The African Origins of Common English Words

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Farooq A. Kperogi

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Sep 18, 2010, 7:44:36 PM9/18/10

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Saturday, September 18, 2010

The African Origins of Common English Words

By Farooq A. Kperogi

A distinct feature of the English language is its extensive borrowing from other languages. According to some sources, only about 30 percent of the vocabulary we use in modern English is derived from the native tongue itself, that is, from Anglo-Saxon—English prior to about 1100. The rest is derived from an amalgam of different languages, leading some to call the English language a “loaned language.”

So what contributions have African languages made to the vocabulary—and perhaps the syntax— of the English language? As I will point out shortly, the contributions of (black) African languages to the lexis and structure of the English language has been minimal at best and inconsequential at worst.

In researching this topic, I realized that a lot of work has already been done in this area. Notable books written on this topic include, Newbell Niles Puckett’s Black Names in America: Origins and Usage, which was published in 1975; Winifred Kellersberger Vass’ The Bantu Speaking Heritage of the United States, published in 1979; Gerard Matthew Dalgish’s A Dictionary of Africanisms: Contributions of Sub-Saharan Africa to the English Language, published in 1982; Joseph E. Holloway’s Africanisms in American Culture, published in 1990; and Joseph E Holloways and Winifred Kellersberger Vass’ The African Heritage of American English, published in 1993.

I haven’t read all of these books yet. When I do, I will update this entry. Perhaps some of my conclusions will change. However, there are several online resources that detail the African heritage of many English words. In this write-up, I am concerned only with common words in everyday English, by which I mean words that are so usual and so actively used in modern spoken and written English that one doesn’t need to consult a dictionary to know their meanings).

A good but by no means entirely reliable starting-point to find out about the African origins of common English words is Krystal.com, which lists several English words that are borrowed into modern English from other languages, including African languages.

Some common words that trace their roots to black Africa include the words “juke” and “jumbo.” Krystal.com says these words are of Bambara origin. Bambara is a Niger Congo language spoken mostly in the West African nations of Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast, and Burkina Faso.

Most people know that “voodoo” is African. But few probably know that it’s derived from the Gbe languages (the most widely spoken of the Gbe languages are Ewe and Fon), a Niger Congo language cluster spoken in parts of Ghana, Togo, and Benin Republic. The word is originally rendered in these languages as “vudun.”

A related word is “juju.” Both Krystal.com and Dictionary.com claim that the word originates from the Hausa language. I doubt that this is true. The word sounds more Yoruba than Hausa to me. I should know because I have a limited working proficiency in both languages.

“Tango,” the rhythmic ballroom dance often associated with Latin America, is said to owe its etymological provenance to Ibibio, a Benue-Congo language spoken in southeastern Nigeria. It’s said to be derived from the Ibibio word “tamgu,” which means “to dance.” “Merengue,” another popular Caribbean dance, is reputedly a distortion of the Fulani “merereki,” which means “to shake or quiver.”

Okra ( known to us as okro in Nigerian English) is said to be derived from the Igbo word “okuru” or “okworo,” which refers to the shrub used to make “gumbo” (a southern U.S. delicacy; the word “gumbo” itself is of African origin, but it’s not clear what African language it’s derived from) or other kinds of “slimy” soups. There is a popular folk etymology here in the United States that suggests that “okuru”—or its many dialectal variations— is Igbo for “lady’s fingers.” However, many of my Igbo friends couldn’t confirm this.

The words “chimpanzee,” “funky,” and “zombie” are also said to be derived from Kongo, a Niger Congo language spoken in the Central African nations of Angola and the Congo. And “milo,” a type of maize from which Milo drink is made, is derived from Sotho, a Niger Congo language spoken in southern African nations of Lesotho and South Africa. “Tsetse,” the bloodsucking fly often called “tsetse fly,” is from Tswana, a Niger Congo language spoken in Botswana and parts of South Africa. And “cola,” from which Coca-Cola derives its name, is from Temme, a Niger-Congo language spoken chiefly in Sierra Leone.

“Banana,” “jazz,” “jive,” “yam” are of Wolof origin. Wolof is a Niger Congo language spoken mostly in Senegal, the Gambia, and parts of Mauritania. Note, however, that some people claim that yam is derived from “nyami,” the Fulani word for the tuber; others said it’s derived from “anyinam,” the Twi word for yam. But it’s important that Wolof, Fulani (spoken in most West African countries) and Twi (spoken in Ghana and Ivory Coast) are descended from the same Niger-Congo language family—in common with most languages in southern and central Nigeria.

