A hybrid of Altaic and Afro-Asiatic languages

Question

Is there any language which is a hybrid of two different language groups? A hybrid of Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic languages, or, a hybrid of Altaic and Afro-Asiatic languages?

CalifJim · Accepted Answer

Jackson6612Is there any language which is a hybrid of two different language groups?

Swahili may be a candidate. It is within the Bantu language family, but it contains about 35% Arabic words, and Arabic is within the Semitic language family. I don't know about those other combinations.

CJ

AlpheccaStars · Answer

Jackson:

A pidgin is a language that is a hybrid mixture of two or more languages. It has a (usually primitive) grammar and vocabulary. Pidgins form when groups of people who cannot communicate in their native languages need to communicate (most commonly for trade), and so they form a contact language. If a pidgin becomes established to a point where it is spoken as a native language, it is called a creole. So I suppose that some creoles might be classified as hybrids of different language grooups, depending on their origins and the dominance of one of the contributory languages.

Jackson6612 · Answer

The elements in a periodic table group are there in a same group because they have many common features.

Proto-Indo-European Language > Germanic > West Germanic > Old English > Middle English > English

Proto-Indo-European Language > Indo-Iranian > Indic > Vedic Sanskrit> Middle Indic > Punjabi, Urdu, Hindi, etc.

I don't think there is much common between English and Punjabi, then how come they occupy a place in the same language group? Urdu is much close to Arabic (Afro-Asiatic language group) than to English.

The http://www.public.iastate.edu/%7Ecfford/342worldhistoryearly.html from the top on the linked webpage shows the posited homeland (presumably Anatolia) of Indo-European language which is the stick language. It says that Aryans brought Indo-European language to Indian subcontinent. Were people in Indian subcontinent living without a language before the invasion of Aryans?

Do these language groups, such as Afro-Asiatic and Indo-European, have some connection with human migrations?

The homeland of Afro-Asiatic language group is not far away from the areas of Indo-European language, then how they are distinct language groups?

CalifJim · Answer

Jackson6612I don't think there is much common between English and Punjabi,

There is probably more in common than meets the eye. What is in common is found in the proto-languages which nobody speaks anymore. As time went on, English diverged from the common ancestor language in a different way from how Punjabi diverged from that same language.

Jackson6612It says that Aryans brought Indo-European language to Indian subcontinent. Were people in Indian subcontinent living without a language before the invasion of Aryans?

Doubtful. Rather, whatever language they spoke was gradually replaced by the language of the group that moved into that area.

Jackson6612Do these language groups, such as Afro-Asiatic and Indo-European, have some connection with human migrations?Yes, they have everything to do with human migrations. Languages can't move on their own; they always have to be carried by those that speak them!
Jackson6612The homeland of Afro-Asiatic language group is not far away from the areas of Indo-European language, then how they are distinct language groups?
That's just how things worked out historically -- again based on various human migrations. Belonging to a language group has to do with having a common language that both developed from. Whether the origins of two groups are close or far from one another geographically is less important. It would not be very unusual to see the pattern you see, because two large groups of people may find themselves competing over the same space. The two groups may speak completely different languages. As time goes on, some daughter languages develop from one of the two; other daughter languages develop out of the other one. Then you have two language families that originated in almost the same place.

CJ

Anonymous · Answer

Jackson6612Urdu is much close to Arabic (Afro-Asiatic language group) than to English.

Urdu has a lot of loanwords from Arabic, but that doesn't make it an Afro-Asiatic language. Similarly English has a lot of loanwords from French, but that doesn't make English an Italic language.

Urdu is much closer to Punjabi than it is to English, and both Urdu and Punjabi are closer to English than they are to Arabic.

Jackson6612 · Answer

The chemical elements are there in a same group of periodic table for a reason. The reason is they are similar in many respects.

Every language needs a vocabulary, grammar, construction (which I think is also a part of grammar?), and script, that's all.

What is common between the languages of a same family? What are the similarities between Urdu, Hindi, and English? Are there any?

Urdu and Hindi have a common ancestor Khariboli and have a lot of common features. Urdu is written is Nastaleeq script while Hindi in Devanagari. Hindi borrows many words from Sanskrit while Urdu from Arabic and Persian.

I don't think there ever was any kind of proto-language. Rather, there was a dialect continuum between the people who were culturally, economically, and regionally etc. related. The tree diagram which is used to represent the evolution of languages from the parent language is highly misleading.

Read the first few paragraphs on the linked webpage:

http://paleoglot.blogspot.com/2007/10/language-waves-and-satem-innovation-in.html

Where do the languages of the tribes who live in jungles come from? Do they fit in any language family?

Jackson6612 · Answer

Help, please!

Jackson6612 · Answer

Is this so tough...?<img src="http://www.EnglishForward.com/emoticons/emotion-42.gif"/>

Patrick Lockerby · Answer

Jackson6612Is this so tough...?

Yes!

I've been mulling this over.

There is an influence from Buddhism which carried words between languages in an area from Greece through Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, India to China, Tibet, Thailand, Korea and Japan. This has left a Greek influence in its wake, but I can't find anything in the academic literature to suggest that any language in that area might be a hybrid. It is more a case that the various languages have adopted Greek words and modified them.

The place to look for such an Altaic-Afro-Asiatic hybrid would be the Pacific. Perhaps such a hybrid may evolve, or may already have evolved in the Fijian Islands.
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=Fiji

Wikipedia articles that may be of interest:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_in_Central_Asia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalmyk_people#Language

Other than English, language history is not my area. My focus is on how language works, how children learn to talk, and how we use language to exchange ideas in all languages.

I hope this has been of some help to you.

AlpheccaStars · Answer

Jackson:
I have recently finished a short course of study on the subject of historical linguistics.

There are arguments both pro and con on the thesis of a single human proto-language, and I assume this will never be known for sure. One key question is: When in human history, did the first language develop? There are many well-developed theories on the mechanisms of language change - semantically as well as syntactically. As humans migrated, generations lived and died, their languages evolved, diverged and died out. Even Aristotle recognized that his Greek was different than Homer's Greek, and analyzed the changes!

The existence of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto_Indo-European_language is well accepted by the experts. The details are still debated, of course, but it is estimated to have been living some 10,000 years ago.

The history of an individual contemporary language is difficult to trace if it is not written, and the great majority of languages are not written. There are an estimated 5000 languages in the world today, and only a very small percentage of these are written. They are also going extinct at a very rapid pace.

A hybrid of Altaic and Afro-Asiatic languages

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