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     | Thursday, February 08, 2001 - 06:10 am CUSHITIC RELIGION IN the first part of this study we followed the development of the Sufi tariqa organization in Somaliland after the introduction of Islam and examined the functions exercised by Sufi communities in the social structure. We interpreted the closer social and genealogical assimilation of jama'as as among the nomadic tribes in terms of lack of arable land available for the foundation of independent settlements. It was argued that the genealogical idiom in which social relations are normally described, especially amongst the nomads is extended to the jama'as by virtue of their identification with the Arabian genealogies of their sheiks. The incorporation of such Sufi genealogies was held to explain how the Somali lineage system is in its furthest extension extrapolated to the Qurayshitic lineage of the Prophet. Sufi and Somali tribal genealogies, it was suggested, have parallel religious functions which make such assimilation possible. In the light of these similarities of religious function, and, in order to provide a theological framework for the discussion of syncretism which concludes this essay it will be necessary to make some attempt to compare pre-Islamic and Islamic Somali theology. This should reveal the factors which underlie the rise of Sufism in Somaliland. The present account of Cushitic religion in Somaliland is limited mainly to the Hawiye tribes of southern Somalia. Cushitic features of Hawiye belief and practice have been recorded in some detail by Cerulli; information on the northern Somali is scanty and much less satisfactory. Religion only will be considered and pre-Islamic customs such as the levirate, sororate, circumcision and infibulation, etc, which are not specifically religious and do not in themselves elucidate religious concepts will be ignored. As has been emphasized, Islam is interpreted through the medium of the earlier Cushitic substratum which is being continuously modified and progressively Islamized. In the present context it is not necessary to go into the racial history of Somaliland (1) in any detail beyond recalling that, even prior to the twelfth century, (2) the Somali had begun their southern expansion at the expanse of their Galla (Cushitic) predecessors. As the Galla withdrew before the advancing Somali, they took much of their common Cushitic culture with them, while the Somali increasingly adopted Islam. Islam had, as we have seen, made its appearance in the coastal centres shortly after the Hejira. However, there are still to-day a few tribes which preserve much of their Cushitic culture unmodified by Muslim influence. The Hawiye retain sufficient of their old religion to indicate its general characteristics. Zar and Waaq The Supreme Being of Cushitic religion is a Sky God who is regarded as Father of the universe. The entire world of nature, including man and his possessions, is ultimately God's. The root-name for the Sky God may be Zar, since, according to Cerulli (1923, p. 2) Zar occurs in this context with only slight modifications in most Cushitic languages and is the form used among the pagan Agao whose religion has been taken as the archetype of Cushitic religion (cf. Ullendorff, 1955, pp. 634). Since, however, comparative study of the Cushitic languages is in its infancy this theory is uncertain. Among the northern Somali Eebbe (Father) is a common name for God - now Allah - and among the Hawiye of the south the word used is Waaq (cf. Galla, Waaqa ) (3). Waaq in northern Somaliland occurs in certain obscure expletives but is not generally used to designate God. Zar itself appears to occur in the form Saar, which, as we shall see, connotes a spirit-refraction accreted to Islam as a malignant jinn. Eebbe and Waaq are now, of course, applied to Allah, and these Cushitic names and their derivatives are still found as personal and place-names. God's exalted position is indicated in the songs addressed to Him. ' Children are Yours, women Yours, cattle Yours.' ' If You are pleased with our fine horses, take them. If our slaves please You, take them, and if our wives find favour in Your sight take them also.' God is apprehended as He watches over creation in the sun's light, just as man is aware of his surroundings through the gift of sight. Prayers run: ' Watch us God, You who have eyes, know and we shall know, for after You have known we know (4). ' Knowledge is Yours, sight is Yours, watch us with good eyes. Make us see well. Sight is Yours.' The semantic relation is eyes, seeing, sun, and light. God's eternal constancy is compared to the central-pole of the hut. ' May the central-pole be as of iron.' Without support man's house collapses, but God, ' the same without the central pole ', is full of wonder and power. Somali still sing " This Sky, the same unchanging, without the central-pole according to the Divine Will " (Cerulli, op. cit.). The Sky God's belt is the