African Romance


African Romance or African Latin is an extinct Romance language that was spoken in the Roman province of Africa by the Roman Africans during the later Roman and early Byzantine Empires, and several centuries after the annexation of the region by the Umayyad Caliphate in 696 AD. African Romance is poorly attested as it was mainly a spoken, vernacular language, a sermo rusticus. There is little doubt, however, that by the early 3rd century AD, some native provincial variety of Latin was fully established in Africa.'
This language, which developed under Byzantine rule, continued through to the 12th century in various places along the North African coast and the immediate littoral,' with evidence that it may have persisted up to the 14th century,' and possibly even the 15th century,' or later in certain areas of the interior. It was, along with the region's other languages such as Berber, subsequently suppressed and supplanted by Arabic after the Arab conquest of the Maghreb.

Background

The Roman province of Africa was organized in 146 BC following the defeat of Carthage in the Third Punic War. The city of Carthage, destroyed following the war, was rebuilt during the dictatorship of Julius Caesar as a Roman colony, and by the 1st century, it had grown to be the fourth largest city of the empire, with a population in excess of 100,000 people. The Fossa regia was an important boundary in North Africa, originally separating the Roman occupied Carthaginian territory from Numidia,' and may have served as a cultural boundary indicating Romanization.'
In the time of the Roman Empire, the province had become populous and prosperous, and Carthage was the second-largest Latin-speaking city in the Empire. Latin was, however, largely an urban and coastal speech. Carthaginian Punic continued to be spoken in inland and rural areas as late as the mid-5th century, but also in the cities.' It is probable that Berber languages were spoken in some areas as well.
Funerary stelae chronicle the Romanization of art and religion in North Africa.' Notable differences, however, existed in the penetration and survival of the Latin, Punic and Berber languages.' These indicated regional differences: Neo-Punic had a revival in Tripolitania, around Hippo Regius there is a cluster of Libyan inscriptions, while in the mountainous regions of Kabylie and Aures, Latin was scarcer, though not absent.'
Africa was occupied by the Germanic Vandal tribe for over a century, between 429 and 534 AD, when the province was reconquered by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. The changes that occurred in spoken Latin during that time are unknown. Literary Latin, however, was maintained at a high standard, as seen in the Latin poetry of the African writer Corippus. The area around Carthage remained fully Latin-speaking until the arrival of the Arabs.

Origins and development

Like all Romance languages, African Romance descended from Vulgar Latin, the non-standard form of the Latin language, which was spoken by soldiers and merchants throughout the Roman Empire. With the expansion of the empire, Vulgar Latin came to be spoken by inhabitants of the various Roman-controlled territories in North Africa. Latin and its descendants were spoken in the Province of Africa following the Punic Wars, when the Romans conquered the territory. Spoken Latin, and Latin inscriptions developed while Punic was still being used.' Bilingual inscriptions were engraved, some of which reflect the introduction of Roman institutions into Africa, using new Punic expressions.'
Latin, and then some Romance variant of it, was spoken by generations of speakers, for about fifteen centuries.' This was demonstrated by African-born speakers of African Romance who continued to create Latin inscriptions until the first half of the 11th century.' Evidence for a spoken Romance variety which developed locally out of Latin persisted in rural areas of Tunisia - possibly as late as the last two decades of the 15th century in some sources.'
By the late 19th century and early 20th century, the possible existence of African Latin was controversial,' with debates on the existence of Africitas as a putative African dialect of Latin. In 1882, the German scholar used unconvincing material to adduce features particular to Latin in Africa.' This unconvincing evidence was attacked by Wilhelm Kroll in 1897, and again by Madeline D. Brock in 1911.' Brock went so far as to assert that "African Latin was free from provincialism" ",' and that African Latin was "the Latin of an epoch rather than that of a country".' This view shifted in recent decades, with modern philologists going so far as to say that African Latin "was not free from provincialism"' and that, given the remoteness of parts of Africa, there were "probably a plurality of varieties of Latin, rather than a single African Latin".' Other researchers believe that features peculiar to African Latin existed, but are "not to be found where Sittl looked for it".' While as a language African Romance is extinct, there is some evidence of regional varieties in African Latin that helps reconstruct some of its features. Some historical evidence on the phonetic and lexical features of the Afri were already observed in ancient times. Pliny observes how walls in Africa and Spain are called formacei, or "framed walls, because they are made by packing in a frame enclosed between two boards, one on each side". Nonius Marcellus, a Roman grammarian, provides further, if uncertain, evidence regarding vocabulary and possible "Africanisms". In the Historia Augusta, the North African Roman Emperor Septimius Severus is said to have retained an African accent until old age. More recent analysis focuses on a body of literary texts, being literary pieces written by African and non-African writers. These show the existence of an African pronunciation of Latin, then moving on to a further study of lexical material drawn from sub-literary sources, such as practical texts and ostraca, from multiple African communities, that is military writers, landholders and doctors.'
Adams lists a number of possible Africanisms found in this wider Latin literary corpus. Only two refer to constructions found in Sittl, with the other examples deriving from medical texts, various ostraca and other non-traditional sources. Two sorts of regional features can be observed. The first are loanwords from a substrate language, such is the case with Britain. In African Latin, this substrate was Punic. African Romance included words such as ginga for "henbane", boba for "mallow," girba for "mortar" and gelela for the inner flesh of a gourd.' The second refers to use of Latin words with particular meanings not found elsewhere, or in limited contexts. Of particular note is the African Romance use of the word rostrum for "mouth" instead of the original meaning in Latin, which is "beak",' and baiae for "baths" being a late Latin and particularly African generalisation from the place-name Baiae. Pullus meaning "cock" or "rooster", was probably borrowed by Berber dialects from African Romance, for use instead of the Latin gallus.' The originally abstract word dulcor is seen applied as a probable medical African specialisation relating to sweet wine instead of the Latin passum or mustum. The Latin for grape, traditionally indeterminate, male or neuter, in various African Latin sources changes to the feminine acina. Other examples include the use of pala as a metaphor for the shoulder blade; centenarium, which only occurs in the Albertini Tablets and may have meant "granary"; and infantilisms such as dida.
Both Africans, such as Augustine of Hippo and the grammarian Pompeius, as well as non-Africans, such as Consentius and Jerome, wrote on African features, some in very specific terms. Indeed in his De Ordine, dated to late 386, Augustine remarks how he was still "criticised by the Italians" for his pronunciation, while he himself often found fault with theirs.' While modern scholars may express doubts on the interpretation or accuracy of some of these writings, they contend that African Latin must have been distinctive enough to inspire so much discussion.

