{"history":[],"article":{"id":"8498d170-9519-488d-9784-68e27d6cd1a3","title":"African Romance","slug":"african-romance","content":":::summary\n**Name:** African Romance \n**Era:** c. 1st–15th century AD(?) \n**Familycolor:** Indo-European \n**Region:** [Roman Africa](https://bliptext.com/articles/africa-roman-province) ([Africa Proconsularis](https://bliptext.com/articles/africa-proconsularis)/[Mauretania Caesariensis](https://bliptext.com/articles/mauretania-caesariensis)/[Mauretania Tingitana](https://bliptext.com/articles/mauretania-tingitana)) · [Vandal Kingdom](https://bliptext.com/articles/vandal-kingdom) · [Byzantine Africa](https://bliptext.com/articles/byzantine-africa) ([Praetorian prefecture](https://bliptext.com/articles/praetorian-prefecture-of-africa)/[Exarchate of Africa](https://bliptext.com/articles/exarchate-of-africa)) · [Mauro-Roman Kingdom](https://bliptext.com/articles/mauro-roman-kingdom) · [Maghreb](https://bliptext.com/articles/maghreb)/[Ifriqiya](https://bliptext.com/articles/ifriqiya) \n**Ethnicity:** [Roman Africans](https://bliptext.com/articles/roman-africans) \n**Fam 2:** [Italic](https://bliptext.com/articles/italic-languages) \n**Fam 3:** [Latino-Faliscan](https://bliptext.com/articles/latino-faliscan-languages) \n**Fam 4:** [Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin) \n**Fam 5:** [Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages) \n**Fam 6:** [Southern Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/southern-romance-languages)? \n**Ancestor:** [Old Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-latin) \n**Ancestor 2:** [Vulgar Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/vulgar-latin) \n**Ancestor 3:** [Proto-Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/proto-romance-language) \n**Iso 3:** none \n**Linglist:** lat-afr \n**Glotto:** none \n:::\n\n# \n**African Romance** or **African Latin** is an extinct [Romance language](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages) that was spoken in the various provinces of [Roman Africa](https://bliptext.com/articles/africa-roman-province) by the [African Romans](https://bliptext.com/articles/african-romans) under the later [Roman Empire](https://bliptext.com/articles/roman-empire) and its various post-Roman successor states in the region, including the [Vandal Kingdom](https://bliptext.com/articles/vandal-kingdom), the [Byzantine](https://bliptext.com/articles/byzantine-empire)-administered [Exarchate of Africa](https://bliptext.com/articles/exarchate-of-africa) and the [Berber](https://bliptext.com/articles/berbers) [Mauro-Roman Kingdom](https://bliptext.com/articles/mauro-roman-kingdom).\nAfrican Romance is poorly attested as it was mainly a [spoken](https://bliptext.com/articles/spoken-language), [vernacular language](https://bliptext.com/articles/vernacular-language). There is little doubt, however, that by the early 3rd century AD, some native provincial variety of [Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin) was fully established in Africa.\nAfter the [conquest of North Africa](https://bliptext.com/articles/muslim-conquest-of-the-maghreb) by the [Umayyad Caliphate](https://bliptext.com/articles/umayyad-caliphate) in 709 AD, this language survived through to the 12th century in various places along the [North African](https://bliptext.com/articles/north-africa) coast and the immediate littoral,**' with evidence that it may have persisted up to the 14th century,'** and possibly even the 15th century,**' or later'** in certain areas of the interior.\n\n# Background\nThe [Roman province of Africa](https://bliptext.com/articles/africa-roman-province) was organized in 146 BC following the defeat of [Carthage](https://bliptext.com/articles/ancient-carthage) in the [Third Punic War](https://bliptext.com/articles/third-punic-war).\nThe city of Carthage, destroyed following the war, was rebuilt during the dictatorship of [Julius Caesar](https://bliptext.com/articles/julius-caesar) as a [Roman colony](https://bliptext.com/articles/colonia-roman), and by the 1st century, it had grown to be the fourth largest city of the empire, with a population in excess of 100,000 people.\nThe [Fossa regia](https://bliptext.com/articles/fossa-regia) was an important boundary in North Africa, originally separating the Roman occupied Carthaginian territory from [Numidia](https://bliptext.com/articles/numidia),**' and may have served as a [cultural boundary](https://bliptext.com/articles/cultural-area) indicating [Romanization](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanization-cultural).'**\nIn the time of the Roman Empire, the province had become populous and prosperous and Carthage was the second-largest Latin-speaking city in the Empire.\nLatin was, however, largely an urban and coastal speech.\n[Carthaginian](https://bliptext.com/articles/carthaginian-people) [Punic](https://bliptext.com/articles/punic-language) continued to be spoken in inland and rural areas as late as the mid-5th century, but also in the cities. It is probable that [Berber languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/berber-languages) were spoken in some areas as well.\nFunerary [stelae](https://bliptext.com/articles/stele) chronicle the Romanization of art and religion in North Africa.**' Notable differences, however, existed in the penetration and survival of the Latin, Punic and [Berber languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/eastern-berber-languages).'** These indicated regional differences: Neo-Punic had a revival in [Tripolitania](https://bliptext.com/articles/tripolitania), around [Hippo Regius](https://bliptext.com/articles/hippo-regius) there is a cluster of Libyan inscriptions, while in the mountainous regions of [Kabylie](https://bliptext.com/articles/kabylie) and [Aures](https://bliptext.com/articles/aur-s), Latin was scarcer, though not absent.\nAfrica was occupied by the [Germanic](https://bliptext.com/articles/germanic-peoples) [Vandal](https://bliptext.com/articles/vandal) tribe for over a century, between 429 and 534 AD, when the province was reconquered by the Byzantine Emperor [Justinian I](https://bliptext.com/articles/justinian-i).\nThe changes that occurred in spoken Latin during that time are unknown.\nLiterary Latin, however, was maintained at a high standard, as seen in the [Latin poetry](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin-poetry) of the African writer [Corippus](https://bliptext.com/articles/corippus).\nThe area around Carthage remained fully Latin-speaking until the arrival of the Arabs.\n# [The Fossa regia (in pink) marked the approximate border between the province of Africa and Numidia. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/East///Numidia.jpg]\n\n# Origins and development\nLike all Romance languages, African Romance descended from [Vulgar Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/vulgar-latin), the non-standard (in contrast to [Classical Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/classical-latin)) form of the Latin language, which was spoken by soldiers and merchants throughout the Roman Empire.\nWith the [expansion of the empire](https://bliptext.com/articles/campaign-history-of-the-roman-military), Vulgar Latin came to be spoken by inhabitants of the various Roman-controlled territories in [North Africa](https://bliptext.com/articles/north-africa).\nLatin and its descendants were spoken in the [Province of Africa](https://bliptext.com/articles/africa-roman-province) following the [Punic Wars](https://bliptext.com/articles/punic-wars), when the Romans conquered the territory.\nSpoken Latin, and Latin [inscriptions](https://bliptext.com/articles/epigraphy) developed while Punic was still being used.**' [Bilingual](https://bliptext.com/articles/multilingualism) [inscriptions](https://bliptext.com/articles/epigraphy) were engraved, some of which reflect the introduction of [Roman institutions](https://bliptext.com/articles/political-institutions-of-ancient-rome) into Africa, using new Punic expressions.'**\nLatin, and then some Romance variant of it, was spoken by generations of speakers, for about fifteen centuries.**' This was demonstrated by African-born speakers of African Romance who continued to create Latin inscriptions until the first half of the 11th century.'** Evidence for a spoken Romance variety which developed locally out of Latin persisted in rural areas of [Tunisia](https://bliptext.com/articles/tunisia) – possibly as late as the last two decades of the 15th century in some sources.\nBy the late 19th century and early 20th century, the possible existence of African Latin was controversial, with debates on the existence of [Africitas](https://bliptext.com/articles/africitas) as a putative African dialect of Latin.\nIn 1882, the [German](https://bliptext.com/articles/germany) scholar Karl Sittl used unconvincing material to adduce features particular to Latin in Africa.**' This unconvincing evidence was attacked by [Wilhelm Kroll](https://bliptext.com/articles/wilhelm-kroll) in 1897, and again by [Madeline D. Brock](https://bliptext.com/articles/dorothy-brock) in 1911.'** Brock went so far as to assert that \"African Latin was free from provincialism\",**' and that African Latin was \"the Latin of an epoch rather than that of a country\".'