Speaking in Oran

It's a bit last minute, but I'm glad to announce that I will be giving two talks in Oran over the next few days:

• "Le contact linguistique au Sahara" at 2:00 pm, 29 April, at CRASC (Centre National de Recherche en Anthropologie Sociale et Culturelle), Technopole USTO, Oran.
• "L'histoire du korandjé, une langue algérienne méconnue" at 10:00 am, 30 April, at CEMA (Centre d'Etudes Maghrébines en Algérie), Cité du Chercheur (ex-IAP), University of Oran Es-Senia.

It would be a pleasure to see some readers of this blog there.

Siwi addressee agreement and demonstrative typology

My article "Siwi addressee agreement and demonstrative typology" has just been published, in STUF 67:1. In this article, I discuss the semantics of Siwi demonstratives, focusing especially on a phenomenon that I briefly covered in a post from 2012, Siwi: addressee agreement and addressing Aljazeera. Here's the abstract:

Siwi, a Berber language of Egypt, shows gender/number agreement of medial demonstratives with the addressee. Such phenomena are crosslinguistically very rarely reported, and are not discussed in major surveys of the typology of demonstratives (Diessel 1999; Imai 2003). However, within person-oriented demonstrative systems, such marking amounts to an iconic representation of addressee anchoring. The pragmatics of Siwi demonstratives thus cast light on the nature of the mapping from person to place that such systems reflect (Greenberg 1985). Comparative eastern Berber data suggests that demonstrative addressee agreement may be more widespread than the literature reflects.

Darja notes 3: Diminutive kumquats and affricate phonology

Continuing the Darja theme of my previous posts, I learned a new word today, from a speaker of the traditional dialect of Algiers: تشوينة čwina "kumquat".  This is obviously the diminutive of تشينة čina "orange" (a borrowing from Spanish), just as مشيمشة mšimša "loquat" - another originally Asian fruit - is of مشماش məšmaš "apricot". But its form is a handy clue to the sound system of Algerian Arabic.

Some years ago, Jeffrey Heath wrote a key study of Moroccan Arabic phonology, Ablaut and Ambiguity. Among the questions he tackled was the status of تش č: one phoneme, or two? One way to check is to look at its behaviour in diminutives. Words beginning with two consonants in a row form their diminutives by inserting an i after the two consonants, eg لسان lsan "tongue" > لسيّن lsiyyən "little tongue". Words beginning with one consonant followed by a vowel form the diminutive by replacing the vowel with و w and adding i after it, eg شيخ šix "old man" > شويّخ šwiyyəx "little old man". We thus see from تشوينة čwina that تش č behaves like a single consonant in Algerian Arabic, not like a cluster of two consonants. Since ج j is pronounced as an affricate in the north-central dialect under discussion, this conclusion makes sense. For Morocco, judging by Heath's account, the situation is more ambiguous, and speakers don't really seem sure how to form the diminutive; perhaps the same is true in other parts of Algeria.

More Darja: sea creatures, folk tales, etc.

I’m just back from Algeria, with plenty of work to get to – but before they fade from my memory, here are a few more miscellaneous observations, written down on the plane with help from my notes...

On this trip I took the small, lavishly illustrated book Sea Fishes and Invertebrates of the Mediterranean Sea, by Lawson Wood (London: New Holland, 2002). It proved very useful for checking species identifications, a task I attempted earlier with mixed results in Souag (2005). Since I was on holiday, I didn’t attempt to track down fishermen and do a proper job of identification, but showing it to a cousin yielded the following lexicographical haul:

Previously unrecorded names: rbibət əs-səlbaħa ربيبة السلباحة (“eel’s stepdaughter”) “brittlestar” (Ophioderma longicauda); bu-jəɣləllu بوجغللّو (“snail”) “sea hare (Aplysia sp.)”; langušṭa لانڤوشطة “lobster”; ɣəṭɣuṭ غطغوط “damselfish (Chromis chromis)” (also used in the expression: kħəl ɣəṭɣuṭ كحل غطغوط “pitch-black”); šuṭ شوط “barracuda (Sphyraena sphyraena)”.

Names recorded in Souag (2005) without identification: ṭṛiʕ طريع “Neptune grass (Posidonia oceanica)”; šadiyya شادية “violet sea urchin (Sphaerechinus granularis)”; bərjəmbaluq برجمبالوق “comber (Serranus cabrilla)”; ẓṛiṛga زريرقة (“little green”) “rainbow wrasse (Coris julis)”; luq لوق “striped grouper (Epinephelus costae)”; kəħla كحلة (“black”) “saddled bream (Oblada melanura)”; ʕin əl-ħəjla عين الجلة (partridge-eye) “ornate wrasse (Thalassoma pavo)”; čalba تشالبة “cow bream (Sarpa salpa)”; buriyya بورية “boxlip mullet (Oedachilus labeo)”.

Names differently identified in Souag (2005): zarniyya زارنية “great amberjack (Seriola dumerili)” (previously: derbio or leerfish); čarniyya تشارنية “blue runner (Caranx crysos)” (previously: grouper).

Minor differences in identification: šaɣəṛ شاغر “white bream (Diplodus sargus sargus)” (previously: sea bream); bu-snan بوسنان (“toothy one”) “two-banded bream (Diplodus vulgaris)” (previously: young šaɣəṛ = sea bream); fərxa فرخة (originally “chick”) “dusky grouper (Epinephelus marginatus)” (previously: young čarniyya = grouper).

Confirmed: bu-zəllayəq بوزلاّيق (“slippery one”) “blenny (Parablennius sp.)”; qaṛuṣ قاروص “sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax)”; gʷrəng ڤُرنڨ “conger eel (Congerconger)”; mustila موستيلة “forkbeard (Phycis phycis)”; ẓənkuṛ زنكور “wrasse (Symphodus sp.)” (previously: wrasse); ruži روجي (French rouget) “striped mullet (Mullus surmuletus)” (previously: mullet).

There are plenty of etymological difficulties among these, but clear non-French Romance loanwords include šaɣəṛ (Latin sargus), čarniyya and zarniyya (Latin acernia), čalba (Latin salpa), gʷrəng (Latin conger), and, judging by the š, langušṭa. bərjəmbaluq is from Turkish, cp. balık “fish”, but I still can’t identify the first part.

Moving from wild sea life to domestic animals, reminiscences of life before independence brought up a number of words I had rarely or never heard: nhəš نهش “bite (eg donkey)”, ṣǔkk صكّ “kick (with hind legs)”, ṣhəl صهل “bray”, ɣrəz غرز “stop giving milk (cow)”, tkəlləl تكلّل “curdle”, bəgṛa ṭṛiyya بڤرة طرية “a cow who has recently given birth”, ɣǔṛfa غرفة “1^st story floor” (2^nd story for Americans). yəmni يمني and šəlli شلّي for “right” and “left” were equally new to me; usually I’ve heard ymin يمين and šmal شمال, or feminine yəmna يمنى and yəsṛa يسرى.

The genre of folk tales is just about extinct in Dellys, as far as I can tell, but it too came up in a few reminiscences. A tongue-twister (say it ten times fast!) alludes to a short anecdote: dadda ʕaḅḅʷa lli ḅḅʷa l-bab دادّا عبّا اللي ابّوا الباب “Dadda Abba who carried the door on his back”. I’m unlikely ever to hear the tales of lunja bənt drig əl-ɣul لونجة بنت دريڨ الغول “Lunja daughter of Drig the monster” or bəgṛət l-itama بڤرة اليتامى “the orphans’ cow” in Dellys, but the fact that versions of them have been collected all over the Maghreb – such as this Kabyle version of Lunja summarised in English, or the song Tafunast igujilen –  is some consolation; indeed, a version of the latter tale is popular even in Siwa. From near the ending of the latter comes the following rhyme: when the orphan brother invites his sister to run up the ladder and escape the well, she says ħsən w-əlħusin fi ħəjri, ma nəqdər nəjri حسن والحسين في حجري، ما نقدر نجري“Hasan and Husayn (her twin sons) are in my lap, I can’t run”.

