African Romance: searching for traces of a lost Latin language
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- Опубліковано 26 гру 2019
- Did a Romance language survive in North Africa? What was it like? The story of a late Latin language, people who spoke it and a tour of its possible features.
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~ Briefly ~
Our story starts with a map of modern Romance languages, zooming in one of the areas where a local neo-Latin language did not survive: Roman Africa. We'll meet Punic speakers in Carthage, hear of Roman and Vandal and Byzantine and Umayyad conquests, and Amazigh ("Berber") people all along as we uncover pieces of this tongue's story.
In the end we're left speculating, wondering about a language that maybe - possibly! - had a vowel system like Sardinian, k-sounding Cs like Dalmatian, b-sounding Vs like Spain and interacted with local languages that other Romance languages hardly knew.
~ Credits ~
Art, narration and animation by Josh from NativLang.
My doc full of sources for claims and credits for music, sfx, fonts and images:
docs.google.com/document/d/1B...
The lost brother of our Romance family :(
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Alvo neutralizado
salute to our ancient counterparts lol (salam to you ;) )
F
many latin words live on in the common tunisian tongue, like qurnita 🐙 kayas 🛣️ quatoos 🐈 and many others
F
“The city of Hippo grows hungrier by the day.”
Hungry hungry hippo
@@tchitchouan Tomorrow it will be the hungry hungry hungry hippo
Oh my God
Hippo Regius
Made me laugh :)
I used to live in the city of Gafsa (the last city we have records of African Romance being spoken, specifically by Idrissi in the 13th century) and I reember the locals having a distinct word for "Pub" no other Tunisians used, it was "Tabarna", very simillar to the Latin "Taberna".
Also in the Tunisian dialect in large we have many words of possible Latin origin like "Qatus or "Gatus" for Cat (from "Cattus"), "Kayyas" for Road (from "Callis"), "Koujina" for "Kitchen" (from "Cochina"), "Kalsita" for Sock (from the vulgar latin "Calcita") and "Karrusa" for Carriage (from "Carrus")
@Elijah Contreras-Velasco Spain briefly occupied Tunis and other Tunisian cities during the 16th century wars against the Ottomans. So one has to be careful in making a generalization here, as word borrowing happens for many different reasons and paces.
Interesting
There were Spanish speaking Jews in north Africa who were expelled from Spain in 1492.
@@petergray2712 Exactly, linguistically it looks more like borrowings from italian or spanish that actual word directly from latin through tamazigh (which is the case for several other words, like one meaning "donkey").
@Elijah Contreras-Velasco same in algeria, we have a LOT of words from latin or more recently from french and spanish (we are neighbors lol), we use words like changla (same meaning as chancla), cusina for kitchen ,etc The thing is most of these words are recent, it's difficult to know wheter vocabulary is from latin or from recent times.
I'm actually from Carthage! I used to walk by the ruins everyday on my way to school, it's a nice vibe
Nice
cool
Nice 👍🏻.
Every single time that I draw alternate universe maps, I have to unite most of North Africa into Carthage. It's just such a fucking awesome idea.
@@enotsnavdier6867 “Punic, more like, Pubic.”
-Scipio Aemilianus
I never thought about African Latin but now I'm obsessed with this idea
I did in the past so muuuuuch I'm so happy this video is here
same here
same omg
Tbh I never got why a lot of people are fascinated by this. Is it because the word "Africa" invokes images of a faraway exotic land that is alien to Rome? the reality is that "Africa" was just a coastal Mediterranean region that is a stone throw away from Italy, a region that was one of the earliest to become Romanized. British Latin has always sounded more intriguing to me since Britannia was a distant outpost of the empire.
@@GarlicOasis no weirdo, it's just the seeming lack of direct evidence for it that makes it so enticing and mysterious. It's also never mentioned.
Everyone: Latin is dead, Roman Empire is no more
Romance languages: No one's ever really gone
Nope but Germanic languages are certainly trying to bulldoze romance languages.
Que? Hahaha
@@adampope5107 where's the flavour?
And if you think that in the Vatican City they still speak latin (although a very modern form) and the pope is the Pontifex Maximus , you realize the empire transformed in something else
The roman civilisation never collapsed. That was the antic political structure that disapeard. The germanics politically dossociated the roman empire, but it stayed alive in various nations until now.
One of my favorite language facts: the last speaker of the Dalmatian language died in 1898 as an old man, only one year after a linguist learned of his existence and made a book based on the man's hazy memories of speaking the language with his long-deceased grandma. And had that not happened, our understanding of Dalmatian would have been based entirely on some old Dalmatian writings, none any less than 500 years old.
Well, I can only speak for tunisian vernacular arabic, but I can say this: the latin ending "us" is still very common. It features in words such as "Qattus" (meaning cat cat), "fallous" (chick as in chicken offspring) "barkus" (male sheep), etc. It's also used consistently an an ending in the regular deminutive case.
Actuall, the tunisian word for cat is possibly the most fascinating, because (at least to me), it always sounded as a compromise between latin (cattus) and arabic (Qitt), resulting into Qattus.
I'm amazigh from Morocco, and in amazigh, Foulous its chicken :)) I think its a amazigh word but with a latin roots.
Prince Kareem Foulos is very similar to Pollo, which is Chicken in Italian
@Yavieg Oranje coincidence?
In moroccan and algerian arabic the word for male sheep is عتروس 'atrūs . The defining letters of the word changed but the "us" ending is there too. So they may be a correlation.
@@marocb0y we have the word عتروس too in Tunisia, but from my experience, it is used metaphorically much more than literally.