** This view shifted in recent decades, with modern philologists going so far as to say that African Latin \"was not free from provincialism\"**' and that, given the remoteness of parts of Africa, there were \"probably a plurality of varieties of Latin, rather than a single African Latin\".'** Other researchers believe that features peculiar to African Latin existed, but are \"not to be found where Sittl looked for it\".\nWhile as a language African Romance is extinct, there is some evidence of regional varieties in African Latin that helps reconstruct some of its features.\nSome historical evidence on the [phonetic](https://bliptext.com/articles/phonetics) and [lexical](https://bliptext.com/articles/lexical-semantics) features of the [Afri](https://bliptext.com/articles/afri) were already observed in ancient times.\n[Pliny](https://bliptext.com/articles/pliny-the-elder) observes how walls in Africa and [Spain](https://bliptext.com/articles/hispania) are called formacei, or \"framed walls, because they are made by packing in a frame enclosed between two boards, one on each side\".\n[Nonius Marcellus](https://bliptext.com/articles/nonius-marcellus), a Roman [grammarian](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammarian-greco-roman-world), provides further, if uncertain, evidence regarding vocabulary and possible \"Africanisms\".\nIn the [Historia Augusta](https://bliptext.com/articles/historia-augusta), the North African [Roman Emperor](https://bliptext.com/articles/roman-emperor) [Septimius Severus](https://bliptext.com/articles/septimius-severus) is said to have retained an African accent until old age.\nMore recent analysis focuses on a body of literary texts, being literary pieces written by African and non-African writers.\nThese show the existence of an African pronunciation of Latin, then moving on to a further study of lexical material drawn from sub-literary sources, such as practical texts and [ostraca](https://bliptext.com/articles/ostracon), from multiple African communities, that is military writers, landholders and doctors.\nThe Romance philologist [James Noel Adams](https://bliptext.com/articles/james-noel-adams) lists a number of possible Africanisms found in this wider Latin literary corpus.\nOnly two refer to constructions found in Sittl, with the other examples deriving from medical texts, various ostraca and other non-traditional sources.\nTwo sorts of regional features can be observed.\nThe first are [loanwords](https://bliptext.com/articles/loanword) from a substrate language, such is the case with [Britain](https://bliptext.com/articles/british-latin).\nIn African Latin, this substrate was Punic.\nThe African dialect included words such as ginga for \"[henbane](https://bliptext.com/articles/hyoscyamus-niger)\", boba for \"[mallow](https://bliptext.com/articles/common-mallow),\" girba for \"[mortar](https://bliptext.com/articles/mortar-and-pestle)\" and gelela for the inner flesh of a [gourd](https://bliptext.com/articles/gourd). The second refers to use of Latin words with particular meanings not found elsewhere, or in limited contexts.\nOf particular note is the African Romance use of the word rostrum for \"mouth\" instead of the original meaning in Latin, which is \"beak\", and baiae for \"baths\" being a late Latin and particularly African generalisation from the place-name [Baiae](https://bliptext.com/articles/baiae).\nPullus meaning \"cock\" or \"[rooster](https://bliptext.com/articles/rooster)\", was probably borrowed by Berber dialects from African Romance, for use instead of the Latin gallus. The originally abstract word dulcor is seen applied as a probable medical African specialisation relating to [sweet wine](https://bliptext.com/articles/sweetness-of-wine) instead of the Latin passum or mustum. The Latin for [grape](https://bliptext.com/articles/grape), traditionally indeterminate (acinis), male (acinus) or [neuter](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-gender) (acinum), in various African Latin sources changes to the feminine acina.\nOther examples include the use of pala as a metaphor for the [shoulder blade](https://bliptext.com/articles/scapula); centenarium, which only occurs in the [Albertini Tablets](https://bliptext.com/articles/tablettes-albertini) and may have meant \"granary\"; and [infantilisms](https://bliptext.com/articles/infantile-speech) such as dida, which apparently meant \"breast/nipple\" or \"[wet nurse](https://bliptext.com/articles/wet-nurse)\".\nA few African Latin loanwords from Punic, such as matta (\"mat made of rushes\", from which derives English \"mat\") and Berber, such as buda (\"cattail\") also spread into general Latin usage, the latter even displacing native Latin ulva.\nBoth Africans, such as [Augustine of Hippo](https://bliptext.com/articles/augustine-of-hippo) and the grammarian [Pompeius](https://bliptext.com/articles/pompeius), as well as non-Africans, such as [Consentius](https://bliptext.com/articles/consentius) and [Jerome](https://bliptext.com/articles/jerome), wrote on African features, some in very specific terms.\nIndeed in his De Ordine, dated to late 386, Augustine remarks how he was still criticised by the [Italians](https://bliptext.com/articles/italians) for his [pronunciation](https://bliptext.com/articles/pronunciation), while he himself often found fault with theirs. While modern scholars may express doubts on the interpretation or accuracy of some of these writings, they contend that African Latin must have been distinctive enough to inspire so much discussion.\n# [An inscription from one of the gates to the theatre at Leptis Magna, indicating that Latin and Punic co-existed in Northern Africa for centuries. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Inscription///Theatre///Leptis///Magna///Libya.JPG]\n# [Fifth century AD inscription at the Leptis Magna forum, Libya. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Forum///Leptis///Magna///05.JPG]\n\n# Extinction as a vernacular\nPrior to the [Arab conquest](https://bliptext.com/articles/muslim-conquest-of-the-maghreb) in 696–705 AD, a Romance language was probably spoken alongside [Berber languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/berber-languages) in the region.\nLoanwords from Northwest African Romance to Berber are attested, usually in the [accusative](https://bliptext.com/articles/accusative) form: examples include atmun (\"plough-beam\") from temonem.\nFollowing the conquest, it becomes difficult to trace the fate of African Romance.\nThe Umayyad administration did at first utilize the local Latin language in coinage from Carthage and [Kairouan](https://bliptext.com/articles/kairouan) in the early 7th century, displaying Latin inscriptions of Islamic phrases such as D[e]us tu[us] D[e]us et a[li]us non e[st] (\"God is your God and there is no other\"), a variation of the [shahada](https://bliptext.com/articles/shahada), or Muslim declaration of faith.\nConant suggests that African Romance vernacular could have facillitated diplomatic exchange between [Charlemagne](https://bliptext.com/articles/charlemagne) and the [Aghlabid](https://bliptext.com/articles/aghlabid) emirate, as the Frankish-given name for the [Aghlabid](https://bliptext.com/articles/aghlabid) capital is Fossatum (Latin for fortifications) which is reflected in the name today Fusātū.\nAfrican Latin was soon replaced by Arabic as the primary [administrative language](https://bliptext.com/articles/administrative-language), but it existed at least until the arrival of the [Banu Hilal](https://bliptext.com/articles/banu-hilal) Arabs in the 11th century and probably until the beginning of the 14th century.\nIt was various parts of the littoral of Africa into the 12th century, exerting a significant influence on [Northwest African Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/maghrebi-arabic), particularly the language of northwestern [Morocco](https://bliptext.com/articles/morocco).\nAmongst the Berbers of Ifriqiya, African Romance was linked to Christianity, which survived in North Africa (outside of Egypt) until the 14th century.\nChristian cemeteries excavated in Kairouan dating from 945-1046 and in Áin Zára and En Ngila in Tripolitania from before the 10th century contain Latin inscriptions demonstrating continued use of written liturgical Latin centuries into Islamic rule; graves with Christian names such as Peter, John, Maria, Irene, Isidore, Speratus, Boniface and Faustinus contain common phrases such as \"requiem aeternam det tibi Dominus et lux perpetua luceat tibi (“May the Lord give you eternal rest and everlasting light shine upon you”) or Deus Sabaoth from the [Sanctus hymn](https://bliptext.com/articles/sanctus). Another [example](https://bliptext.com/articles/undefined) attests to the dual usage of the Christian and the [Hijri](https://bliptext.com/articles/hijri-year) calendars, reading that the deceased died in [Anno Domini](https://bliptext.com/articles/anno-domini) 1007 or 397 annorum infidelium (\"Year of the infidels\".) There is also a [Vetus Latina](https://bliptext.com/articles/vetus-latina) [Psalter](https://bliptext.com/articles/psalter) in [Saint Catherine's Monastery](https://bliptext.com/articles/saint-catherine-s-monastery) dated to 1230, which has long been attributed to African origin due to its usage of African text and calendar of saints.