Usually I don’t take much interest in French loanwords, but I noticed one that looks as if it has undergone quite a curious semantic shift: puṭaži پوطاجي means “kitchen counter”, from French potager “kitchen garden” (or some non-standard dialect of French?) Behnstedt and Woidich report that in Biskra this form means “kitchen”; I wonder whether that is a further semantic shift or a misunderstanding.

Finally, to follow up on the last post’s themes, I found two more words which have retained Berber nominal affixes, again without plurals (pardon the etymology): taklufit تاكلوفيت “meddling”, tayhudit تايهوديت “malice”. (From my 2005 paper, I can also add the fig breed timəlwin تيملْوين, and the seaweed species tubrint توبرينْت). However, this strategy is quite atypical; much commoner is to drop the Berber affixes and substitute Arabic ones as appropriate, as in jəgjiga جڤجيڤة “dandelion” (Kabyle tajejjigt “flower”) or məjjir مجّير “mallow” (Kabyle məjjir).

Random Darja notes

I'm currently on a short break in Dellys, which is providing many incidental opportunities for linguistic observation. Here are a few, randomly chosen and not guaranteed to interest anyone but me:

- What kind of insufferable pedant "translates" merguez مرڤاز into Standard Arabic, on a butcher's signboard I spotted, as naqāniq نقانق "sausage"? And would they still do so if they were aware that the latter is a Greek loanword, deriving from loukanikos? Sometimes I feel that the problem with Modern Standard Arabic, for Algeria, is precisely that it's modern and standard: too extensively modernised to connect Algeria satisfactorily with its pre-colonial past, and too standardised for Algerians to feel comfortable tinkering with its vocabulary.

- There are very few Berber loanwords here that retain the nominal prefix, but I heard one or two new ones. The list so far: amalu أمالو "wet shady spot", axiṛ أخير "good morning", aqsil / lə-qsil أقسيل "grass sp.", tirẓəẓt تيرززت "small wasp", taɣənnant تاغنّانْت "stubbornness". None, unfortunately, seem to have plurals...

- Talking of which, I registered for the first time the handy "conjunction" məqqaṛ مقّار "at least", a concept I had previously had to express using French (au moins) or Standard Arabic (ʕala l'aqall) when speaking Darja. This conjunction is shared with Kabyle, but also with Andalusi Arabic (makkār مكّار) – Corriente derives it from Greek ō makarie "lucky you", but I'm not sure whether to accept that etymology.

- I belatedly realised that ṣəṛwəl صرْول, cypress, is actually from Arabic sarw سرو, with an unexplained extra letter. Another case in point: rəɣwən رغْون "to foam up" – cp. rəɣw-a رغوة "foam (n.)". Where extra letters like these come from is one of the great mysteries of Semitic, frequently discussed but never really explained.

- There's not much true code-switching into French going on here, at least not in my social circle, but I did overhear the following excellent sentence: ṛana en plein ṭyab رانا آن پلان طياب "we're in the middle of cooking". Note that en plein is selecting for a verbal noun: one could say ṛana mʕa ṭṭyab رانا معا الطياب "we are (busy with) cooking" with a preposition and a verbal noun, or ṛana nṭəyybu رانا نطيّبو "we are cooking" with a finite verb, but not *ṛana ṭṭyab.

- An interrogative relative clause with an unexpected nominal head: makaš drari mʕa-mən təlʕəb ماكاش دراري معامن تلعب "there are no kids for her to play with". The negative existential context is presumably what favours it.

Ghardaia: etymology, spelling, and politics

How is it possible that, in Algeria – a state normally obsessed with the need to combat divisive ideas – openly sectarian slogans like "Malikism, Malikism, national power" or "The Ibadi is the enemy of God" can be shouted by rioters and painted on the walls of burnt-out shops, in 2014? What's going on is far too localised to be explained in terms of "Arabs" and "Berbers" (contra AFP); at most, it's between Chaamba (Sh`ānba) and Mzabis (Mozabites). But the Mzabis speak Berber, practice Ibadi Islam (a small minority sect), are native to the town, and have a famously strong mercantile tradition; the Chaamba speak Arabic, practice Maliki Islam (like the rest of Algeria), used to be nomads with a strong martial tradition, and by and large are less well off. The potential economic and political causes for resentment should be obvious – and, indeed, the shops ransacked generally belonged to Mzabis, and the largely Arab local police stood aside. It is not surprising that both sides are using broader identities – Arab or Berber, Maliki or Ibadi – to appeal for help, and the Chaamba rioters are clearly demonising Ibadis, but it's housing shortages that reportedly initially triggered these riots.

Oddly enough, however, not only language but even etymology is being used as a tool of division. As I looked through page after depressing page on the events, I was surprised to notice that, while Mzabi pages, and neutral ones, spelled Ghardaia غرداية (Ghardāyah), Chaambi pages rather consistently spelled it غارداية (Ghārdāyah). The latter spelling turns out to be based on a folk etymology, deriving the name of "Ghardaia" from Arabic ghār "cave" plus Dāyah, the name of a woman – who some Chaamba claim was from the Arab tribe of Said Atba, proving that Arabs got there before the Mzabis did (قبائل الشعانبة… بنو سُليم الجزائر.) Mzabis have a version of the same etymology, in fact (chanson amazigh mozabit) – but according to them, Daya was a saintly Ibadi woman from Touat, proving that they were there first.

Either version is problematic, since the name is pronounced ɣərdāya (Berber taɣərdayt), not ɣārdāya. The Said Atba idea is especially implausible: in 1053, when Ghardaia was reportedly founded, Ibadi Berbers had been trading across the Sahara for centuries, whereas Arab nomads had barely begun to reach the area. Phonetically, the more obvious etymology is Mzabi Berber taɣərdayt "mouse" – but who'd name a town "Mouse"? Delheure suggested a derivation from tiɣərdin "shoulders", a term found in Ouargli Berber, based on its topography (followed eg here). Dabouz compares it to a Nafusi term reportedly meaning "land next to a wadi". No proposal seems entirely satisfactory, which is itself an indicator of the placename's antiquity.

Be that as it may, this pointed use of "cave of Dāyah" reinforces my impression that what's going on is a mapping of economic grievances onto ethnic/religious categories. Adding this one letter effectively says "Mzabis own this place, but by rights it should be ours" – a thoroughly wrong attitude. الله يهديهم ويهدينا!

Book out: Berber and Arabic in Siwa (Egypt)

I am very happy to announce here (a couple of days late) that my book Berber and Arabic in Siwa (Egypt) has now come out. The oasis of Siwa in Egypt, already famous in Classical times for its Oracle of Ammon, is by far the easternmost place where Berber is spoken. As a result of its isolation from the rest of Berber, and of a history that includes significant immigration and language shift, the Berber variety spoken there is highly distinctive (and not mutually comprehensible with Moroccan or Algerian Berber). On the one hand, some of the most persistent quirks of Berber grammar have been substantially simplified; on the other, even highly irregular core Berber morphology has been retained, and massive influence from Arabic – including the borrowing of productive root-pattern morphology – has generated new complexities. Based on part of my doctoral thesis but significantly expanded, this book:

• proposes a classification of Siwi within Berber, and a corresponding probable account of where this Berber variety originated;
• describes the grammar of Siwi, in greater detail than any previous work;
• establishes how, and how much, long-term contact with Arabic has affected its grammar;
• examines the dialectal affiliations of Arabic loans in Siwi, providing further evidence that this contact involved very different varieties at different periods;
• provides a number of fully glossed Siwi texts of different genres, illustrating Siwi grammar and casting light on Siwi culture.