Other common English words with African roots are, “kwashiorkor” (from Ga, the Ghanaian language, where the word literally means “swollen stomach”), mumbo jumbo (i.e., gibberish; unintelligible talk; derived from Mandingo, a West African language spoken mostly in the Gambia, Mali, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea), “jamboree” (possibly from Swahili), “gorilla,” “zebra,” etc.

There is a lot of debate over whether the word “OK,” aptly described as “the best-known and widest-travelled Americanism, used and recognised even by people who hardly know another word of English,” is of African origin. People who support a theory of African origins for the word say it’s derived from the Mandingo phrase “O ke,” which stands for “certainly.” Others say it is derived from the Wolof “waw kay,” which translates as “yes indeed.” But this is folk etymology.

Many other languages have some version of the “OK” sound in their lexicons, which incidentally share semantic properties with the English OK. Speakers of such languages also lay claim to being the sources of America’s most popular linguistic export. In the Finnish language, for instance, the word oikea means “correct, exact.” In the Native American Choctaw-Chickasaw language group, “okah” means “yes indeed.”

I am persuaded by the evidence, which I shall present shortly, that OK has no African origins. As linguistic researchers know only too well—and as the examples above illustrate—the possibility for “accidental evidence” in glutto-chronological research is often immense. For instance, what the English people call “sun” is called “son” in Batonu, my native language. The Hausa word for the English “sixty” is “sitin.” This in no way, of course, suggests that Batonu, Hausa, and English are cognate languages; these are just linguistic accidents. English is an Indo-European language, Batonu is a Niger-Congo language, and Hausa is an Afro-Asiatic language.

Sometime ago, a Japanese professor of linguistics went to Plateau State in central Nigeria to investigate the link between any of the Sino-Tibetan languages spoken in China and the Chinese-sounding local languages spoken in Plateau State. He found about 20 percent (?) lexical similarities between the Plateau and Sino-Tibetan languages but dismissed this as “accidental evidence” and as insufficient basis to establish cognacy between the languages.

Untrained, “feel-good” researchers often hold up accidental glutto-chronological strands of evidence as inviolably self-evident empirical proofs of their preconceptions. So what is the true origin of the word “OK”?

The Online Etymology Dictionary says—and this has been corroborated by many authorities— that OK is actually a slangy and jocular abbreviation of the humorous phrase “oll korrect,” which emerged in Boston in 1838. During this period, there was a trend to humorously spell words as they sound, what one might call “pronunciation spelling.” The word "OK" would have died like other jocular abbreviations of the time had the New York re-election campaign group for Martin Van Buren, America’s 8^th president, not created a group called the “OK Club.” This was in 1840, two years after the word was first invented in Boston. Buren lost his re-election bid, but America—and the world— gained a new word.

Now back to the contribution of African languages to the English language. It’s obvious that the words black African languages have contributed to the English language fall into four categories: names of plants that are originally native to our soil, names of animals that were exclusively found in Africa, names of material and immaterial artifacts that trace their provenance to Africa and, finally, derogatory terms in modern English that arose out of the deep-seated disdain that the first English people to set foot on Africa had for us.

What became obvious to me in the course of researching this topic is that so-called sub-Saharan languages have collectively made the least contribution to the vocabulary of the English language, leading someone to note that “Africa isn’t sharing its words.” According to him, “Africa, especially Sub-Sahara Africa, despite having been known and explored for thousands of years, has not given us nearly so many words as the Native Americans, discovered only five centuries ago.” But is Africa deliberately hoarding its vocabularies?

Well, it isn’t just our vocabulary that the English language has been reluctant to accept; our languages have also not made any significant impact, as far as I know, on the idioms and structure of English. To appreciate the point I am making, consider the fact that Sino-Tibetan languages such as Mandarin and Cantonese have not only enriched the vocabulary of the English language, they have also influenced its idioms and structure. For instance, the phrase “pidgin English” is China’s gift to English. It was originally the Chinese (mis)pronunciation of “business English.”

Similarly, the phrase “long time no see” (which is really non-grammatical by the standards of Standard English, but which is now so integral to the English language that no one thinks of its grammatical awkwardness) is China’s gift to English idioms. In proper English syntax, the phrase should have been rendered as, “We have not seen in a long time.” The Oxford Dictionary says “long time no see” started as a humorous imitation of Chinese English in the United States. Now it has stuck.

And such ungrammatical but now perfectly acceptable idiomatic phrases as “have a look-see,” “no-go area,” “to lose face,” etc are direct translations from Chinese, sort of like “you and work” becoming an accepted form of greeting in English in conformity with how that greeting is literally rendered in many Nigerian languages such as the Yoruba “eku ise” and the Hausa “sanu da aiki,” which we instead render as “well done” in Nigerian English.

