tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post4485682106696853021..comments2024-03-23T01:31:13.502+01:00Comments on Jabal al-Lughat: Berber words in Roman times, and Ghomara Berber materialLameen Souag الأمين سواقhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00773164776222840428noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-73630204455191521062011-02-05T16:11:38.681+01:002011-02-05T16:11:38.681+01:00@Lameen,
"What do you want him to do - give ...@Lameen,<br /><br />"What do you want him to do - give a full list of every quotation that doesn't contain evidence that they spoke Berber?..."<br /><br /><br />- I don't claim this is an easy work, but I have read (as a note) that the Sir Alan Gardiner claimed that the Meshwesh spoke the Berber language (I found this note in an article: "The Meshwesh also spoke a Berber dialect (Gardiner 1968:121).").<br /><br />- Are the names not typical Berber?<br /><br />Personally, as a native Berber speaker, i won't be surprised by claiming that their names sound very "Berberic".<br /><br />- 1- As possible evidence, Those Mazics where he speaks on, are supposed to be the same word "Meshwesh".<br />This is a claim of Gabriel Camps:<br />"...Il s’agit en fait du nom que les Berbères se donnent eux-mêmes Imazighen (au singulier Amazigh.). Ce nom a été transcrit par les étrangers sous des formes variées : Meshwesh par les Égyptiens, Mazyes et Maxyes par les Grecs, Mazices et Madices par les Latins..."<br /><br />-2- Also the name "Libu" (where the name "Libyan" of the Greeks came from) is believed to be linguistically the same word as Luwata (the name of a Berber tribe in medieval times) (i cannot find the exact quote, but it seems that this theory is attributed to Oric Bates, the eastern Libyans, and supported by others).<br /><br />Note that it goes here on the "linguistic evidence" and not the evidence of their "Berber origin" in general.<br /><br />*****<br /><br />For your second note:<br />as far as i know the Siwans were related to the people of Awjila and other Berbers in the times of Herodotus. They were all Libyans like the people of Morocco. <br />There had contacts between them and the other Berber/Libyan tribes. <br />It is interesting to compare the Siwan and Awjilan language since they are diffirent (as you told me), but the Berber origin of Siwa doesn't have to clarify why they are distinct.<br />****<br />But you have to agree with me, that it is too simple to claime "there is no evidence...".آفر برسhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05341148322454688666noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-35236601216534199832011-02-05T02:29:37.201+01:002011-02-05T02:29:37.201+01:00"I think it is just a impression he wants to ..."I think it is just a impression he wants to give by claiming there is no evidence, since he didn't tell me how he concluded that."<br /><br />What do you want him to do - give a full list of every quotation that <i>doesn't</i> contain evidence that they spoke Berber? He explains why the few connections that have actually been suggested (in particular the Antef stela) don't hold up. If you think he's wrong about there being no evidence, then by all means, tell us what the evidence is.<br /><br />"2- Siwan language was not isolated from the berber languge, and therefore, there is no need to be so different from the other languages."<br /><br />That hypothesis fails to account for why the Awjilan language is so much more different from the rest of Berber than Siwi is, and for why Siwi should be more similar to Sokna and Nafusa far away than to Awjila nearby.Lameen Souag الأمين سواقhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00773164776222840428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-1455351332948742262011-02-04T16:47:00.976+01:002011-02-04T16:47:00.976+01:00"he points out there is no linguistic evidenc..."he points out there is no linguistic evidence that the Lebu / Libyans or Meshwesh, or any of the other Western Desert tribes recorded before the Mazices of the Byzantine era, spoke Berber, nor even that Siwa spoke Berber before the Byzantine era."<br /><br />"This fits with my own observations that Siwi is simply too much like Western Libyan Berber to be the survival of an ancient Berber language of the Western Desert - although the activists who urge Imazighen to date their calendar from the "Amazigh" conquest of Egypt by the Libyans may not be happy with this cautious conclusion!"<br /><br />1- I think it is just a impression he wants to give by claiming there is no evidence, since he didn't tell me how he concluded that.<br /><br />2- Siwan language was not isolated from the berber languge, and therefore, there is no need to be so different from the other languages.آفر برسhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05341148322454688666noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-29988513956570563622011-02-03T18:17:42.588+01:002011-02-03T18:17:42.588+01:00Barcelona has been really emerging as a major hot ...Barcelona has been really emerging as a major hot spot of Berber studies in Europe (like Leiden and Paris)!