108: Highs and lows of tone in Babanki - Interview with Pius Akumbu

Introduction

0:00Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics. I'm Lauren Gawne, and today we're getting enthusiastic about documenting Grassfield's languages in Cameroon. But first, Lingthusiasm has more than 20 interview episodes, and you can find them all together on

0:34our topics page where we have a category for interviews specifically. Go to lingthusiasm.com slash topics to find those. We also have over 100 bonus episodes for patrons, with a few interviews in there as well. Our latest bonus episode is one of those interviews. We talk with one of the translators of Because Internet about the particular challenges of translating a book about internet linguistics, like how to translate the lolcat bible into Spanish when this meme never existed in Spanish in the first place, a problem which Miguel solves brilliantly.

1:04You can listen to Gretchen's chat with Dr. Miguel Sanchez-Ibañez, who is a linguist and lecturer at Valladolid University on Patreon, and you can read Because Internet in Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. Links in the show notes. Patrons get access to bonus episodes and help keep the show running ad-free. Go to patreon.com slash lingthusiasm.

Professor Akumbu

1:35Professor Pais Akumbu is a linguist from Babanki, Cameroon, and a director of research in African linguistics at CNRS in the Lacan Lab, the Languages and Cultures of Africa Lab in Paris, France. Professor Akumbu has done documentation work on a wide variety of topics, from lexical tone to traditional stories, and also founded a school in his home village to ensure that children have access to primary education in their own language, Babanki, also known as Kejom. Welcome to Lingthusiasm,

2:07Professor Akumbu. Thank you for having me, Lauren. It's my pleasure to be invited to your

Getting into Linguistics

2:12program. How did you get into linguistics? Well, I think the best answer is that I got into linguistics by chance. Like, many people in many parts of the world, I had no idea what linguistics was when I completed high school. And so I went to the university. I really didn't know what I wanted to do. Yeah, of course, the orientation before that wasn't, wasn't there. So I had to find my way

2:42through. And then as I was wondering what to do, I had some friends who had already decided, and one of them, whose name I can mention, Enno Cecilia, had already joined the linguistics department. And then we we met on campus, and she was like, oh, come try and see. And so I went to that class. Yeah. What an excellent chance. Yeah, yeah. And to date, I still really appreciate that I had this

3:15opportunity. And of course, when I went there, I had some very nice professors. Well, that always makes it a lot easier. Yeah, yeah. So and when I talk about this, I like to mention Professor Mutaka, Ngesimo Mutaka, who was really someone I wanted to be like him, you know, as a linguistics professor. He was wonderful. I really enjoyed his classes. And I was like, well, if someday I can be able

3:47to do what he's doing, I would really be happy. And I also had Professor Paios Tamangi, maybe because we had the same first name. But he was great. He was great. And, you know, I just felt like, oh, if someday I can really do linguistics. Yeah. And also, I had a very, just before I started my PhD, I had contact with SIL Cameroon. And yeah, there was, it's a strong linguistics

4:22group. They have, they do a lot of work on Cameroonian languages. And I got close to people there, someone like Robert Hedinger, who was really supportive and who, who encouraged me a lot, who even funded my field trip for my PhD. Amazing. Individual funding. He just made this happen. He, he, he found, he trusted what I was doing

4:52and really wanted to encourage me. So he did this and, and yeah, I really appreciate all what he did. There was also Ginger Boyd, who was at SIL, who supported my work. And so I really found myself enjoying linguistics and I was just encouraged to keep on. So you had some influential friends, some influential professors, and then some influential

5:24mentors and supporters as well. Yeah, exactly. I would say that. Yeah. It takes all these people to encourage you, especially going through to something like a PhD, you really need that, that community's worth of support. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, without like the funding from Robert Hedinger or the support from Ginger Boyd, I think, uh, I don't think I would have continued in linguistics, uh, because I mean, if I couldn't fund my field trips, uh, there was no way I could do, I could do much. Uh, so this kind

6:00of support really just encouraged me and then I had no excuses. I had to move on and, and, um, that's how I was able to do a PhD on, uh, on a Bantu language, on a narrow Bantu language, uh, which wasn't a language I was familiar with in any way, uh, but I needed to go to the field. And, uh, so with the support I got around me, I was able to do it. And yeah, my, my supervisor, Professor Motaka was,