\nThe Psalter notably contains spellings consistent with Vulgar Latin/African Romance features ([see below](https://bliptext.com/articles/african-romance)), such as prothetic i insertion, repeated betacism in writing b for v and substituting second declension endings to undeclinable Semitic biblical names.\nWritten Latin continued to be the language of correspondence between African bishops and the Papacy up till the final communication between [Pope Gregory VII](https://bliptext.com/articles/pope-gregory-vii) and the imprisoned archbishop of Carthage, [Cyriacus](https://bliptext.com/articles/archdiocese-of-carthage) in the 11th century.\nSpoken Latin or Romance is attested in [Gabès](https://bliptext.com/articles/gab-s) by [Ibn Khordadbeh](https://bliptext.com/articles/ibn-khordadbeh); in [Béja](https://bliptext.com/articles/b-ja), [Biskra](https://bliptext.com/articles/biskra), [Tlemcen](https://bliptext.com/articles/tlemcen), and [Niffis](https://bliptext.com/articles/niffis) by [al-Bakri](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-bakri); and in [Gafsa](https://bliptext.com/articles/gafsa) and [Monastir](https://bliptext.com/articles/monastir-tunisia) by [al-Idrisi](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-idrisi), who observes that the people in [Gafsa](https://bliptext.com/articles/gafsa) \"are Berberised, and most of them speak the African Latin tongue.\"\nIn the passage, Al-Idrisi mentions that \"there is a fountain called \", which could derive from therma (\"hot bath\".) There is also a possible reference to spoken Latin or African Romance in the 11th century, when the [Rustamid](https://bliptext.com/articles/rustamid-dynasty) governor Abu Ubayda Abd al-Hamid al-Jannawni was said to have sworn his oath of office in Arabic, Berber and in an unspecified \"town language\", which might be interpreted as a Romance variety; in the oath, the Arabic-rendered phrase bar diyyu could represent some variation of Latin per Deu(m) (\"by God\".)\nIn their quest to conquer the [Kingdom of Africa](https://bliptext.com/articles/kingdom-of-africa) in the 12th century, the [Normans](https://bliptext.com/articles/normans) were aided by the remaining Christian population of Tunisia, who some linguists, among them Vermondo Brugnatelli, argue had been speaking a Romance language for centuries.\nThe final attestations of African Romance come from the Renaissance period.\nThe 15th century Italian humanist Paolo Pompilio makes the most significant remarks on the language and its features, reporting that a Catalan merchant named Riaria who had lived in North Africa for thirty years told him that the villagers in the [Aurès](https://bliptext.com/articles/aur-s) mountain region \"speak an almost intact Latin and, when Latin words are corrupted, then they pass to the sound and habits of the [Sardinian language](https://bliptext.com/articles/sardinian-language)\".\nThe 16th century geographer and diplomat [Leo Africanus](https://bliptext.com/articles/leo-africanus), who was born into a Muslim family in [Granada](https://bliptext.com/articles/granada) and fled the [Reconquista](https://bliptext.com/articles/reconquista) to Morocco, also says that the North Africans retained their own language after the Islamic conquest which he calls \"Italian\", which must refer to Romance.\nA statement by [Mawlā Aḥmad](https://bliptext.com/articles/mawl-a-mad) is sometimes interpreted as implying the survival of a Christian community in [Tozeur](https://bliptext.com/articles/tozeur) into the eighteenth century, but this is unlikely; Prevost estimates that Christianity disappeared around the middle of the thirteenth century in southern Tunisia.\n# [The Exarchate of Africa within the Byzantine Empire after the reconquest of Justinian. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Exarchate-Africa.png]\n# [Map highlighting in black the \"Romania submersa\", being those Roman, or formerly Roman regions where forms of neo-Latin disappeared after some centuries, including Northern Africa. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Western///and///Eastern///Romania.PNG]\n\n# Related languages\n\n## The Sardinian hypothesis\nThe most prominent theory for the classification of African Romance (at least for the interior province of [Africa Proconsularis](https://bliptext.com/articles/africa-proconsularis)) is that it belonged to a shared subgroup along with [Sardinian](https://bliptext.com/articles/sardinian-language), called [Southern Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/southern-romance) by some linguists.\nThis branch of Romance, of which Sardinian would today be the only surviving member, could have also been spoken in the medieval period in [Corsica](https://bliptext.com/articles/corsica) prior to the island's Tuscanization, southern [Basilicata](https://bliptext.com/articles/basilicata) (eastern region of the [Lausberg area](https://bliptext.com/articles/lausberg-area)) and perhaps other regions in southern Italy, [Sicily](https://bliptext.com/articles/sicily) and possibly even [Malta](https://bliptext.com/articles/malta).\nA potential linguistic relationship between Sardinia and North Africa could have been built up as a result of the two regions' long pre-Roman cultural ties starting from the 8th-7th centuries BC, when the island fell under the [Carthaginian](https://bliptext.com/articles/ancient-carthage) sphere of influence.\nThis resulted in the [Punic language](https://bliptext.com/articles/punic-language) being spoken in Sardinia up to the 3rd–4th centuries AD, and several Punic loan-words survive into modern Sardinian.\n[Cicero](https://bliptext.com/articles/cicero) also mocks Sardinia's perceived Carthaginian and African cultural identity as the source of its inferiority and disloyalty to Rome.\"Fallacissimum genus esse Phoenicum omnia monumenta vetustatis atque omnes historiae nobis prodiderunt. ab his orti Poeni multis Carthaginiensium rebellionibus, multis violatis fractisque foederibus nihil se degenerasse docuerunt. A Poenis admixto Afrorum genere Sardi non deducti in Sardiniam atque ibi constituti, sed amandati et repudiati coloni. [...] Neque ego, cum de vitiis gentis loquor, neminem excipio; sed a me est de universo genere dicendum, in quo fortasse aliqui suis moribus et humanitate stirpis ipsius et gentis vitia vicerunt. magnam quidem esse partem sine fide, sine societate et coniunctione nominis nostri res ipsa declarat. quae est enim praeter Sardiniam provincia quae nullam habeat amicam populo Romano ac liberam civitatem?\nAfrica ipsa parens illa Sardiniae, quae plurima et acerbissima cum maioribus nostris bella gessit.\" (\"All the monuments of the ancients and all histories have handed down to us the tradition that the nation of the Phoenicians is the most treacherous of all nations. The Poeni, who are descended from them, have proved by many rebellions of the Carthaginians, and very many broken and violated treaties, that they have in no respect degenerated from them. The Sardinians, who are sprung from the Poeni, with an admixture of African blood, were not led into Sardinia as colonists and established there, but are rather a tribe who were draughted off, and put there to get rid of them. Nor indeed, when I speak of the vices of the nation, do I except no one. But I am forced to speak generally of the entire race; in which, perhaps, some individuals by their own civilized habits and natural humanity have got the better of the vices of their family and nation.\nThat the greater part of the nation is destitute of faith, destitute of any community and connection with our name, the facts themselves plainly show.\nFor what province is there besides Sardinia which has not one city in it on friendly terms with the Roman people, not one free city?\nAfrica itself is the parent of Sardinia, which has waged many most bitter wars against our ancestors.\" Translation by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1856, ) The affinity between the two regions persisted after the collapse of the [Western Roman Empire](https://bliptext.com/articles/western-roman-empire) under shared governance by the [Vandal Kingdom](https://bliptext.com/articles/vandal-kingdom) and then the Byzantine [Exarchate of Africa](https://bliptext.com/articles/exarchate-of-africa). Pinelli believes that the Vandal presence had \"estranged Sardinia from Europe, linking its own destiny to Africa's territorial expanse\" in a bond that was to strengthen further \"under Byzantine rule, not only because the Roman Empire included the island in the African Exarchate, but also because it developed from there, albeit indirectly, its ethnic community, causing it to acquire many of the African characteristics\".\nThe spoken variety of African Romance was perceived to be similar to [Sardinia](https://bliptext.com/articles/sardinia)n as reported in the above-cited passage by Paolo Pompilio – supporting hypotheses that there were parallelisms between developments of Latin in Africa and [Sardinia](https://bliptext.com/articles/sardinia).\nAlthough this testimony comes from a secondhand source, the Catalan merchant Riaria, these observations are reliable since Sardinia was under Catalan rule by the [Crown of Aragon](https://bliptext.com/articles/crown-of-aragon), so the merchant could have had the opportunity to trade in both regions.