Observations of a Semitist on Recent Etymologies proposed by Africanists

Opening ParagraphThe Africanists were stirred up recently by Joseph Greenberg's Studies in African Linguistic Classification (New Haven, 1955). Not being an Africanist myself I do not intend to express here my opinion on the validity of Greenberg's classification. Since, however, Cushitic and Semitic comparisons were injected into the discussion I wish to sound a note of caution against certain etymologies and comparisons proposed in the various studies. The Semitist will tend to be rather conservative when dealing with etymologies and comparisons. The reasons for his cautious attitude are easily understandable. He deals with languages for which he has written documents going back as far as the third millenium B.C. (as is the case of Akkadian); the investigation of some of these started hundreds of years ago. This is not so in African linguistics. The African languages came to our attention only recently and for many of them we have only scanty vocabularies at our disposal. We do not know much about the phonetic development of most of the African languages and, as a result of this situation, the Africanist finds himself sometimes comparing roots representing different stages of the language without being able to reduce them to the original form. The Semitist is in a more favourable position. Because of his knowledge of the missing links within the various linguistic groups he is able to bring back, for instance, Ennemor (Gurage) roots such as äč ‘boy’ to Semitic wld, e'ä ‘crunch’ to ḥqā, ny'ä ‘be far’ to rḥq and others, even though these derivations would seem a tour de force at first consideration. In some studies dealing with African linguistics one occasionally finds comparisons and etymologies of the above-mentioned kind, but the Africanist is often unable, through no fault of his own, to justify his comparisons because of his inadequate knowledge of the linguistic history of these languages. There is also a simple human factor. In dealing with languages stretching from the north to the south of Africa it is not always possible to be adequately acquainted with the phonetic history of the various language groups even if sufficient documentation were available. Consequently occasional inexact comparisons and etymologies are established. I am hopeful that the Africanist will not refuse the co-operation of a Semitist and an amateur Cushitist. The purpose of the present note is to rectify some comparisons of Semitic and Cushitic brought into the discussion of African linguistic classification.