I think it bears repeating that it isn’t Africa that isn’t sharing its words; it’s the English language that isn’t accepting Africa’s words. This is probably a linguistic manifestation of the ice-cold contempt the Brits have for us. Or it could be the consequence of the time-honored unequal, exploitative, one-dimensional cultural exchange between Britain and Africa, which has resulted in Africa’s low symbolic and cultural power in global cultural politics. African languages certainly have more to offer to the English language outside of simple names and derogatory phrases.

Perhaps, the popularization of West African and East African English is one way Africa can make inroads into the lexis and structure of English. But even that isn’t very promising for now.

Related Articles:

1. A Comparison of Nigerian, American and British English
2. Why is "Sentiment" Such a Bad Word in Nigeria?
3. Ambassador Aminchi's Impossible Grammatical Logic
4. 10 Most Annoying Nigerian Media English Expressions
5. Sambawa and "Peasant Attitude to Governance"
6. Adverbial and Adjectival Abuse in Nigerian English
7. In Defense of "Flashing" and Other Nigerianisms
8. Weird Words We're Wedded to in Nigerian English
9. American English or British English?
10. Hypercorrection in Nigerian English
11. Nigerianisms, Americanisms, Briticisms and Communication Breakdown
12. Top 10 Irritating Errors in American English
13. Nigerian Editors Killing Macebuh Twice with Bad Grammar
14. On "Metaphors" and "Puns" in Nigerian English
15. Common Errors of Pluralization in Nigerian English
16. Q & A About Common Grammatical Problems
17. Semantic Change and the Politics of English Pronunciation

18. Common Errors of Reported Speech in Nigerian English

19. Broken English, Pidgin English and Nigerian English

20. Top Cutest and Strangest Nigerian English Idioms

21. Back-formation and Affixation in Nigerian English

22. The Politics of Usage and Meaning in English

23. When Food and Grammar Mix

24. Q and A on Grammar

1 Park Place South
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Atlanta, GA, USA.
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Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Blog: www.farooqkperogi.blogspot.com

"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will

Hetty ter Haar

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Sep 19, 2010, 6:21:20 AM9/19/10

to USA Africa Dialogue Series

"According to some sources ... only about 30 percent of the vocabulary

we use in modern English is derived
from the native tongue itself, that is, from Anglo-Saxon—English prior
to about 1100."

The Anglo-Saxons settled in Britain from the 5th century CE; in pre-
Roman times the Celts inhabited Britain; the original native tongue
therefore seems to be Celtic, not Anglo-Saxon.

Hetty ter Haar

On Sep 19, 12:44 am, "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooqkper...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Saturday, September 18, 2010
> The African Origins of Common English

> Words<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/09/african-origins-of-common-e...>
> *By Farooq A. Kperogi*

>
> A distinct feature of the English language is its extensive borrowing from
> other languages. According to some

> sources<http://askville.amazon.com/percentage-English-words-Latin/AnswerViewe...>,

> only about 30 percent of the vocabulary we use in modern English is derived
> from the native tongue itself, that is, from Anglo-Saxon—English prior to
> about 1100. The rest is derived from an amalgam of different languages,
> leading some to call the English language a “loaned language.”
>
> So what contributions have African languages made to the vocabulary—and
> perhaps the syntax— of the English language? As I will point out shortly,
> the contributions of (black) African languages to the lexis and structure of
> the English language has been minimal at best and inconsequential at worst.
>
> In researching this topic, I realized that a lot of work has already been
> done in this area. Notable books written on this topic include, Newbell

> Niles Puckett’s *Black Names in America: Origins and Usage*, which was
> published in 1975; Winifred Kellersberger Vass’ *The Bantu Speaking Heritage
> of the United States*, published in 1979; Gerard Matthew Dalgish’s *A

> Dictionary of Africanisms: Contributions of Sub-Saharan Africa to the

> English Language*, published in 1982; Joseph E. Holloway’s *Africanisms in
> American Culture*, published in 1990; and Joseph E Holloways and Winifred
> Kellersberger Vass’ *The African Heritage of American English*, published in

> 1993.
>
> I haven’t read all of these books yet. When I do, I will update this entry.
> Perhaps some of my conclusions will change. However, there are several
> online resources that detail the African heritage of many English words. In
> this write-up, I am concerned only with common words in everyday English, by
> which I mean words that are so usual and so actively used in modern spoken
> and written English that one doesn’t need to consult a dictionary to know
> their meanings).
>
> A good but by no means entirely reliable starting-point to find out about
> the African origins of common English words is