As a vulgar Bulgarian I am a big supporter of the idea that romans wouldn't be able to differentiate between B and V
A bulgar Vulgarian
@@pyrrhocorax That's my joke. The word vulgar in English comes from the greek word for the Bulgar tribe, which gave name to the country of Bulgaria
@@nikolaytsankov9066 The word "vulgar" is of Latin origin, not Greek.
Isn't the name Bulgaria of Turkic origin?
But, yeah, I just tried to make a make a bad joke based on the joke you made.
It is interesting how language primes the brain to finely differentiate sounds that matter and to ignore, sometimes to the point of near deafness, those sounds that don't matter in said language. There's a sound in Turkish that occurs in my GF's friend's name. She's taken on a nickname due to English speaking Americans' inability to even hear it let alone say it. It sounds identical to a curled OO sound to me, but that's apparently very wrong.
In Spanish aswell
Let's end the year with some epic lost linguistic history.
Epic
The language the Muslims spoke in Iberia was definitely Mozarabic.
Amazing
I FREAKING LOVE IT
Fascinating material!
There are lots of Latin words still being used in modern day Tunisian Arabic, some of these words are even used frequently :
-Qattus قطوس for “cat” from the Latin word cattus
-Kayyas كياس for “roadway” from the Latin word Callis
-Fallus فلوس for “chick” from the Latin word pullus
-Sbitar صبيطار for “hospital” from the Latin word hospitor
-Karrusa كروسة for “carrige” from the Latin word carrus
Tunisia was the most romanized of the three Maghrebi countries (Morocco and Algeria) and it was also where the roman Carthage was located. That explains the many Latin words still being used in Tunisian Arabic also known as “Tunsi” by Tunisians.
But carthage is not Roman, it's Phoenician.
Qat, not qattus
@@boomrang9503 Carthage was rebuilt by the Romans and was one of the most important cities in the Roman Empire for centuries.
"Catta/Cattus" is a loan word from a native African language into Latin. "Feles" (cf. "Feline") was the Latin word for a cat.
Ara0liver that native language must be punic since it shares semitic roots with arabic and cat in arabic is qat
I am an Amazigh from Libya and we use words from Latin like
agisi = caseus (cheese)
firnu = furnus (oven)
firas = pirus (pear)
akmis = camisia (shirt)
queso
horno
pera
camisa
spanish for ya =P
The word camisa is of Celtic origin, but I can see it going to Libya through Latin, so that's only fair =P
In the kabyle language :
Avernus
Akermus
Agendus
Drus
There is many words end with "us"
But I think it's from the German influence.
Agendus looks and sounds like ''agenda'' in portuguese, so can be a portuguese/french/spanish influence in kabyle language
In Spanish, we say camisa.
I have literally waited for years to hear someone talk about this.
You could read this somewhere
i already read this in Augustine's Confessiones
This has actually been a topic I've thought about quite a bit the past few months as well.
Your purpose is complete
Duodecimus .Anemoi me too bro
Welp, if this doesn't launch a half dozen conlangs, I don't know what will.
And I can't wait to see every single one of them lol
I wanna take a jab at it lol
somebody already made vandalic and it's really cool
@@henryleonardi5368 I'll look it up.
Henry Leonardi Vandalic is a real Germanic language from what I found.
"...The city of Hippo grows hungrier by the day"
You might call it a... hungry, hungry Hippo
Hippo means horse.
@@richardcoiner3888 Me and my physio in hospital were just speaking of this, pontus means river right? That was the example word he gave, He explained how Greek invents new words and how he found studying medicine in English easier than he thought as many of the medical words used are simply multiple (sometimes shorter) words with simpler concepts put together to explain more complex things, and also how for example the Aorta is Aorti or something like that which in Greek language essentially translates as "a strap to hang (something by)" with implied meaning from there own etymologic history that makes it obvious this words meaning and association with the heart. Might have butchered this and nobody asked for it but language info is always fun to share & learn imo
"Well I'm from Utica and I've never heard of this African Romance language."
Oh not in Utica, no, it’s an Algiers expression.
I'm a resident of Utica, myself. And I back up your story
Good Lord, what is happening there?!
Could someone explain to me what do you mean by that ?
I'm not from Utica obviously, but from Tunis.
@@SeptimiusAfer240 it's a reference to the steamed hams meme where Superintendent Skinner says "well I'm from Utica but I've never heard of steamed hams." The Utica here being in New York rather than Tunisia
Never realized "Carthage" was so similar to the Hebrew words "Karet Hadash" (meaning the exact same thing - "New city", though "Karet" is quite archaic)
Makes sense. Carthage was founded by Phoenicians who are historically linked to just north of the historical homeland of Hebrew.
The Cartagena mentioned in the video used to be Carthago Nova during Roman times, so "New New City".
Imagine how funny it would be to realize the Colombian city is new new new Carthage
@@garyermann I've looked into Punic. It's semi-intelligible to Hebrew speakers.
@@petersantos6395 new new new *city
I speak Kabyle, an Amazigh language, and in my local dialect, there isn't natively any b like "bear" or v like "vase". Rather, there is a voiced labial fricative [β], written "b" and, another one, where it's doubled or stressed, written "bb".
[b] and [v] do exist but most of the time, they are found in loanwords from Arabic and French.
Also, thank you so much for this video; I learned so much from it. Keep up the quality content!
Funny how in Sassari (Sardinia) we have the same situation!
@mPky1 A quick search says there's no p but there is f.
@@williamramsey9140 Late Punic also evolved all of their p into f
Well, in spanish we have [b] but we mostly use [β] as well!, that's because we speak so fast that the words sound like one single word, so we use the [β] sound, also making it easier to pronounce, we use the [b] sound mostly in foreign vocabulary, and sometimes not even that xd
So... we still exist and poeple still think we are arabs!!?
Thats how we live no one knows about us.