6:33he was just wonderful. Excellent. It's really wonderful when people get inspired and want to continue in linguistics. And it's really frustrating that sometimes the barriers are just really practical things like having funding to go on a field trip. And it's so great to hear that there were people who were able to make that happen for you. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's true. At the time I was, uh, studying, I mean, I was doing my PhD. There was basically it was hard. Uh, I mean, this was several, this was close to 30 years ago, it was hard to find funding for, for PhD work in, in Cameroon,

7:13in Africa in general, it was much more difficult, nearly impossible. Uh, and so, uh, this was really, uh, privilege that I, I got close to Robert Hedinger and Steve Anderson, Ginger Boyd, all these people, uh, Keith and Mary Bivon. I mean, I like to mention these names because I will always be grateful to these people. And again, a really good demonstration that even though your PhD has your name on it, it comes with really so many people that contribute. Yeah. I'm really obsessed with reading the

7:47acknowledgement sections of PhDs because there's always so many wonderful stories in there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I wrote, I wrote in my PhD that if I could see further than others, I was referring to people I was doing my PhD with whom I, I managed to finish why they were, why they, before them, I said, if I had seen further than others, it was by standing on the shoulders of giants. Of course I was borrowing this statement, but this was true. I, I, without

8:20those giants I couldn't have seen further. The, the cliches are a cliche for a reason. Yeah. Right. Like it, it sounds, it sounds like a cliche and then you're like, no, I really couldn't have done this without all of those people. Exactly. Yeah.

Documenting Own Language

8:34And so after doing your undergraduate linguistics, moving through and continuing to work onto a PhD, after all of that, and going to a field site where you didn't know people, only after all of that, did you turn around and think about the chance to work on your own language? So what was it like deciding to move from being a, a linguist coming into a community and then thinking about documenting your own language?

9:04Yeah. I think it was a good policy that the department of linguistics at the University of the only one had at the time to ask students not to work on their language. Right. Because like that, it, it helped us to have a field, field experience. So this, this was a good thing. It was frustrating at the time, but you know, it, it, it was, it was a good thing. And after my PhD, of course I said, okay, now I have the degree in linguistics and my language is under-described.

9:40So at, at the, at that point, there were just like two, two very important articles by Larry Hyman. There was one on the Bobankic tonology, which was in 1979. And then the other on the Bobankic noun class system, uh, in the, in 1980. Okay. So there were just these two influential works and here, here I am in 20 years later and I can do things on my language. So, so why not?

10:12And what great company. Larry Hyman is a incredibly famous linguist who's worked on so many languages and yours as well. Yeah. Yeah. I'm at that point, uh, like say 2001 or so, I, I had some challenges. I emailed Larry Hyman, you know, just, I knew that I knew the name and this famous name, I'd read some of his words and I just took the chance to email him. I wasn't really expecting that such a person

10:43would reply to my email. Uh, but a few minutes later I got a reply. Oh, amazing. Yeah. And he was like, Oh, okay. As then I could discuss my, my work with him. And I, I, you know, he just opened up to me and each time I would turn to him, he would respond immediately. And it has just been wonderful. Uh, we've, uh, we've collaborated a lot. He has invited me, uh, he hosted me in Berkeley for over a year.

11:14And so it, it, it, I said, well, I should, and Larry again told, he has told me once that I'm moving around with a whole lot of knowledge of Babanki and I should be the one working on this language. Indeed. Yeah. How is it working on a language where you can consult your own intuitions rather than being the outsider, having to ask other people? You know, of course, having intuitions, my own intuitions has always been very, very, very, very helpful. Uh, I don't rely on them on my, on me

11:48completely. I shouldn't, I don't. Yeah. Because of course, uh, I'm not, uh, describing my speech. I'm trying to describe the speech of many people in the community. So I always try to rely on what I, I, I gather from, uh, from several speakers of the language. And in that effort, I see, of course, I don't, I know some of the language, but not like I can say I would rely on myself entirely.

12:21So I always depend on data from the community, from as many people as I can, I can get. Uh, but of course, my judgments are always helpful. And in many cases, they are either confirmed or adjusted, modified by what I get from other people. Yeah. And of, of course, every language has variation. So, uh, the, the way I speak is not necessarily the way everyone speaks.