\n[Augustine of Hippo](https://bliptext.com/articles/augustine-of-hippo) writes that \"African ears have no quick perception of the shortness or length of [Latin] vowels\".\nThis also describes the evolution of [vowels in the Sardinian language](https://bliptext.com/articles/sardinian-phonology).\nSardinian has only five vowels, and no diphthongs; unlike the other surviving [Romance languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages), the five long vowel pairs of [Classical Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin), ā, ē, ī, ō, ū (phonetically [aː, eː, iː, oː, uː]), merged with their corresponding short vowel counterparts ă, ĕ, ĭ, ŏ, ŭ [a, ɛ, ɪ, ɔ, ʊ] into five single vowels with no length distinction: /a, ɛ, i, ɔ, u/.\nIn the [Italo-Western Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/italo-western-romance) varieties, short ǐ, ŭ [ɪ, ʊ] merged with long ē, ō [e(ː), o(ː)] instead of with long ī, ū [i(ː), u(ː)] as in Sardinian, which typically resulted in a seven vowel system, for example /a, ɛ, e, i, ɔ, o, u/ in [Italian](https://bliptext.com/articles/italian-phonology).\nAdams theorises that similarities in some vocabulary, such as pala (\"shoulderblade\") and acina (\"grape\") across Sardinian and African Romance, or spanu in Sardinian and spanus (\"light red\") in African Romance, may be evidence that some vocabulary was shared between Sardinia and Africa.\nA further theory suggests that the Sardinian word for \"Friday\", cenàpura or chenàpura (literally \"pure dinner\", in reference to parasceve, or Friday preparation for the [Sabbath](https://bliptext.com/articles/sabbath)), may have been brought to Sardinia by [North African Jews](https://bliptext.com/articles/maghrebi-jews).\nThe term cena pura is used by Augustine, although there is no evidence that its meaning in Africa extended beyond the Jewish religious context to simply refer to the day of Friday.\nIt is further speculated that the Sardinian word for the month of June, lámpadas (\"lamps\"), could have a connection to African usage due to references by [Fulgentius](https://bliptext.com/articles/fabius-planciades-fulgentius) and in a work on the [Nativity of John the Baptist](https://bliptext.com/articles/nativity-of-john-the-baptist) to a lampadarum dies (\"day of the lamps\") during the harvest in June.\nThere is also possible evidence of shared Sardinian and African Latin vocabulary in that Latin cartallus (\"basket\") results in the unique Sardinian word iscarteddu and [Maghrebi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/maghrebi-arabic) gertella.\nAdditionally, it is notable that Sardinian is the only Romance language in which the name for the [Milky Way](https://bliptext.com/articles/milky-way), sa (b)ía de sa bálla / báza, meaning \"the Way of Straw\", also occurs in Berber languages, hinting at a possible African Romance connection.\n[Blasco Ferrer](https://bliptext.com/articles/eduardo-blasco-ferrer) suggests that the Latin demonstrative ipse/-a, from which derive both the Sardinian definite article su/sa as well as the [subject personal pronouns](https://bliptext.com/articles/subject-personal-pronoun) isse/-a, could have syncretized with the Berber feminine prefix ta in African Latin.\nApart from Sardinian, the only other Romance varieties which take their article from ipse/-a (instead of ille/-a) are the Catalan dialects of the [Balearic islands and certain areas of Girona, the Vall de Gallerina and tàrbena](https://bliptext.com/articles/ca-article-salat), Provençal and medieval Gascon.\nBlasco Ferrer proposes that usage of ipse/-a was preferred over ille/-a in Africa under southern Italian influence, as observed in the 2nd century Act of the [Scillitan Martyrs](https://bliptext.com/articles/scillitan-martyrs) (Passio Scillitanorum) which substitutes ipse/-a for ille/-a.\nThis dialectal form then could have developed into *tsa, which is attested in [Old Catalan](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-catalan) documents like the [Homilies d'Organyà](https://bliptext.com/articles/homilies-d-organy) (e.g. za paraula: \"the words\"), and traversed the Mediterranean from Africa to Sardinia, the Balearics and southern Gaul.\nThe justification for positing Berber ta as possibly derivative of ipsa is that its allophonic pronunciation is [θa], which is often the phonetic outcome in Berber of [tsa].\nHowever, the connection between ipsa and ta remains highly speculative and without direct evidence.\n[Muhammad al-Idrisi](https://bliptext.com/articles/muhammad-al-idrisi) additionally observes cultural similarities between [Sardinians](https://bliptext.com/articles/sardinian-people) and Roman Africans, saying that \"the [Sardinians](https://bliptext.com/articles/sardinian-people) are ethnically Roman Africans, live like the [Berbers](https://bliptext.com/articles/berbers), shun any other nation of [Rûm](https://bliptext.com/articles/r-m); these people are courageous and valiant, that never part with their weapons.\"\n# [The condaghe of Saint Peter of Silki (1065-1180), one of the first documents written in Sardinian. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/Condaghe///Silki.png]\n# [Vowel changes from Latin to Sardinian, theorized to have been shared with African Romance. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/Sardinian///vowels.png]\n\n## Other theories: Eastern Romance and Hispano-Romance\nMore recent research could point towards an alternate development for the Latin spoken in the province of [Mauretania](https://bliptext.com/articles/mauretania) in western North Africa.\nAlthough agreeing with previous studies that the Late Latin of the interior province of [Africa Proconsularis](https://bliptext.com/articles/africa-proconsularis) certainly displayed Sardinian vocalism, Adamik argues based on inscriptional evidence that the vowel system was not uniform across the entirety of the North African coast, and there is some indication that the Latin variety of [Mauretania Caesariensis](https://bliptext.com/articles/mauretania-caesariensis) was possibly changing in the direction of the asymmetric six-vowel system found in [Eastern Romance languages such as Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/history-of-the-romanian-language): /a, ɛ, e, i, o, u/.\nIn Eastern Romance, on the front vowel axis short ǐ [ɪ] merged with long ē [e(ː)] as /e/ while keeping short ĕ /ɛ/ as a separate phoneme (as in Italo-Western Romance), and on the back vowel axis short ŭ [ʊ] merged with long ū [u(ː)], while short ŏ [ɔ] merged with long ō [o(ː)] as /o/ (similar to in Sardinian.)\nDue to the vast size of Roman territory in Africa, it is indeed plausible (if not likely) based on the analysis above that multiple distinct Romance languages had evolved there from Latin, perhaps separating along provincial lines between a Mauretanian Romance variety spoken in the western regions and an \"Afro-Sardinian\" or \"Afro-Insular\" Romance group spoken in central North Africa and the Mediterranean islands.\nSome scholars also theorise that many of the [North African invaders of Hispania](https://bliptext.com/articles/umayyad-conquest-of-hispania) in the [Early Middle Ages](https://bliptext.com/articles/early-middle-ages) spoke some form of African Romance, with \"phonetic, [morphosyntactic](https://bliptext.com/articles/morphology-linguistics), lexical and [semantic](https://bliptext.com/articles/semantics) data\" from African Romance appearing to have contributed in the development of [Ibero-Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/iberian-romance-languages).\" It is suggested that African Latin [betacism](https://bliptext.com/articles/betacism) may have pushed the phonological development of [Ibero-Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/iberian-romance-languages) varieties in favor of the now characteristic Spanish b/v merger as well as influencing the lengthening of stressed short vowels (after the loss of vowel length distinction) evidenced in lack of diphthongization of short e/o in certain words (such as teneo > tengo (\"I have\"), pectus > pecho (\"chest\"), mons > monte (\"mountain\".) In the area of vocabulary, it is possible that the meaning of rostrum (originally \"bird beak\") may have changed to mean \"face\" (of humans or animals), as in Spanish rostro, under the influence of African usage, and the African Latin-exclusive word centenarium (\"granary\") may have yielded the names of two towns in [Huesca](https://bliptext.com/articles/huesca) called Centenero.\nAdamik also finds evidence for dialectological similarity between [Hispania](https://bliptext.com/articles/hispania) and Africa based on rates of errors in the case system, a relation which could have increased from the 4th-6th centuries AD but was disrupted by the Islamic invasion.\n# [Map showing the provincial division of Roman North Africa: Mauretania, Numidia and Africa | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/Africaseptentrionalis-sb.jpg]\n# [Vowel changes from Latin to Romanian, which one scholar suggests as a possible path of development for the Latin of Mauretania. