# African languages



## dihydrogen monoxide

Why didn't African people feel the need to write things down ie. having their own alphabet, their own grammars, studying language and so on. Many if not almost all African languages were being studied in 20th century by Europeans and it is only then when grammars of these languages were written, in some cases even Bible translated. I know, you could argue about Eskimos and Native Indians too. But Indians in South America are exceptions. I am only interested in African. Again Ancient Egyptians are African and they do not concern me at this point, they felt the need and so on, just for the alphabet, but not for grammar...
If we look at the people at that time only Africans and Indians (well some of the Native American Indians had them thanks to Slovenian explorer Baraga) didn't have the alphabet in those days. What was the reason for that?


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## jfm

African languages have been described since very long, such as Egyptian (you can't seriosly exclude that from a list of African languages!), Meroitic, Geez, etc. Most of the early work and literature on and in African languages are from the north-east of Africa.

The earliest sub-Saharan languages that appear in writing date from the mid 17th century, although they didn't start to pick up until the 1830s/40s, after which the missionaries started their Bible translations en masse.

Writing is a cultural invention, and has been invented only a few times in history, viz. Middle East/Egypt, China, and Mesoamerica, plus possibly a handful other locations. Thus writing has spread throughout the world from only a few locations, and it has done so mostly by cultural domination, religious conversion, or military conquest.

Most of the world’s "alphabets" originate from the Middle East/Egypt area, and was invented some time during the 2nd millenium BC. From there, various versions and developments of it later spread to the rest of the world, incl. Europe.

Europeans did not invent any writing. They were introduced to it, which is true for most of the Mediterranan world, incl. northern Africa.

Early writing served limited purposes and was practiced only by restricted sectors of any given society. They were of limited use to people at large. Nor was writing necessary to handle a large-scale administration. The Incas managed well without writing.

Most African societies have functioned well without writing. However, those African societies, such as the early Berbers, who were exposed to the Phoenecian writing did the same thing as the Europeans did. They adopted it. 

So, the fact that many European societies adopted writing earlier than sub-Saharan societies is mostly due to historical happenstance.

Also, since African societies are largely characterised by oral culture/literature, there was never any serious need for writing things down. It was only when the highly racist Christians came and wanted to "save" the African heathens from a savage and sub-human (in their eyes) existense, that writing was introduced, not as a cultural enrichment, but as a deliberate tool to obliterate native culture and convert people to Christianity.


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## sokol

I would like to add that writing at the beginning was NOT at the core of culture but at the core of administration: civil servants and emperors invented writing because this made it easier for them to rule.

Culture (that is, poetry and that stuff) only came later.
Culture does _not _need exactly writing - it is only that culture _changes _with culture. But it may develop with writing and without.

It seems that in Sub-Saharan Africa there was not a single state with an administration structure like the one in Egypt or Sumer. In Europe there was neither, of course, for a very long time, until the Romans came, who took their alphabet from the Greeks who were in long and intense contact with the Near East.

In China a writing system developped independently from Africa/Near East, and under similar circumstances.


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## Athaulf

jfm said:


> Most of the world’s "alphabets" originate from the Middle East/Egypt area, and was invented some time during the 2nd millenium BC. From there, various versions and developments of it later spread to the rest of the world, incl. Europe.



Actually, as far as I know, alphabetic writing - in the sense of writing systems whose symbols roughly correspond to phonemes - was invented _only once_, some four thousand years ago in the ancient Middle East. Even alphabets that didn't directly evolve from this first proto-alphabet were designed by people who were familiar with one or more existing alphabets. They just took the liberty to invent novel letter shapes or derive them from non-alphabetic scripts, instead of directly copying and adapting existing alphabets. 

Even the basic idea of writing wasn't invented independently more than a handful of times. In fact, with the most restrictive assumptions, it is possible that it was invented only twice: in the ancient Middle East and in Mesoamerica. Although Chinese characters, and perhaps also Indus Valley writing, are graphically independent from Middle Eastern scripts, it is possible that the idea of writing itself was transmitted there from the Middle East. Even with the least restrictive plausible assumptions, the number of occasions that writing was invented fully independently can't be larger than four or five - ancient ME, China, and Mesoamerica, plus perhaps Rongorongo and (unlikely) the Indus Valley script. It is extremely unlikely, although I guess not _totally _impossible, that some very old inscriptions such as Tartaria tablets or the Phaistos disc represent something that could be reasonably called an independently invented writing system. 

