ago, some speakers must have moved north across what is now the Sahara, and the next traceable offshoot is the group of languages now called Berber, which, as Rameses said above, is spoken across north Africa from the western oases of Egypt all the way to Morocco and Mauritania. And, by the way, the modern Berber languages are the same in origin as the Libyan and Numidian language(s) of the Roman period.

 

I was researching Berber to see if there was any trace of latin loanwords that could help reconstruct the nature of the Latin spoken in North Africa, and I

Edited January 31, 2009 by Silentium

[docoflove1974]

I was under the impression that the Arabic-speaking 'conquerors' (for lack of a better word) were fairly strict in Africa with regard to linguistic and cultural policy--namely, that people either conform to Arabic and the Islamic life or be put to the sword--but that by the time they got to Iberia this policy had softened. I know I've seen documents from monks who say this, but considering these monks hardly left their region, let alone Iberia, and they wrote this centuries after the Moorish invasion, I don't know how accurate their stories are.

[Northern Neil]

I have seen several references to 'North African Romance' ( mainly on Wikipedia ). It seems it finally died out in the 17th century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Romance

Edited February 1, 2009 by Northern Neil

[docoflove1974]

The Wikipedia article makes reference to Ladino, the variety of Medieval Spanish spoken by the Sephardi...but an important note is that they, too, were expected to convert to Islam and speak Arabic in North Africa. It's why most of them spread out over Europe and, especially, the Ottoman Empire. Ralph Penny talks briefly about it in his History of the Spanish Language (1991:21-24).

 

As for Latin in Africa...I just flipped through the major handbooks (Meyer-L

[Silentium]

I was under the impression that the Arabic-speaking 'conquerors' (for lack of a better word) were fairly strict in Africa with regard to linguistic and cultural policy--namely, that people either conform to Arabic and the Islamic life or be put to the sword--but that by the time they got to Iberia this policy had softened. I know I've seen documents from monks who say this, but considering these monks hardly left their region, let alone Iberia, and they wrote this centuries after the Moorish invasion, I don't know how accurate their stories are.

Yes, I was wondering if there were other factors in play, such as arabic being a language of "culture" itself (which could explain why Berber has so many latin loanwords and Arabic doesn't) and the fact that the romanisation of Africa had not started as early as that of Iberia and had not been as capillar as the one in the latter.

 

I have seen several references to 'North African Romance' ( mainly on Wikipedia ). It seems it finally died out in the 17th century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Romance

I have looked at the article and the bibliography at the bottom of the page but the postulation of a "North African Romance" seems merely speculative, considering that it is based on the corpus of latin loanwords in Berber, and that generally these loanwords seem to be characterised by a certain "archaism". Even if the phonetics of some of these loanwords may suggest that their origin was proto-romance or late-latin, that does not prove the existence of an african romance language and there is no overwhelming toponymic/onomastic evidence either. If latin continued to be spoken as late as the VI century in the region then it is likely that this latin had already evolved into proto-romance or "late latin", but that does not prove these borrowings came from an african romance language (Just one? Why not many?), let alone that it was spoken until the XVII century. The author of the article claims that this late african latin was different from that of the rest of the "Rom

[docoflove1974]

Yes, I was wondering if there were other factors in play, such as arabic being a language of "culture" itself (which could explain why Berber has so many latin loanwords and Arabic doesn't) and the fact that the romanisation of Africa had not started as early as that of Iberia and had not been as capillar as the one in the latter.

 

I think the question of late Romanization is definitely part of the equation, and the same could be true of the 'language of culture' aspect--I certainly wouldn't argue it. I don't have anything here which talks about it, but I'd be very curious as to what, if anything, has been written about and argued.

[Silentium]

Yes, I was wondering if there were other factors in play, such as arabic being a language of "culture" itself (which could explain why Berber has so many latin loanwords and Arabic doesn't) and the fact that the romanisation of Africa had not started as early as that of Iberia and had not been as capillar as the one in the latter.

 

I think the question of late Romanization is definitely part of the equation, and the same could be true of the 'language of culture' aspect--I certainly wouldn't argue it. I don't have anything here which talks about it, but I'd be very curious as to what, if anything, has been written about and argued.

 

My sources for the previous posts are, in addition to Hugo Schuchardt's Die romanischen Lehnw

[Ludovicus]

If you comb through the Latin of St. Augustine's Confessions you will find a single reference to the vulgar Latin spoken in his parts of Africa: Hippo and Carthage; it's a word or phrase. There is another reference, perhaps in a different work of his, where he makes the point that it's better for the populace to understand a sermon written in "bad grammar" than to miss a point in grammatically correct Latin, a tongue which people seemed to have gotten away from by his time.

[Ludovicus]

If you comb through the Latin of St. Augustine's Confessions you will find a single reference to the vulgar Latin spoken in his parts of Africa: Hippo and Carthage; it's a word or phrase. There is another reference, perhaps in a different work of his, where he makes the point that it's better for the populace to understand a sermon given in "bad grammar" than for them to miss a point in grammatically correct Latin, a tongue which people seemed to have gotten away from by his time.

Edited February 2, 2009 by Ludovicus

[Silentium]

If you comb through the Latin of St. Augustine's Confessions you will find a single reference to the vulgar Latin spoken in his parts of Africa: Hippo and Carthage; it's a word or phrase. There is another reference, perhaps in a different work of his, where he makes the point that it's better for the populace to understand a sermon written in "bad grammar" than to miss a point in grammatically correct Latin, a tongue which people seemed to have gotten away from by his time.