rainbow, and the rains are in his keeping as a gift for man; certain individuals have power over the rains through their relation to God. Saar in Somali describes a state of possession by a spirit also called saar. The extreme symptoms are frenzy, fits, or madness, and the spirit itself is, in the Islamic setting, described as a kind of jinn whose malignant powers cause certain types of sickness. Among the eastern tribes of northern Somaliland "invisible" wadaad (see above) act similarly to Saar but have less serious effects and are merely responsible for some minor forms of illness. Saar can be expelled by persons who have acquired mastery over the spirits through having themselves been previously possessed. In northern Somaliland such 'doctors' (alaqa) are generally women, for visitation is here confined almost exclusively to this sex, especially to the wealthy. Rich women who believe that a Saar is troubling them have recourse to an alaqa: poor women cannot afford to be afflicted by Saar because treatment is costly. Such an illogical situation leads skeptical Somalis to abandon their belief in Saar. This is not the place nor is there at present sufficient material on the social contexts in which saar are active, to enter into a sociological discussion of the subject. It seems possible, however, that we are concerned with a form of the witchcraft which is associated with wealth and polygamy elsewhere and which serves as a vehicle for jealousy and as a buttress of social status. Saar are expelled in the ' dance of the Saar ' which is apparently fairly extensively practised in Somalia although violently opposed by Muslim wadaad. In northern Somaliland, where official opposition is such that many devout Muslims deny its existence, (5) the dance is sometimes still performed by women. It seems that the dance acts as a form of exorcism of the malevolent jinn causing possession, and perhaps less frequently as a means of attaining possession. In Somalia, the opening movement is called or-goys and consists of those assembled beginning to sing and to raise their arms rhythmically towards the sky. Soon someone falls in a faint and his companions ' beat the Saar ', forming a circle round him and breaking into "the song of the Saar", sung at first slowly and then with increasing tempo. Drumming, castanet playing, and hand-clapping swell the singing. Slowly the fallen dancer revives, and moving his limbs in rhythm, seizes a knife or lighted brand which he thrusts between his teeth and dances into the semi-circle formed by the others. The tempo increases until the dancer again succumbs and falls panting to the ground. After a little he rises completely restored and the Saar is said to have left him (6). The dance is widely distributed among the Cushitic peoples of north-east Africa and often the possessed dancer acts as an oracle (7) (see Lewis, 1934). Beyond the Cushitic areas, it occurs as far away as Egypt (Kahle, 1912), the Anglo-Egyptian-Sudan (Trimingham, 1949, pp. 174-7), and even the H. ijaz (Hurgronje, 1888-9, II, PP. 124-8). The explanation seems to "be that the saar (Zar) dance has spread far beyond the bounds of Cushitic culture with the export of slaves from Ethiopia where it has its Cushitic origin (Cerulli, 1933, II, P. 35). Other Religious Concepts The realm of the Sky God includes a multitude of subsidiary spirits; the spirits of the bush, certain animals, some snakes, scorpions, termites, and other insects frequently credited by Somali with malignant powers. In certain situations tribes are described as linked to trees and animals which are addressed by maternal kinship names, but the connexion does not appear to be totemic. Spirit-refractions are said to have their seats in those possessed, and, among the Cushitic Agao of Gondar in Ethiopia the spirit-ridden subject is referred to as the spirit's 'horse'. A similar spirit is encountered and overcome in the crossing the threshold ceremony (kalaqaad) which marks a male child's first expedition outside his mother's hut. The baby is carried over the threshold by his mother's brother (Cerulli, 1919, p. 23). Although generally obscured by and syncreted in Islam, divining and various forms of sympathetic magic are still practised. Ordeals and oath-taking by swearing on stones are used to establish testimony. Charms and amulets, especially as prophylactics, enjoy wide popularity. Their efficacy, now, of course, depends upon association with the Holy Koran. In this contest it is perhaps not irrelevant to mention the fire-kindling ceremony of dabshid which is widely observed and marks the commencement of the solar year (8). The festival is condoned in some parts of Somalia by representing it as a Muslim expiatory rite; in one district it is known as the "feast of beating". In southern Somaliland death is regarded as a transformation. In the grave the corpse lies clothed and provided with a supply of food. The dead are remembered in periodical ceremonies (" sweeping the tomb"  at