Dravidians from Africa/not Europe

[benji wald]

Infra dig, but C. A. Winters wrote:
 
>Moreover you have made the distinction that Somali is not related to the
>Other Black African languages this distinction is not accepted by most
>linguist of African languages that are of afrrican descent and know and
>speak the languages every day.
 
This misrepresents what Trask said.  He said Mande is a branch of
Niger-Congo, while Somali is not.  It is a branch of Cushitic, in turn a
branch of Afro-Asiatic.  What Winter calls "Black Africans" speak Cushitic
as well as Niger-Congo languages.  Trask never said they didn't.  He just
said the two types of languages have never been demonstrated to be
genetically related, while Clyde's Dravidian-"African" hypothesis
presupposes (without argument other than racial, it seems) that they are.
Somehow, Clyde seems to want to obscure this point for purposes of
asserting the linguists of African descent agree with him and not Trask.
No Somali that I know, linguist or not, thinks that Somali is more closely
related to Bantu or any other Niger-Congo language than it is to Cushitic,
and even to Arabic (which is also Afro-Asiatic).  Similarly, no speaker of
Mwini (Bantu: Niger-Congo), a language spoken in Somalia closely related to
Swahili, thinks that Mwini is related to Somali, and that despite numerous
Somali loanwords in Mwini.  I doubt that Clyde has any names to back up his
assertion who, in fact, speak Somali or any other relevant African
language.  He seems to be somehow confusedly and racistically arguing that
the opinion of some African linguist (and perhaps only one) is worth more
than some non-African linguist, regardless of knowledge of relevant
languages, linguistic expertise, or, above all, method.  His argument, to
the extent that it is not totally truncated, is totally absurd.
 
With regard to some resemblances across some Dravidian and "African" languages,
Clyde wrote:
 
>These resemblances can not be called chance resemblances because of the
>clear analogy in their construction and meaning.
 
This is the extent of Clyde's argument.  I suggest that such arguments do
not require further response, and that further discussion of Clyde's
hypothesis, within his mode of arguing, is a matter of theology, not of
linguistics.  Linguists can only argue with those who accept linguistic
(scientific) forms of argumentation.  Linguists cannot argue against
matters of unshakable conviction, which is what Clyde's hypothesis is to
him.
 
--  Benji