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/Development///of///vowels///from///Latin///to///Romanian.png]\n\n## Berber and Maghrebi Arabic\nScholars including Brugnatelli and Kossmann have identified at least 40 words in various [Berber](https://bliptext.com/articles/berber-languages) dialects which are certain to have been loans from Latin or African Romance.\nFor example, in [Ghadames](https://bliptext.com/articles/ghadam-s-language) the word \"anǧalus\" (, أندجالوس) refers to a spiritual entity, clearly using a word from the Latin \"angel\". A complete list of Latin/Romance loanwords is provided below under the section on Berber vocabulary.\nSome impacts of African Romance on [Maghrebi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/maghrebi-arabic) and [Maltese](https://bliptext.com/articles/maltese-language) are theorised.' For example, in [calendar](https://bliptext.com/articles/calendar) [month](https://bliptext.com/articles/month) names, the word furar \"February\" is only found in the Maghreb and in the [Maltese](https://bliptext.com/articles/maltese-language) language – proving the word's ancient origins.' The region also has a form of another Latin named [month](https://bliptext.com/articles/month) in awi/ussu < augustus.**' This word does not appear to be a loan word through Arabic, and may have been taken over directly from Late Latin or African Romance.'** Scholars theorise that a Latin-based system provided forms such as awi/ussu and furar, with the system then mediating Latin/Romance names through Arabic for some [month](https://bliptext.com/articles/month) names during the Islamic period.' The same situation exists for [Maltese](https://bliptext.com/articles/maltese-language) which mediated words from [Italian](https://bliptext.com/articles/italian-language), and retains both non-[Italian](https://bliptext.com/articles/italian-language) forms such as awissu/awwissu and frar, and [Italian](https://bliptext.com/articles/italian-language) forms such as april.' Lameen Souag likewise compares several [Maltese](https://bliptext.com/articles/maltese-language) lexical items with [Maghrebi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/maghrebi-arabic) forms to show that these words were borrowed directly from African Latin, rather than [Italian](https://bliptext.com/articles/italian-language) or Sicilian.\nBumerin (\"seal\"), coming from Latin bos marinus (\"sea cow\"), matches [Dellys](https://bliptext.com/articles/dellys) bū-mnīr and Moroccan bū-mrīn.\nIn the case of Maltese berdlieqa (\"purslane\") from Latin portulaca, equivalent Arabic words are found throughout North Africa and former [al-Andalus](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-andalus), including bǝrdlāqa in Dellys, bardilāqaš in [Andalusi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/andalusi-arabic) and burṭlāg in the desert regions of [El Oued](https://bliptext.com/articles/el-oued).\nAs mentioned above, the Maghrebi Arabic word gertella (\"basket\"), from Latin cartallus, could also hint at a promising African Romance-Sardinian lexical connection with the unique Sardinian word iscarteddu.\nLastly, in the area of grammar, Heath has suggested that the archaic [Moroccan Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/moroccan-arabic) genitive particle d could have derived from Latin de, as in Romance languages, although this structure is absent from Maltese and other Maghrebi Arabic varieties, making the theory controversial.\n\n# Characteristics\nStarting from African Romance's similarity with Sardinian, scholars theorise that the similarity may be pinned down to specific phonological properties.**' Sardinian lacks [palatization](https://bliptext.com/articles/palatalization-sound-change) of [velar stops](https://bliptext.com/articles/velar-stop) before front vowels, and features the pairwise merger of short and long non-low vowels.'** Evidence is found that both [isoglosses](https://bliptext.com/articles/isogloss) were present in African Latin (at least in the central province of Africa Proconsularis):\n# [The earliest known portrait of Saint Augustine in a 6th-century fresco, Lateran, Rome. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/Augustine///Lateran.jpg]\n\n## Berber vocabulary\nThe Polish Arabist Tadeusz Lewicki tried to reconstruct some sections of this language based on 85 lemmas mainly derived from Northwest African [toponyms](https://bliptext.com/articles/toponymy) and [anthroponyms](https://bliptext.com/articles/anthroponymy) found in medieval sources. Due to the historical presence in the region of Classical Latin, modern Romance languages, as well as the influence of the [Mediterranean Lingua Franca](https://bliptext.com/articles/mediterranean-lingua-franca) (that has Romance vocabulary) it is difficult to differentiate the precise origin of words in [Berber languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/berber-languages) and in the varieties of [Maghrebi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/maghrebi-arabic).\nThe studies are also difficult and often highly conjectural.\nDue to the large size of the North African territory, it is highly probable that not one but several varieties of African Romance existed, much like the wide variety of Romance languages in Europe.**' Moroever, other Romance languages spoken in Northwest Africa before the [European colonization](https://bliptext.com/articles/scramble-for-africa) were the [Mediterranean Lingua Franca](https://bliptext.com/articles/mediterranean-lingua-franca),'** a [pidgin](https://bliptext.com/articles/pidgin) with Arabic and Romance influences, and [Judaeo-Spanish](https://bliptext.com/articles/judaeo-spanish), a dialect of Spanish brought by [Sephardi Jews](https://bliptext.com/articles/sephardi-jews). Scholars are uncertain or disagree on the Latin origin of some of the words presented in the list, which may be attributed alternatively to Berber language internal etymology.\nScholars believe that there is a great number of Berber words, existing in various dialects, which are theorised to derive from late Latin or African Romance, such as the vocabulary in the following list.\nIt might be possible to reconstruct a chronology of which loans entered Berber languages in the Classical Latin period versus in Late Latin/Proto-Romance based on features; for example, certain forms such as afullus (from pullus, \"chicken\") or asnus (< asinus, \"donkey\") preserve the Classical Latin nominative ending -us, whereas other words like urṭu (< hortus, \"garden\") or muṛu (< murus, \"wall\") have lost final -s (matching parallel developments in Romance, perhaps in deriving from the accusative form after the loss of final -m.) Forms such as tayda (< taeda, \"pinewood\"), which seem to preserve the Latin diphthong ae, might also be interpreted as archaic highly conservative loans from the Roman Imperial period or earlier.\nHowever, the potential chronological distinction based on word endings is inconsistent; the form qaṭṭus (from cattus, \"cat\") preserves final -s, but cattus is only attested in Late Latin, when one would expect final -s to have been dropped.\nFurther, the -u endings may instead simply derive from accusative forms which had lost final -m; as a comparison, words drawn from 3rd declension nouns may vary between nominative-based forms like falku < falco (\"falcon\"), and accusative/oblique-case forms like atmun < temo (Acc: temonem, \"pole\", c.f. Italian timone) or amerkidu (\"divine recompense\") < merces (Acc: mercedem, \"pay/wages\", c.f. Italiian mercede.)\nNevertheless, when undisputed Latin-derived Berber words are compared with corresponding terms in Italian, Sardinian, Corsican, Sicilian and Maltese, shared phonological outcomes with Sardinian (and to some extent Corsican) seem apparent.\nFor evidence of the merger of Latin short ǐ, ŭ [ɪ, ʊ] with /i, u/ instead of /e, o/, compare how Latin pirus/a (\"pear tree/pear\") results in Berber ifires and Sardinian pira vs. Italian pero, and Latin pullus (\"chicken\") becomes Berber afullus and Sardinian puddu vs. Italian pollo.\nFor the lack of palatalization of velar stops, notice how Latin merces (\"pay/wages\") results in Berber amerkidu and Sardinian merchede vs. Italian mercede, and Latin cicer (\"chickpea\") becomes Berber ikiker and Sardinian chìghere vs. Italian cece.\nFor the other month names, see [Berber calendar](https://bliptext.com/articles/berber-calendar).