As a libyan orfalian who is amazighian i hate being mistaked for arabs
i am a amazigh riffian and i only know of two clear Latin words:
Asnus -> Asinus (Donkey/ass)
firru -> fillum (thread, to sow with)
in our language(tamazight) we drop the last M (in some words) and make the long vowel short, we also proncounce the B as a V and sometimes the other way around. so it seems our language has adopted African latin words. BUT we force these changes also on loan words from Arabic, for example Tayara (aeroplane) -> Tiyara (long a to short i). so can we conclude that the Latin speakers in north africa where just influenced by the local amazigh people. As are modern arabic (darija) speakers influenced by tamazight speakers.
Hi there! Do young amazigh people in the Riff speak tamazight in general or is there a shift to Arab?
champimuros no they speak Tamazight, and they really love it
We speak both
(Arabic)Moroccan-Darija and our native tongue, Tamazight
Im berber rifian from north morocco RIFLAND.
Latin left many marks on Tamazight language. The calendar is based off of the Julian calendar, so all our months are still Latin based after 2,165 years. The biggest Amazigh holiday "Yennayer" is based on "Ianuarii". And of course, there are various words in Tamazight that come directly from latin like "äng'alus" from "angelus", "ayugu" from "iugum", "azaglu" from "iugulum", "agluglu" and "kkal" from "coagulum", "agursel" from "agarcium", "abekkadu" from "peccatum" and "arumi" (foreigner) from "romanus". I'm pretty sure the general rule is if a Tamazight word ends with U or I, there's a good chance it comes from Latin.
I hope more people become interested in the Tamazight languages, because despite recent revitalization, the amount of people who speak it is a crumb compared to what it was a hundred years ago.
Also, Tamazight has a tendency to confuse certain consonants and B, which is probably why B=V. Whether B is pronounced V or V is pronounced B depends on the region. Other consonants which fall victim to this confusion include B=G and B=P.
thanks that's so interesting! which amazigh language is this tho?
I remember reading a quote once that said that the Latin in Africa was indistinguishable at one point from the Latin of Sardinia.
The Vandals did control Sardinia for a time so maybe some of this has to do with them
Although as the video mentioned, the Vandals didn't force their own language onto the north africans and sards, as they used latin as administrative language it would be funny to imagine an Afro- Vandalic language that stuck to the region. Something they would've called 'african goth', 𐌰𐍆𐍂𐌹𐌺𐌰𐍂𐌰𐌶𐌳𐌰 maybe?
Even if the Vandals didn't enforce their rule, some traits of Spoken Vandal might have left footprints on the Latin spoken, after all, if you speak a language and have problem saying a certain sound, then said mistake can become the norm. After all, the English word Queen is not only a spelling mistake but a pronunciation mistake. Sure it's Quinna in older English, meaning woman, and sure it got adopted alongside Quningas, and the similarities between the words and seeing as the Saxon word Woman existed, it got elevated into being spouse of royal.
I mean, it simply didn't have a lot of time to evolve under a new power. Latin in Africa wasn't different from latin in southern Gaul either.
There are some regional variations in latin at all times (especially latin used in graffiti or on tombs), but in this video there's confusion between phenomena that are common for all latin dialects (like how -m isn't pronounced anymore), regional variants, social class, influence from other languages etc.
We have zero evidence that the Vandals influenced the local latin dialect with germanic words. In fact, we only have evidence that the local dialect wasn't classical latin anymore, and they stopped using it since there was no longer a latin-speaking elite (which were the only ones to still be able to "speak" classical latin, which sounded archaic at this point). Many linguistic shifts that lead to the differenciation of Romance languages didn't happen yet (such as long i becoming e in italian).
So the latin of Africa was basically indistinguisable from latin in most areas of western europe, except maybe from some local words used by the plebeians, but it wasn't much more different than the different english variants in the USA, really.
Lol same thing with their Arabic
Just realized the map at the beginning has 3 blacked out areas. We might get 2 more videos folks
Well the Romans of England left very little evidence of their language before it was replaced with Brithonic languages and then Germanic with the migrations of the Jutes, Saxons, and Angles. We have a few tablets and writings by soldiers and locals in the region to work off of but not much. We can tell that there was a preservation of v being pronounced as w and we can see that it underwent both palatalization like Gallic and Iberian varieties of Latin and lenition like Celtic languages did. It would have had a Brithonic substrate as well. Otherwise scholar are all in disagreement over what it exactly would look like and have many competing theories.
@@hoathanatos6179 Wouldn't Brittonic have been spoken in Britain at the same time as Latin rather than replacing it given that the Celts were here first?
the black spot in the middle of Europe is probably Hungary. Hungarians came from the northeast and conquered that area around 800 I think. even though historians think that the conquerors were a minority compared to the nations already living there, they became the leaders and somehow their finno-ugric language stuck.
@@eperke2933 It stuck because Hungary is in the Carpathian Basin surrounded by mountains that isolated them.
@@lost4eva081980 Yeah, and it totally was, especially in the West and North where the Romans weren't as populous. Some of the Latin tablets and inscription we have are accompanied by Brithonic text since it was still highly spoken and influential on the Roman dialects spoken. If a Romance language remained in Britain into the present it most likely would have been heavily influenced by Celtic mutations, pronunciations, and vocabulary and would have sounded more like modern Welsh but with clear Romantic grammar and vocab. We can tell that many Latin Ds for instance turned into Welsh DDs or Đs and certain Ls and Rs would have probably turned into LL and Rh especially when preceded by fricatives and vowels. We can tell that like Italian and Spanish -us and -um became -o as well and some inscriptions may signify vowel fronting on stressed vowels, like one says Protictor rather than Protector. If I wanted to say I'm going home it might be written something like "Io vato/vaddo all chasa/al gasa." Where ll is a a voiceless lateral fricative and ch is a voiceless uvular fricative.