> Krystal.com<http://www.krysstal.com/borrow.html>,

> which lists several English words that are borrowed into modern English from
> other languages, including African languages.
>
> Some common words that trace their roots to black Africa include the words
> “juke” and “jumbo.” Krystal.com says these words are of Bambara origin.
> Bambara is a Niger Congo language spoken mostly in the West African nations
> of Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast, and Burkina Faso.
>
> Most people know that “voodoo” is African. But few probably know that it’s
> derived from the Gbe languages (the most widely spoken of the Gbe languages
> are Ewe and Fon), a Niger Congo language cluster spoken in parts of Ghana,
> Togo, and Benin Republic. The word is originally rendered in these languages

> as “*vudun*.”

>
> A related word is “juju.” Both Krystal.com and

> Dictionary.com<http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/juju> claim

> that the word originates from the Hausa language. I doubt that this is true.
> The word sounds more Yoruba than Hausa to me. I should know because I have a
> limited working proficiency in both languages.
>
> “Tango,” the rhythmic ballroom dance often associated with Latin America, is
> said to owe its etymological provenance to Ibibio, a Benue-Congo language
> spoken in southeastern Nigeria. It’s said to be derived from the Ibibio word

> “*tamgu*,” which means “to dance.” “Merengue,” another popular Caribbean
> dance, is reputedly a distortion of the Fulani “*merereki*,” which means “to
> shake or quiver.”
>
> Okra ( known to us as *okro *in Nigerian English) is said to be derived from
> the Igbo word “*okuru* <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/okra>” or

> “okworo,” which refers to the shrub used to make “gumbo” (a southern U.S.
> delicacy; the word “gumbo” itself is of African origin, but it’s not clear
> what African language it’s derived from) or other kinds of “slimy” soups.
> There is a popular folk etymology here in the United States that suggests
> that “okuru”—or its many dialectal variations— is Igbo for “lady’s fingers.”
> However, many of my Igbo friends couldn’t confirm this.
>
> The words “chimpanzee,” “funky,” and “zombie” are also said to be derived
> from Kongo, a Niger Congo language spoken in the Central African nations of

> Angola and the Congo. And “*milo*,” a type of maize from which Milo drink is

> made, is derived from Sotho, a Niger Congo language spoken in southern
> African nations of Lesotho and South Africa. “Tsetse,” the bloodsucking fly
> often called “tsetse fly,” is from Tswana, a Niger Congo language spoken in
> Botswana and parts of South Africa. And “cola,” from which Coca-Cola derives
> its name, is from Temme, a Niger-Congo language spoken chiefly in Sierra
> Leone.
>
> “Banana,” “jazz,” “jive,” “yam” are of Wolof origin. Wolof is a Niger Congo
> language spoken mostly in Senegal, the Gambia, and parts of Mauritania.

> Note, however, that some people claim that yam is derived from “*nyami*,”
> the Fulani word for the tuber; others said it’s derived from “*anyinam*,”

> the Twi word for yam. But it’s important that Wolof, Fulani (spoken in most
> West African countries) and Twi (spoken in Ghana and Ivory Coast) are
> descended from the same Niger-Congo language family—in common with most
> languages in southern and central Nigeria.
>
> Other common English words with African roots are, “kwashiorkor” (from Ga,
> the Ghanaian language, where the word literally means “swollen stomach”),
> mumbo jumbo (i.e., gibberish; unintelligible talk; derived from Mandingo, a
> West African language spoken mostly in the Gambia, Mali, Liberia, Sierra
> Leone, and Guinea), “jamboree” (possibly from Swahili), “gorilla,” “zebra,”
> etc.
>
> There is a lot of debate over whether the word “OK,” aptly

> described<http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-oka1.htm> as

> “the best-known and widest-travelled Americanism, used and recognised even
> by people who hardly know another word of English,” is of African origin.
> People who support a theory of African origins for the word say it’s derived

> from the Mandingo phrase “*O ke*,” which stands for “certainly.” Others say
> it is derived from the Wolof “*waw kay*,” which translates as “yes indeed.”

> But this is folk etymology.
>
> Many other languages have some version of the “OK” sound in their lexicons,
> which incidentally share semantic properties with the English OK. Speakers
> of such languages also lay claim to being the sources of America’s most

> popular linguistic export. In the Finnish language, for instance, the word *
> oikea* means “correct, exact.” In the Native American Choctaw-Chickasaw
> language group, “*okah*” means “yes indeed.”

