Of Yoruba, Arabic, and origins of Nigerian languages (II)

I got furious and wrote the following rebuttal: “Of the many languages I mentioned that deploy ‘asiri’ to denote ‘secret,’ you singled out only one language (Batonu) that I said is spoken in Benin Republic and in Nigeria and then proceeded to make the astonishingly parochial claim that the word’s presence in that language is […]

I got furious and wrote the following rebuttal: “Of the many languages I mentioned that deploy ‘asiri’ to denote ‘secret,’ you singled out only one language (Batonu) that I said is spoken in Benin Republic and in Nigeria and then proceeded to make the astonishingly parochial claim that the word’s presence in that language is a vestigial linguistic remnant of the Yoruba colonial heritage of the speakers of the language. You conveniently ignored the other languages I mentioned, perhaps, because reckoning with them would vitiate the validity of your claims.

“Well, first, go and read your West African history properly. Central and northern Benin Republic, that is, Alibori, Atakora, Borgu and Donga departments (states are called ‘departments’ there) were at no time in history under Oyo (or what you call ‘Yoruba’) suzerainty. In precolonial times, the name ‘Dahomey’ referred only to the southern third of what is now Benin Republic. French colonialists adopted the name and applied it to the whole area–to the displeasure of other parts of the country.

“When Matthew Kerekou, a northerner from Atakora Department, seized power in the early 1970s he changed the name of the country to the culturally neutral “Benin” (culturally neutral, that is, in the context of the country’s politics) — in the tradition of other West African countries that renamed their countries after precolonial African empires even when those empires didn’t have any geographic, cultural, or historical affinities with the modern countries after which they were named.

“So don’t confuse ‘Dahomey’ and ‘Benin Republic.’ They evoke different significations. ‘Yoruba influence in Dahomey’ isn’t the same thing as ‘Yoruba influence in Benin Republic.’ The Fon of Dahomey do indeed share many linguistic similarities with the Yoruba and were, according to many historical accounts, under the suzerainty of Oyo Empire at some point. So are the Aja and many Yoruboid groups in the country.

“The Batonu of Borgu, Donga and Alibori departments, however, were never under Oyo suzerainty. Nor were the Somba of Atakora. That’s not to say, though, that there are no linguistic interchanges between the Yoruba and the people of northern and central Benin Republic; it is just to say that if such interchanges exist–and they do exist–they are not the consequence of any fictive ‘imperial power’ of one group over the other. But that’s even by the way.

“Would you also say that Kanuri and Hausa people’s use of‘asiri’ to mean ‘secret’ is a holdover from their Yoruba colonial heritage? Or that Arabs use ‘as-sir’ to denote ‘secret’ because of the irresistible cultural force of ‘Yoruba civilization’? What point, exactly, are you trying to make?”

Of course, the man wasn’t making any point. He had no defense. He only apologized and pleaded that I be less caustic in future correspondences with him. You see, tracing the roots of languages and identifying the paths of their evolution is at once political and emotional. But it is also a scientific undertaking. That, though, is a topic for another column.

In the course of the heated discussion that my article generated, Professor FoluOgundinmu, a Nigerian professor of communication and journalism at Michigan State University, asked what it meant“to say a word is derived from another language when the etymology of the word is not clearly established?” He added:“How do linguists determine the order of direction or origin in such matters – say as in a Yoruba, Igbo, or Batonu word having origin in Arabic or another language?”

I understood the questions as intended to prod us to problematize notions of derivation, borrowing, and linguistic nativism. I am entirely in agreement with his understated but nonetheless apparent skepticism about what I like to call vulgar etymologies. If we can’t determine with certainty that a particular word is native to a language (and what, by the way, is nativism given the labyrinthine interconnectedness of languages?), how can we make claims that it has “loaned” a word to another language? What if the “loaned” word is itself loaned to that language by another language?

I am no professional linguist, but my sense is that when linguists say a word in one language is derived from another language, they mean nothing more than that the word’s immediate (and not necessarily its deep) roots are traceable to that language. One example will suffice. In Sierra Leonean Krio, for instance, “yabas” means onion. That word is “derived” and “corrupted” from the Yoruba “alubosa.” The Yoruba alubosa, in turn, is “derived” from the Hausa “albasa,” which is itself “derived” from the Arabic “al-basal.” It is entirely conceivable that “al-basal” isn’t, in fact, native to Arabic. I recently read a fascinating article about Greek and Latin loans in Arabic. Arabic borrowed heavily from Greek and Latin when Muslim scholars translated classical Greek works through which the Western world recovered its lost past.

Glottochronologists and lexicostatisticians also claim to be able to scientifically map the evolution of languages through the examination and analysis of certain “basic vocabularies.” They can give insights into the origins and circulations of words across languages.

I have, for instance, been fascinated by the many uncanny similarities between Japanese names and African names. Does this fact suggest common origins? What about the similarities in sound and rhythm between Plateau State languages and the Sino-Tibetan languages of China and its environs? Well, a Japanese linguist once investigated this and found that less than 30 percent of the similar-sounding words between Plateau State languages and China’s Sino-Tibetan languages share similar meanings. Linguists call these kinds of similarities “accidental evidence.” In other words, the researcher found that there was no evidence of commonorigin for Chinese and the Plateau languages; just accidental similarities in sound.

After all is said and done, historical, cultural, geographic and even political factors all conspire to shape the evolution, patterns, and socio-linguistic contours of all languages.

Given the intense interest in language families that this write up has generated in my readers, next week I will write on language families and the interconnectedness of Nigerian languages. Did you know, for instance, that Fulani is linguistically closer to Yoruba and Igbo than it is to Hausa? Then keep a date next week.