posted 21 April 2005 06:26 PM            

1) négro-égyptien
2) khoisan
3) berbère

He recognizes that Semitic languages are spoken in Africa but
doesn't classify them as native to the geographical continent of
Africa calling them

4) sémitique de l'Afrique

He defines the Negro-Egyptian group as those languages
related to if not actually arising from pharaonic Egyptian.

Tamazight (the designation that North Africans themselves
have chosen for their language family as they deem the
word Berber to be one forced on them by Greek, Roman,
and later Arab colonialist invaders) is totally unrelated to
pharaonic Egyptian per Obenga and thus excluded from
the unity of the langues négro-africaines.

Of the familes considered to be Afrasian (and I do believe
that term a misnomer as Africa is the birthplace of these
languages -- even Semitic was born somewhere between
the Sahara and the Horn before crossing the Bab el Mandeb
to the Arabian peninsula which geologically is part of the African
continent -- and they are spoken nowhere in Asia outside of the
context of the dispersion of religion)

1) Omotic
2) Kushitic
3) Egyptian
4) Chadic (Hausa)
5) Tamazight
6) Semitic

Obenga has retained the phylum family unity of

1) Kushitic
2) Egyptian
3) Chadic

and broadened the connection by demoting and including
the previously two classified as independent ranking phyla

4) Nilo-Saharan
5) Niger-Kordofanian

into his new Black-Egyptian language phylum.

Table 1. Two classifications of African language phyla

OBENGA
1.Berber
2.Negro-Egyptian
3.Khoisan

GREENBERG
1.Afrasian
2.Nilo-Saharan
3.Niger-Kordofanian
4.Khoisan

Essentially Obenga abandons Afrasian (Afrasan) rejecting Semitic
and making "Berber" a major phylum of its own. What then remains of Afrasan
he combines with Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Kordofanian to produce his
Negro-Egyptian major phylum. He apparently agrees with the Greenberg school
about the classification of Khoi and San.

posted 21 April 2005 06:48 PM            

In some respects I think the Diop era of African scholars have not really "gotten" how much the game has changed.

They continue to play the dead hand of "Negritude", not understanding that they play right into the trap of Eurocentrists who wish to corner them as Afrocentric racists and then refute via straw argument.

That's what CL Brace did in his critique of Diop.

It was primarily a critique of Blumenbach and Coon's racist classification system, which was de rigour in Diop's day, and not subject to refutation.

Diop's central thesis was the African origin of Ancient Egypt.

He was correct, and the evidence available to demonstrate this truth is far more extensive and irrefutable than it was in "his day".

But in order to utilise the new evidence, one must embrace it, incorporate it and abandon outdated constructs.

Enough preamble though:

Language is not race. There is no
negro language. You can't 'remove' semitic and berber from the family just because you don't like the fact that these two langauges are spoken by people who are in some cases of predominently of Eurasian lineage.

This just inverts the error of the Nostracists who are really trying to create "white" grand-dad langauge, and even more ridiculous idea, of course.

Christopher Ehret is on the right track in my opinion. He calls the language Afrasan, which is the next logical step in recognising its essentially African character.

reviewing the evolution of the terminology:

posted 21 April 2005 07:09 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by rasol:

Christopher Ehret is on the right track in my opinion. He calls the language Afrasan, which is the next logical step in recognising its essentially African character.

---

Thought Writes:

We also need to reevaluate the geography of the region Semitic spread into during the early Holocene. The Levant is a part of the African Rift Valley and hence it may be argued that Afrasan never really left Africa.

posted 21 April 2005 07:20 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by rasol:

This just inverts the error of the Nostracists who are really trying to create "white" grand-dad langauge, and even more ridiculous idea, of course.

reviewing the evolution of the terminology:

* semitic
* hamito-semitic
* afro-asiatic.
* afrasian
* afrasan

---

As a sidebar here's the evolution of Obenga's Egyptian-BlackAfrican
language phylum:

posted 21 April 2005 08:05 PM            

quote:

---

1974 - Obenga delineates between Negro-African and Berber saying that
unlike Egyptian it shares no typological, morphological, phonemic,
lexicological or syntactic similarities in the least.
Report of the symposium on
'The Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Deciphering of the Meroitic Script'
The General History of Africa - Studies and Documents No. 1
Paris: Unesco, 1978

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Objective being to refute the idea that the Berber were the primary source of ancient Egyptian; prior to genetic synthesis demonstrating that the Berber people and implicitly the language emanate from a common African stock; obviating the 'need' to separate out the Berber.