Thanks once again to everyone who helped in this process, and especially my friends in Siwa. To all those who find this sort of thing interesting, I hope the book comes in handy!

Korandjé tale (Conte en korandjé - قصة بلبالية)

In the early 1950s, the French anthropologist Dominique Champault made a number of sound recordings in Tabelbala. Champault’s recordings have recently been made available online by the Centre de Recherche en Musicologie, through Cécile Funke’s archival work. Many are in Arabic or French, but the Korandjé ones are an irreplaceable resource for the study of the language; in her time, the language was under rather less pressure and verbal arts were in much better health.

One of the easiest recordings for me – the sound quality is good, and the language simple – is a short folk tale about a cat, narrated by Zohra Adda (70-01):

Like “the house that Jack built”, this cumulative tale helps children learn to understand recursive causation. There are a few dialectal or idiolectal differences from the Korandjé I’ve heard, minor but striking to my ears. Following Marijn van Putten’s example, I’ll put it up here – comments very welcome! Etymology is marked by colour: yellow for Arabic, blue for Berber, and unmarked for Songhay.

عيحاجانيس عسكاتنيسي: – حاجيتك ما جيتك

ʕa-yħaža=ni.s ʕa-s-kka-t=ni.si:

1Sg-tell=2Sg.to 1Sg-not-come-hither=2Sg.to

I have told you, I haven't come to you (ie “Once upon a time”):

Je t’ai raconté, je ne suis pas venu à toi (c’est à dire “Il était une fois”) :

Comments: This is an alarmingly literal translation of the widespread North African “Once upon a time” formula, ħajit-ək ma jit-ək. This fixed formula is barely interpretable in Arabic, but one grammatically possible parse corresponds to the Korandjé here. iħaža, of course, is a Maghrebi Arabic loan, from ħaji “tell a story” (possibly via Berber).

1. إيشنّ احّلّق موشفُكدّا. – خلق الله قطا صغيرا

išann a-ħħəlləq muš=fʷ kadda.

God 3Sg-create cat=one small

God created a little cat.
Dieu a créé un petit chat.

Comments: išannu, historically a compound “our master”, has fallen into disfavour in modern Tabelbala; most speakers now prefer the dialect Arabic equivalent mula-na. ħəlləq “create” is from Maghrebi Arabic xləq, with an irregular shift x > ħ, probably the result of place dissimilation, paralleled in the Arabic of the Touat region (cf. Bachir Bouhania). Songhay, Berber, and local Arabic all have more or less the same word for “cat”, so it’s difficult to say which source Korandjé got the word from; provisionally, I assume it’s inherited.

2. آدر آبينبش. – ذهب يخدش

a-a-dər a-ab-inbəš.

3Sg-PF-go 3Sg-PROG-scratch

He went scratching (in the ground).
Il est allé gratter.

Comments: inbəš “scratch” is Maghrebi Arabic nbəš.

3. افُّ ابساتاكا اتّاس: توغ نبابتلاّ؟ – مر به أحد فقال له: عمّا تبحث؟

a-ffʷ a-bbsa-t-a.ka a-tts=a.s tsuɣ n-bạb-tsə̣llạ?

Nom-one 3Sg-pass-hither=3Sg.at 3Sg-say=3Sg.to what 2Sg-PROG-seek

Someone passed by him and told him: What are you looking for?
Quelqu’un est passé à côté de lui et lui a dit : Qu’est-ce que tu cherches ?

Comments: I’ve never heard any modern speaker pronounce “seek” as emphatic; the pronunciation I always heard was [tsɛlla] / [tsɨlla]. For the etymology of this Berber loan, cf. Zenaga pf. yə-llāh, impf. yə-ttälla(a)h “chercher” (Taine-Cheikh 2010); unusually, it seems to derive from the imperfective rather than the perfective.

4. ايتا عابتلاّ (ذ) إدرامن. – ها أنا أبحث عن النقود

əytsa ʕ-ab-tsə̣llạ (ḏ) idṛạmən.

lo 1Sg-PROG-seek (?) money

I'm looking for... money.
Je cherche... de l’argent.

Comments: There’s a clearly audible ḏ before “money”, but I can’t figure out a plausible reason for it. əytsa “lo!” is probably Berber, cp. Kabyle aṯan. idṛạmən “money” is a formally plural noun taken from Berber, ultimately from Arabic dirham (itself from Greek drachma).

5. ما نبغ إدرامن؟ – لماذا تريد النقود؟

mə n-bə̣ɣ idṛạmən

why 2Sg-want money

Why do you want money?
Pourquoi veux-tu de l’argent ?

Comments: “Want” is one of two quasi-verbs in Korandjé – the other is “exist” – that does not take mood/aspect morphology. I’ve heard maɣạ and mạʕạ for “why” > Berber ma-ɣər, but never just ma/mə as here. bə̣ɣ “want” looks suspiciously like Arabic bɣa, but actually it has a regular Songhay etymology, *baga.

6. عمذينذي فركا. – لأشتري بها حمارا

ʕə-mm- ə dzay=ndz.i fə̣ṛka.

1Sg-IRR- uh buy=with.3Pl

So I can buy a donkey with it.
Pour que j’en achète un âne.

Comments: Modern speakers usually have a slightly more reduced vowel in “buy” – [dzɛi], or even just [dzɨi]. Note the 3Pl, agreeing with idṛạmən.

7. ما نبغ فركا؟ – لماذا تريد حمارا؟

ma n-bə̣ɣ fə̣ṛka

why 2Sg-want donkey

why 2Sg-want donkey?

Why do you want a donkey?
Pourquoi veux-tu un âne ?

8. عمنڤّر لابو. – لأنقل الطين

ʕa-m-dza- ʕa-mm- ə- nəggə̣ṛ lạbu.

1Sg-IRR-bu- 1Sg-IRR- uh- transport clay

So I can bu- so I can- uh- transport clay.
Pour que j’ach- pour que je- euh - transporte de l’argile.

Comments: I’ve never heard “clay” with an emphatic vowel either; modern speakers usually say [læ:bu]. nəggə̣ṛ is presumably from Arabic naqala “transport”, but I need to double-check its meaning is also normally not emphatic now.

9. ما نبغ لابو؟ – لماذا تريد الطين؟

ma n-bə̣ɣ lạbu?

why 2Sg-want clay

Why do you want clay?
Pourquoi veux-tu de l’argile ?

10. عمكا آضّب. – لأصنع الطوب

ʕa-m-kạ ạḍḍə̣b.

1Sg-IRR-hit brick

So I can make bricks.
Pour que je fasse des briques.

Comments: kạ ạḍḍə̣b “make (lit. hit) bricks” is a fixed expression; kạ can be used in some other contexts to mean “work”. ạḍḍə̣b “brick” (pl. iḍḍụbən) is a Berber-style adaptation of Arabic al-ṭūb, which, transmitted via Spanish, also gives us English adobe.

11. ما نبغ آضّب؟ – لماذا تريد الطوب؟

ma n-bə̣ɣ ạddəb?

why 2Sg-want brick

Why do you want bricks?