 

Of course, the latin translation of the Bible in the Codex Bobiensis has the same features, it is essentially "vulgar latin". I presume the educated would probably have been able to read the scriptures in greek if they wanted to, these translations and sermons were probably conceived for the uneducated.

[Ludovicus]

African Augustine, toward the end of the 4th century C.E., also remarks that Punic was still being spoken in the hinterlands of his province. So possibly North African Romance reflected the substratum of that Semitic language. Mario Pei remarks on Augustine's language:

"One rare written sample of his his spoken-language preference is the use of "ossum" for "os," bone in English, so that it may not be confused with "os," mouth...; the possibility of this confusion in turn indicates that the popular language no longer made a distinction between the short o of os, ossis, and the long o of os, oris." pp68-69, The Story of Latin and the Latin Languages.

 

That said, I'm sure that the same phenomenon was taking place not only in North Africa, but elsewhere in Latin-speaking Late Antiquity.

Edited February 7, 2009 by Ludovicus

[Silentium]

African Augustine, toward the end of the 4th century C.E., also remarks that Punic was still being spoken in the hinterlands of his province. So possibly North African Romance reflected the substratum of that Semitic language. Mario Pei remarks on Augustine's language:

"One rare written sample of his his spoken-language preference is the use of "ossum" for "os," bone in English, so that it may not be confused with "os," mouth...; the possibility of this confusion in turn indicates that the popular language no longer made a distinction between the short o of os, ossis, and the long o of os, oris." pp68-69, The Story of Latin and the Latin Languages.

 

That said, I'm sure that the same phenomenon was taking place not only in North Africa, but elsewhere in Latin-speaking Late Antiquity.

 

Interesting. A similar phenomenon of substitution was occurring in the rest of the Rom

Edited February 8, 2009 by Silentium

[Ludovicus]

African Augustine, toward the end of the 4th century C.E., also remarks that Punic was still being spoken in the hinterlands of his province. So possibly North African Romance reflected the substratum of that Semitic language. Mario Pei remarks on Augustine's language:

"One rare written sample of his his spoken-language preference is the use of "ossum" for "os," bone in English, so that it may not be confused with "os," mouth...; the possibility of this confusion in turn indicates that the popular language no longer made a distinction between the short o of os, ossis, and the long o of os, oris." pp68-69, The Story of Latin and the Latin Languages.

 

That said, I'm sure that the same phenomenon was taking place not only in North Africa, but elsewhere in Latin-speaking Late Antiquity.

 

Interesting. A similar phenomenon of substitution was occurring in the rest of the Rom

Edited February 8, 2009 by Ludovicus

[docoflove1974]

There is constant work being done on Mozarabic Ibero-Romance, but it's a long process. As far as I know, there isn't evidence of anything but boca (or a version thereof) in that speech community, but perhaps something else has been uncovered. But I'd agree with Silentium that loan words alone is not evidence enough alone; one would have to look at the syntax and morphology more closely.

[Andreas]

There is constant work being done on Mozarabic Ibero-Romance, but it's a long process. As far as I know, there isn't evidence of anything but boca (or a version thereof) in that speech community, but perhaps something else has been uncovered. But I'd agree with Silentium that loan words alone is not evidence enough alone; one would have to look at the syntax and morphology more closely.

 

I'm no linguist but in my thesis on Roman Africa outside of Egypt I found little to no evidence of Latin being the vernacular of the common people of the region. Even the family of Emperor Septimius were evidently not first language users of Latin as his embarrassment over his sister's inability to speak proper Latin shows. And they hailed from a family with deep connections with Rome far removed from what one could expect of the bulk of the populace.

 

The Berber tribes more than likely stuck to their own dialects with an influx of loan words, the Punic descendants to one or more Punic variants mingled with Latin and Berber depending upon social class probably.

 

Original Latin speakers outside of the elite probably had to integrate somewhat into these earlier linguistic groups depending upon which region they settled in.

 

The elite Latin speakers and the elite Berber and Punic probably maintained Latin as a language of power and culture.

 

But with the coming of the Vandals the Latin elite was ousted from their place of power as agricultural landlords and clergy when the Aryan Christian and Germanic speaking invaders arrived.

The Vandals themselves were probably at least somewhat versed in Latin from decades of exposure to it but by removing the language from a place of prestige domestically in North Africa they signalled the death knell for the language in the long run.

The Greek Byzantines probably just furthered this process when they took over the helm as they themselves were in the process of eschewing Latin as an official language and had their own brand of Christianity to boot.

 

The Arab invasion ended the traditional agricultural and coastline/trade based culture as both Carthage and Lepcis Magna, former magnificent cities vanished out of history.

 

So who would continue the Latin tradition?

 

The elite had been changed out 3 times over, any remnants of Roman influence would've been weak indeed if there was any at all in the new Arab ruling strata.

The common folk had always been predominantly Berber with a sprinkling of Punic and Latin settlers and with the catastrophic economic and political changes of the late Antiquity their numbers had probably dropped significantly, especially among the coastal populations where Latin and Punic were most prevalent and where their livelihoods based on large scale farming probably was untenable in the face of marauding Berbers and Arabs.

 

I'm not saying it's impossible for any remnant of Latin to have survived but the facts speak against it.

Edited December 31, 2009 by Andreas