\n\n# Citations\n\n## Sources\n\n### Primary sources\n\n### Secondary sources","current_revision":null,"created_by":"kACnuQmH5k9Nr5VNVEpVeg7XpvUmMctD","created_at":"2025-01-26T08:14:00.265Z","updated_at":"2025-01-26T08:14:00.265Z","search_vector":"'african':1 'romanc':2","search_content":" \n**Name:** African Romance \n**Era:** c. 1st–15th century AD(?) \n**Familycolor:** Indo-European \n**Region:** [Roman Africa](https://bliptext.com/articles/africa-roman-province) ([Africa Proconsularis](https://bliptext.com/articles/africa-proconsularis)/[Mauretania Caesariensis](https://bliptext.com/articles/mauretania-caesariensis)/[Mauretania Tingitana](https://bliptext.com/articles/mauretania-tingitana)) · [Vandal Kingdom](https://bliptext.com/articles/vandal-kingdom) · [Byzantine Africa](https://bliptext.com/articles/byzantine-africa) ([Praetorian prefecture](https://bliptext.com/articles/praetorian-prefecture-of-africa)/[Exarchate of Africa](https://bliptext.com/articles/exarchate-of-africa)) · [Mauro-Roman Kingdom](https://bliptext.com/articles/mauro-roman-kingdom) · [Maghreb](https://bliptext.com/articles/maghreb)/[Ifriqiya](https://bliptext.com/articles/ifriqiya) \n**Ethnicity:** [Roman Africans](https://bliptext.com/articles/roman-africans) \n**Fam 2:** [Italic](https://bliptext.com/articles/italic-languages) \n**Fam 3:** [Latino-Faliscan](https://bliptext.com/articles/latino-faliscan-languages) \n**Fam 4:** [Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin) \n**Fam 5:** [Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages) \n**Fam 6:** [Southern Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/southern-romance-languages)? \n**Ancestor:** [Old Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-latin) \n**Ancestor 2:** [Vulgar Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/vulgar-latin) \n**Ancestor 3:** [Proto-Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/proto-romance-language) \n**Iso 3:** none \n**Linglist:** lat-afr \n**Glotto:** none \n \n\n# \n**African Romance** or **African Latin** is an extinct [Romance language](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages) that was spoken in the various provinces of [Roman Africa](https://bliptext.com/articles/africa-roman-province) by the [African Romans](https://bliptext.com/articles/african-romans) under the later [Roman Empire](https://bliptext.com/articles/roman-empire) and its various post-Roman successor states in the region, including the [Vandal Kingdom](https://bliptext.com/articles/vandal-kingdom), the [Byzantine](https://bliptext.com/articles/byzantine-empire)-administered [Exarchate of Africa](https://bliptext.com/articles/exarchate-of-africa) and the [Berber](https://bliptext.com/articles/berbers) [Mauro-Roman Kingdom](https://bliptext.com/articles/mauro-roman-kingdom).\nAfrican Romance is poorly attested as it was mainly a [spoken](https://bliptext.com/articles/spoken-language), [vernacular language](https://bliptext.com/articles/vernacular-language). There is little doubt, however, that by the early 3rd century AD, some native provincial variety of [Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin) was fully established in Africa.\nAfter the [conquest of North Africa](https://bliptext.com/articles/muslim-conquest-of-the-maghreb) by the [Umayyad Caliphate](https://bliptext.com/articles/umayyad-caliphate) in 709 AD, this language survived through to the 12th century in various places along the [North African](https://bliptext.com/articles/north-africa) coast and the immediate littoral,**' with evidence that it may have persisted up to the 14th century,'** and possibly even the 15th century,**' or later'** in certain areas of the interior.\n\n# Background\nThe [Roman province of Africa](https://bliptext.com/articles/africa-roman-province) was organized in 146 BC following the defeat of [Carthage](https://bliptext.com/articles/ancient-carthage) in the [Third Punic War](https://bliptext.com/articles/third-punic-war).\nThe city of Carthage, destroyed following the war, was rebuilt during the dictatorship of [Julius Caesar](https://bliptext.com/articles/julius-caesar) as a [Roman colony](https://bliptext.com/articles/colonia-roman), and by the 1st century, it had grown to be the fourth largest city of the empire, with a population in excess of 100,000 people.\nThe [Fossa regia](https://bliptext.com/articles/fossa-regia) was an important boundary in North Africa, originally separating the Roman occupied Carthaginian territory from [Numidia](https://bliptext.com/articles/numidia),**' and may have served as a [cultural boundary](https://bliptext.com/articles/cultural-area) indicating [Romanization](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanization-cultural).'**\nIn the time of the Roman Empire, the province had become populous and prosperous and Carthage was the second-largest Latin-speaking city in the Empire.\nLatin was, however, largely an urban and coastal speech.\n[Carthaginian](https://bliptext.com/articles/carthaginian-people) [Punic](https://bliptext.com/articles/punic-language) continued to be spoken in inland and rural areas as late as the mid-5th century, but also in the cities. It is probable that [Berber languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/berber-languages) were spoken in some areas as well.\nFunerary [stelae](https://bliptext.com/articles/stele) chronicle the Romanization of art and religion in North Africa.**' Notable differences, however, existed in the penetration and survival of the Latin, Punic and [Berber languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/eastern-berber-languages).'** These indicated regional differences: Neo-Punic had a revival in [Tripolitania](https://bliptext.com/articles/tripolitania), around [Hippo Regius](https://bliptext.com/articles/hippo-regius) there is a cluster of Libyan inscriptions, while in the mountainous regions of [Kabylie](https://bliptext.com/articles/kabylie) and [Aures](https://bliptext.com/articles/aur-s), Latin was scarcer, though not absent.\nAfrica was occupied by the [Germanic](https://bliptext.com/articles/germanic-peoples) [Vandal](https://bliptext.com/articles/vandal) tribe for over a century, between 429 and 534 AD, when the province was reconquered by the Byzantine Emperor [Justinian I](https://bliptext.com/articles/justinian-i).\nThe changes that occurred in spoken Latin during that time are unknown.\nLiterary Latin, however, was maintained at a high standard, as seen in the [Latin poetry](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin-poetry) of the African writer [Corippus](https://bliptext.com/articles/corippus).\nThe area around Carthage remained fully Latin-speaking until the arrival of the Arabs.\n# [The Fossa regia (in pink) marked the approximate border between the province of Africa and Numidia. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/East///Numidia.jpg]\n\n# Origins and development\nLike all Romance languages, African Romance descended from [Vulgar Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/vulgar-latin), the non-standard (in contrast to [Classical Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/classical-latin)) form of the Latin language, which was spoken by soldiers and merchants throughout the Roman Empire.\nWith the [expansion of the empire](https://bliptext.com/articles/campaign-history-of-the-roman-military), Vulgar Latin came to be spoken by inhabitants of the various Roman-controlled territories in [North Africa](https://bliptext.com/articles/north-africa).\nLatin and its descendants were spoken in the [Province of Africa](https://bliptext.com/articles/africa-roman-province) following the [Punic Wars](https://bliptext.com/articles/punic-wars), when the Romans conquered the territory.\nSpoken Latin, and Latin [inscriptions](https://bliptext.com/articles/epigraphy) developed while Punic was still being used.**' [Bilingual](https://bliptext.com/articles/multilingualism) [inscriptions](https://bliptext.com/articles/epigraphy) were engraved, some of which reflect the introduction of [Roman institutions](https://bliptext.com/articles/political-institutions-of-ancient-rome) into Africa, using new Punic expressions.'**\nLatin, and then some Romance variant of it, was spoken by generations of speakers, for about fifteen centuries.**' This was demonstrated by African-born speakers of African Romance who continued to create Latin inscriptions until the first half of the 11th century.'** Evidence for a spoken Romance variety which developed locally out of Latin persisted in rural areas of [Tunisia](https://bliptext.com/articles/tunisia) – possibly as late as the last two decades of the 15th century in some sources.\nBy the late 19th century and early 20th century, the possible existence of African Latin was controversial, with debates on the existence of [Africitas](https://bliptext.com/articles/africitas) as a putative African dialect of Latin.\nIn 1882, the [German](https://bliptext.com/articles/germany) scholar Karl Sittl used unconvincing material to adduce features particular to Latin in Africa.**' This unconvincing evidence was attacked by [Wilhelm Kroll](https://bliptext.com/articles/wilhelm-kroll) in 1897, and again by [Madeline D. Brock](https://bliptext.com/articles/dorothy-brock) in 1911.'** Brock went so far as to assert that \"African Latin was free from provincialism\",**' and that African Latin was \"the Latin of an epoch rather than that of a country\".'** This view shifted in recent decades, with modern philologists going so far as to say that African Latin \"was not free from provincialism\"**' and that, given the remoteness of parts of Africa, there were \"probably a plurality of varieties of Latin, rather than a single African Latin\".'** Other researchers believe that features peculiar to African Latin existed, but are \"not to be found where Sittl looked for it\".\nWhile as a language African Romance is extinct, there is some evidence of regional varieties in African Latin that helps reconstruct some of its features.\nSome historical evidence on the [phonetic](https://bliptext.com/articles/phonetics) and [lexical](https://bliptext.com/articles/lexical-semantics) features of the [Afri](https://bliptext.com/articles/afri) were already observed in ancient times.