Extinction as a vernacular

Following the Arab conquest in 696–705 AD, it is difficult to trace the fate of African Romance, though it was soon replaced by Arabic as the primary administrative language. It is not known when African Latin ceased to be spoken in North Africa, but it is likely that it continued to be widely spoken in various parts of the littoral of Africa into the 12th century. '
At the time of the conquest a Romance language was probably spoken in the cities and Berber languages were also spoken in the region.' Loanwords from Northwest African Romance to Berber are attested and are usually in the accusative form: examples include atmun from temonem.' It is unclear for how long Romance continued to be spoken, but its influence on Northwest African Arabic indicates it must have had a significant presence in the early years after the Arab conquest.'Spoken Latin or Romance is attested in Gabès by Ibn Khordadbeh, in Béja, Biskra, Tlemcen and Niffis by al-Bakri and in Gafsa and Monastir by al-Idrisi.' The latter describes how the people in Gafsa «are Berberised, and most of them speak the African Latin tongue.»'
In their pursuit of acquiring their African kingdom in the 12th century, the Normans received help from the remaining Christian population of Tunisia, and some linguists such as argue that those Christians had been speaking a Romance language for centuries.' The language existed until the arrival of the Banu Hilal Arabs in the 11th century and probably until the beginning of the fourteenth century.'
Furthermore, modern scholars have identified that, amongst the Berbers of Afrikiya, the African Romance language was linked to Christianity, which survived in North Africa until the 14th century.' According to the testimony of Mawlâ Aḥmad, a Romance dialect probably survived in Touzeur until the early 18th century.' Indeed in 1709, Ahmad wrote that "the inhabitants of Touzeur are a remnant of the Christians who were once in Afrikiya, before the Arab conquest".

Related languages

Sardinian

The spoken variety of African Romance, as recorded by, was perceived to be similar to Sardinian' – confirming hypotheses that there were parallelisms between developments of Latin in Africa and Sardinia.' In fact, some linguists, like the philologist Heinrich Lausberg, proposed to classify Sardinian as the sole living representative of a Southern group of the Romance languages, which once also comprised the African Latin dialects, as well as the Corsican dialects spoken prior to the island's Tuscanization.
Augustine of Hippo writes that "African ears have no quick perception of the shortness or length of vowels". This also describes the evolution of vowels in the Sardinian language. Sardinian has only five vowels, and no diphthongs: unlike some other surviving Romance languages, the five long and short vowel pairs of classical Latin merged into five single vowels with no length distinction. Italian and Romanian have seven, while Portuguese and Catalan have eight.
Adams theorises that similarities in some vocabulary, such as spanu in Sardinian and spanus in African Romance may be evidence that some vocabulary was shared between Sardinia and Africa.' A further theory suggests that the Sardinian word for "Friday", cenàpura or chenàpura, may have been brought to Sardinia from Africa by Jews from North Africa.'
Muhammad al-Idrisi also says of the island's native people that "the Sardinians are ethnically Roman Africans, live like the Berbers, shun any other nation of Rûm; these people are courageous and valiant, that never part with their weapons."