12:51So, uh, all of this, you know, one has to, uh, only put together by getting, collecting, uh, data from several people. Uh, but I, of course, I have that advantage. Like I, I have an idea what I expect from other speakers. And usually it's, I confirmed or sometimes, yeah, there are modifications that are needed or other views that are considered. Mm-hmm. Has there been any time where your own introspection and thinking about your own

13:24judgments has surprised you where you've, you've gone, oh, I, I didn't think that about Babanki. Yeah, of course. Of course. Yeah. There've, there've been many, many occasions like that. Many times where, um, what I, what I, I know, I don't hear other people say exactly that. Mm-hmm. And, uh, it's like, oh, is this maybe some influence I've had by being in contact with some other languages as I've, I've lived out of the community for a long time myself.

13:57Mm-hmm. Um, yeah. So, sometimes there are things that surprise me and, well, but those are the things I go looking for. Like, you know, it's, uh, that's why we get data, we collect data from several sources, from several people. Yeah. So, if I find things that are not exactly like I thought, yeah, and there are things I don't know, of course, yeah, depending on what part of, uh, what register of the language one is in,

14:30there are language, language is used in different, uh, for different purposes in different, um, yeah. And, and sometimes one speaker is not exposed to all the different domains of use of a language, right? Absolutely. I remember a friend telling me that he was so confident in his Spanish and then they had a, a baby. He was a Spanish second language speaker, had moved to Spain. And then when he and his wife had a baby, he realized he didn't know any child-related Spanish. He had to

15:06ask for what, what everyone else was just like, well, we've grown up, we were children, we grew up with other children, this, this register, this way of talking to children, this way of talking about children. Like, how can you not know it? And even someone who is highly bilingual or multilingual, there'll be domains where you might be able to speak with a better vocabulary. I mean, my vocabulary in English about architecture is terrible. If you're an English second language speaker who's

15:40a trained architect, that's one register you're going to do much better than me in. Yeah. And you have been documenting. Yeah. Yeah. So one example I could give you is, I mean, I tried to study the language of certain rituals, like maybe death celebrations, childbirth ceremonies. Right. Right. And there are several things within these rituals that there's no way I could ever know. Like, even some songs, I could hear some words, but

16:18you know, the songs carry meaning and then which go beyond the words one hears. There's Yeah. Something more about those words that one can only get by, you know, getting closer to maybe the women who sing those songs. Right. So for some registers, it's about who is allowed to participate in the register. Yeah. Yeah. So even whether you're an insider or an outsider to the community, that's a secondary consideration to

16:49whether you're an insider to these particular rituals. Exactly. Right. Right. Can we talk about the time you staged a wedding? Because this is a really great example

Staging a Wedding

17:01of you trying to capture this traditional speech ritual. Yeah. Well, yeah. So of course, I would have loved to have a natural, natural wedding happen. Were you trying to set up all the young couples? Were you trying to match make people and get them married? No, no, no, no, no, no. I wouldn't do that. No, no, no. There's no, no. Far away from that.

17:29The point was this, this is already something that is endangered. Like many people don't do traditional weddings again in the community, but there was people remember what used to be done and there wasn't anyone. I waited throughout a full year. I was looking out to a traditional wedding in the community and I never got information about any, but people remember these things. And so I had to

18:03bring people together and just ask somebody and just two people to play the role of bride and groom. And, and then we did this through, but it wasn't, in fact, these people were related. So there was no chance of them ever getting married, but it was just for, for, for us to go through the process. Yeah. It wasn't any attempt to get people together. Like, yeah, a linguist, a linguist can't play the role.

18:35Sorry, I was, I was joking about that. Linguists, linguists are willing to do a lot for field work, but not that much. How long is a traditional Babanki marriage ritual or wedding ritual?

Traditional Marriage Ritual

18:48There are so many aspects of it and, and it can extend over a long period of time. Yeah. And these things could be, there are things that could be done and, and there are parts that could be done and others and parts done later. So it's not like everything must be done on the same day. So it can take

19:09quite a while. And yeah, if we were to, unless we went into the details of that, which, which would take us a lot of time. That's totally fine. I mean, I've been to Western weddings that have been 10 minutes long, and I've been to Western weddings that have been two hours long. So yeah. If you're talking about the ceremony where, uh, if it's just that ceremony, it's, it, it can, it happens.