\n[Pliny](https://bliptext.com/articles/pliny-the-elder) observes how walls in Africa and [Spain](https://bliptext.com/articles/hispania) are called formacei, or \"framed walls, because they are made by packing in a frame enclosed between two boards, one on each side\".\n[Nonius Marcellus](https://bliptext.com/articles/nonius-marcellus), a Roman [grammarian](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammarian-greco-roman-world), provides further, if uncertain, evidence regarding vocabulary and possible \"Africanisms\".\nIn the [Historia Augusta](https://bliptext.com/articles/historia-augusta), the North African [Roman Emperor](https://bliptext.com/articles/roman-emperor) [Septimius Severus](https://bliptext.com/articles/septimius-severus) is said to have retained an African accent until old age.\nMore recent analysis focuses on a body of literary texts, being literary pieces written by African and non-African writers.\nThese show the existence of an African pronunciation of Latin, then moving on to a further study of lexical material drawn from sub-literary sources, such as practical texts and [ostraca](https://bliptext.com/articles/ostracon), from multiple African communities, that is military writers, landholders and doctors.\nThe Romance philologist [James Noel Adams](https://bliptext.com/articles/james-noel-adams) lists a number of possible Africanisms found in this wider Latin literary corpus.\nOnly two refer to constructions found in Sittl, with the other examples deriving from medical texts, various ostraca and other non-traditional sources.\nTwo sorts of regional features can be observed.\nThe first are [loanwords](https://bliptext.com/articles/loanword) from a substrate language, such is the case with [Britain](https://bliptext.com/articles/british-latin).\nIn African Latin, this substrate was Punic.\nThe African dialect included words such as ginga for \"[henbane](https://bliptext.com/articles/hyoscyamus-niger)\", boba for \"[mallow](https://bliptext.com/articles/common-mallow),\" girba for \"[mortar](https://bliptext.com/articles/mortar-and-pestle)\" and gelela for the inner flesh of a [gourd](https://bliptext.com/articles/gourd). The second refers to use of Latin words with particular meanings not found elsewhere, or in limited contexts.\nOf particular note is the African Romance use of the word rostrum for \"mouth\" instead of the original meaning in Latin, which is \"beak\", and baiae for \"baths\" being a late Latin and particularly African generalisation from the place-name [Baiae](https://bliptext.com/articles/baiae).\nPullus meaning \"cock\" or \"[rooster](https://bliptext.com/articles/rooster)\", was probably borrowed by Berber dialects from African Romance, for use instead of the Latin gallus. The originally abstract word dulcor is seen applied as a probable medical African specialisation relating to [sweet wine](https://bliptext.com/articles/sweetness-of-wine) instead of the Latin passum or mustum. The Latin for [grape](https://bliptext.com/articles/grape), traditionally indeterminate (acinis), male (acinus) or [neuter](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-gender) (acinum), in various African Latin sources changes to the feminine acina.\nOther examples include the use of pala as a metaphor for the [shoulder blade](https://bliptext.com/articles/scapula); centenarium, which only occurs in the [Albertini Tablets](https://bliptext.com/articles/tablettes-albertini) and may have meant \"granary\"; and [infantilisms](https://bliptext.com/articles/infantile-speech) such as dida, which apparently meant \"breast/nipple\" or \"[wet nurse](https://bliptext.com/articles/wet-nurse)\".\nA few African Latin loanwords from Punic, such as matta (\"mat made of rushes\", from which derives English \"mat\") and Berber, such as buda (\"cattail\") also spread into general Latin usage, the latter even displacing native Latin ulva.\nBoth Africans, such as [Augustine of Hippo](https://bliptext.com/articles/augustine-of-hippo) and the grammarian [Pompeius](https://bliptext.com/articles/pompeius), as well as non-Africans, such as [Consentius](https://bliptext.com/articles/consentius) and [Jerome](https://bliptext.com/articles/jerome), wrote on African features, some in very specific terms.\nIndeed in his De Ordine, dated to late 386, Augustine remarks how he was still criticised by the [Italians](https://bliptext.com/articles/italians) for his [pronunciation](https://bliptext.com/articles/pronunciation), while he himself often found fault with theirs. While modern scholars may express doubts on the interpretation or accuracy of some of these writings, they contend that African Latin must have been distinctive enough to inspire so much discussion.\n# [An inscription from one of the gates to the theatre at Leptis Magna, indicating that Latin and Punic co-existed in Northern Africa for centuries. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Inscription///Theatre///Leptis///Magna///Libya.JPG]\n# [Fifth century AD inscription at the Leptis Magna forum, Libya. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Forum///Leptis///Magna///05.JPG]\n\n# Extinction as a vernacular\nPrior to the [Arab conquest](https://bliptext.com/articles/muslim-conquest-of-the-maghreb) in 696–705 AD, a Romance language was probably spoken alongside [Berber languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/berber-languages) in the region.\nLoanwords from Northwest African Romance to Berber are attested, usually in the [accusative](https://bliptext.com/articles/accusative) form: examples include atmun (\"plough-beam\") from temonem.\nFollowing the conquest, it becomes difficult to trace the fate of African Romance.\nThe Umayyad administration did at first utilize the local Latin language in coinage from Carthage and [Kairouan](https://bliptext.com/articles/kairouan) in the early 7th century, displaying Latin inscriptions of Islamic phrases such as D[e]us tu[us] D[e]us et a[li]us non e[st] (\"God is your God and there is no other\"), a variation of the [shahada](https://bliptext.com/articles/shahada), or Muslim declaration of faith.\nConant suggests that African Romance vernacular could have facillitated diplomatic exchange between [Charlemagne](https://bliptext.com/articles/charlemagne) and the [Aghlabid](https://bliptext.com/articles/aghlabid) emirate, as the Frankish-given name for the [Aghlabid](https://bliptext.com/articles/aghlabid) capital is Fossatum (Latin for fortifications) which is reflected in the name today Fusātū.\nAfrican Latin was soon replaced by Arabic as the primary [administrative language](https://bliptext.com/articles/administrative-language), but it existed at least until the arrival of the [Banu Hilal](https://bliptext.com/articles/banu-hilal) Arabs in the 11th century and probably until the beginning of the 14th century.\nIt was various parts of the littoral of Africa into the 12th century, exerting a significant influence on [Northwest African Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/maghrebi-arabic), particularly the language of northwestern [Morocco](https://bliptext.com/articles/morocco).\nAmongst the Berbers of Ifriqiya, African Romance was linked to Christianity, which survived in North Africa (outside of Egypt) until the 14th century.\nChristian cemeteries excavated in Kairouan dating from 945-1046 and in Áin Zára and En Ngila in Tripolitania from before the 10th century contain Latin inscriptions demonstrating continued use of written liturgical Latin centuries into Islamic rule; graves with Christian names such as Peter, John, Maria, Irene, Isidore, Speratus, Boniface and Faustinus contain common phrases such as \"requiem aeternam det tibi Dominus et lux perpetua luceat tibi (“May the Lord give you eternal rest and everlasting light shine upon you”) or Deus Sabaoth from the [Sanctus hymn](https://bliptext.com/articles/sanctus). Another [example](https://bliptext.com/articles/undefined) attests to the dual usage of the Christian and the [Hijri](https://bliptext.com/articles/hijri-year) calendars, reading that the deceased died in [Anno Domini](https://bliptext.com/articles/anno-domini) 1007 or 397 annorum infidelium (\"Year of the infidels\".) There is also a [Vetus Latina](https://bliptext.com/articles/vetus-latina) [Psalter](https://bliptext.com/articles/psalter) in [Saint Catherine's Monastery](https://bliptext.com/articles/saint-catherine-s-monastery) dated to 1230, which has long been attributed to African origin due to its usage of African text and calendar of saints.\nThe Psalter notably contains spellings consistent with Vulgar Latin/African Romance features ([see below](https://bliptext.com/articles/african-romance)), such as prothetic i insertion, repeated betacism in writing b for v and substituting second declension endings to undeclinable Semitic biblical names.\nWritten Latin continued to be the language of correspondence between African bishops and the Papacy up till the final communication between [Pope Gregory VII](https://bliptext.com/articles/pope-gregory-vii) and the imprisoned archbishop of Carthage, [Cyriacus](https://bliptext.com/articles/archdiocese-of-carthage) in the 11th century.