Pourquoi veux-tu des briques ?

12. عمكيكي ڤا. – لأبني بيتا

ʕa-m-kikəy gạ.

1Sg-IRR-build house

So I can build a house.
Pour que je construise une maison.

13. ما نبغ ڤا؟ – لماذا تريد بيتا؟

mə n-bə̣ɣ gạ?

why 2Sg-want house

Why do you want a house?
Pourquoi veux-tu une maison ?

14. عمّيكنا محمّد نذا فاطنة إمّيـ – أصنعها، محمد وفاطمة يـ

ʕa-mm-ikn-a muħəmməd ndza fạṭna, i-mm-i-

1Sg-IRR-make-3Sg Muhammad and Fatima, 3Pl-IRR-h-

I’ll make it, and Muhammad and Fatima, they’ll- (Je la construirai, et Mohamed et Fatma, ils –)

Comments: Note that fạṭna “Fatima” shows place dissimilation, a regular process in many Atlas Berber varieties, suggesting that this version of the name reached Korandjé via Moroccan Berber rather than directly via Arabic.

15. عمذاكا محمد نذا فاطنة. – لأضع فيها محمدا وفاطمة

ʕa-m-dza=a.ka muħəmməd ndza fạṭna.

1Sg-IRR-put=3Sg.at Muhammad and Fatima

So I can put Muhammad and Fatima into it.
Pour que j’y mette Mohamed et Fatma.

16. ما نبغ محمد نذا فاطنة؟ – لماذا تريد محمدا وفاطمة؟

ma n-bə̣ɣ muħəmməd ndza fạṭna?

why 2Sg-want Muhammad and Fatima

Why do you want Muhammad and Fatima?
Pourquoi veux-tu Mohamed et Fatma ?

17. عمكيكيغيس تا- إمّيسرحغيس تاوالا. – لأبني لي قـ- ليسرحوا لي قطيعا

ʕa-m-kikəy=ɣəy.s ta- i-mm-isrəħ=ɣəy.s tsawala.

1Sg-IRR-build=1Sg.to fl- 3Pl-IRR-herd=1Sg.to flock

So I can build myself a fl- so they can herd for me a flock.
Pour que je me construise un tr– pour qu’ils me paissent un troupeau.

Comments: isrəħ “herd, graze” is Arabic srəħ. tsawala “flock (cared for by turns)” is Moroccan Berber, and is probably a later re-borrowing of the same word that yields Korandjé tsara “(a) time”.

18. ما نبغ تاوالا؟ – لماذا تريد قطيعا؟

mə n-bə̣ɣ tawala?

why 2Sg-want flock

Why do you want a flock?
Pourquoi veux-tu un troupeau ?

19. عمكواكا هوّا. – لأستخرج منه الحليب

ʕa-m-kaw=a.ka huwwa.

1Sg-IRR-remove=3Sg.at milk

So I can get milk from it.
Pour que j’en obtienne du lait.

Comments: As with “buy”, modern speakers usually have a rather more reduced vowel in “remove” – more like [kçəu].

20. ما نبغ هوّا؟ – لماذا تريد الحليب؟

ma n-bə̣ɣ huwwa?

why 2Sg-want milk

Why do you want milk?
Pourquoi veux-tu du lait ?

21. عمكواكا ڤي. – لأستخرج منها السمن

ʕa-m-kaw=a.ka gi.

1Sg-IRR-remove=3Sg.at ghee.
Pour que j’en obtienne du s’men.

Comments: By an amusing coincidence of sound and meaning, gi means more or less the same as English “ghee”.

22. ما نبغ ڤي؟ – لماذا تريد السمن؟

ma n-bə̣ɣ gi?

why 2Sg-want ghee

Why do you want ghee?
Pourquoi veux-tu du s’men ?

23. عمْيننذا رسول الله ن تالبّسْت(؟). – لأدهن به ؟؟ رسول الله

ʕa-m-yən=ndz.a ṛạsuləḷḷạh-n tsagʷḍḍə̣st[?].

1Sg-IRR-anoint=with.3Sg Messenger_of_God GEN lock

So that I can anoint with it the Messenger of God’s hair-lock.
Pour que j’en oigne le ?? de l’Envoyé du Dieu.

Comments: I can’t seem to make out that last word – the speaker tails off – but it seems to have the Berber feminine circumfix. ṛạsuləḷḷah is an Arabic compound, rasūl “messenger” and Allāh “God”. By the way, despite appearances, n is not Berber – given the associated word order, it can more plausibly be derived from an irregular shortening of Songhay wane (see Kossmann).

Korandjé is generally thought of as a contact-intensive language – so how mixed is this sample? Well, there are two ways to count (excluding, in any case, bound morphemes and incomplete words), depending on what we do with words that occur more than once. If we count by token, then we count the same word each time it appears; if we count by type, then we count the same word only once.

By token, we have 84 words: 52 Songhay, 12 Arabic, 20 Berber. So 62% of the text is Songhay, 14% Arabic, and 24% Berber.

By type, we have:

• 24 Songhay words: ka “come”, išannu “God”, -fu “one”, kadda “small”, dri “go”, bsa “pass”, tsi “say”, tsuɣu “what”, bəɣ “want”, dzay “buy”, fəṛka “donkey”, lạbu “clay”, kạ “hit, work”, dza “put, do”, ndza “and, with”, kikəy “build”, kaw “remove”, huwwa “milk”, gi “ghee”, yən “anoint”, aɣəy “I”, ni “you”, ana “he/she/it”, ?muš “cat”
• 8 Arabic loans: iħaža “tell (a story)”, ħəlləq “create”, yinbəš “scratch”, yisrəħ “herd”, ṛasuləḷḷạh “the Messenger of God”, muħəmməd “Muhammad”, fạṭna “Fatima”, nəggə̣ṛ “transport”
• 8 Berber loans: idṛạmən “money”, ạḍḍə̣b “brick”, ikna “make”, tsawala “flock”, əytsa “lo”, tsə̣llạ “seek”, ma “why”, tsagʷḍḍə̣st “hair-lock”

So this rather repetitive text has a total vocabulary of only 40 words; 60% of its vocabulary is Songhay, 20% Arabic, and 20% Berber.

Korandjé music video (Algeria's other language)

As regular readers will know, for some years I've been working on the only language of Algeria that's neither Arabic nor Berber – Korandjé, spoken in a tiny oasis betwen Bechar and Tindouf called Tabelbala. A little while ago, we saw a brief video of one of its closest relatives, the Tagdal language of Niger. Today, for the benefit of anyone who may have wondered what Korandjé sounds like, I'd like to present the first music video in Korandjé to reach YouTube – a nostalgic song in a Middle Eastern style by Abdou Makhloufi:

Musically and poetically, it's rather derivative (and not derivative of Tabelbala's traditions either). But I salute the author's efforts anyway; it's not easy to go against the flow, and the trend in Tabelbala is very much to leave music (and most other domains of life) to Arabic. Here's an attempt at a transcript, minus most of the repetition (almost every line is repeated at least twice):

عباعمير كُارا عباعمير
ʕ-baʕam-yər kʷạrạ, ʕ-baʕam-yər
I-wanna-return town, I-wanna-return
I wanna go back home, I wanna go back,

تكُّاري ندا ادرا ن لهوا ابيسحر
tsəkkʷạrəy ndz’ adṛạ n ləhwa a-b-yisħər
sand and mountain ’s air it-IMPF-enchant
The sand and the mountain air are enchanting,

عباعمير كُارا عباعمير
ʕ-baʕam-yər kʷạrạ, ʕ-baʕam-yər
I-wanna-return town, I-wanna-return
I wanna go back home, I wanna go back.