19:38Well, traditionally, there's no point where the husband and wife are brought together. No, right. Like families, families gather and, uh, and take decisions about the bride price. And, and then the, much of the day is, is preparing food and eating. And, uh, then at some point, the bride is, the bride is escorted to the home of the, of the, of the groom.

20:07And then there is more celebration and as there should be. Yeah. And, uh, then people, people go their way. Like there's no, there's no exchange of rings. There's no, there's really no, well, the, the only point where the bride and the groom come together is, uh, at the home of the bride, when the parents of the bride have to verify whether the bride is actually, uh, interested in the, in the groom. So they would, there is a way to check.

20:42I like that step. That sounds good. Yeah. Yeah. And they would, they would give her palm wine. If she drinks and hands it over to the groom, then it, it, it means, yeah, she accepts to marry. And it's really important to document these rituals because these are the kind of things that are often some of the earliest things that can get lost in, in a language. And so people might speak the bunky day to day, but if no one's doing a traditional marriage ceremony, documenting,

21:16it means you do have a record for the future. That's right. If people are interested. Yeah, that's right. And, uh, even, even now people try to do, even those who try to do something close, even the dressing is no longer the same, uh, because it's influenced by either Nigerian cultures or even the Western cultures. So, yeah. Yeah. So good to document. It was really nice to stitch this,

21:48what, what, what we did to stitch that and try to have something that looks like what used to happen. Mm-hmm. And did people enjoy participating? Was that nostalgic for some of the participants? I think it was. I think it was. And, uh, I've heard, I've heard people who, who did actually one traditional wedding after that, based on this, yeah. And yeah, we have a record of it. It was made

22:18by someone else because I wasn't there at this point. How do people feel about having a babanki speaker as someone documenting babanki language and culture? Well, I, I think for many people I used to, because I've been doing this kind of work for, for a while. Right. So many people, people know me, remember of the, um, kind of now I, I think I'm considered as an elite in the community.

22:49Mm-hmm. So people are used to, to what I do. People, I think, appreciate it. People like the fact that I'm trying to, um, safeguard parts of their culture. And so, yeah, I think, I, I, I hear lots of good things people say about what, what I'm doing. And sometimes, yeah, I think people accept it easily. So I don't have any trouble getting, uh, people to accept to be recorded, right? Yeah. If, if I'm

23:24there to record things, people just say, oh yeah, go ahead. And, uh, but of course I have to tell them why I'm doing the recording, what I need it for, uh, what, where it will end and so on, you know, but yeah, I've not really got to an institution where someone says, uh, no, I don't want to be involved. I don't want to be recorded or so. Right. And are there any younger Babanki people that have become interested in linguistics through your work? So far, I, I don't know if someone has

23:58started doing linguistics because of me. I don't know that yet. Like, nobody has told me they are doing linguistics because of me. So I don't know, maybe they are. Yeah. But they are, they are younger Babanki people who study linguistics. They are. There are? Yeah. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Are they also working in topics related to Babanki or other topics? Yeah. Uh, they still, they also work on Babanki. The young people also work on Babanki. Great. So it's no longer just you and

24:31Larry Hyman. No, no, no, no, no. There are many more. Yeah. Wonderful. Yeah. What are some of the

Features of Babanki

24:39things other than traditional registers? What are some of the features of Babanki that you find fascinating to tell other people about? I think, yeah, when I think of what is fascinating about not just Babanki, but probably wider Bantu or Grassfields, Bantu languages in general, I think of the, maybe at least two things. They could be minimal, but I think one of the things is that this is, Babanki is a noun

25:12class language. Okay. Which is something we find across Grassfields and especially Bantu, where nouns, nouns in the language, in each language are grouped up into different sets and linguists have called these classes, right? And usually the way to determine how a language belongs to one class or another is to look at the Concord system. So you look at maybe how a language is used with other modifiers,