Therefore, it's not too surprising that none of the sub-Saharan African cultures ever invented their own writing systems (let alone alphabets), since hardly anyone else ever did before coming into contact with an existing literate culture. 



> Also, since African societies are largely characterised by oral culture/literature, there was never any serious need for writing things down. It was only when the highly racist Christians came and wanted to "save" the African heathens from a savage and sub-human (in their eyes) existense, that writing was introduced, not as a cultural enrichment, but as a deliberate tool to obliterate native culture and convert people to Christianity.


I think you're being much too harsh on Christian missionaries. Do you think that, for example, Slavic or Germanic peoples would be better off if their ancient illiterate pagan cultures hadn't been Christianized in the early Middle Ages, even though this process was accompanied by excesses and atrocities at least as bad as those that happened during colonial times in Africa? (Don't forget that most Western European languages, including English, derive their words for "slave" from "Slav"!) Being of Slavic extraction myself, I'd say that the answer is a definite no. 

Whether we want to admit it or not, writing _is _a basic requirement  for any society capable of ensuring a reasonable level of safety and living  standards for its people. Colonialism has obviously left many societies incapable of ensuring this, but I think it's quite naive to put the blame for this on the literacy and education brought by Christian missionaries, or to romanticize the preliterate societies that preceded the European colonization and their pagan religions (whose barbaric aspects aren't just fraudulent propaganda of Christian and Muslim missionaries - observe the horrific atrocities occasionally perpetrated in the name of pagan superstitions in Africa even nowadays). As for the supposed deliberate obliteration of native cultures, in many cases we can in fact thank the Christian missionaries for preserving the native languages and heritage by introducing literacy. 


(Note to moderator: I'm not sure if this part of the discussion is going too far off-topic, so please feel free to delete it if you think it is. Still, if you're going to keep the above quoted assertions, I think that they are much too biased one-sided to be left without a reply.)


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## Athaulf

sokol said:


> In China a writing system developped independently from Africa/Near East, and under similar circumstances.



This is possible, but not absolutely certain. Silly sensationalist headlines aside, the oldest uncontroversial examples of Chinese writing are less than 3,400 years old. In comparison, we have uncontroversial examples of more than 5,000 years old Sumerian documents (the Jemdet Nasr tablets), and some perhaps even 5,500 years old (the Kish tablet). Thus, there was ample time for the idea of writing to propagate from the Middle East to China.


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## sokol

Athaulf said:


> (...) Thus, there was ample time for the idea of writing to propagate from the Middle East to China.


There was, yes. It wouldn't even be unlikely that such an influence had taken place at some time; there were cultural contacts via India and also over the ancient Silk Road.

Personally I would consider it very likely that the Chinese writing developped indepentently, but anyway there's another example of independent development of a logosyllabic script which is even more difficult to contest - the Maya script (I do not know if there are _scientists _contesting autochthonous origin of their script). So even if Chinese writing were going back to Sumerian there are other examples of independent development of a logosyllabic script - if only few (or probably only the one).

Further we can be quite sure that the Japanese syllabic script (hiragana - katagana) was derived from Chinese script (a similar 'simplified' syllabic writing also exist(ed) in China but seems to be almost out of use nowadays; unfortunately I forgot how this one is called and I can't find a reference at the moment) and the Korean writing = Hangeul which also is derived from Chinese is an alphabetic script.
So if there were no connection between Sumerian writing and Chinese writing then there would be at least two independently invented alphabetical scripts (the second one being Korean).

Also this development of a logosyllabic script to syllabic and, further, alphabetical script is quite logical - the same has happened in the Near East where the first Sumerian writing system also was logosyllabic and later became syllabic and alphabetic.
Anyway, it is very clear that there were a very few centres which developped writing systems of any kind from where the idea of writing language expanded to the whole world.