Other languages

Some impacts of African Romance on Arabic spoken in the Maghreb are also theorised.' For example, in calendar month names, the word furar "February" is only found in the Maghreb and in the Maltese language - proving the word's ancient origins.' The region also has a form of another Latin named month in awi/ussu < augustus.' This word does not appear to be a loan word through Arabic, and may have been taken over directly from Late Latin or African Romance.' Scholars theorise that a Latin-based system provided forms such as awi/ussu and furar, with the system then mediating Latin/Romance names through Arabic for some month names during the Islamic period.' The same situation exists for Maltese which mediated words from Italian, and retains both non-Italian forms such as awissu/awwissu and frar, and Italian forms such as april.'
Some scholars theorise that many of the North African invaders of Hispania in the Early Middle Ages spoke some form of African Romance, with "phonetic, morphosyntactic, lexical and semantic data" from African Romance appearing to have contributed in the development of Ibero-Romance.'
Brugnatelli pinpoints some Berber words, relating to religious topics, as being originally words from Latin: for example, in Ghadames the word "äng'alus" refers to a spiritual entity, clearly using a word from the Latin "angel".'

Characteristics

Starting from African Romance's similarity with Sardinian, scholars theorise that the similarity may be pinned down to specific phonological properties.' Sardinian lacks palatization of velar stops before front vowels, and features the pairwise merger of short and long non-low vowels.' Evidence is found that both isoglosses were present in African Latin:
There also is evidence that the vowel system of African Latin was similar to Sardinian.' Augustine of Hippo's testimony on how ōs "mouth" in Latin was to African ears indistinguishable from ŏs'' "bone" indicates the merger of vowels and the loss of the original allophonic quality distinction in vowels.'
Moreover, in a study of errors on stressed vowels in a corpus of 279 inscriptions, scholars noted how African inscriptions confused between over-stressed and under-stressed vowels between the 1st and 4th century AD, with Rome reaching comparable error rates only by the late 4th to 6th centuries.'

Berber vocabulary

The Polish Arabist tried to reconstruct some sections of this language based on 85 lemmas mainly derived from Northwest African toponyms and anthroponyms found in medieval sources.' Due to the historical presence in the region of Classical Latin, modern Romance languages, as well as the influence of the Mediterranean Lingua Franca it is difficult to differentiate the precise origin of words in Berber languages and in the varieties of Maghrebi Arabic. The studies are also difficult and often highly conjectural. Due to the large size of the North African territory, it is highly probable that not one but several varieties of African Romance existed, much like the wide variety of Romance languages in Europe.' Moroever, other Romance languages spoken in Northwest Africa before the European colonization were the Mediterranean Lingua Franca,' a pidgin with Arabic and Romance influences, and Judaeo-Spanish, a dialect of Spanish brought by Sephardi Jews.'
Scholars believe that there is a great number of Berber words, existing in various dialects, which are theorised to derive from late Latin or African Romance, such as:
EnglishBerberLatinItalian
sinabekkadupeccatumpeccato
ovenafarnufurnusforno
oakakarruš / akerruš cerrus, quercius quercio
oleanderalili / ilili / talilit liliumoleandro
flouraren farinafarina
large sackasaku saccusgrosso sacco
helmatmun temotimone
Augustawussuaugustusagosto
bliteblitu blitumpera mezza
young boybušilpusillusfanciullo
large wooden bowlduskudiscusgrossa scodella in legno
locality in TripolitaniaFassaṭofossatum località della Tripolitania
Februaryfurarforarfebbraio
castle / villageġasrucastrumcastello / borgo/ villaggio
beanibawfabafava
horehoundimmerwimarrubiummarrubio
cultivated fieldiger / ižer agercampo coltivato
chickpeaikikercicercece
durmastiskir aesculusrovere
catqaṭṭuscattusgatto
locality in MoroccoRifripa località del Marocco
throattageržumtgorgiagola


Citations

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