25:50with other nominal modifiers, say like adjectives or demonstratives or so on and so on. So if you take a funky noun like, let's say fengi, fengi is the word for knife, and you take another noun, say kekang, which is like a dish, and to see if these belong together or not, I could try to put a

26:20demonstrative or possessive or some other modifier to get out of this noun. So if I say fengi, fengi, efuom, this is my knife. And if I say kekang, efuom, this is my dish. oh they're not the same this is my dish so i see that the the the f which i find in a form is not the same like the which i find in a come so this tells me um these two these two nouns cannot

26:53be in the same class because if i had several nouns like finin fini for says for everything every modifier would also have a fur and if i had those with curve prefix all the modifiers will have a curve yeah so this this the chances that all nouns that have the same class marker like a prefix yeah would all belong to together and if they all have take the same modifier then i know okay

27:26they form one class as opposed to these other ones that belong to another class right so the babanki has about 12 okay different classes of nouns typical bunch languages have somewhere over 20 right okay classes for nouns so this is one thing that babanki has there are some languages in the area that have reduced the non-class system some that have lost it okay so that maybe you have

27:56two or three classes in a language which is closer to what european language speakers might recognize in say french with them the masculine and the feminine and the neuter yeah yeah yeah you only have a small number of classes yeah and also of course these languages uh babanki and rasfews bantu they are tone languages okay which is i think something also fascinating because you in a tone language you just change your

28:27pitch you can you can maintain the same say consonants and vowels in a word yeah and change your pitch and then you have different meaning okay so so in babanki for example depending on whether i raise my voice and my pitch and say ndong or i lower it and say ndong then i have two different words so ndong is is the word for cup and ndong is potato right just so just changing my pitch and then i i have different words and this is

29:04this is this is stone and what also makes stone very fascinating to me yeah in this languages especially in gradsviews is that so there are lots of floating tones floating tones yeah of course uh each tone has its bearing unit so there's a tone bearing unit what what carries that tone in many cases the vowels sometimes yeah so there are nasas which may be still a bit so if uh but it happens it happens that

29:37tone bearing unit can be can be lost maybe you see for some languages some languages don't like to have like two vowels next to each other across morphemes okay yeah so if two vowels come together it's then and one of them is is lost however the tones tones are more stable so the vowel can be lost but the tone remains right floating because it's lost the vowel that it's attached to yeah because it's lost the

30:09vowel that that it's attached to and in in grass views in particular many words started out as two syllables so many words so many words were di-syllabic and then one of the syllables has been lost over time okay okay but that's just the segment that is lost say the vowel but the tones have remained what happens to them as soon as you maybe try to combine a word that has a floating tone with another

30:39word then you can see the effect of this floating tone on on the on a neighboring neighboring segment on a neighboring word so we one of the things that is very common is like down step so if there is a floating low tone and then you add a high tone after it usually that high tone is is lowered the level of that high tone is lowered compared to the the height of the preceding high tone so that you have something

31:13like down down not no not down down right so the second high is lowered and then you wonder but why how come you you put a high tone next to another high tone and and this second high tone is lower yeah so you you look back into the history of the language and you see ah there was a vowel here and it was lost and its tone floats and that's why the uh the second high is lowered so there are

31:43floating tones all over the place in grass use bantu if you say that first word in isolation you only hear the high tone and it's not until you put it next to another word that that floating extra tone appears and influences the next word yeah you could you could because the floating tone is there it's it's part of the the on the line form of the word it's there and if you have two words which are all high and you see each one by itself and it's you hear a very you hear a normal high tone and when you put them

32:19together then one is lower usually the second is lower than the first then this suggests that there is a floating tone after the first which then causes the tone of the second to to be lowered so you have to figure out all these floating tones by looking at all of the words in context by putting things in context yeah it could be there could be other reasons why things change but usually floating tones are responsible for lots of tone changes in grass fuse bantu so sneaky how many tones is babanki said to have

33:01this is why people study these languages and this is why linguists have work to do it's sometimes not just straightforward right now we think that there is a high tone we are we are sure we agree that there is a high tone and a low tone okay yeah and but sometimes we have also counter tones so there is like a stone that begins low and ends high that's a rising tone on another that begins high and ends low