>
> I am persuaded by the evidence, which I shall present shortly, that OK has
> no African origins. As linguistic researchers know only too well—and as the
> examples above illustrate—the possibility for “accidental evidence” in
> glutto-chronological research is often immense. For instance, what the

> English people call “sun” is called “*son*” in Batonu, my native language.
> The Hausa word for the English “sixty” is “*sitin*.” This in no way, of

> course, suggests that Batonu, Hausa, and English are cognate languages;
> these are just linguistic accidents. English is an Indo-European language,
> Batonu is a Niger-Congo language, and Hausa is an Afro-Asiatic language.
>
> Sometime ago, a Japanese professor of linguistics went to Plateau State in
> central Nigeria to investigate the link between any of the Sino-Tibetan
> languages spoken in China and the Chinese-sounding local languages spoken in
> Plateau State. He found about 20 percent (?) lexical similarities between
> the Plateau and Sino-Tibetan languages but dismissed this as “accidental
> evidence” and as insufficient basis to establish cognacy between the
> languages.
>
> Untrained, “feel-good” researchers often hold up accidental
> glutto-chronological strands of evidence as inviolably self-evident
> empirical proofs of their preconceptions. So what is the true origin of the
> word “OK”?
>
> The Online Etymology

> Dictionary<http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=OK> says—and

> this has been corroborated by many authorities— that OK is actually a slangy
> and jocular abbreviation of the humorous phrase “oll korrect,” which emerged
> in Boston in 1838. During this period, there was a trend to humorously spell
> words as they sound, what one might call “pronunciation spelling.” The word
> "OK" would have died like other jocular abbreviations of the time had the
> New York re-election campaign group for Martin Van Buren, America’s
> 8th president,
> not created a group called the “OK Club.” This was in 1840, two years after
> the word was first invented in Boston. Buren lost his re-election bid, but
> America—and the world— gained a new word.
>
> Now back to the contribution of African languages to the English language.
> It’s obvious that the words black African languages have contributed to the
> English language fall into four categories: names of plants that are
> originally native to our soil, names of animals that were exclusively found
> in Africa, names of material and immaterial artifacts that trace their
> provenance to Africa and, finally, derogatory terms in modern English that
> arose out of the deep-seated disdain that the first English people to set
> foot on Africa had for us.
>
> What became obvious to me in the course of researching this topic is that
> so-called sub-Saharan languages have collectively made the least
> contribution to the vocabulary of the English language, leading someone to

> note <http://everything2.com/title/English+words+of+African+origin> that

> rendered in many Nigerian languages such as the Yoruba “*eku ise*” and the
> Hausa “*sanu da aiki*,” which we instead render as “well done” in Nigerian

> English.
>
> I think it bears repeating that it isn’t Africa that isn’t sharing its
> words; it’s the English language that isn’t accepting Africa’s words. This
> is probably a linguistic manifestation of the ice-cold contempt the Brits
> have for us. Or it could be the consequence of the time-honored unequal,
> exploitative, one-dimensional cultural exchange between Britain and Africa,
> which has resulted in Africa’s low symbolic and cultural power in global
> cultural politics. African languages certainly have more to offer to the
> English language outside of simple names and derogatory phrases.
>
> Perhaps, the popularization of West African and East African English is one
> way Africa can make inroads into the lexis and structure of English. But
> even that isn’t very promising for now.
>

> *Related Articles:*
> *1. A Comparison of Nigerian, American and British
> English<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2007/09/divided-by-common-language-...>
> 2. <http://www.blogger.com/goog_2036618659>Why is "Sentiment" Such a Bad
> Word in Nigeria?<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2009/12/why-is-sentiment-such-bad-w...>

> 3. Ambassador Aminchi's Impossible Grammatical

> Logic<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2009/12/yaraduas-health-amb-aminchi...>

> 4. 10 Most Annoying Nigerian Media English

> Expressions<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2009/12/10-most-annoying-nigerian-m...>

> 5. Sambawa and "Peasant Attitude to

> Governance"<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2009/12/sambawa-and-peasant-attitud...>

> 6. Adverbial and Adjectival Abuse in Nigerian

> English<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2009/12/adverbial-and-adjectival-ab...>

> 7. In Defense of "Flashing" and Other

> Nigerianisms<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/01/in-defense-of-flashing-and-...>

> 8. Weird Words We're Wedded to in Nigerian

> English<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/01/weird-words-were-wedded-to-...>

> 9. American English or British

> English?<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/01/american-english-or-british...>
> 10. Hypercorrection in Nigerian
> English<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/02/hypercorrection-in-nigerian...>