Jesus, his perfect pronunciation of the word "português" in european portuguese felt good to my ears.
Also, didn't know spanish had the V/B deal, because this happens as well in northern Portugal. The so called "northern accent" or "Porto's accent" is notoriously famous in Portugal for misusing Bs instead of Vs. We say "Eu bou" instead of "Eu vou" (I go), or "Bioleta" instead of "Violeta" (Violet).
The B/V deal also happens in Galician and some dialects of Catalan due to Spanish influence.
@@vicmonteir0 Linking the origins of betacism in Galician and Catalan to Spanish influence is debatable. Specially considering the phenomenon is present in Catalan speaking areas that never saw any significant influence from Spanish (Rossellò, L'Alguer, Andorra, etc.), and that the phenomenon is common to both Galicia and northern Portugal.
I love the european accent of portuguese, and I got scared when he pronounced it perfectly
@@vicmonteir0 - Not "Spanish" influence: substrate Vasconic influence most likely instead.
@gay AF Every human fcks up their own languages. Even the most conservative old people. The history of language change is always a tug-of-war between centrifugal tendencies of humans and some centripetal forces like written language materials and traditions.
Im a native speaker of Amazigh, Spanish and Catalan and I've always felt that Amazigh had more in common with latin than Arab. Sadly modern Amazigh has been so arabised that is hard to tell. Really good video mate👌
@@ZWEA88 Islam has corroded, or rather shall I say, erased, most of the local cultures it has invaded (the only exception I can think of is Indonesia). An alternative history version where the coast of North Africa - such as Tynisia where Carthage used to be - was never invaded by muslims is an extremely interesting thought experiment, and I thank you for helping me take note of it. It probably wouldn't still be 100% romance-based, rather a blend between local ancient culture and latin influence, but then again, if you look at countries like Portugal or France, very little to nothing remains of the ancient Gaul peoples' culture. As a non-muslim Mazice, what do you think these regions would look like today, had it not been for the heavy muslim influence?
@@ZWEA88 As a southern Portuguese, when I hear Berber music or see a local horse festival I think "these are my people". Now I don't know if it's because of common roots or because our ancestors spent so much time at each other's throats that they became brothers. Maybe any is ok I guess.
@@ZWEA88 Tbh i feel closer to non-arab levantines than for ex. southern europeans. A lot of us got not only Arabized, but Latinized too lol. A lot of North Africans are okay with one thing but not with the other. Romans also imposed their culture on us, just like Arabs. It is what it is tho, this happened all the time before written history.
Hebrew was considered extinct in the 19th to early 20th century since the Hebrew spoken across Europe has been creolised which led to the creation of Jewish languages such as "Yiddish" in Judaeo-Germanic or "Ladino" in Judaeo-Spanish dialect. As of now, with the creation of the State of Israel, Hebrew made a comeback and removed as much of foreign influences to keep it pure. If they can do it, so can you. You are a Berber not an Arab. Arabs are from Arabia not from Africa or Levant.
@@yasmina10013 Agreed. You don't need to revive African Romance but rather, you should preserve your language. Write more poems and books in Amazigh not in Arabic or French or Spanish. Be proud of your culture! Remember the last Berber Queen before the conquest of the Muslims?
Queen Dihya, a Christian-Berber Queen who sought to protect and preserve the Berber language who bravely fought off the Arab-Muslims? Make her proud by rising up and preserve the culture of Tamazigh people! DO IT! I am rooting for you!
I adore how your videos make me emotional about linguistic concepts.
How do they make you emotional?
Nice pfp
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@@denizmetint.462I can relate. If you tell me that millions of people died during WW1, I'd remain unphased. If you tell me that there are only a few speakers left of a language, which has become an isolate because all its sister languages are dead or extinct, I'd genuinely be very sad.
You should look at Maltese, Europe’s only official Semitic language.
Interesting language, Arabic roots but with majority Romance vocab. A video would be great.
@@generaldissatisfaction5397 langfocus channel made video on that
TheSkepticalApple I was actually wondering why Malta was not really mentioned here. The Vandals got to Malta but the didn’t stay long.
Bonġu min Malta. Semitic but written in Latin. We are a product of our history. (And a lot of swearing when writing it down )
Also the only semitic language using the latin alphabet! I love Maltese. ❤️
"The extinct Dalmatian" Josh is Cruella DeVille, confirmed
ofsinope dalmatien the missing link between Italian and romanian
Marcel Costache indeed.
@@marcelcostache2504 there was romance dalmatian. al ancient dalmatian poets and writers wrote in latin and slavic-dalmatian. there was ventian dialect though as dalmatia was part of it.
todays romanian is not even 200 years old. theres cyrilic alphabet which means romanian was slavic.
@@tiami3886 50 iq
@@tiami3886 You're wrong. "todays romanian is not even 200 years old" - We understand very well the Neacșu letter (1521). Romanian hasn't change very much in the last 500 years, unlike English.
Also wrong: "theres cyrilic alphabet which means romanian was slavic" What logic is this? Language and alphabet are different things. I can write Romanian language in any alphabet if I want. Cyrillic was used mainly due to orthodox church, but Romanian texts were also written with Latin alphabet (i.e. Todorescu text - in 1570).
Your videos are Amazi(n)gh.
smol history nugget for the comments: After the Umayyad conquest, and especially under Hafsid rule, the former place of the roman province of Africa was still called Ifriqiya.
Under norman rule too !
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9:18 Portuguese: Face, cara, visagem, rosto. Yep, they all mean face
Catalan: faç, cara, visatge, rostre. They all mean 'face' as well
Verdade, porém visagem não é muito usado.