which cattle are slaughtered and food distributed amongst the poor, slaves and servants, and the aged. Gifts of food and clothes are sometimes offered, often in response to dreams. " I dreamt that my father showed me his torn clothes. Here are some clothes, let him take them." Or again, " I have given my dead mother an ox, now my father is thin and hungry and wants something to fatten him. Here is another ox, let him come and take it". Old men are constantly preoccupied in amassing their wah la-I-gu dugo (what is buried with me) and, according to Cerulli, on occasion set aside as much as three-quarters of their inheritance for the performance of "sweeping the tomb" ceremonies after their death. Sacrifice (Waaq da'il, Rabbibari) plays, as we have seen, an important part in the life of the Somali. From the structural point of view its crucial form is the annual celebration held at the tombs of the founding ancestors of lineages. The assimilation within Islam of this, the most vital aspect of sacrifice in relation to the lineage system, will be discussed below. To recapitulate: a brief description has been given of the Cushitic world of power manifest in an apparently incoherent and rather vague hierarchy of refractions of the Sky God ( Waaq) . This world presided over by God comprises the phenomena which we call "natural"; the sun, moon, and stars, the winds, rainbow, rains, and the rest, as well as the more contiguous parts of nature, the hills, trees, and water. which make up man's immediate surroundings. Certain configurations of these phenomena are fraught with polver, available sometimes to ritual experts only, sometimes to whoever chances to cross their path. One of the tribal religious expert's (wadaad) special skills is his knowledge of the skies and power to interpret the movements of the heavenly bodies (Cerulli, 1929, 1931 ). But power appears too in the interaction of the more remote phenomena of the skies with man's immediate environment. At Lugh-Ferrandi in Somalia, for example, the moon is believed to set in a clump of tamarind bushes and whoever is touched by a falling leaf as the moon disappears will die (Ferrandi, 1903:300). Many similar examples could be cited. Apart from individual, chance, and private, rather than collective, relations with the world of power, such as those indicated and, for example, in the Saar dance, the influence of God appears at a higher structural level and correspondingly higher potential in tribal sacrifice. We have already noticed how the religious nature of chieftaincy is established in sacrifice and how a chief may have powers of rainmaking. The chief was seen to have a special relation with God. From his sanctity follows his power to bless and curse his people and the force of the fire within him which makes his glance "the burning eye" (il kulul ).
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| | Thursday, February 08, 2001 - 06:20 am Cushitic languages group of languages spoken by some 16 million people in Ethiopia and adjacent areas south and east and compromising one of the five branches of the Afro-Asiatic (formerly Hamito-Semitic) language family. (The other branches are Egyptian, Berber, Chadic, and Semitic.) Scholars differentiate five Cushitic subgroups: (1) Beja, (2) Agau, (3) Eastern Cushitic (including Oromo and Somali), (4) West Cushitic (including Kaffa in southwest Ethiopia), and (5) Southern Cushitic (including Mbugu and Mbulunge [Burungi] in Tanzania). The most widespread languages are Oromo, Somali, and Beja. Because West Cushitic has few vocabulary items in common with the other Cushitic languages, some scholars consider it to be a separate (or sixth) branch, called Omotic, of the Afro-Asiatic language family. The Northern group is represented by Beja, or Bedawiye, spoken mainly in The Sudan close to the Red Sea and also in Eritrea; it has about 1,300,000 speakers. Typical linguistic features include the scanty representation of affricates, velars changing partly to ', and postvelar consonants changing to h. Two or, in some cases, three verbal forms with prefixed actor markers exist ("strong conjugation" , but many verbs are conjugated by suffixes (developed from an auxiliary verb with prefix conjugation). There are stem modifications similar to those of Berber in the strong conjugation, formed by suffixes in the other verbs (this is also typical of the other Cushitic languages). In addition, declension of the noun, with traceable relics of the ancient type similar to the Semitic, also can be seen. The Eastern group has several subgroups. The highland languages, spoken east of Addis Ababa, include Hadya-Libide (900,000 speakers), Kambata (300,000 speakers), Sidamo (1,100,000 speakers), Darasa (300,000 speakers), Burji, and some related languages. The total number of speakers of this subgroup is about 2,600,000. The other subgroups include Saho-Afar in Eritrea, northeast Ethiopia, and Djibouti, with 750,000 or more speakers; the Somali subgroup, with