ومّوغيسي، عباعميرنيسي
wə-ṃṃə̣w-ɣəy-si, ʕ-baʕam-t-ndzi-si
y’all!-listen-me-to, I-wanna-say-y’all-to
Y'all listen up, I wanna tell you all,

اوغ اكّس ان كُارا، توغا اڤُّاسي
uɣ əkkəs an kʷạrạ, tsuɣạ ggwạ-a-si
who abandon his town, what remains-him-to
Someone who abandons his hometown, what's left for him?

عباعمير كُارا عباعمير
ʕ-baʕam-yər kʷạrạ, ʕ-baʕam-yər
I-wanna-return town, I-wanna-return
I wanna go back home, I wanna go back.

الله الله، ڤايو زّينيو بايو
əḷḷạh əḷḷạh, gạ-yu zzin-yu gạ-yu
God God, house-s old-s house-s
O Lord O Lord, the old houses,

ڤايو، بايو ندا لغاديايو
gạ-yu, bạ-yu ndza lɣadya-yu
house-s, person-s and ???-s
The houses, the people and the ???s,

ڤُند عفّكّر كُارا، عاهيو
gundz ʕa-f-fəkkəṛ kʷạṛạ, ʕa-hyu
when I-ed-remember town, I-cry
When I remembered the hometown, I cried.

عباعمير كُارا عباعمير
ʕ-baʕam-yər kʷạrạ, ʕ-baʕam-yər
I-wanna-return town, I-wanna-return
I wanna go back home, I wanna go back.

تاميسا عباعمدغنني، تامسّخ ما كُنّاني
tsamis a ʕ-baʕam-dɣən-ni, tsaməssəx ma kunna ni!
how FOC I-gonna-forget-you, how what find you!
How could I forget you, how – what's wrong with you!

ڤُا بايباهنڤاني، آ نمبغسي واراني
gwạ bạ-i-ba-hanga-ni; a nən bə̣nɣ-si wara ni
stay person-s-have-follow-you, ah your head-to even you
Stay, people are following you; ah, (stay) for yourself too!

تاميسا عباعمدغنني، تامسّخ ما كُنّاني
tsamis a ʕ-baʕam-dɣən-ni, tsaməssəx ma kunna ni!
how FOC I-gonna-forget-you, how what find you!
How could I forget you, how – what's wrong with you!

اقّا عقّوم عمزوني، عمزوني
əgga ʕa-ggum ʕa-m-zəw-ni, ʕa-m-zəw-ni – əgga ʕa-ggum
PAST I-swear I-'d-take-you, I-'d-take-you – PAST I-swear
I had sworn to marry you, to marry you

نزّو افيط نكّسغي
nə-zzəw a-fyəṭ nə-kkəs-ɣi
you-take an-other you-abandon-me;
You married another and left me;

تامسّخ ما كُنّاني
tsaməssəx ma kunna ni!
how what find you!
How – how could you!

نن لقبيلت اسبغغي، اسبغغي - نن لقبيلت
nn ləqbilət a-s-bəɣ-ɣəy, a-s-bəɣ-ɣəy – nn ləqbilət
your tribe it-not-like-me, it-not-like-me – your tribe
Your tribe doesn't like me, doesn't like me – your tribe;

إدرامن اسباغيسي
idṛạmən əs-bạ-ɣəy-si
money not-be-me-to
I don't have money

آغي عمبين اكُّاري، نبّي مسّخ من بكري
aɣəy ʕan bin ək-kwạrəy, nə-b-bəy məssəx mən bəkri
Me my heart is-white, you-PF-know thus from long_ago
But my heart is clear, you've always known that

تامسّخ ما كُنّا ني
tsaməssəx ma kunna ni!
how what find you!
How – how could you!

18th century Zenaga poetry and language change

By far the most distant Berber variety from the rest – a separate language by even the most generous standards, as the lines quoted below will probably convince you – is Zenaga, the Berber of Mauritania. In an old article by Harry Norris (1969), "Znaga Islam during the 17th and 18th centuries", I recently came across an passage in a photograph of a page from a 20th-century Mauritanian manuscript called Dhāt alwāḥ wa-dusur, discussing a poem written in Zenaga by Wālid bin Khālunā al-Daymānī (d. 1797), and containing words already obsolete by the commenter's time. The article says this was to be published by James Bynon, but that doesn't appear to have happened. While I can make out much of it, especially with the help of two partial translations into Arabic quoted in the article, I cannot fully parse the few lines given there – perhaps some commenters will join in the fun of decipherment. The author also throws in some unexpectedly insightful observations on language change...

وأما الثانية فيعسر ضبطها جدا لأن الفاظها كلها عجمية ومع ذلك فتلك الالفاظ قد اندرست اليوم وعدم من يعرفها لأن اللغات تتبدّل فكل سنة تنسى كلمات ويوتى بآخر غير معهودة ولولا محافظة الناس على اللغة العربية في الدهر الذي نزل فيه الوحي تبدلت بالكلية حتى لا يوجد من يعرفها ويدلّ على ذلك ان العرب الاقاح في هذا الدهر الذي نحن فيه قد تغيرت السنتهم حتى لا يتكادون يفهمون العربية الاصلية الا ان يتعلموها وتسمى هذه الثانية بالمزروف ومطلعها:

اترگ نئك اراكلئذ * ايشذ ننتا شد اذچان
ايش اتؤچش اذ تنجگفئذ يسگذان اشرن يستغان

قوله اكلئد اي السلطان
وقوله اتؤجش اي وجوده
وقوله تنجگفئذ اي القدم
وقوله نِ اي انا اي القائم بنفسه

"As for the second [poem], it is very difficult to determine it, because its words are all non-Arabic, yet those words have become rare today and no one knows them any more – since languages change. Every year some words are forgotten, and others, little-known, are brought forth. If people had not preserved the Arabic language at the time when the revelation came down, it would have changed completely, to the point that no one would know it. This is shown by the fact that the tongues of the Arabs of our time have changed, until they can barely understand original Arabic unless they have studied it. This second [poem] is called "al-Mazrūfa", and it opens with:

əttäräg niʔk är ägälliʔḏ – äyš äḏ nəttä šd äḏžān
äyš ätuʔž-əš äḏ tənd'əgfiʔḏ – yässəgḏān āš ni yəstəġān
("I ask of the Sultan * He who is my owner
Whose existence is eternity without beginning * who is rich, who needs nothing")

• His saying ägälliʔḏ means "Sultan".
• His saying ätuʔž-əš means "his existence".
• His saying tənd'ägfiʔḏ means "eternity without beginning".
• His saying ni means "I" ie "the independent"."

From Taine-Cheikh (2007), we find that ättər is "ask", and əttär-äg therefore perfective "I ask"; niʔk is "I" (note the carefully written glottal stop!); and är is "from". Perhaps unsurprisingly given this passage, ägälliʔḏ has not made it into the modern era, so the vocalisation is conjectural, but it is obviously cognate with Tashelhiyt agllid "Sultan". äyš is a relative complementiser ("that") normally combined with a resumptive pronoun; äḏ is the copula ("is"); nəttä "he" is presumably the expected resumptive pronoun (the text actually clearly has two n's, but I'm assuming one of them is a typo). The rest of the line is a bit of a mystery; my best guess is that it involves the perfective participle of the verb "own", äyi(ʔ) in Taine-Cheikh (note that her y is often ž in other Zenaga varieties, from original *l), but then I would expect a glottal stop to be written. äyš "that" we have already seen, and -əš is "his/her/its". ätuʔž, explained as "existence", must be derived from the verb y-uʔy "exist", but the t is surprising. äḏ "is" we have already seen. We are given the meaning of tənd'ägfiʔḏ, but even its vocalisation is conjectural, and I can't find an appropriate root to relate it to. yässəgḏān (vocalisation conjectural again) must be a participle of the verb corresponding to Ould Hamidoun's eʔssəgḏīh "richesse", quoted by Taine-Cheikh (note that vowel length, phonemic in Zenaga, is transcribed accurately!). The rest is another blur, except that yəstəġān (?) may be from Arabic istaġnā "not to need".