@@josuegabriel8066 É bem mais usado na literatura.
Spanish: faz, cara, visaje, rostro
Italian: faccia, viso, rostro - but to my knowledge "rostro" pretty much only means a bird's beak. I'm only kinda haltingly proficient in Italian, but I don't recall 'cara' or anything like it in common use.
@@logansorenssen "visaje" doesn't exist.
My take home message from this video:
The Ummayads who conquered Iberia may have been speaking a variant of Latin in Africa.
Never thought about it.
@@denizmetint.462
Yeah, I alwAys thought they spoke Arabic or Berber
There were already Arab document talking about them speaking their own language which was actually Berber not Roman! Also this tongue was commun in morroco Algeria and Tunisian with some variation. Also it's still largely spoken today
JB TALK COCK STATION_新山吹水站 that’s not true , Umayyad army and elite spoke Arabic , and those from North Africa (new convert Muslims) spoke Berber , there is no evidence of Berber warriors in Umayyad army speaking any other languages than Berber and Arabic .
@@hassanbassim4007 It is an interesting proposition/theory nonetheless...
The "V > B confusion" doesn't hold much water when one considers it's totally absent in southern Portugal, but present in the north. If it were from north African influence then you'd likely see it the other way around, like toponyms.
It's clearly not related to North African Latin. It's a Vasconic (or "Iberoid") substrate/adstrate influence that is very pervasive in Iberian romances but also in Gascon. As the video says Visigothic era Iberians did confuse v/b, so it must be very old (also Greeks confuse v/b equally and pronounce all them /b/, Italians on the other hand retain the old Latin distinction).
was just watching language videos and was wishing there was a new NativLang video...a holiday miracle!!
amen!
I have severe ADHD, paranoia and anxiety and I watch this at least once a day to not only help myself first for now, but to remind myself my goal of one day becoming a history and linguistics teacher and be able to help others too. You're a legend.
Next: British Latin !
Please this!
Nononono
Anglo-Saxons: no
As a Spaniard I'm frequently surprised by the proximity of Spanish and English vocabularies to the point that I doubt English could be considered a Germanic language.
For you to realize:
Como español me sorprende frecuentemente la proximidad de los vocabularios español e inglés hasta el punto de que dudo que el inglés pueda ser considerado una lengua germánica.
@@newhuskytwenty I only under the second paragraph because I have a background in French and Latin
I first became familiar with St. Augustine of Hippo from his quote: “If justice be taken away, what are governments but great bands of robbers?” Perhaps it was in reference to the invading Vandals? He was also responsible for many later Christian concepts of “original sin” and why baptism is important. (I’m not Christian, just like random history stuff) Really interesting guy, but I had no idea he played into this story!
Random fact:there's a tree somewhere around which he allegedly used to hang out
The Vandals also were Arians, believing there was a time when the Son was not, while the people they conquered were Nicene Christians, who didn't.
WHAT A COINCIDENCE!!! I was researching about African Romance just today, and I found it to be super intriguing. And then I ended up rewatching your videos for the entire afternoon (I had and still have a high temperature)... And now you upload this video!
Get better soon!
Whitney Hanson Thanks! It was a depressing Christmas... I’ve been sick for days :(
same for me all this week i was searching and thinking about this African romance
The part about Visigoths and Vandals made me realize how much I'd love to see a video about the East Germanic languages. The people who spoke them, what they sounded like, and what happened to them.
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@@mansionbookerstudios9629 she's a Nazi
Kind of wild to think there could've been a Germanic language from Africa
@@t_ylrAfrikaans?
@@geelen7829 Vandalish
Greetings from a Sardinian speaker from Sardinia ;)
Greetings from the USA! I kind of wish I spoke a minor language natively so I could help keep it alive, but for me it’s just boring old English :( I was really fascinated by the stuff about your language, I guess I thought it was a local variant of Italian, but hearing about it sounds super cool
@@gwest3644 Thanks man! Yeah it's a separate, somewhat older language than Italian :-) If you wanna learn more let me know.
@El Mauro You are correct, Sardinians preserve the highest % of Early European Farmers heritage, some kind of relic from the past :-) . Sardinian is the oldest surviving branch of Latin, it is not intelligibile with Italian at all, so an Italian speaker would find it very hard to understand. In a sense, if you see it written, you'll spot many similarities with Spanish and Portuguese, such as the plurals made with an -S at the end of the nouns. Phonetics, however, make it a bit harder than that :-)
This will help me create a custom Afro-Latin culture in CK2 with some real historic authenticity. Latest update added Dalmatian, so why not.
I enjoy the work you do. Keep it up! Subscribed.
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The confusion of B and V reminds me of the pronunciation change in the Greek language, where the letter B (beta) was pronounced B in ancient times, but has been pronounced V (vita) since the middle ages.
This had also impact on neighboring languages of greek:
For example the “Byzantine Empire” is called “Vizantijsko carstvo” in Serbian, but “Bizantsko carstvo” in Croatian. The Holy Basil is called “Sveti Vasilije” in Serbian and “Sveti Bazilije” in Croatian. There are much more examples where Serbian adopted the V-version of a word/name and Croatian adopted the B-version.
As a native Spanish speaker, I have huge issues distinguishing short from long vowels in both English and German, although in English I've mostly resorted to memorizing how each word should be pronounced, in German I still very often make vowel length mistakes. Perhaps that too can be somewhat explained by this hypothesis
That explains some awkward situations I've had with Spanish speaking people. For example, I once replied to what I thought was "where do you live?" but the actual question was meant to be "when do you leave?"
Why so? If you can distinguish between, yo gusto, y, el gustó. Duerme y dormiré, está y esta, este y esté, etc.
I think it may personal quirk to your English acquisition.