Somali, Bayso, Rendile, and other languages in Somalia, eastern Ethiopia, and eastern Kenya, having a total of more than 5,000,000 speakers; the Gallinya subgroup, comprising Oromo (Gallinya, with several dialects) in western, central, and southern Ethiopia and northern and eastern Kenya; the subgroup of Arbore, Dathanaic (Geleba), and other languages, together having about 13,000,000 speakers; Konso, Gidole, and related dialects, with about 80,000 speakers in western Ethiopia; Warazi (Warize) and related languages also in western Ethiopia, with about 50,000 speakers; and Mogogodo of northern Kenya. Typical features of the group are the presence of emphatic affricate sounds and the change of postvelar sounds to ' and h; in some languages the older *l sound is represented as j or r, and *r as r, d, or n. The number of verbs of the "strong conjugation" is very small in some languages and nonexistent in others. In addition, there are grammatical genders differing from the ancient type. The Central, or Agau, group includes languages or dialects dispersed over Ethiopia. They include Bilin, Khamta, Awngi, and Kemant (Qimant), among others, and are spoken by more than 100,000 people. The Quara dialect, spoken formerly by the Falashas, an Ethiopian Jewish ethnic group, is now extinct. Although the vocabulary of all Agau dialects is very similar, there is little mutual intelligibility as a result of the dissimilarity in the phonetic reflexes of the Proto-Cushitic sounds and the strong influence of Ethiopic and Amharic. The Southern group, located in Tanzania, south of the Equator, includes Iraqw and its related dialects, Asa, Ngomwia, and others. Characteristic of the group is the loss, for the most part, of emphatic consonants. The laterals, however, are partly preserved, as are the pharyngeal ' and a few of the affricates. Both *l and *r are reflected as l- and -r-. In spite of numerous innovations as a result of substratum influence, there are many similarities with Eastern Cushitic in grammar. The Western group, also called the Omotic branch by some scholars, encompasses Ometo, a dialect cluster including the Walamo language, with about 1,600,000 speakers; Janjero (Yamma), Bworo (Shinasha, Gonga), Anfillo (Southern Mao), Benesho-She (Gimira), Ari-Banna, and others, all of which are languages with small numbers of speakers, perhaps about 120,000 in all; and Kafa (Kaficho)-Mocha, with more than 200,000 speakers. All of these languages are spoken along the western border of Ethiopia and in northern Kenya. Typical features include the change of *s to s, the preservation of most affricates, but the loss of laterals and of all postvelar, pharyngeal, and laryngeal fricatives. The sonants *l, *r, and *n are usually represented alike as n- and -r-. Some languages have tones that serve to differentiate word meaning. Also characteristic are drastic innovations in the pronoun and the verb. Traces of the genders are usually represented as masculine -o (from *-aw) and feminine -a and -e (perhaps from *-at or *-ay). There have been some attempts to create a written language for Oromo and especially for Somali on the basis of Ethiopic, Latin, or Arabic writing. An original Somali writing system was invented in the beginning of the 20th century, but at present Somali is written in the Arabic alphabet. Linguistic characteristics Phonology All the Hamito-Semitic groups of consonants were preserved in Common Cushitic, and separate reflexes of each group can be traced in the different Cushitic languages. Because of an imperfect development of the system of word formation by vowel infixation, however, the stability of the consonantal root was not as necessary for correlation of forms as in Semitic. The reflexes of the sounds of the protolanguage in the individual Cushitic languages therefore depend to a great extent on positional circumstances; thus, a Proto-Cushitic *c, pronounced as ts, may have developed into a d- in an initial position and an -s- in an intervocalic or final position, and so forth. Emphatics are mostly preserved (d, c or c, k, etc.); *p is distinguished from *p by different reflexes (Omotic partly retains p). Affricates (and also d, s, s, etc.) represent what in Semitic are interdental consonants. Verbal conjugation by means of prefixed actor markers is preserved only in a part of the verbs or else in traces; in most of the verbs it is replaced by a new system of conjugation (originally a combination of verbal noun plus prefix conjugation of an auxiliary verb). Two genders (masculine *-w, feminine *-t) and traces of noun declension can be observed; partial and sometimes complete reduplication of stems is used as a means of expressing the plural, along with the means known from the other branches. The pronominal system (except in Omotic) is very close to that of Semitic. In vocabulary, there are many borrowings from Ethiopic, Amharic, Arabic, and Nilo-Saharan. Cushitic languages Bibliography M.L. Bender, "The Languages of Ethiopia: A New