33:31a falling tone and these have been analyzed as a combination of two tones the high and the low or the low and the high okay yeah and we we we see this very easily as i said the words that started up with two syllables and now there is just one syllable and then the one syllable that is left either carries the two tones or carries just one and then the the other one floats but also we find a few words there are a few words there are a few words that you you can't you can't argue that were two

34:07syllables at the at the beginning okay very few words that really seem to have rising tones of their own okay but these these kinds of exceptional tones don't are not sufficient proof to say that the language has counter tones because you know for thai polish car reasons we know that many african languages do not have counter tones right right so unlike unlike uh asian chinese languages right unlike that

34:43we know have counter tones as units so that's where the scholarly debate happens around the contour tones yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah but we one has to go through an analysis to determine what the tones of a language are absolutely sure and does tone have a grammatical function in babanki not exactly in babanki

35:12not exactly there are there are languages where you can clearly say uh tone has grammatical function yeah say maybe maybe you have just a change of tone and and maybe say that leads to change of tense yeah okay so but there are tonal morphins in in babanki right so like the imperative if i wanted to express the imperative in babanki i know that i have to use a high tone okay all right so so if even a verb that

35:44is uh is uh is uh is so a verb like calm which is v which is slow v which is calm if i needed to to to order someone to come or to yeah yeah i would i would say v okay so i i will add a high tone to to v right so i know that i can you know there are there are instances like this uh the progressive progressive marking it's not really tonal but tone place in a way like yeah in asian tone languages

36:22those tones are almost always just for word distinction whereas yeah in babanki you have a little bit of this and in some other languages with tone yeah it takes on a whole bunch of functions yeah does babanki have a writing system that's commonly used uh there is an autography that i i have

Writing System

36:45proposed in 2008 so this was a while ago commonly used maybe too much to say because um babanki remains largely uh spoken language it's oral it remains oral like like the majority of the world's like the majority of the world's languages but it remains just an oral language many people don't we we don't normally read or write the language there is a new testament bible that has been translated into the

37:17language and i think it's it's read in some churches okay but by a few people who have very few people who have learned to read uh writing remains uh something really far off for people because babanki is not a language that is used in in the school system very much right it's something i've been trying to encourage but it's it's uh meets its challenges because the language of education is english

37:48right so people don't there's no reason there is really no motivation for people to invest in learning to read and write babanki understandable so the writing system is there it is the system that was used in the in the bible translation it's that autography that was used but beyond that not many people are writing the language yeah it's totally understandable when there are those external pressures pressures and when english is the standard medium of education it's understandable that people

38:25prioritize that but you have been putting work into trying to change that and setting up a school for babanki how has that project been going well the project uh took off it took off but quickly met uh challenges with the the breakout of the of war in the era by 2018 there was already active uh fighting in in

38:55in babanki era and so it's been slow sometimes sometimes kids come to the school for for a few weeks during a whole year sometimes a few months so it hasn't been consistent and so it's even hard to determine whether this project has been successful or not at some point the priority became just to have to to to allow

39:26children to have some education yeah in english right because i mean this is uh times are hard when times are hard you you just think of survival strategies and and so the project of really ensuring that children learn only in babanki for the first three years and then transition to learning in english has not been fully implemented yeah so this is uh beyond what we can control absolutely

39:57uh while hoping that the the crisis uh is eventually uh brought to an end and then we move on from there but so far it's it's been six full years of war and so sad but yeah and unfortunately it's one of those crises in the world that does not has not received attention because yeah of course cameroon is not an important oil producing country you know so it's also a good reminder that we can have all the evidence

40:33about what makes for good education and you know in situations where we're striving for even you know basic safety of children yeah obviously those those higher ideals have to hit some pretty pragmatic reality so but i i remain optimistic hopeful that well i have been optimistic for six years and maybe a little patience a little more patience but i think there will be an end to it some at some point yeah there'll be an end to the war at some point and these foundations are really really

41:09important for what comes next in the story of cameroon and the story of babanki yeah can you tell us a

Grass Fields Languages

41:15little bit about grass fields languages in general so this is a subgroup of bantu languages the bantu family is a massive family that spreads right across the kind of center of the continent of africa and then the grass fields languages are mostly centered on cameroon so the grass fields languages are mostly spoken in the northwest and west region of cameroon there are spill overs into into nigeria across