@@John_Jim the, i, sound in, live, does not in Spanish. They just use their sound of, i.
@@John_Jim cuando te vas vs donde tu vives 🤔i don't see room for error
*Frnkn shw como rumano puedo pronunciar y hablar español sin problemas y aunque trabajo y hablo ingles desde mas de 20 años aun tiengo exactemente el mismo dificultad que vos😅 Saludos desde Canada y feliz navidad 🎄.
I so love u for this video man. I come from Africa, Tunisia. Finally someone has made a video about languages from that region. The region of my home country. It was a very beautiful journey to follow. Thank u man ❤️
This title immediately brought me in because of my interest in Hippo, and you taking about Augustine made me freak out! St. Augustine is one of my favorite figures of all time
Can't talk about Roman Africans without mentioning Augustine 😃
@@Skadi609 if by roman african you mean Amazigh then meh why not, sure.
Nate Starr : In his book ''Les confessions'' (I read it in French), he talks about the night were he said good bye to his mother, Monica, before embarking on a ship the next morning bound for Italy. She was crying, etc. It was in a small chapel on the beach of Carthage (Tunisia). I saw a commemorative stone in Carthage some 25 years ago saying that a chapel ued to be on that spot in Roman times. So that was the exact place were that scene of the Confessions took place. A very emotional scene in the book.
@@adnanafulay3142 Yes I was talking about North Africans who were part of the Roman Empire.
@@kb-tu2kf I read this passage in French, too. Very sad indeed. He stayed with her till the very end and closed her eyes.
As I read "African Romance" I thought you wanted to try something new and started writing Romance Novels :D
3:00 the citizens of Hippo grew hungrier and hungrier every day...you could even perhaps say they were...hungry hungry hippos
You legit made me laugh
out of all the language deaths i've known, this has always made me feel the saddest
I just learned something I never truly thought about when it came to Southern European influence on Northwest and North Africa. I'm curious if you could do a video on the West African language of Yorùbá. It's the one West African language you can find remnants of throughout the Americas largely due to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. It's found spoken most in Brasil and Cuba but you will also hear it spoken in various forms in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Jamaica.
I'm most curious about its presence in Bahia in Northeast Brasil and how a 400+-year-old version of the language is spoken there versus how it's spoken in Benin and Southwest Nigeria.
No one in Puerto Rico speaks Yoruba. I really doubt it is spoken anywhere else in the Caribbean. Some inherited vocabulary does not mean a language is spoken.
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@@joseanfigueroa8785 Puerto Rico has religious traditions of Yoruba origins, so it's likely that some words at least are present. More of a few are surely present in Cuba, Haiti, North East Brasil (Bahia mostly) and other areas where Youruba people were brought to in slavery time.
Currently spoken? Likely not. Still used in specific religious and traditional context? Definitely yes.
Yoruba is not the only African language with loanwords in American speech, Akan also plays a part in Jamaica
The b/v confusion also occurs in Basque (whose ancestor was likely related to the pre-Roman "Iberian" language). It seems more likely that (in Spanish) that feature might have been a survival from ancient and probably related (pre-Indo-European and pre-Roman) languages native to the Iberian peninsula (like ancient Basque/"Acquitanian" and Iberian).
Since Amzinga shares this feature it also suggests a link between the Basque and Berber peoples. This falls in line with the genetic studies comparing the two
North Portuguese also has problems with the V and B.
Except its the exact opposite and they replace the supposed V by a B instead.
This happens very often in languages, independently. Many germanic languages flipped f>v>b back and forth many times, just compare german "aber", "Hebel", "Sieb" with central bavarian "åwa" "Hewi" Siwi" or dutch "hefboom" "zeef".
In classical Latin the 'V' was pronounced like 'U' in Italian and Spanish. So is the 'V' sound of English, French, and other romance languages a development from vulgar Latin??
Because of that I don't think the b/v confusion is of Basque/Gascon origin. Maybe it was born out of vulgar Latin's developed into different romance languages?
@@davsalda It could perhaps be a Basque/Iberian influence on (an earlier form of) Vulgar Latin (i.e. Latin as spoken by the common people that was brought to Spain in the Roman era).
You should do a video on Sardinian itself
Latin is already beyond awesome in my mind, and this video reinforces this idea even more. "Latin is a dead language", they say, and yet its remnants are still here, permeating the everyday life.
Thank you greatly, Josh.
Latin is dead because usually no one teaches it as a first language to children,as it was with Hebraic.
@@Bronze_Age_Sea_Person
Calling Latin "dead" makes no sense. No one says "English is dead" because we're aren't speaking Old English anymore. Modern Romance languages are just as Latin as modern English is English, modern Greek is Greek, modern Chinese is Chinese.
@@kekeke8988 No.. I think it's really dead just like our native TAmazighT language in Tunisia unfortunately
4:15
NativLang: "Take time to analyze those mistakes"
Me, as a commoner viewer with 0 linguistic knowledge that only speaks Spanish and a bit of English: "I don't think sol".
They are called 'mistakes' because the original document was supposed to be written in Classical Latin instead of actual vernacular language of the authors. Written languages tend to cling on the 'tradition' as far as they can, with only certain mistakes slipping in.
Pushed it back because of life stuff but I'm starting my masters next year finally. I'll move to France in November hopefully if all goes according to plan. I was accepted for 2021 at the school I wanted for Langue Etranger Appliquée. I'll have enough saved to live comfortably and just focus on my studies by then
That's really neat, man! I wish you luck! What are you studying? I minored in linguistics and did a year of a grad program, but realized as much as I loved linguistics, I didn't like the program and wasn't getting enough support. I now just study the topic at my leisure. Good luck!! :) :)
I did that cursus for a year, maybe that's because the university I was in sucked (because it does suck, it's considered one of the worst in the country) but I got bored to tears and I left before the end of the semester and my friends that took it as well left for another one at the end of the year.