Lexicostatistic Classification and Some Problems of Diffusion," Anthropological Linguistics, vol. 13 (1971); A.B. Dolgopol'skij, Sravitel'no-istoricheskaja fonetika kusitskikh jazykov (1973); on the individual branches and languages of Cushitic, see C.R. Bell, The Somali Language (1953), a manual of the Isaq dialect; M.M. Moreno, Il somalo della Somalia (1955), devoted to the Benadir, Darod, and Digil dialects; Enrico Cerulli, Studi etiopici, 4 vol. (1936-51), contains grammars and vocabularies of Sidamo, Janjero, some Ometo dialects, and Kafa (Kaficho). For a good survey of the individual branches and languages of Cushitic, see F.R. Palmer, "Cushitic," in Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.), Current Trends in Linguistics, vol. 6 (1970), pp. 571-585.
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| | Thursday, February 08, 2001 - 06:27 am There have been some attempts to create a written language for Oromo and especially for Somali on the basis of Ethiopic, Latin, or Arabic writing. An original Somali writing system was invented in the beginning of the 20th century, but at present Somali is written in the Latin alphabet, but at one time Somali was written in the Arabic alphabet. Language has nothing to do with Religion. Saying CUSHITIC RELIGION is as saying LATIN RELIGION.
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| | Thursday, February 08, 2001 - 06:38 am Cushitic (ksht´k) (KEY), group of languages belonging to the Hamitic subfamily of the Hamito-Semitic family of languages. Hamito-Semitic languages (hm´t-smt´k) (KEY), family of languages spoken by more than 200 million people in N Africa; much of the Sahara; parts of E, central, and W Africa; and W Asia (especially the Arabian peninsula, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel). Since four of the Hamito-Semitic tongues, Arabic, Hebrew, Coptic, and Syriac, are also respectively the languages of Islam, Judaism, and two sects of the Christian faith, the language family reaches many millions in addition to its native speakers. 1 Traditionally, the Hamito-Semitic language family is said to have two subfamilies: Semitic and Hamitic. Although some scholars regard Hamitic and Semitic as two distinct language families, they possess a number of grammatical similarities and have a larger common vocabulary than borrowing would account for. The most satisfactory explanation is that the Hamitic and Semitic groups, despite their divergences, are subfamilies of a single Hamito-Semitic linguistic family, as evidenced by their marked grammatical, lexical, and phonological resemblances. 2 The languages of the Hamito-Semitic family are thought to have first been spoken along the shores of the Red Sea. Another theory holds that the Hamito-Semitic, or Afroasiatic, language family came into being in Africa, for only in Africa are all its members found, aside from some Semitic languages encountered in W Asia. The existence of the Semitic languages in W Asia is explained by assuming that the Semites of Africa migrated from E Africa to W Asia in very ancient times. At a later date, some Semites returned from Arabia to Africa. 3 The Hamitic Subfamily The Hamitic subfamily is generally considered to include ancient Egyptian (see Egyptian language) and its descendant, Coptic; the Berber languages; and the Cushitic languages. Ancient Egyptian and Coptic are extinct. Some linguists also place the Chad languages within the Hamitic subfamily. Those Hamitic tongues are or were spoken in N Africa, much of the Sahara, the Horn of E Africa, and parts of central and W Africa. They were named after Ham, the second son of the biblical Noah, whose descendants supposedly were the original speakers of the Hamitic languages. 4 The Berber languages are the mother tongues of more than 10 million persons in N Africa. The oldest known Berber inscriptions are from the 4th cent. B.C., but Berber-speaking peoples have lived in N Africa since c.3000 B.C., and Berber names appear in ancient Egyptian inscriptions from the Old Kingdom. The Berber tongues have survived Phoenician, Roman, and Arab conquests. Today they are spoken in Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Mauritania, Chad, and Niger. Many Berbers are bilingual, speaking also Arabic. The modern Berber variants include Tamachek, Zenaga, Kabyle, Rif, Siwi, and others. Grammatically, gender and number are indicated by prefixes and suffixes. The vocabulary has been enriched by borrowings from Latin, Arabic, French, and Spanish. The Arabic alphabet is employed, except in the case of the Tamachek dialect, which continues to use an ancient Berber alphabet known as Tifinagh. 5 The name Cushitic is derived from Cush, a son of Ham. The two principal Cushitic languages are Oromo, the tongue of 20 million people in Ethiopia and Kenya, and Somali, spoken by 9 million people in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Djibouti. Among the many other Cushitic languages are Saho-Afar, Agau, Beja, Burji, Geleba, Gimira, Janjero, Konso, Kaffa, Maji, and Sidamo. Oromo is written in the Ethiopic script (see discussion of writing below); Somali, in the Roman alphabet. 