If this isn't enough of a challenge, there's several other lines of Zenaga poetry quoted in that article...

The Arabic Script in Africa

An article of mine that's been in the pipeline for almost four years has finally come out: "Writing 'Shelha' in new media: Emergent non-Arabic literacy in Southwestern Algeria". I discuss the usage of non-Arabic languages (Berber and Korandjé) in Southwestern Algeria in digital media, looking at the orthographic solutions adopted and the purposes of those writing it. The results suggest that, under appropriate circumstances, a high degree of orthographic uniformity is possible without any formal training in writing the language in question – but that the existing sociolinguistic marginalisation of these languages in speech is taken even further in writing.

I received a copy of the book recently, and found the rest of it very interesting. Maarten Kossmann and Ramada Elghamis discuss the traditional Arabic orthography of Tuareg, which shows several unexpected features. Two articles discuss the writing of Afrikaans in Arabic script, which – hard as it may seem to believe – predates its writing in Latin script. Nikolai Dobronravine discusses the use of Arabic to write African languages (as well as the Arabic language) in the Americas – the archives of Brazil, for example, contain a surprising number of letters confiscated from slaves. Other articles examine Fulani, Kanembu, Manding, and Swahili, as well as the history of Arabic writing in general and its distribution in Africa.

On a related note, if you're interested in Libyan Berber, it turns out there's a surprisingly large number of people writing even some of the least well-known varieties on Facebook, often in Arabic script; see my recent post on Awjili negation for Awjila, or Awal n ɛdeməs for Ghadames.

Aljazeera video of mixed Tuareg-Songhay language, Tagdal

Aljazeera's documentary Orphans of the Sahara is worth watching for anyone interested in Tuareg language, as well as Tuareg politics – the producers took the very commendable decision to do most of the interviewing in Tuareg, giving a much more representative picture of Tuareg opinions than if they had stuck to interviewing French speakers as many other journalists do. Other languages of the region, apart from Arabic (and other ethnic groups' opinions) are rather less well represented, but about ten minutes into the first video, my ears perked up as I realised that I wasn't hearing Tuareg any more. As the camera follows Mohammed Igdali's first meeting in many years with his grandmother, somewhere outside Agades in Niger, you hear them speaking in a language that sounds oddly like Tuareg yet has a completely different grammar (from about 10min13s to 10min52s): In fact, this language is Tagdal, the language of the Igdalen tribe – a close relative of Korandjé, the Algerian language I studied for my doctorate. Most of its vocabulary is from Tuareg (or sometimes other Berber varieties), but its grammar and a few hundred of the commonest words are from Songhay, a language family spoken mainly further south along the Niger River. I can make out "Maxámmad Xásan, nənn áahay. – ɣann áahay ah?" (Mohammed Hassan, your grandchild. – My grandchild?), in which "grandchild" (áahay) is Tuareg and the possessive pronouns "your" (nən) and "my" (ɣan) are Songhay, as well as "nən bárar ɣo ggóra nə́n moo ka" (your child who is sitting in front of you), in which only bárar "child" is Tuareg, while the rest is Songhay. This is the first recording of Tagdal I've ever heard.

Tagdal is extremely inadequately documented – there are only three published resources on it that I know of (see my Northern Songhay bibliography), none of which provides even a sketch grammar (although a sketch grammar by the missionary linguist Carlos Benítez-Torres should be coming out in a couple of years, in The Oxford Handbook of Language Contact). It would be a rather interesting language to study, both as a case study in extremely intense language contact and for what it indicates about regional history. (Unlike most Tuareg tribes, the Igdalen are thought to have come from the west, and they seem to have played a prominent role in early medieval history; their original language, like that of the Idaksahak, was quite likely not Tuareg.) Unfortunately, the political situation described in that documentary makes fieldwork rather difficult to undertake for the moment.

Yennayer and the influence of writing on oral tradition

Aseggas ameggaz! Today (12 January), many Algerians are celebrating Yennayer, the start of the Berber New Year. Nowadays this seems like a quintessential example of the stubborn maintenance of authentic popular tradition in the mountains, defying pressure from religious scholars and governments. The reality, however, is more complex. It's true that many North African Islamic scholars have been condemning New Year's celebrations since at least the 11th century. But this should not obscure the fact that the Berber calendar itself has been maintained, for most of its history, by literate North African scholars writing mainly in Arabic, not just by oral tradition – and even the orally transmitted month names derive partly from written tradition.

This calendar, originally Julian, is of obvious Latin origins (the Kabyle forms of the month names are Yennayer, Furar, Meɣres, Yebrir, Yunyu, Yulyu, ɣuct, Ctember, (K)tuber, Nu(ne)mber, Duǧember/Buǧember). But it is fairly widely found in medieval Arabic writing, starting as early as the 10th-century Andalusi book al-`Iqd al-Farīd, which quotes the doctor Isḥāq ibn `Imrān of Qayrawān giving health advice for each month:

So in Yennayer drink strong drink each morning; in Fubrayr do not eat chards [...] in Nubambar do not enter the bathhouse; in Dujambar do not eat rabbit.
فيفي شهر يناير تشرب شراباً شديدياً كل غداة. وفي شهر فبرير لا تأكل السلق. وفي مارس لا تأكل الحلواء كلها وتشرب الأفسنتين في الحلاوة. وفي أبريل لا تأكل شيئاً من الأصول التي تنبت في الأرض ولا الفجل. وفي مايه لا تأكل رأس شيء من الحيوان. وفي يونيه تشرب الماء البارد بعد ما تطبخه وتبرده، على الريق. وفي يوليه تجنب الوطء. وفي أغشت لا تأكل الحيتان. وفي سبتمبر تشرب اللبن البقري. وفي أكتوبر لا تأكل الكراث نيئاً ولا مطبوخاً. وفي نبنبر لا تدخل الحمام. وفي دجنبر لا تأكل الأرنب. (source)

Note that he uses the month names 'Aghusht (August) and Dujambar (December), aligning him firmly with the North African month name tradition rather than those of other Arabic-speaking regions. In such works, the calendar is usually called `ajami, as in the 12th-century history of Ibn Ṣāḥib al-Ṣalāt:

...he returned to Marrakech on the morning of Saturday 11 Rabī` II (sic, should be Rabī` I), corresponding to the `Ajamī date 15 Yennayer, of the year 561.
فكان وروده حضرة مراكش ضحوة يوم السبت الحادي عشر من ربيع الآخر الموافق للخامس عشر من يناير العجمي من عام واحد وستين وخمس مائة. (source)

It's a lot easier to keep a calendar if you know how to read and write, and Coon's account of traditional Riffian Berber society make it clear that, there at least, the local religious scholar was charged with this duty:

Agriculture in the Rif and in the Senhaja country is conducted on the basis of the old Roman calendar, the names of the months surviving in a form very little altered from its original character. I was unable to transcribe these names exactly since I could find no one who both knew them and was willing to reveal them. Knowledge of them is confined to the fḳih, the preceptor or religious head of each group of villages, and to his students. The fḳih, while delivering sermons at the mosque on Fridays, reveals the agricultural program for the following week and tells the farmers just what activities the season merits. To reveal this calendrical system and the agricultural annotations that go with it would be to relinquish a part of the awe in which the religious leader is held. (Coon 1931:49)

Writing not only helped preserve this calendar, but affected its form. In parts of Morocco, June and July are not called Yunyu and Yulyu, as elsewhere, but Yunyuh and Yulyuz. The distinction is impossible to explain from Latin, where they are simply Iunius and Iulius. The first academic article to explain it seems to be Van den Boogert (2002), who shows that the new names are based on a neat mathematical trick.