I hope it was just a problem with the professors I got and that this isn't just the course itself that is the problem because I wish that your studies go well. Where do you plan to go ?
Who cares?
@@maxx1014 three comments before you. And if you don't care, you should've just ignored the comment and moved on. :)
@@kornaes no I don't get why he writes completely random stuff about his personal life under a linguistic video. To simply say "move on" isn't really an argument when I'm asking me the question why somebody should write about this stuff under such a video.
seriously, I love your videos so much, they have such depth, that I'm really sad that when they end. As a native Catalan and Spanish speaker, I found this one really interesting too. I understand that romance languages are but a small language group, but I really like when you go in depth on them. Keep them coming!
Jebli spoken in northern Morocco has Amazigh structure (I think) and a lot of Arabic vocabulary. It also contains word like 'stito' meaning little which appears to come from Latin. Cf Spanish 'perrito' little dog.
In Amazigh the word for a Christian is 'aroumi' meaning someone from Rum ie Rome or Christian Asia Minor.
As a Sardinian I salute you my fellow north African brothers. Carthago delenda non est!
Thanks
Well it kinda is bro
Yoo hey
Berbers were not unhappy about Carthage being "deleted" I must say.
Nah, we don't care about Carthage.
I love watching/listening to your videos.
The clear enthusiasm for the subject that you have, makes it engaging, even when(on a rare occasion) it happens to be something I have less interest in myself.
Also, from the various pronunciations of different languages and dialects, you have a real talent for linguistics, which just makes it that much more of a pleasure to watch/listening to your videos.
Thanks for the vid, and a happy new year to you :)
I am a Berber from Morocco and the videomaker knows what he's talking about I have researched my whole life about my roots and at last Europeans start to know the truth about North-Africa
These videos are always SO well done. I love it. The education enthusiast in me, the language nerd in me, the animation fan in me all love getting these notifications
9:58 oof that's some genuinely good Arabic pronounciation, good job on the ق
yeah the 9af is guttural and hard for non native speakers .
The fundamental questions surrounding the cultures of the Straight of Gibraltar at the time of the Umayyad conquest suffer from so many layers of national history conflicts that it will be a long time before experts are able to do the research that needs to be done in earnest.
The whole early umayyad history is weird and mysterious.
Starting by the fact that the people who live in Gibraltar are mostly Iberians who speak English, some of them hate the other Iberians, others, want to kick the English out of there. Oh, and the Spanish people surrounding them want that piece of land back, from here to a hundred years it isn’t as crazy to see the kingdom of Spain regaining that bit of land. In the meanwhile, however, we must add that Spain and Morocco are too in a Mexican standoff due to the African territories that belong to Spain, we’re not even including Portugal in that meddling. Obviously it’s tremendously difficult for the scholars of those countries, who are the most interested in studying that, to have a collaborative, comprehensive and extensive study of the subject because of that, specially since these current problems are backed with history itself, Islam cutoff Northern Africa form what would end up being the western world, 2 of those countries entire national identity have been built upon the fact that they had to fight the Muslims for the land that always was rightfully theirs, and Spain and the Hispanic cultural sphere have been attacked for long by the anglo cultural sphere, which complicates things a little further.
What's so mysterious? Obviously Riffians spoke Riffian (as they still do now) and all others spoke some form of Latin more or less bastardized. Of course it depends how much distant your "surrounding" scope is but basically: Berber and Latin in North Africa and Iberian remnants like Basque and Latin in Iberia (Celtic died because it was an elite conqueror language that could not compete with Latin).
@@juandavidrestrepoduran6007 - Actually Gibraltarians are settlers: the natives of Gibraltar were expelled upon English conquest.
@@LuisAldamiz I don't think so, Gibraltar is still inhabited by Spaniards.
This video is tremendously good from every point of view I can imagine: interesting content, historical and linguistic accuracy, academic objectivity, nice and historically accurate graphics - even captivating plot (I usually get bored by anything that's over 5 minutes). I may be biased by my love of Romance languages and frontier cultures, but again, it's not only what it has been done about, it's how it has been done. Congratulations on the making of this video.
God blesses anyone who shares knowledge. Thank you so much for this.
Evey time I walk across roman ruins here in Algeria I feel something very strange and can only appreciate how fascinating life used to be, I would love to learn about ancient history wich seems the most interesting to me so far.
Last time I was this early, African romance was still spoken
You're as late as this meme is dead
El Negro
Actually it is still spoken in libya tunisia algeria and morocco and they call it amazighian (I am amazighian) and north africans (Mghreb) aren't arabs but they can speack arabic
@@shayatbenskeep2465 you mean berberic lenguage? I don't think that is romanic lenguage.
@@zeljkomikulicic4378
Yeah but it called amazighian
Absolutely fantastic!! Thanks so much for this really cool look into the evolution of Latin, NativLang!! :)
Your ability to explain these crazy interesting concepts is not only a demonstration of how well researched they are but also how much fun YOU have in exploring them. I was so glad I had found your channel however many months ago, the content has only gotten better since.
I've just realised that the Augustin mentioned in the video is none other than... Saint Augustin! One of the most influential theologians and philosophers of the Late Antiquity and one of the four Great Church Fathers!
It really blew my mind because I'd heard a lot about St Augustin, but only recently started to really look into his philosophy. I was reading his Wikipedia page when the clues started building up, and when I saw "died aged 75 during the siege of Hippo by Gaiseric" suddenly I knew. The fact that Nativlang only mentions a "hefty literary legacy" leaves out a lot of the details! 😂 (though I don't blame him, it's not the subject of the video)
When I think how long it took me to find out, I know there's one very telling reason: every depiction of St Augustin is as a white man. Yet when Nativlang drew him, he drew a decidedly North African face; quite right, since he was at least partly Berber! It really goes to show how Eurocentric the Catholic Church's view of its own history is...