> 11. Nigerianisms, Americanisms, Briticisms and Communication

> Breakdown<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/02/nigerianisms-americanisms-b...>

> 12. Top 10 Irritating Errors in American

> English<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/03/top-10-irritating-errors-in...>

> 13. Nigerian Editors Killing Macebuh Twice with Bad

> Grammar<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/03/nigerian-editors-killing-ma...>

> 14. On "Metaphors" and "Puns" in Nigerian

> English<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/04/on-metaphors-and-puns-in-ni...>

> 15. Common Errors of Pluralization in Nigerian

> English<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/04/common-errors-of-pluralizat...>
> <http://www.blogger.com/goog_704080340>16. Q & A About Common Grammatical
> Problems<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/04/q-and-about-common-grammati...>
> <http://www.blogger.com/goog_704080340>17. Semantic Change and the Politics
> of English Pronunciation<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/04/semantic-change-and-politic...>
> *
> 18.* Common Errors of Reported Speech in Nigerian
> English<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/05/common-errors-of-reported-s...>
> *

> 19. Broken English, Pidgin English and Nigerian

> English<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/05/broken-english-pidgin-engli...>

> 20. Top Cutest and Strangest Nigerian English

> Idioms<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/06/top-cutest-and-strangest-ni...>

> 21. Back-formation and Affixation in Nigerian

> English<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/07/back-formation-and-affixati...>

> 22. The Politics of Usage and Meaning in

> English<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/08/politics-of-meaning-and-usa...>

> 23. When Food and Grammar

> Mix<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/08/when-food-and-grammar-mix.html>
> 24. Q and A on Grammar<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/09/q-and-on-grammar.html>

kenneth harrow

unread,

Sep 19, 2010, 10:01:25 AM9/19/10

to usaafric...@googlegroups.com

thanks farooq for this fascinating piece.
i was once told that in american english we indicate approval by saying uh-huh, and disapproval by unh-unh (not sure of spelling), and that these tonal signifiers were of african origin. i was told that these were not in british english, and were not even comprehensible to brits (find that a bit hard to believe, but who knows). wait, farooq knows.
what do you say.
and here's another, bigger one you might not want to take on. i read a bit of cheikh anta diop's claims of wolof being of egyptian origin, and he cites similarities of common words. but given the changes over time that languages undergo, wouldn't the arguments for similarity be vitiated? anyway, real linguits could evaluate that claim, and i've always been curious about its scientific solidity
ken

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Cornelius Hamelberg

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Sep 19, 2010, 11:49:28 AM9/19/10

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What a bummer!

The title of the piece led the likes of I and I to believe that we
were about to open a goldmine of revelation: thousands of African
loanwords from the womb of da mother of all languages, and that they
(The English or “Britishers” as the Germans and Boers say) should be
grateful to be a part of us, through those contributions, as we are a
part of them, language-wise.

By Othello the black fellow, what a dis-appointment!

Africa the Dark Continent, the cradle of civilisation has not given
or loaned the English speaking world more words? What says our fluent
polyglot (a dozen African and six European, plus Hebrew and Arabic)
Professor Bangura who is currently a-perfecting his knowledge of
hieroglyphics?

What says Chambi Chachage our doyen of Swahili stationed at Dar-es-
salaam, about the tenuous notion that Berber and Arabic dialects as
spoken in that vast chunk of North African territory - down to
Mauritania are not African languages – in the same way that English
is now native to the American, the Australian, the Canadian, the New
Zealander?

I think that a vital element that Farooq has left out in his
assessment is NIGERIAN ENGLISH, and what local languages have
contributed to that, since Nigerian English and the diverse English –
based Creoles, Krio, pidgins and patois and all the contemporary rap
slang are all part and parcel of the corpus called the English
language which is currently being globalized, even as Farooq continues
his research into the matter of our contributions to the latest
development/s. Farooq’s concluding paragraph is far too pessimistic –
think of the contribution that “ NO woman No cry” Jamaican reggae has
made to the current state of the English language!

I’m very surprised about the paucity of Africa’s contributions to the
Queen’s English, when I take into consideration the extent of the
British Empire under Queen Victoria, an empire on which the sun did
not set, and which included half of Africa. One would have thought
that it was not only a one-way contact but more elements of give and
take in our contacts as with settler colonisation in Kenya, Zimbabwe,
South Africa - and the costal connections ( such as the Kalabari, the
Krio, the Kru, the Ga, the Ewe, the Yoruba, the Efik and Ibibio ) if
there was indeed a cultural exchange in the processes of colonisation.