If you know the date and the day of the week for 1 January, how would you go about figuring out the day of the week of any given date in the year? Well, 1 February is 31 days later; take away four weeks (28 days), and you get 3, so it must start on a day of the week three days later than 1 January. Repeat that procedure for each month in turn, and you get how many days of the week later than 1 January each of them starts. But that's tedious work even with a calculator, much less without it, and if you plan to do it at all often, you'd better just memorise the figures – February starts 3 weekdays later than January, April starts 6 days later, etc. But how can you make it easier to associate 12 numerals with 12 different months?

In Arabic, letters of the alphabet can be used as numerals, following the same old order used in Hebrew and Aramaic: a = 1, b = 2, j = 3, d = 4, h = 5, w = 6, z = 7, ḥ = 8... So what some unsung calendricalist did was tack the appropriate numbers onto each month name, setting the weekday of 1 January = a, as in this medieval Moroccan example: innayr-a, fubrayr-ad, marṣ-ad, abrīl-az, mayyu-b, yunyu-h, yulyu-z, ghusht-aj, shutambir-aw, aktubar-aḥ, nuwambir-ad, dujambir-aw. Memorise this list, and you're sorted. And, as a bonus, it gives you a way to better distinguish the dangerously similar-sounding month names Yunyu and Yulyu.

Does Arabic have the most words? Don't believe the hype.

For some time, I've been hearing rumours (from Arabs, of course) that Arabic has the largest number of words of any language. Recently I found one vector for this rumour: Comparison of the Number of Words in Languages of the World, a poster put together by Azzam Aldakhil which has the merit of at least giving the sources for its figures, namely Muʕjam ʕAjā'ib al-Lughah by Shawqī Ḥamādah, 2000. (In a follow-up comment he gives the page numbers, 83-84.) This poster claims that "Arabic has 25 times as many words as English".

Unfortunately for this claim, if you go to the book cited, what you actually find is a calculation of the number of possible roots in Arabic, without regard to whether or not the root actually has a meaning. Such a count includes huge numbers of unused roots such as بزح bzḥ or قذب qḏb, while at the same time lumping together all words derived from the same root; كتاب book, كاتب writer, and مكتب office are three words, but only one root. The result of such a calculation might tell us something about the potential for expanding Arabic, but absolutely nothing about the state of the Arabic language. And since in practice both Arabic and the languages it is being compared to on that poster allow arbitrary long words without real roots, if only in loanwords, it doesn't even tell us much about its potential.

Both the number of Classical Arabic roots with actual meanings and the number of words can be estimated from the classic dictionaries: according to Sakhr's statistics, there seem to be around 10,000 roots, and up to 200,000 distinct words. Roots don't play such a major role in the lexicography of most non-Semitic languages, so it's difficult to compare the number of roots cross-linguistically. But in terms of words, that would be slightly fewer than English (250,000 in the OED, although the poster cites 600,000) and slightly higher than French (over 100,000 excluding proper nouns, according to the Académie Française).

However, such comparisons can hardly fail to be misleading. For one thing, English is much more hospitable towards dialectal and colloquial usages than Arabic is – the OED is full of words marked as Scottish or Northern or slang or whatnot, the equivalents of which would never be accepted by an Arabic dictionary. For another thing, the whole enterprise of counting words across languages runs into apparently insuperable problems, especially when it comes to compounds, which Arabic dictionaries do not normally treat as words. If you include compounds, then compound-friendly languages like German or Turkish or Inuktitut are automatically going to beat all the rest – and all the available statistics that I've seen for, say, English happen to include compounds.

So the best answer is that we don't really know, and that word count, even if we could measure it better, is not a very good measure of a language's expressive power anyway. Some missing words make a genuine difference, as I've discussed here before. But is English really missing out by not having distinct words for male camels (جمل) vs. female camels (ناقة)? Is Arabic really missing out by not having a special word for cornpone, or for scones?

Tadaksahak

Tadaksahak, a heavily Berber-influenced Northern Songhay language spoken in northern Mali and Niger and closely related to Korandjé, is a remarkable example of how far language mixture can go. While the core grammar remains Songhay, causatives and passives can only be formed using Berber morphology attached to Berber stems, so every non-Berber verb in the language has a suppletive causative and passive (there are only a couple of hundred of those left, though, so it's not that impossible to learn.) I recently finally finished a review of Regula Christiansen-Bolli's Grammar of Tadaksahak (you can read the review here). For various reasons, I ended up taking the opportunity to write an overview of the general problem of how the language came into being. I don't have a final answer, but I did find that it was even more complicated than it looks.

You see, Tadaksahak speakers are currently mostly bilingual in Tuareg, and well integrated into Tuareg culture. Most of the Berber loanwords in Tadaksahak are from one or another Tuareg variety. But quite a few – including some of those irregular causatives and most numerals up to 20 - are demonstrably not from Tuareg, but from some other Berber language, closely related to Tetserrét (Niger). Today, Tetserrét is nearly extinct, and nobody speaks it as a second language; obviously things must have been different in the past. It looks like most Tadaksahak speakers are visibly of Berber descent, so probably they shifted from Tetserrét to Northern Songhay and then came under Tuareg influence. But why would anyone want to adopt Northern Songhay, currently barely hanging on in one or two remote towns of northern Niger, as a first language? Again, obviously things must have been different, but it's not easy to see how. My best guess for the moment is that they did so in order to reinforce their identity as religious specialists (ineslemen, "marabouts"), since Songhay was the language of the urban centres where advanced religious studies could be pursued, but there are a lot of question marks over that. To confuse matters further, their neighbours like to claim that Tadaksahak speakers are of Jewish descent - probably just to undermine their religious specialist status, but possibly reflecting some more complex history.

Oral tradition isn't much help; there is no firm consensus within the group on their history, and such genealogies as have been circulated, by themselves or by their neighbours, look very much like efforts to push self-serving agendas. About the only common theme across them is that they came from the west. Genetic testing might give firmer data, but the results could be politically sensitive. More lexical data, both for Tadaksahak and for other minority languages of the region, would certainly help, but the problem is ultimately cross-disciplinary - historians, archeologists, anthropologists, etc. take note! Any ideas?

wləd/wlid- "boy, son": An irregular development

There's a curious feature I recently noticed about the Arabic of Dellys in Algeria (I can't imagine what took me so long, since it's in my own idiolect as well!). In Morocco and western Algeria "boy" and "son" are both ولْد wəld, corresponding regularly to Classical Arabic وَلَد walad. In Dellys, "boy" is ولد wləd, again corresponding regularly (in Morocco, CaLaC and CaLC, where C is any consonant and L is a sonorant, both end up as CəLC; in central Algeria, the former becomes CLəC, the latter CəLC). But with a possessor – ie, in the sense of "son" – is not wləd, but وليد wlid. You can say وليد خويا wlid xu-ya "my brother's son" or وليدك wlid-ək "your son", but not *wləd xuya or *wəld-ək. It's not obvious how to explain this historically; on the face of it, it looks like a completely irregular development. There are a few other nouns derived from the pattern CaCaC – for instance حنش ħnəš "snake", حبق ħbəq "basil" – but I can't think of any cases offhand which frequently occur in the construct state (that is, with a possessor directly following them). It might be compared to the diminutive, but in present-day Dellys Arabic anyway, the diminutive is وليّد wliyyəd, not wlid.

