Was Setswana originally an ancient Sumerian language? (Part 1)
L M Leteane | Monday December 9, 2013 14:08
Firstly, many of us who never studied history do not know what or where Sumer was, so whatever purported association Setswana has with it means little to them. For the few that do, it is all a bit too much to handle as Batswana in general, much like the rest of Africa, are not innovators or pioneers: we need others to unravel things for us as this is still very much the preserve of other races.
As such, it is no accident that the West is far ahead of us; they make sure that anyone who advances anything in any direction is acknowledged. If findings are promising but incomplete, the notes of the researcher are kept for posterity to be later developed and furthered by someone else. And the pioneer is never forgotten; they forever speak of him in reverent terms. This is why Western scientists and scholars are prepared to dedicate or even sacrifice their lives in pursuit of knowledge; burning deep within their bosoms – whether they admit it or not – is the thought of being immortalised. If I was living in the West and discovered the very same things I have discovered, and could fully substantiate them as I intend to in this article, I would be feted and celebrated; universities would trample over each other to honour me, help me unfold my findings.
What, in any case, is the benefit in discovering that Setswana is much like both ancient Egyptian and Sumerian; that it was indeed a protolanguage? If at all it means little to us, it would certainly mean a lot to other nations in the wider world. Their perceptions about Africa in relation to ancient civilisations would change, especially the perception of the West that they, and certainly not Africans, are the de-facto inheritors of the ancient sophistication of these cultures, even of Egypt. We would rediscover our rightful place in the evolution of civilisations. Bantu languages – and Setswana in particular – would be widely respected, perhaps considerably slowing down its seemingly inevitable slide into extinction due to the creeping, ever-increasing use of English as a universal lingua franca. Most of all, it would put us in the world map; make us a centre of study with the spin-offs that this would bring. The important thing, of course, is that my claims must be shown to be true.
Although the roots of Setswana can unearth many other things (including the very origins of our current beliefs) in this article I intend to focus only on the language aspect. To effectively substantiate my findings thus far, and within the confines of available space, I will devote Part One of this two-part series to my emerging Dictionary of Protolanguage Terms and Part Two to conclusively demonstrating that Sumerian is almost pure Sotho-Tswana; understandable even today.
Regarding my ever-expanding Dictionary of Protolanguage Terms, I regularly offer snippets of proof in my column that serve to demonstrate that many Setswana words are similar in both pronunciation and meaning to those in ostensibly unrelated language families like Indo-European. This, of course, would suggest that they are cognate (a linguistics term meaning “of the same source”). But I suspect (well, no one has told me to my face) that some people might treat such similarities as highly entertaining but merely coincidental – perhaps even somewhat contrived. Current thinking in linguistics would certainly agree with them. The current view in linguistics is that Indo-European (Germanic and Latin-based languages) cannot be “genetically” linked with any other language family.
As such, my purported “similarities” may be taken to be in the vein of ‘Atlantic Ocean: a tlola a ntika ka leswana’ and ‘Thank you very much: Tonki e rwele mashi!’ Every Motswana child has played this common game wherein the pronunciation of certain English words transliterates to a totally different but entertaining outcome in Setswana – as in ‘he jumped and threw a spoon at me’ and ‘a donkey is carrying milk!’ But, I can assure the reader, my research is rather less casual than that and I intend to convey this in the rest of my article.
My emerging Protolanguage Dictionary, unlike in the amusing examples above, emphasises similarity in both pronunciation and meaning. However, under the current rules of etymology (the study of the roots and development of words), ‘similarities in pronunciation and meaning between separate language families is to be treated as merely coincidental, and thus disregarded’. My argument, however, is that there are too many such similarities – several hundred terms, already, in my Dictionary – for them to be statistically ascribed to mere chance. Indeed, we will soon see that some Setswana words can actually unlock the likely proto-meanings (original meanings) of certain Indo-European words.
An interesting point to begin at would be with the term ‘linguistics’ itself. Most Batswana will know what le-lengwane is (note: I often add a dash in order to facilitate an assessment of the distinct morphemes (sub-meanings) within a Tswana term – not because I cannot properly spell the word). Lengwane is an obstructive ligament of sorts in the tongue and I once saw it removed from my dog when I was little. It literally means ‘little tongue’ (tongue itself is lo-leme) and already, here, we can see the link. Lingua (Latin) and lengwe/lengoe (a grammatical paradigm of leme) each relate to both ‘tongue’ and ‘language’.