6 The Chad group of languages are spoken near Lake Chad in central Africa. Its most important tongue is Hausa, native to 25 million people, of whom about 19 million live in N Nigeria, 5 million in Niger, and 1 million in Cameroon, Togo, and Benin. In addition, Hausa is widely used as a lingua franca in W Africa. Written Hausa has long employed an alphabet based on that of Arabic, but today it is turning increasingly to a system based on Roman characters. The written literature in Hausa includes both poetry and prose. Among the many other Chad languages are Angas, Bolewa, Gwandara, Hiji, Kuseri, Kotoko, Mandara, Ron, Shirawa, and Sokoro. 7 The Semitic Subfamily The Semitic languages are named after Shem or Sem, the oldest son of Noah, from whom most of the languages’ speakers were said to be descended. These languages are believed to have evolved from a hypothetical parent tongue, proto-Semitic. The place of origin of proto-Semitic is still disputed: Africa, Arabia, and Mesopotamia are the most probable locations. The Semitic subfamily may be divided into North Semitic and South Semitic. The former has the subdivisions Northeast Semitic and Northwest Semitic, while the latter is made up of Southeast Semitic and Southwest Semitic. 8 A distinctive feature of the Semitic languages is the triliteral or triconsonantal root, composed of three consonants separated by vowels. The basic meaning of a word is expressed by the consonants, and different shades of this basic meaning are indicated by vowel changes. The plural can be formed either by adding a suffix to the singular or by an internal vowel change, as in Arabic kitab, “book,” but kutub, “books.” Two genders, masculine and feminine, are found in Semitic languages. The feminine is often indicated by the suffixes -t or -at. The Semitic verb is distinguished by its ability to form from the same root a number of derived stems that express new meanings based on the fundamental sense, such as passive, reflexive, causative, and intensive. 9 North Semitic Division An example of a Northeast Semitic language is Akkadian, also called Assyro-Babylonian. The principal subdivisions of the Northwest Semitic group are Canaanite, Ugaritic, and Aramaic (which embraced many dialects in the course of its long history, including Syriac). The term Canaanite is derived from Canaan, the name for the ancient region that comprised Palestine, Phoenicia, and part of Syria. Included among the Canaanite languages are Phoenician, Moabite, and Hebrew. Phoenician, a dead language, was the tongue of the Phoenician people. The earliest inscriptions in Phoenician that can be deciphered are dated c.10th cent. B.C. The language is also preserved in inscriptions from ancient Phoenician colonies, especially Carthage, whose language was a variant of Phoenician known as Punic. The existence of Moabite is known from a single inscription in that language dating from about the 9th cent. B.C., from proper names that occur in the Old Testament, and from the inscriptions of other peoples. The Ugaritic language was first encountered in 1929 at Ras Shamra, Syria, a village where ancient clay tablets with writing in this tongue were found. Since Ras Shamra, which flourished before the 12th cent. B.C., was called Ugarit in antiquity, the language discovered there was named after that ancient city. The Ugaritic language has variously been regarded as an early form of Hebrew, an early form of Phoenician, an early dialect of Canaanite, and an independent dialect of Northwest Semitic. Its classification is still unresolved. The writings in Ugaritic are important in the study of the Hebrew language and biblical literature of the early period. 10 South Semitic Division To the Southwest Semitic group belong both classical Arabic and the modern Arabic dialects. Southeast Semitic is represented by the South Arabic language of ancient South Arabia, which is preserved in inscriptions, and by the Semitic languages of Ethiopia, such as classical Ethiopic or Geez, Amharic, Tigre, and Tigrinya. About 5,000 stone inscriptions in South Arabic (or Himyaritic) were found in what is now Yemen. Ancient South Arabic had two principal dialects, Sabaean and Minaean. Sabaean inscriptions were also discovered in parts of Ethiopia. The earliest Minaean inscriptions belong to the 8th cent. B.C. or even earlier; the Sabaean inscriptions are of a later date. Some dialects spoken today in parts of S Arabia are called Modern South Arabic. Their relationship to the ancient South Arabic dialects of the inscriptions has not yet been determined. A Semitic language (or languages) was brought from S Arabia to Ethiopia during the first millennium B.C. by Semites. At that time the native languages of Ethiopia were Cushitic, and these languages strongly influenced the imported Semitic tongues. The Semitic languages of Ethiopia are classified as North Ethiopic (to which Geez or classical Ethiopic, Tigre, and Tigrinya belong) and South Ethiopic (consisting of Amharic, Harari, Gurage, and others). 