Has anyone come across a similar phenomenon in any other Arabic variety?

19th c. Songhay sources from Tanzania and the US

A while ago, I posted about the earliest European source for Songhay. Shuichiro Nakao, who's been doing some interesting work on the 19th-century development of Arabic-based creoles, recently sent me a link to an early record of Songhay from an even more surprising source: the journal Tanganyika Notes and Records. The article in question is a summary autobiography of Adrien Atiman, who spent most of his life working as a Catholic missionary in central Africa. Apparently, as a child he was taken (sold or kidnapped? he would never know which) as a slave from Tindirma (modern Mali) and brought north to Metlili, where he was "ransomed" by a Catholic priest in 1876, converted, trained for priesthood, and finally sent off to a completely different part of Africa to be a missionary. He gives a few words, the only ones he could still remember of his native language after so many years: ""Coro" meaning lion, "Boro" man, "Elham" meat, "Bri" bone, and "Kunduhari" beer." These are easily recognisable as the Koyra Chiini forms (after Heath 2005): kooro hyena, boro person, ham meat (crossed here with Algerian Arabic lħəm "meat"), biri bone, and kundu "bourgou grass" + hari "water" (a syrup is traditionally made from bourgou grass). But it is striking that, even for these last holdouts, the meanings are not remembered exactly. Your first language is not necessarily the language you are most fluent in!

As it happens, another Songhay-speaking slave also left us his biography, from slightly earlier in the nineteenth century (1854): Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua. A native of Djougou (modern Benin), he was taken prisoner while visiting a different town and sold south to the coast, ending up as a slave in Brazil, but eventually managed to escape while passing through New York, which had already abolished slavery. He gives the numbers from one to a thousand in Dendi, as well as a few vocabulary items scattered throughout the book. (Not all the latter are Dendi – some are Hausa, eg "cofa" (properly ƙofa) for "gate".)

I've managed to trace a few Songhay loanwords in North Africa, but as far as I know no one has ever reported a Songhay loanword in the Americas. That is probably to be expected, since most slaves there would have come from regions closer to the sea – but it would be interesting to look more closely...

Propaganda and grammatical gender

I try my best to avoid reading products of the propaganda wars currently raging in the Middle East, but today I found that they had managed to leak into the usually apolitical world of linguistics blogging. In a recent post about the way grammatical gender affects how we imagine anthropomorphic characters, Asya Pereltsvaig alludes to a fatwa supposedly arguing that "the word for ‘sea’ is grammatically masculine in Arabic, and so when a woman goes swimming and “the water touches the woman’s private parts, she becomes an ‘adulteress’ and should be punished”." This is sourced to an article in India Today, based on Al Masry Al Youm, which in turn cites a report by Dr. Sayyid Zayed of Al-Azhar titled "The Errant Fatwas of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis" (الفتوى الضالة عن الإخوان والسلفيين). This report is not online, and none of the links identify the author of the fatwa in question, but Google provides an answer - an article from 17 September 2012 gives a screenshot of a Tweet allegedly posted on 11/5/2011 by @AliAlirabieeii saying "It is one of the greatest sins for a woman to go down into the sea, even covered, since the sea is masculine, and when the water goes into her private parts she thus becomes an adulterer and liable to the stipulated punishment." There is in fact a Dr. Ali Al-Rabiei, a vocal Saudi imam, and he does have a Twitter account - @DrAliAlrabieei. On this Twitter account, he tweeted on 28 May 2012 that "The Shia are counterfeiting a sixth fake account in my name - @AliAlirabieeii - to display smears and fakery; we call upon you to inform about it and get it closed."

In some ways, this brief odyssey through the sad world of Twitter warfare was superfluous. The slightest knowledge of Middle Eastern politics should be enough to tell anyone that a story run by Al Masry Al Youm, or a report by Al Azhar, published not long after the ouster of Morsy and explaining how the Brotherhood are completely crazy, might need to be taken with a pinch of salt. In the current political battles of the Middle East, attributing horrifying fake quotes to leaders from the other side has become a rather popular tactic. I don't know what the background is for the Iraqi fatwa cited later in the same post (a slightly different account is sourced by the Daily Telegraph to the observations of a Sunni leader from Anbar), but common sense tells us it's more likely to be hostile propaganda than to be anybody's actual belief, no matter how crazy. Salafis are known for being especially strict about the need to separate men and women; whoever was behind these stories must have decided that the idea of extending this to separating grammatically masculine things from feminine things would be just plausible enough to fool ordinary people while at the same time ridiculous enough to horrify them. Apparently, he was right.

[Addendum: Looking at this post again, it occurs to me that it's missing the human dimension; you can probably reconstruct it from the facts, but just in case, here are the basics. The Twitter accounts were very likely intended as satire, notwithstanding Alrabieei's furious response – and he may well have deserved satire, if his positions on the Shia are as extremist as they seem to be. The fact that a number of sketchy Arabic news sources picked it up as if it were real might be an honest mistake, but much more likely was simply because they were looking for any opportunity, honest or dishonest, to embarrass someone on the opposite side of the current culture wars. The Egyptian media then picked it up because what they wanted to do was paint opponents of the current government as insane fanatics, but left out his name and identity because he's Saudi, and the Saudi government is strongly on the side of the current Egyptian government. That's dishonesty any way you spin it.]

APiCS online, ASJP

Any readers interested in pidgins, creoles, or mixed languages (one of those things is not like the others!) will want to know that the data for the Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Languages, APiCS, is finally online and publicly browsable. Think of it as WALS for pidgins and creoles, basically – lots of pretty maps, with the nice bonus that language-internal variation in features like word order can be represented proportionally by a pie graph instead of having to choose a single value per language.

Also released lately is the data underlying the ASJP (Automated Similarity Judgement Program). The program's results itself remain thoroughly unreliable as a guide to classification – as of the latest version, it auto-classifies Songhay with Masa (Chadic), Berber with East Chadic, Kanuri with various Biu-Mandara (Chadic) languages (and not with Teda-Daza), Turkic with some New Guinea language named Kuot, and Hebrew with Tigre and Tigrinya against the rest of Semitic. For low-level subgroupings they aren't always too bad, though – their Berber tree has become surprisingly plausible. In any event, having the data, you can analyse it yourself, or try running your own algorithms if you feel up to it...

Lingua franca / Sabir

Mi star trovato un bonu libro sopra il sabir: Dictionnaire de la langue franque ou petit mauresque. Avanti l'attaca del Fransis, l'Algerino parlar con il Rumi ne in esbagnol ne in italiano ne in fransis, ma in questa lingua, una miscolantza dell'italiano e dell'esbagnol, muchu facile anche per un muchachu. Il mariniero parlar il sabir non solo in Algieri ma in tutto portao straniero. Ma doppo 1830, il genti star imparato fransis, presto scordato il sabir. Ellu star lasciato giusto qualche parola in l'arab del mariniero, come in Dellys "timpu" (il tempo bello). Per ancora imparar, andar a A Glossary of Lingua Franca, di Alan Corré.