Following this, let me hasten to demonstrate that even long-lost proto-meanings in ‘unrelated’ languages like the Germanic language family can be unearthed through a comparative association with Setswana. Actually, the English term ‘slim’ (note: both Dutch and English are classified under ‘Germanic’) derives from the Middle Dutch (MD) term ‘slimme’ which meant ‘crafty’. Per dictionaries, only later did the dominant meaning of the term become ‘slender’ in English, and the semantic development (change in meaning through association with other things) that led to the newer meaning is easily understandable. Taking Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar as an example, Caesar expressed the desire to be surrounded by men who are ‘fat’ and content, “who sleep o’ their nights…[unlike] yonder Cassius [who] has a lean and hungry look…such men are dangerous”.
Now, when se-leme is applied to a person, in Setswana this can mean: “one who tends to [mis]use the tongue” – evidently to craftily get his or her own way. The ‘tongue’ metaphor thus provides a good clue as to true proto-meaning of the term ‘slimme’. Moreover, ‘slime’ (defined as “ropy or viscous liquid matter”) evidently relates to saliva which – especially with some mucous content – can indeed be “thick and ropy”, and which substance obviously covers the tongue! Sadly, however, the logical etymologies of ‘slim’ and ‘slime’, as shown herein, are now lost to English as the reader can confirm in any advanced dictionary.
Another good example of where Setswana is able to unearth Indo-European proto-meanings is the word ‘booby’. My reference dictionary does not pretend to be able to trace its etymology, except to link it with the now obsolete word ‘poop’ (a fool). As for ‘booby-trap’, no etymology is offered. ‘Bobi’ is spider’s web in Setswana. It is thin and barely visible so as to entrap an unsuspecting insect, and already we can see the very likely ancient derivation of ‘bobby trap’. That is not all. In Sumerian (which is almost pure Setswana as I will show in the next article), buba means ‘weave’ and ‘bobi’ is thus “that which is woven”. A ‘bobbin’ evidently moved up and down a loom as it weaved – hence the term ‘bob-and-weave’ – and thus ‘to bob’ is now ‘to quickly move up and down’.
But we are only getting started. Since English and other Germanic languages have been greatly influenced by Greek and Latin, let us see if we can extend our Setswana claims to these once-classical languages. The Greek term hika means ‘overcome’. In Latin this is vict (root of ‘victor’ in English). Now, the root-term hika corresponds well to heke-etsa in Setswana, which also means ‘to defeat or overcome’; heka when used alone mainly denotes when a male animal mounts (‘overcomes’) a female one. Moreover, in Setswana h and f are often interchangeable so I would even go so far as to suggest that vict relates, primordially, to feke-etsa.
Other Greek and Latin terms that relate well to Setswana are kala (branch) and kolo (following or flowing in a line). Se-kala in Tswana means ‘branch-like’ and we can see how it relates to ‘scale’ a weighing object which had two weighing ‘branches’, or arms. Moreover, kala in Tswana (Setswana) means ‘weigh’! Dictionaries do not ascribe a Greek etymology to s’kala but we can easily see that the common Greek surname ‘Kalafatis’ means ‘branches of a tree’; in Sotho, se-fate is ‘tree’! In Sotho-Tswana, koloka means ‘form a [long] line’, or ‘follow one after the other’. Both definitions relate well to a ‘column’ (Latin: columna) but this must not be confused with colossus (huge, gigantic) or Colosseum (a huge stadium built in Roman times): these relate to kgolo (great).
Latin terms like ‘semi’ and ‘circa’ are also discernible in Setswana. As I will duly demonstrate in Part Two, the Sumerian term ‘mi’ means ‘but’ (‘mme’ in current Setswana). Regarding ‘semi’, se (it is)…mme (but)… points to something that is not quite like the exact or complete thing – exactly as in Latin. Seka (as in le-seka; a bracelet) and saka (as in le-saka; a kraal) both relate to a round structure in Setswana culture – exactly like ‘circa’ (around) and ‘circle’. Raka (as in le-rako; a circular enclosure, hence ‘rakia’ – [round] bracelet – in Hebrew) also has the connotation of ‘round’, but mainly because a circle always ‘meets’ itself. ‘Meet’ is thus rakana in Tswana (and Maracana Stadium in Brazil is ostensibly both a ‘meeting place’ and a ‘roundish structure’)!