Athaulf said:


> (...) Although Chinese characters, and perhaps also Indus Valley writing, are graphically independent from Middle Eastern scripts, it is possible that the idea of writing itself was transmitted there from the Middle East. (...)


I agree fully.
We have a legion of examples of new "inventions" of writing systems from people who were familiar with the _idea of writing_ - and in that case one certainly can't speak of an independent invention. The similarity (or dissimilarity) of the individual characters is of no consequence; it is clearly visible with Cyrillic script (some new letters but many adopted Greek letters), only just visible with Armenian (only the order of sounds in the Armenian alphabet is a very clear hint that Greek was the model alphabet; and also then historical documents which make clear that the Armenians already were familiar with Greek when they "invented" their alphabet).
The case of Hittite is even more strange: in older documents cuneiform script is used, in younger documents a newly invented hieroglyphic script - clearly adopted from Egyptian hieroglyphs. Seems that at the time hieroglyphs were all the rage at the time ...


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## berndf

sokol said:


> ..., until the Romans came, who took their alphabet from the Greeks who were in long and intense contact with the Near East.


 
I always wondered if this is really the case. Romans and Etruscans must have had direct contact with Phoenicians like the Greeks. The Roman and Etruscan alphabets might well have originated from the same Phoenician/Paleo-Hebrew alphabet from which the Greeks derived theirs. Latin has retained some letters which Greek lost, I am thinking especially of the “Q” (< “qoph”) which, as far as I know, Greek lost very early.
 
If I should be wrong, what would be the reasons to assume the Latin alphabet be derived (exclusively) from Greek?


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## Outsider

jfm said:


> Europeans did not invent any writing. They were introduced to it, which is true for most of the Mediterranan world, incl. northern Africa.


What about the ancient Cretan scripts?



berndf said:


> I always wondered if this is really the case. Romans and Etruscans must have had direct contact with Phoenicians like the Greeks. The Roman and Etruscan alphabets might well have originated from the same Phoenician/Paleo-Hebrew alphabet from which the Greeks derived theirs. Latin has retained some letters which Greek lost, I am thinking especially of the “Q” (< “qoph”) which, as far as I know, Greek lost very early.
> 
> If I should be wrong, what would be the reasons to assume the Latin alphabet be derived (exclusively) from Greek?


There were several variants of the Greek alphabet in pre-classical times. The western variant included the letter "Q". The Etruscan and the Latin alphabets are ultimately a result of the Greek colonization of the Mediterranean.

With regard to the original question, I second what has already been said: actually, one of the first writing systems, Egyptian hieroglyphs, was invented in Africa.

A deeper reply might be that a prerequisite for the invention of writing -- barring outside influences -- seems to be the existence of cities. In Africa below the Sahara, it seems that cities only developed relatively later than elsewhere (although with exceptions like the Great Zimbabwe). When cities did start to arise, it was under Islamic cultural influence, and then the Arabic alphabet was naturally adopted.


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## berndf

Outsider said:


> The western variant included the letter "Q". The Etruscan and the Latin alphabets are ultimately a result of the Greek colonization of the Mediterranean.


Kyme and Old Italic scripts are more or less of the same age. I still don't understand why one is sure that one is the ancestor of the other.


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## modus.irrealis

berndf said:


> Kyme and Old Italic scripts are more or less of the same age. I still don't understand why one is sure that one is the ancestor of the other.


I would say the value of the letters, especially of the vowels. It's possible that representing vowels was an independent invention but what are the odds that He would be used for [e] in both alphabets (and instead use Het for ) or that Ayin would be used for [o]? There's also shared innovations like the splitting of Waw into two letters, and the letter X.


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## Outsider

berndf said:


> Kyme and Old Italic scripts are more or less of the same age. I still don't understand why one is sure that one is the ancestor of the other.


In any case, it seems clear that both were archaic forms of the Greek alphabet.


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## Athaulf

Outsider said:


> What about the ancient Cretan scripts?