Sorry for such a long comment, I hope somebody reads it 😅 I just really needed to share this because I've still not recovered 😂
I've figured that out, and may God bless him forever more and help us preserve even the smallest traces of this lost language we call "African Romance".
I never thought about this! What an interesting question.
What a wonderful journey. Thank you for sharing. Seriously, this was one of your best works. Shades of high school Latin class...
This is easily one of the best channels on UA-cam. I love history and language.
I’m a kid who has been learning Spanish, French, and Portuguese for the past 10 or so months (I’m close to fluent in Spanish, and my French and Portuguese are nearly conversational) and after watching like 4 of this dude’s videos I really want to add Latin to that list lol.
ahh i love these videos, theyre like listening to stories about lost treasure..... thats kind of exactly what they are, actually.
what we really need is some time travel.
It's curious how this language perished the same fate as Andalusi Romance (or Mozarabic) and was also so close to it, but no one ever points out any kind of relation
I thought this channel stopped posting, seeing them work again made me so so so sooooo happy.
I’ve just found this channel and I’m fascinated by its content. Thank you.
Sardinia was part of the Vandal kingdom. Perhaps there was a Vandalic form of Latin that has survived only in Sardinia.
The Vandals only ruled Africa for a hundred years, and Sardinia even shorter. They also were a tiny minority in these lands.
varana312 true but if you take in eastern Roman/Byzantine accounts in the Roman reconquest of Africa by Belisarius the vandals where very romanized and latinised it is clear that in 100 years they where almost completely assimilate into Roman/African culture.
Vandals used Sardinia only as a starting point to get to other lands. They've never imposed their language on any land they went to and their stance in Sardinia was so short that they didn't leave any linguistic trace of their stay in Sardinian, unlike other peoples.
It's more the common Punic history.
Vandals stayed in Sardinia for less than 80 years, they only owned the coasts since the mountain interior was independent.
St.Augustine, Reconquista and Language: PERFECT VIDEO!
One of your most thought provoking and interesting videos yet, thank you!
Excellent video yet again. Thank you so much for your content!
Even though I am Amazigh I have learned so much in this video. Thank you !
Thank you for making such amazing and interesting videos! I lo~ove your channel.
I’ve been waiting for a good video about this topic! :D Yay!
Salute you from Sardinia!
Beautiful video, sir. ❤
‘’Facia” (face ), “cara” and “rostru/um” (rosto) all still survive today in Brazilian Portuguese, and they all mean “face”.
Its portuguese not brazilean..
@@joaoteixeira7410 Ele disse português brasileiro
He said it was common in Hispania. Hispania is the old name for Iberia (Spain and Portugal).
African Latin: ossum
Portuguese: osso
Latin: facia, cara, visu, rostru
Portuguese: face, cara, visagem, rosto
visagem - brazilian portuguese only. In european portuguese there are no such word.
@@woodpeckerfromspacewoodpec45 Wrong.
dicionario.priberam.org/visagem
It mostly fell into disuse but exists. The only question is: is it an ancient trait that survived until very recently, or is it a relatively recent borrowing from French? The guys at Priberam, at least, are blaiming French.
@@woodpeckerfromspacewoodpec45 será visão?
What a great video.
I love it when the evidence examples is laid transparently and can be followed, rather than just claimed
Came for the coincidence between the subject matter and the time and place of some events described in a book I'm reading, stayed for what ended up being one of your best videos IMO (which is saying something). Thank you.
This video was fascinating and informative. As an Italian speaker, I’ve been interested in the Romance languages at an early age, particularly the variants of Italian - Sicilian, Sardinian and Corsican. I never knew much about North African Latin, but certainly know more now.
Yaaaay nativlang video!!!
What a channel! What a host!! What respondents!! Thunderous Applause, for you al!!
What a fascinating subject. Great video!
OMG! I was wondering about this today!! Get out of my brain!
In Algeria, the child of a chicken is named "fellus". It comes from that latin language. And a lot of familly name comes from this language.
Thank you for uploading such an interesting video!
Thank you for this amazing video! I study Latin and I wondered about these questions too, that's so interesting! Especially the African Romance-Hispania connection
Where is the source for the bibere/vivere thing? I've always thought it must have been made up by some twentieth century teacher.
Anyway, amazing video, as always.
There's a lengthy essay on the phrase here:
en.antiquitatem.com/felices-hispani-quibus-vivere-est-bibere
And for TL;DR, the conclusion is that while the concepts (wordplay on bibere and vivere, and the Spanish mixing b and v) are older, the saying itself is from the Renaissance.
@@varana Excellent article. Thanks for sharing.
Its actually wrong, in old spanish it would rither be bivere bivere or biuere biuere.
In Latin bibere means to drink. Nunc est bibendum, do You remember Horatius?
@@fabianofonda6758 In Luhya languages; mabere or Mavere means milk and also sorghurm for poridge, pera means pears, Kamisi means "inner wear for women."
Hello, have you ever done a video on the proposed evolution of language due to environmental factors? Such as how certain languages such as the Dravidian family from highly forested regions have more constants in their vocabulary due to the ease of it being heard off of the trees? Or how a language native to a mountainous region has a higher vowel content due to the ease of how it would be heard through a valley such as Yodeling? I think that would be an enjoyable video to work on if you have not already!
the city of Hippo is called nowadays "Annaba" in Algeria. This video is pretty insightful
yes yes YES! 1000 TIMES YES!!! The video I've been waiting for!