41:47the border because some of these languages are on that border yep and funnily enough languages don't follow the boundaries of countries that appeared long after they started being spoken yeah yeah yeah so um and especially in the case of uh grass fields because uh there is there is research that has pointed to the to the fact that bantu languages must have originated from the grass fields area right and uh so we we we

42:22think that grass fields is where things it all started for the bantu family and then the migrations began and then moved way down and eventually down to south southern africa yeah so all the way east and south down the continent yeah yeah we we think that there is there is a hypothesis that it all started from that northwestern part of cameroon around there and so it it seems like while the movement happened

42:55bantu those bantu languages have kind of kept this robust noun class system i mentioned earlier whereas the grass fields languages from where it originated have come to have fewer of the classes right and of course the so then both groups have noun classes yeah the only reason the only reason why grass fields languages are not treated as bantu is because of these few differences that we we find particularly in the noun class system

43:33right right and uh so they they kind of you know there's been appellations like semi semi bantu right you know for for grass fields and so yeah it's but it kind of so this these are kind of sister sister languages one would say right okay i always find it interesting when you look at language family groups and some of the names they they feel a little bit judgmental even if they're not judgmental so there's a there's a class called bantoid which is like it has the shape

44:08of a bantu language yeah and i'm sure that made sense to the people who were creating this or there's a category in the area i work in the tibeto berman languages called himalayish that's just like yeah it kind of goes there yeah yeah these these weird little traditions well those those terminologies of course those who started doing they started linguistics it's a european thing you know so those who did this work at this time i think i think they did their best the terminology is is fine these are

44:42things we we just need uh research to modify these terminologies if we are able to it's our responsibility now if we are not satisfied with certain terminologies to use scientific evidence to say no we prefer this name try this one and this is happening across african continent yeah there are there's a lot of shift in terminology and of course we we we are still using bantoid for for now this is

45:15this is what yeah this is what describes those languages that are not clearly bantu yeah right so yeah but nobody has said they they should not change i think we have the responsibility to do research and propose other labels for these languages yeah there's always more work to be done yeah yeah so there is more to do if you could leave people knowing one thing about linguistics what would it be

45:45i think it's good for people to to know i mean many people know this but still several people don't know that uh linguistics is the study of language right it's not it's not learning to speak several languages but rather we are learning to understand how languages work how languages function right how languages uh

46:15relate with one another and things like that so because people usually think like as we because we study linguistics therefore we speak several languages there are linguists who speak several languages great you know but the object is not learning to speak languages but rather just learning to understand how the languages work and to try to describe them and also fundamentally about language endangerment

46:46language revitalization yeah language revitalization i think i think personally that this is something that we should all be concerned about because language our languages carry a lot of information about our cultures about our history about our people and it's it's a matter of a right for people it's a fundamental linguistic right that people should use continue using the language people should preserve the language and

47:22promote it and transmit it to the generations that come after them and and so every language should have a chance so to say right so we see we have seen in many places where people go back to their ancestral links links by through the means of language and so those who still have the opportunity to keep these links should keep them rather than lose them now and then struggle in the future or future generations struggle to

47:55reconstruct and to find what their roots are there are many parts of africa for example where people still speak their languages but they are gradually losing them yeah you know i i always if i have a way to encourage people to multiply their efforts in continuing to use their language and to transmit it to their children and children's children this is better than letting it die out losing their languages and then for

48:27the generations in future to struggle to come back to where uh we would have left abandoned them right now so uh people should protect this right to their languages and cultures i would say thank you so much for chatting with us today professor payas akumbu thank you so much lauren thank you it was really a pleasure for more lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode go to lingthusiasm.com

49:03you can listen to us on all the podcast platforms or lingthusiasm.com and you can get transcripts of every episode on lingthusiasm.com transcripts you can get scarves with lots of linguistics patterns on them including ipa branching tree diagrams booba and kiki and our favorite esoteric unicode symbols plus other lingthusiasm merch like our new jazzy logo t-shirt and aesthetic ipa posters at lingthusiasm.com slash merch my social media and blog is superlinguo links to gretchen's social media can be found at gretchenmcculloch.com her blog is allthingslinguistic.com and her book about internet

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