<br /><br />Awesome, right?! :)<br /><br /><br />-The Catalan-Berber guide of conversation:<br /><br />http://books.google.nl/books?id=cG4F8x62X4EC&pg=PA5&dq=amalal+usiwel&hl=nl&ei=tuFKTYzHCsaXOvuThfUP&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=amalal%20usiwel&f=false<br /><br /><br /><br />-The grammar of Rif-Berber:<br /><br />http://books.google.nl/books?id=kP69X_8GEykC&printsec=frontcover&dq=la+llengua+rifenya&hl=nl&ei=FuJKTZrdCsOUOuPN6eoP&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=falseCemmusthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08147915029620343393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-20454204559160727162011-01-21T12:12:01.024+01:002011-01-21T12:12:01.024+01:00I´ve taken a look at Múrcia´s thesis and it is, we...I´ve taken a look at Múrcia´s thesis and it is, well, huge. If you Lameen or anyone else needs a translation of some part of the text I´ll try to help. I´m a native Catalan speaker and know some classical Greek (but am no expert at all)pephttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07114718842139761229noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-87730026393189869742011-01-20T21:49:57.517+01:002011-01-20T21:49:57.517+01:00haha don´t be afraid to have it written in catalan...haha don´t be afraid to have it written in catalan ;-)<br />after all, as you probably know, there exist two grammars of tamazight in Catalan. One of them can be consulted on-line:<br />http://www.aulaintercultural.org/IMG/pdf/lleng_imm_cat5.pdfpephttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07114718842139761229noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-55068533866254913222011-01-17T14:39:07.705+01:002011-01-17T14:39:07.705+01:00"Angelus" is quite a questionable one - ..."Angelus" is quite a questionable one - sure it's found in Tuareg, but Tuareg is by no means among the first branches to separate off. The solar month names are tempting, but these could just as well have spread to Zenaga at a later date - the medieval Zenaga weren't exactly noted for being agriculturalists. (Plus the correspondences are a bit off.) I can't think offhand of any Punic or Latin loans found in both Awjila and Zenaga, which would be the strongest evidence.Lameen Souag الأمين سواقhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00773164776222840428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-14076383592195536942011-01-17T01:55:05.472+01:002011-01-17T01:55:05.472+01:00Lameen: since you brought up the presence of Phoen...Lameen: since you brought up the presence of Phoenician loans in Siwi: are there any Phoenician loans in Berber that are, if not universal, at least sufficiently widespread to justify the assumption that they were borrowed by Proto-Berber itself? <br /><br />There are a number of Latin words (ANGELUS with the meaning "child", for instance) which are so widespread in Berber that at least some scholars assume them to have been borrowed by Proto-Berber itself, rather than by its daughter languages.<br /><br />Etienne (AKA "Your friendly neighborhood Romance scholar").Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-31932663605186871012011-01-12T14:37:58.477+01:002011-01-12T14:37:58.477+01:00Anon: There have been Ghomara in this part of Moro...Anon: There have been Ghomara in this part of Morocco since the early Middle Ages at least. Beyond that I don't know.<br /><br />Etienne: Yes, that is a reasonable inference from my paper. But it's not likely that this Arabic dialect was present before the Byzantine era, of course!Lameen Souag الأمين سواقhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00773164776222840428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-35286954229468472492011-01-12T04:16:44.826+01:002011-01-12T04:16:44.826+01:00Great post, Lameen.
I think you are being a littl...Great post, Lameen.<br /><br />I think you are being a little modest or unimaginative though, in answer to the question as to what was spoken in Siwa before the spread of Berber. Since you've shown that the Arabic element in Siwi derives neither from Bedouin nor from Egyptian Arabic, I would venture to suggest that it is at least possible that Berber in Siwa expanded at the expense of a now extinct Arabic dialect which supplied this encroaching Berber variety with many words/structures, with present-day Siwi Berber the end result.<br /><br />Your friendly neighborhood Romance scholar (FNRS).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-49836202685368399552011-01-11T07:20:12.705+01:002011-01-11T07:20:12.705+01:00The Ghomara tribe is said to have colonized the Go...The Ghomara tribe is said to have colonized the Gomera island. Where did these Ghomara originally come from?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-60707735601897897652011-01-10T12:06:04.212+01:002011-01-10T12:06:04.212+01:00I propose that we don't know what they spoke. ...I propose that we don't know what they spoke. It could have been Berber; it could have been some relative of Egyptian, or some extinct branch of Afroasiatic; it could have been something entirely different. Until some evidence turns up, we can't simply assume that it must have been Berber. If Siwi has been spoken there in ancient Egyptian times, you would expect to find in it loans from ancient Egyptian that aren't in the rest of Berber (which Vycichl would have noticed if they had existed), and you would not expect to find in it loans from Phoenician (which there are, eg jadir "wall".)Lameen Souag الأمين سواقhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00773164776222840428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-84248460938420740352011-01-10T05:47:26.453+01:002011-01-10T05:47:26.453+01:00"For Egypt, he points out there is no linguis..."For Egypt, he points out there is no linguistic evidence that the Lebu / Libyans or Meshwesh, or any of the other Western Desert tribes recorded before the Mazices of the Byzantine era, spoke Berber, nor even that Siwa spoke Berber before the Byzantine era."<br /><br /> My question regarding this is: what do you propose that they spoke, if not Berber?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com