And also the extent of the slave trade and the millions of Africans
who took their languages with them…. There is evidence of language
retentions of the Gullah or South Carolina and their impact on some of
the English dialects spoken in those parts.

We have been given some examples of pidgin passing on into at least
established conventional mainstream vernacular English as some of new
slang eventually does, in time.

Isn’t it about time for the Yoruba word ”Okuru” to pass into the
British mainstream of invective? “Okuru” means cur or mongrel,
doesn’t it – as in “You common cry of curs”… not to mention other
parts of “Shakespeare’s bawdy”. When Sierra Leone beat Nigeria (1 -0)
at soccer in Freetown, it might delight Nigeria readers to know that a
Sierra Leone English newspaper emblazoned the victory with this
headline: “Okuru dog kill leppet” which translates into ordinary
English, “The Cur (underdog, Sierra Leone) killed the Leopard
(Nigeria)”

Still on the influence of the enslaved African on English in America
and Britain we have “jig” and “jigijigi” and if my friend Daniel Jatta
is right, also the banjo….

One wonders about the extent to which the Yoruba language has
contributed loan words to Spanish and Portuguese, and here I*m
thinking primarily of Cuba (and the Santeria religion) and of course
Brazil and its Yoruba religious retentions. By the time Toyin
( Adepoju) has done his deep digging into the Yoruba religion in the
Caribbean and South America, he should have unearthed a lot of
concepts embedded in some of the Yoruba loanwords – and by writing
about these the original Yoruba will once again take it’s place in the
centre of those religious systems and all discourse about them -
instead of translations or the equivalents to be found in other world
religions, which are approximations mostly and cannot wholly act as
substitutes ( even in eclectic systems, please let us trace things
back to their origins. A lot of religious terms from Sanskrit, Hindi,
Tamil, Hebrew, Arabic, Tibetan and Pali have passed into the English
dictionaries and cornucopias, in the same way. (What cannot be
translated from holy Africa script should be left alone – intact,
perhaps a footnote or two should do)
(There is a wonderful exchange of letters available, between Toyin
Adepoju and Afis on the subject of “Odu Ifa Ose Meji”

“it isn’t Africa that isn’t sharing its

words; it’s the English language that isn’t accepting Africa’s

words.”?

In my opinion the role of the African writer should not be
underestimnmated; it is he and she who can interject and impose
African words, in toto into the English Language in which he / she
writes, without apology, where a calabash will remain a calabash, and
salaat is a ritual form of prayer, dua is a supplication ….

Farooq, I have found this book to be of immense value:

http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en-GB&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENUK257&q=Mother+Wit+from+the+Laughing+Barrel

NB. I and I is no professor and therefore I and I is not even trying
to write professionally about this. At best, I and I asks questions
and perhaps is capable of making useful suggestions to those who are
suggestible. In any case I’ll be phoning Farooq at about 1600hrs, his
time to talk some broken Nigerian English …. (Smile)

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Farooq A. Kperogi

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Sep 19, 2010, 1:05:14 PM9/19/10

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Thanks, Hetty. But, although Celtic is a member of the Indo-European language family, it isn't English. The English language came about only AFTER the Germanic peoples, the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes settled in Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries. Anglo-Saxon or Old English is the native tongue, not Celt which, in fact, doesn't belong to the West Germanic sub-phylum of the Indo-European language family that English belongs to. I was talking about the language not the people. Celt and English are different languages.

Farooq

Farooq A. Kperogi

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Sep 19, 2010, 9:45:14 PM9/19/10

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Ken,

Your story is entirely credible. For one, most, perhaps all, Niger-Congo languages are tonal. And Indo-European languages, of which English is a member, are not. So if Americans indicated approval and disapproval through tonal inflections, it makes sense to attribute this linguistic peculiarity to an African influence since Africans have been a part of the American cultural and linguistic landscape from America's founding. I'd never heard of this before. Thanks for the info. It has enriched my database.

I've read second-hand versions of Diop's claims. Unfortunately, I am not a professional linguist; only an amateur one. However, my understanding is that he set out to "prove" that ancient Egyptian languages were derived from Wolof, not the other way round. Correct me if I am wrong.

I really don't know what methodology Diop employed to arrive at his conclusions. But from what I know about glotto-chronology and lexicostatistics (which isn't a lot, frankly) I think it would be a tough job to scientifically establish lexical cognacy between ancient Egyptian languages and Wolof. But I'll have to read Diop's original work to be able to make any informed comment.