11 Writing Systems The writing used for Semitic languages is either cuneiform or alphabetic writing. The latter has two principal divisions, the North Semitic script and the South Semitic script. The oldest known writing system employed by Semitic-speaking peoples is cuneiform. It was adopted by the Akkadians (see Akkad) c.2500 B.C. from the Sumerians (see Sumer), whose language was not a Semitic tongue. The Sumerian cuneiform goes back to about 4000 B.C., and it was used by various peoples until about the 2d cent. B.C. Babylonian and Assyrian, which were later dialects of Akkadian, also employed cuneiform. At first cuneiform was written from top to bottom in vertical rows, with the first row at the right, but at a later date the direction of writing was reversed, that is, it was written in horizontal rows from left to right. The North Semitic and South Semitic scripts are thought by some scholars to go back to a common source, a hypothetical proto-Semitic writing system. Others dispute this and regard the origin of the South Semitic alphabet as a still unsolved problem. The source of the proto-Semitic alphabetic script has been variously conjectured to be Egyptian hieroglyphics, Babylonian cuneiform, or other writing systems. 12 The North Semitic writing is alphabetic in that each sign or symbol represents a consonantal sound of the language. Vowels for some time were omitted. Symbols of various kinds to indicate the vowels for Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac probably date from the 8th cent. A.D. The North Semitic script consists of a Canaanite branch and an Aramaic branch. The Canaanite branch gave rise to Early Hebrew writing and Phoenician writing. Another descendant of the Canaanite branch is the Greek alphabet, which is the parent of all modern European alphabets, including the Roman and the Cyrillic. According to a Greek tradition the Phoenicians passed on their alphabet to the Greeks. The oldest extant Early Hebrew text is dated at about the 11th or 10th cent. B.C. Early Hebrew writing was the alphabet of the Jews until they adopted Aramaic instead of Hebrew as their spoken language sometime before the Christian era, when they also began to use the Square Hebrew letters derived from the Aramaic writing. The only descendant of the Early Hebrew alphabet still in use is the Samaritan writing. Records of the Aramaic script go back to the 9th cent. B.C. After about 500 B.C. the Aramaic alphabet was used throughout the Middle East. In addition to being the parent of Square Hebrew letters, from which evolved modern Hebrew writing, the Aramaic alphabet is the ancestor of Arabic writing, the Syriac scripts, and other Semitic alphabets. Aramaic writing probably also gave rise to the significant alphabetic writing systems of Asia, such as the Devanagari alphabet so widely used in India. 13 As Islam spread to various nations in Africa and Asia, it was accompanied by the Arabic alphabet. For example, Arabic writing was adapted for Persian, Pushtu, Urdu, Malay, the Berber languages, Swahili, Hausa, and Turkish. (Since 1928, however, the Roman alphabet has been used for Turkish.) The South Arabic inscriptions mentioned earlier employed the South Semitic alphabet, which is no longer used on the Arabian peninsula. This alphabet was taken to Ethiopia during the first millennium B.C. and is still used there, in modified form, for the Ethiopic languages. In fact, the sole noteworthy South Semitic script to survive until modern times is the one employed for the Ethiopic languages. All other known alphabets are believed to be derived from North Semitic writing. Although the South Arabic letters form a consonantal alphabet, the Ethiopic writing is syllabic in nature. Ethiopic consonants have six or more forms, each depending on the vowel following the consonant, but this may be a later development. In any case, the origin of the syllabic nature of the Ethiopic script is an unsolved problem. All Semitic languages are writtten from right to left except Ethiopic, Assyrian, and Babylonian, which are written from left to right. 14 Bibliography See L. H. Gray, Introduction to Semitic Comparative Linguistics (1934); M. A. Bryan, Notes on the Distribution of the Semitic and Cushitic Languages of Africa (1947); S. Moscati, ed., An Introduction to the Comparative Grammar of the Semitic Languages (1964); J. H. Greenberg, The Languages of Africa (2d ed. 1966); D. L. E. O’Leary, Comparative Grammar of the Semitic Languages (1923, repr. 1969); J. J. McCarthy, Formal Problems in Semitic Phonology and Morphology (1985); G. Khan, Studies in Semitic Syntax (1989).
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| | Thursday, February 08, 2001 - 06:44 am http://www.sil.org/htbin/eth?kw=CUSHITIC&fh=1
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