I have noticed while using google translate and listening to certain languages of the Niger-Congo language family. It appears they have a cognate for the word “meat” in all of the bantu languages and at least some of the Nigerian ones. Here is an example of them Niligundua wakati ninatumia google kutafsiri na kusikiliza lugha kadhaa za lugha ya familia za Niger-Kongo. Wanaonekana kuwa na uelewa wa neno “nyama” katika lugha zote za Kibantu na angalau zingine za Kinigeria. Hapa kuna mfano wao
[SIZE=5][FONT=georgia]Word: "our word for the food is “meat” "neno letu kwa chakula ni “nyama”[/FONT][/SIZE]
Kinyarwanda:ijambo ryacu kubiryo ni “inyama” Igbo:okwu anyi maka nri bu “anumanu” Yorubaọrọ wa fun ounjẹ ni “ẹran” Swahili:neno letu kwa chakula ni “nyama” Nyanja:mawu athu oti chakudya ndi “nyama” Southern Sotho:lentsoe la rona bakeng sa lijo ke “nama” Zulu:izwi lethu lokudla “inyama”
If you will notice they all have a “am/an” in their individual words for meat, this is likely a cognate, a word they all share through a genetic relationship from a common ancestor language. Ukigundua wote wana “am / an” katika maneno yao ya kibinafsi ya mwili, labda hii ni utambuzi, neno ambalo wote hushiriki kupitia uhusiano wa maumbile kutoka kwa lugha ya babu mmoja.
This doesn’t mean that the languages themselves are particuarly easy to learn or even that close to each other now, but it is a window into the ancient shared ancestry from this progenitor langauge
The word you’re looking for is Bantu…(abandu,watu,)…also a language spoken comprising several hundred indigenous ethnic groups[COLOR=rgb(0, 0, 0)] in subsaharan africa ile mwarabou stork hapendi,spread over a vast area from ile batu ba congo na congo basin across the East africa down to sataafrika.E.g if you read kinyarwanda ,it looks chikuyu,zulu sounds more abandu
I’m not talking about the cognate for “people”(ntu)
This is a different cognate that isn’t even exclusive to the Bantu subfamily, this cognate is related to Flesh/Meat, I believe it to be “an/am”. Read the parenthesized words of the different languages
You copy pasted everything…hard to keep track. My point is,the similarity in the congnates is due to the fact that they have a common ancestry with a base language thats rather askewed in pronunciation with lexical similarity to mean the same thing albeit unique vocabularies. So nama,inyama and nyama is not that unique,the phonolgy is
Your sample is too small to support your hypothesis. This considering that all the five bantu languages you have presented essentially share the same word for meat. That fact alone reduces your sample to three; Bantu, Igbo, and Yoruba. An expanded sample from different language groups would have been more informative.
The 16th century explorer Leo Africanus described the Cafri as pagan “negroes”, and one of five principal population groups in Africa. According to him, they were “as blacke as pitch, and of a mightie stature, and (as some thinke) descended of the Jews; but now they are idolators.” Leo Africanus identified the Cafri’s geographical heartland as being located in remote southern Africa, an area which he designated as Cafraria.[10]
Following Leo Africanus, the works of Richard Hakluyt designate this population as Cafars and Gawars (Ilitterate), which is, infidels or disbelievers".[11][12] Hakluyt refers to slaves (“slaves called Cafari”) and certain inhabitants of Ethiopia (“and they use to go in small shippes, and trade with the Cafars”) by two different but similar names. The word is also used in allusion to a portion of the coast of Africa (“land of Cafraria”).[13] On early European maps of the 16th and 17th centuries, southern Africa was likewise called by cartographersCafreria.
they’re spelled how they sound mostly, the meaning of the word in all of these languages means meat or dead flesh
I can do that as a matter of fact Kinyarwanda: “inyama” Igbo: “anumanu” Yoruba “eran” Swahili: “nyama” Southern Sotho: “nama” Zulu:“inyama” Twi: “Nam” Ewe: “La”.(pronounced Eh-la) Wolof: “Yapp”
It might just be a word shared on a cultural activity. For example trade. The tribes used to trade amongst each other. I would imagine they would sell killed animals in their meets. Chances are that word was a common Reference word.
Then it wouldn’t be that similar, u can see a similarities between all of these, and since the proto niger congo speakers would have been hunter gatherers they all had the same word for meat, when they diversified linguistically the name probably stayed close to the proto word. This is no coincidence, the senegalese and ghanians have never met any bantu and predate them
what are you talking about? this isn’t trying to connect them grammatically, this is just a possible cognate left over from an ancestral language these subfamilies speak. that is all. not all words within the descended languages will be cognates, in fact most of them arent as language diversification is essentially one group of people playing telephone with the language until it is totally different from the original or sibling.
Meat seems to be a shared similar word with the same context, that is why it is used
you put ‘meat’ as an example,now ,you are being asked to use another word as an example to show cognate similarities. Centuries ago,all of africa was bushland full of game hunters.It makes sense that meat was common hence the name traversing.Are there other words that sound the same?
you Kenyans are hard to deal with. Not at all the brightest bunch
Don’t project your ancestor’s primitive roots on to me either, centuries ago my ancestors were farmers as they had been for thousands of years.
If you actually read what you are saying, you are both trying to sound smart, and it makes no sense at all. No one is wasting resources trading for game that they can hunt themselves and did hunt themselves. That does not even make sense that the name for general dead meat would magically adopt the same word across multiple languages via trading.
But anyways I am still looking for similar words now with my university sources. ill post when I find them
There is nothing serious about this argument, saying that the word meat is not a serious cognate because “all Africans were hunters”(which isn’t true btw) and therefore trade would have magically caused them to adopt the same word for me is a Low IQ argument and furthermore makes no sense, no one adopts full on other words for things they already have. meaning that the terms could only be similar via common descent from an ancestor language. How does this not check out for you Kenyans? i continuously say this as it seems to be you lot that are not serious or intelligent in seeing the clear weird flaw with what you are saying