"People of color"

Herb Stahlke hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM
Mon Jun 1 17:29:15 UTC 2009


Hamitic still shows up as a combining form "Hamito-" in Hamito-Semitic
languages, The term is used mostly in Europe, especially Eastern
Europe, but there is an annual international Hamito-Semitic languages
conference.  The term is generally not used in English-speaking
countries, where it has largely been replaced by Greenberg's
Afro-Asiatic.  Semito-Hamitic also shows up.  Greenberg rejected the
term, in either order, on the grounds that it suggests a two-way split
between Semitic, on the one hand, and Ancient Egyptian, Coptic,
Berber, Cushitic, Omotic, and Chadic on the other.  There is no
evidence of such a split, and Greenberg generally preferred
geographical names.  Khoi-San was his one major exception to that.

Herb

On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 2:49 AM, Victor <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Victor <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "People of color"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Of course, most fun can be had with "Japhethic". Precisely what that is
> would have to be left to Marrists. (If I recall my Stalinist linguistic
> theories correctly, this was the supposed pre-IE connection between the
> "mountain" languages, including the Karvelian languages, Etruscan and
> Basque, and Semitic languages.)
>
> Has anyone else used "Japhetic"? Wiki claims that both "Hamitic" and
> "Japhetic" "have passed into obscurity"--speaking of rewrites, Wiki
> linguistic entries need a lot of work. At the same time Wiki says that
> "Japhetic languages" should not be "confused with the Japhetic theory",
> but this "confusion" only makes sense if there is alternative use of
> "Japhetic".
>
>    VS-)
>
> Herb Stahlke wrote:
>> And for a scholarly and delightful account of the knots people have
>> tied themselves in over racial terms derived from Noah's sons, by all
>> means read Edith Sanders' The Hamitic Hypothesis:  Its Origin and
>> Function in Time Perspective, Journal of African History, Vol. 10, No.
>> 4, (1969) pp. 521-532.
>>
>> Herb
>>
>>
>
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