The exact circumstances of their development are shrouded in mystery, but I'd say it's overwhelmingly likely that they developed from something that had been imported from Egypt.


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## sokol

Athaulf said:


> The exact circumstances of their development are shrouded in mystery, but I'd say it's overwhelmingly likely that they developed from something that had been imported from Egypt.


Not even necessarily imported; Crete did extensive trade with Egypt and the Near East at the time - it is more than likely that the traders knew of their writing systems, and it wouldn't be out of the ordinary at all if they had invented Linear A under their influence.

Crete was much too less isolated from the rest of the Eastern Mediterranean to even think of proposing an independent development of their writing system (of course there is no way of being sure, but the odds are that they knew other scripts before they invented theirs).


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## berndf

modus.irrealis said:


> I would say the value of the letters, especially of the vowels. It's possible that representing vowels was an independent invention but what are the odds that He would be used for [e] in both alphabets (and instead use Het for ) or that Ayin would be used for [o]? There's also shared innovations like the splitting of Waw into two letters, and the letter X.




Good point!


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## Athaulf

sokol said:


> Further we can be quite sure that the Japanese syllabic script (hiragana - katagana) was derived from Chinese script (a similar 'simplified' syllabic writing also exist(ed) in China but seems to be almost out of use nowadays; unfortunately I forgot how this one is called and I can't find a reference at the moment) and the Korean writing = Hangeul which also is derived from Chinese is an alphabetic script.
> So if there were no connection between Sumerian writing and Chinese writing then there would be at least two independently invented alphabetical scripts (the second one being Korean).



However, I don't think that Hangul can count as an independent invention of alphabet. As far as I know, the letters might be graphically independent from any previous alphabet, but it's extremely implausible that the _idea_ of alphabetic writing wasn't imported from elsewhere. Having done some googling, I now see that some scholars believe that the designers of Hangul were influenced by a Mongol script called Phagspa, whose origin can be traced to old Middle Eastern alphabets. 

However natural it might feel to us, the idea of alphabetic writing really seems to be one of the most extraordinary inventions ever, if not _the _most extraordinary one. 



> Also this development of a logosyllabic script to syllabic and, further, alphabetical script is quite logical - the same has happened in the Near East where the first Sumerian writing system also was logosyllabic and later became syllabic and alphabetic.


It might be quite logical, but it seems like it's also highly non-obvious. I suppose the development from logographic to syllabic scripts is natural for speakers of languages whose phonotactic rules allow for only a small number of different syllables, like Japanese. For languages like English, however, that allow for many thousands of different syllables, such a development could probably never take place, since a syllabic script would be more difficult and cumbersome than a logographic one.


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## Frank06

Hi,


Athaulf said:


> However, I don't think that Hangul can count as...


*On this interesting site I learned that the **distance** between Seoul and (and the rather randomly chosen African city) Kinshasa is 7343 miles, 11817 kilometers "as the crow flies". The helpful people of that web site also point out that this may vary from the actual driving distances.*


*Guys, the previous posts really were interesting (and I am not only thinking about Hangul, but also about the Cretan, Greek, Italic scripts etc.), but could it please be possible to move back into the vicinity of any African city of your choice. **Because that happens to be the topic of this thread. Please?*

*Thanks!*

*Frank*
*Moderator EHL*


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## Athaulf

Frank06 said:


> *Guys, the previous posts really were interesting (and I am not only thinking about Hangul, but also about the Cretan, Greek, Italic scripts etc.), but could it please be possible to move back into the vicinity of any African city of your choice. **Because that happens to be the topic of this thread. Please?*



Admittedly, we have drifted too far off topic, but I'd still say that the entire discussion has had at least some relevance for the initial question. In order to say something sensible about why sub-Saharan African cultures never developed any indigenous writing systems, it's important to consider how exactly various other cultures across the world came to be literate. If invention of writing, and especially alphabetic writing, is something so extraordinarily rare that nearly all literate cultures initially acquired their writing systems from somewhere else, then this fact certainly sheds some light on the initial question. And in order to establish whether that is so, it's necessary to consider various examples of supposedly independently invented writing systems across the world.


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