Disappearing English words like ‘tarry’ (delay) may yet be saved by Setswana: thari means ‘delayed’ or ‘late’ or ‘well behind’. A thari is thus a sling a mother carries a baby in, behind her (on her back). ‘Late’ itself relates to lata (follow, be behind someone). Even in Setswana, certain words whose meaning has obscured can be obviated when we realise that there was once indeed a universal protolanguage. Malatswa-thipa sounds like it means ‘lickers of knives’ although its proper meaning, everyone knows, is ‘sycophants’ (servile followers). Malachi is Hebrew for ‘servants’ (ma-lata, ‘followers’ in Tswana, who can also be called ‘malati’). It is the evident root of the English term ‘lackey’, which is derived from a Middle French (MF) term whose etymology is presently ‘unclear’. Thipa is not ‘knife’ in this context. Ti (as in tia) means ‘strong’, or ‘having much substance’, and pa! alludes to “a sudden burst of light” (i.e. ‘clarity’, as in pa-pa-mala). Together, the term means “strongly evident servants [i.e. who are thoroughly servile]”!
I have also learnt that certain ‘strange’ spellings of some English actually hide good clues as to how the words were originally pronounced. ‘Know (and thus “gnosis”) appear to relate to ‘kanoha’: “examine with the intention of learning more” – an obscured paradigm of ‘kanoka’ in Setswana. The biblical ‘Canon’ thus relates, primordially, to “that which has been examined”. I have also determined that the discerned etymology whereby kano relates metaphorically to ‘ruler’ or ‘cane’ – a straight object – and thus semantically to a ‘rule’ (a teaching or instruction), is also due to the term kanoha (now ‘kono-loga’) which suggests that “examine and know” relates to “unbend”, a “straightening” of something convoluted – hence a “straightened path”, as in ‘canal’ and ‘channel’. ‘Knot’ – another such ‘strange’ spelling – evidently relates to kunutu (“a tight, inwardly-bound convolution”), the dominant Setswana meaning of which is now “a secret” or “a conspiracy”.
Setswana (and Bantu) words can be found in the most far-flung of places. ‘Kangaroo’ is ganga-roo; “ganga” means “enormous” in Nguni, (now ‘kana-kana’ in Tswana) and ‘roo’ means ‘paw’ – hence “The Big-Pawed One”. ‘Ganga’ is also in ‘Ganges’ (Immense [River] and ‘Genghis’ [Khan: kana or cahuna, meaning “great [man]”. Chuen is an ancient South American word for ‘monkey’; chuene in Tswana. This reminds me of an ancient depiction from that part of a world (Erich von Daniken, In Search of Ancient Gods: My Pictorial Evidence for the Impossible, Corgi (1981), p87 showing a robot-like man with a gun carrying a dead monkey. It was obviously a troublesome, thieving monkey: ‘mo-chuenyi’, a ‘harasser’ in Tswana, and a ‘mo-nki’ (a “taker” – thus “thief”) in Sotho!
Finally, what we need to be aware of is that good clues can be overlooked right under our noses if we do not incorporate other Bantu, or other Sotho -Tswana, groups. For example, ‘morale’ evidently relates to “raloka” (“play”) a Northern Sotho (Pedi) term now in disuse in Setswana and Southern Sotho. The root word ‘ralo’, we can decipher, relates to “high energy” and thus to “play” (which, naturally, requires surplus energy], hence the ancient link with ‘morale’ (having high energy or spirit), or “to rally” (help revive a flagging strength or spirit). As such, we can understand se-ralo (now se-rala: a stage) as a raised (high) platform on which one may play! Next week, in Part Two of his article, I disclose my conclusive evidence that Sumerian (the archaic language of the earliest known civilisation on Earth: in what is now Iraq) is nothing but almost pure Sotho-Tswana!
*L.M. LETEANE is an independent researcher, author and columnist