Farooq

kenneth harrow

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Sep 19, 2010, 10:38:19 PM9/19/10

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to add to cornelius's useful suggestions of where
to look for african influences, if not words, on
english, that is american english: hard to
believe that as the music came in, words did not
accompany the intonations, tonalities. the two
always go together. do they say "wow" in england?
and along with music as support for words come
narratives, tales. is it possible that brer
rabbit, leuk le lievre, brought no words along
with the tales? hard to believe. no way-oh
when english or spanish or portuguese words
melded from their standard usage to slang/creole
forms, were there no african influences? how are
they measured? when pequeno became piccaninny,
was no african language working on its
transformation into a broadly used pidgin term?
if not for that example, aren't there others?
doesn't seem possible that the swerves into new
terms or pronunciations in english weren't
affected, regionally, where there were many
african slaves, and esp where they were from only a few lang families
questions from a non-linguist
ken

Chambi Chachage

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Sep 20, 2010, 2:37:08 AM9/20/10

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Farooq is on a 'safari' as he has indicated that he may change some of his conclusions after reading the cited books. It seems he has deliberately chosen to travel to the land of the so-called "(black) African languages." I am not sure if, in his mind, that include the areas referred to by Cornelius below - the one others call 'Arab Africa' - and the land of the Pharaohs alluded to by Ken let alone the 'White Africa' of the Afrikaans among other 'European Africans.' Interestingly, the online source that Farooq starts with refers to Arab as an Afro-Asiatic language and lists 97 words that it has contributed to English. However, it only list 2 contributions from (Ki)Swahili - the word bwana and dengue -which it refers to as a Niger-Kongo language! Of course, like Farooq's piece, this online source is also work in progress and, as he cautions, it a "good but by no means entirely reliable starting-point." No wonder it does not even mention the Kiswahili word 'safari' which, by Farooq's definition, is one of the "common words in everyday English" "that are so usual and so actively used in modern spoken and written English that one doesn’t need to consult a dictionary to know their meanings." To add insult to injury the source only mention 13 contributions from the ancient Egyptian though, in line with Martin Bernal's Black Athena: The Afrosiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, it defines it as Afro-Asiatic. A cursory look at that list reveals that many words that the Greek and Latin loaned - if not stole - from Egyptian are missing. Why? Simply because most English Dictionaries credits their origin to Greek and Latin, I presume. By the way, my Chambers English Dictionary refers to the word 'pyramid' as Greek in origin making one wonder what the Egyptians called it! What if the word was Egyptian in origin but got into the English Lexicon via Greek? If words can indirectly pass from African languages to the English language via Asiatic and European languages what does this say about 'The African Origins of Common English Words'?

From: Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sun, September 19, 2010 6:49:28 PM
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: The African Origins of Common English Words

From: kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu>
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sun, September 19, 2010 5:01:25 PM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The African Origins of Common English Words

Farooq A. Kperogi

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Sep 20, 2010, 9:06:52 AM9/20/10

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Great points, Chambi. Yes, I was looking ONLY at black African languages. And that excludes Arabic, which has contributed immensely to the vocabulary of the English language. More than 80 percent of the vocabulary in astronomy (acme, nadir, summit, etc) is derived from Arabic. A huge swath of medical and mathematical vocabulary is also Arabic. So are names for material artifacts like "mattress," "alcohol." Perhaps the only languages that outrival Arabic in terms of contribution to the vocabulary of the English language are Latin and Greek. However, although Arabic is an Afro-Asiatic language, I don't classify it as a "black African" language. I made it clear in my write-up that I was only looking at black African languages, primarily Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan and so-called click languages, except that I also looked at Hausa which, though spoken by black Africans, is classified as an "Afro-Asiatic" language. (I have a problem with that classification, but that's a topic for another day.) I also excluded the Berber languages and Afrikaans, which have both contributed a fair share to the vocabulary of the English language.

Cornelius mentions the influence of Nigerian languages in Nigerian English, which he correctly states is part of the world's Englishes. That's a valid point. But I was looking at words and expressions that aren't provincial, that have international intelligibility. Nigerian English hasn't yet reached that stage.

Having said that, I get the sense that African languages have made a greater impact in the lexis and structure of Spanish than they have on English, but I have no authority to back this up. And since I don't speak even a smattering of Spanish, I am prepared to be challenged-- and educated-- on my claims. However, my casual research on the influences of African languages on English shows that many many Africa-derived vocabularies came to English by way of Spanish.

Ken mentions the possibility that the pronunciational quiddities of American English could have African influences. I'd never thought of that perhaps because I am not very interested in phonology as such. But I think you are on to something here because I have on many occasions mistaken "thick" African-America speech patterns for African languages.