\nSpoken Latin or Romance is attested in [Gabès](https://bliptext.com/articles/gab-s) by [Ibn Khordadbeh](https://bliptext.com/articles/ibn-khordadbeh); in [Béja](https://bliptext.com/articles/b-ja), [Biskra](https://bliptext.com/articles/biskra), [Tlemcen](https://bliptext.com/articles/tlemcen), and [Niffis](https://bliptext.com/articles/niffis) by [al-Bakri](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-bakri); and in [Gafsa](https://bliptext.com/articles/gafsa) and [Monastir](https://bliptext.com/articles/monastir-tunisia) by [al-Idrisi](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-idrisi), who observes that the people in [Gafsa](https://bliptext.com/articles/gafsa) \"are Berberised, and most of them speak the African Latin tongue.\"\nIn the passage, Al-Idrisi mentions that \"there is a fountain called \", which could derive from therma (\"hot bath\".) There is also a possible reference to spoken Latin or African Romance in the 11th century, when the [Rustamid](https://bliptext.com/articles/rustamid-dynasty) governor Abu Ubayda Abd al-Hamid al-Jannawni was said to have sworn his oath of office in Arabic, Berber and in an unspecified \"town language\", which might be interpreted as a Romance variety; in the oath, the Arabic-rendered phrase bar diyyu could represent some variation of Latin per Deu(m) (\"by God\".)\nIn their quest to conquer the [Kingdom of Africa](https://bliptext.com/articles/kingdom-of-africa) in the 12th century, the [Normans](https://bliptext.com/articles/normans) were aided by the remaining Christian population of Tunisia, who some linguists, among them Vermondo Brugnatelli, argue had been speaking a Romance language for centuries.\nThe final attestations of African Romance come from the Renaissance period.\nThe 15th century Italian humanist Paolo Pompilio makes the most significant remarks on the language and its features, reporting that a Catalan merchant named Riaria who had lived in North Africa for thirty years told him that the villagers in the [Aurès](https://bliptext.com/articles/aur-s) mountain region \"speak an almost intact Latin and, when Latin words are corrupted, then they pass to the sound and habits of the [Sardinian language](https://bliptext.com/articles/sardinian-language)\".\nThe 16th century geographer and diplomat [Leo Africanus](https://bliptext.com/articles/leo-africanus), who was born into a Muslim family in [Granada](https://bliptext.com/articles/granada) and fled the [Reconquista](https://bliptext.com/articles/reconquista) to Morocco, also says that the North Africans retained their own language after the Islamic conquest which he calls \"Italian\", which must refer to Romance.\nA statement by [Mawlā Aḥmad](https://bliptext.com/articles/mawl-a-mad) is sometimes interpreted as implying the survival of a Christian community in [Tozeur](https://bliptext.com/articles/tozeur) into the eighteenth century, but this is unlikely; Prevost estimates that Christianity disappeared around the middle of the thirteenth century in southern Tunisia.\n# [The Exarchate of Africa within the Byzantine Empire after the reconquest of Justinian. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Exarchate-Africa.png]\n# [Map highlighting in black the \"Romania submersa\", being those Roman, or formerly Roman regions where forms of neo-Latin disappeared after some centuries, including Northern Africa. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Western///and///Eastern///Romania.PNG]\n\n# Related languages\n\n## The Sardinian hypothesis\nThe most prominent theory for the classification of African Romance (at least for the interior province of [Africa Proconsularis](https://bliptext.com/articles/africa-proconsularis)) is that it belonged to a shared subgroup along with [Sardinian](https://bliptext.com/articles/sardinian-language), called [Southern Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/southern-romance) by some linguists.\nThis branch of Romance, of which Sardinian would today be the only surviving member, could have also been spoken in the medieval period in [Corsica](https://bliptext.com/articles/corsica) prior to the island's Tuscanization, southern [Basilicata](https://bliptext.com/articles/basilicata) (eastern region of the [Lausberg area](https://bliptext.com/articles/lausberg-area)) and perhaps other regions in southern Italy, [Sicily](https://bliptext.com/articles/sicily) and possibly even [Malta](https://bliptext.com/articles/malta).\nA potential linguistic relationship between Sardinia and North Africa could have been built up as a result of the two regions' long pre-Roman cultural ties starting from the 8th-7th centuries BC, when the island fell under the [Carthaginian](https://bliptext.com/articles/ancient-carthage) sphere of influence.\nThis resulted in the [Punic language](https://bliptext.com/articles/punic-language) being spoken in Sardinia up to the 3rd–4th centuries AD, and several Punic loan-words survive into modern Sardinian.\n[Cicero](https://bliptext.com/articles/cicero) also mocks Sardinia's perceived Carthaginian and African cultural identity as the source of its inferiority and disloyalty to Rome. \"Fallacissimum genus esse Phoenicum omnia monumenta vetustatis atque omnes historiae nobis prodiderunt. ab his orti Poeni multis Carthaginiensium rebellionibus, multis violatis fractisque foederibus nihil se degenerasse docuerunt. A Poenis admixto Afrorum genere Sardi non deducti in Sardiniam atque ibi constituti, sed amandati et repudiati coloni. [...] Neque ego, cum de vitiis gentis loquor, neminem excipio; sed a me est de universo genere dicendum, in quo fortasse aliqui suis moribus et humanitate stirpis ipsius et gentis vitia vicerunt. magnam quidem esse partem sine fide, sine societate et coniunctione nominis nostri res ipsa declarat. quae est enim praeter Sardiniam provincia quae nullam habeat amicam populo Romano ac liberam civitatem?\nAfrica ipsa parens illa Sardiniae, quae plurima et acerbissima cum maioribus nostris bella gessit.\" (\"All the monuments of the ancients and all histories have handed down to us the tradition that the nation of the Phoenicians is the most treacherous of all nations. The Poeni, who are descended from them, have proved by many rebellions of the Carthaginians, and very many broken and violated treaties, that they have in no respect degenerated from them. The Sardinians, who are sprung from the Poeni, with an admixture of African blood, were not led into Sardinia as colonists and established there, but are rather a tribe who were draughted off, and put there to get rid of them. Nor indeed, when I speak of the vices of the nation, do I except no one. But I am forced to speak generally of the entire race; in which, perhaps, some individuals by their own civilized habits and natural humanity have got the better of the vices of their family and nation.\nThat the greater part of the nation is destitute of faith, destitute of any community and connection with our name, the facts themselves plainly show.\nFor what province is there besides Sardinia which has not one city in it on friendly terms with the Roman people, not one free city?\nAfrica itself is the parent of Sardinia, which has waged many most bitter wars against our ancestors.\" Translation by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1856, ) The affinity between the two regions persisted after the collapse of the [Western Roman Empire](https://bliptext.com/articles/western-roman-empire) under shared governance by the [Vandal Kingdom](https://bliptext.com/articles/vandal-kingdom) and then the Byzantine [Exarchate of Africa](https://bliptext.com/articles/exarchate-of-africa). Pinelli believes that the Vandal presence had \"estranged Sardinia from Europe, linking its own destiny to Africa's territorial expanse\" in a bond that was to strengthen further \"under Byzantine rule, not only because the Roman Empire included the island in the African Exarchate, but also because it developed from there, albeit indirectly, its ethnic community, causing it to acquire many of the African characteristics\".\nThe spoken variety of African Romance was perceived to be similar to [Sardinia](https://bliptext.com/articles/sardinia)n as reported in the above-cited passage by Paolo Pompilio – supporting hypotheses that there were parallelisms between developments of Latin in Africa and [Sardinia](https://bliptext.com/articles/sardinia).\nAlthough this testimony comes from a secondhand source, the Catalan merchant Riaria, these observations are reliable since Sardinia was under Catalan rule by the [Crown of Aragon](https://bliptext.com/articles/crown-of-aragon), so the merchant could have had the opportunity to trade in both regions.\n[Augustine of Hippo](https://bliptext.com/articles/augustine-of-hippo) writes that \"African ears have no quick perception of the shortness or length of [Latin] vowels\".\nThis also describes the evolution of [vowels in the Sardinian language](https://bliptext.com/articles/sardinian-phonology).\nSardinian has only five vowels, and no diphthongs; unlike the other surviving [Romance languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages), the five long vowel pairs of [Classical Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin), ā, ē, ī, ō, ū (phonetically [aː, eː, iː, oː, uː]), merged with their corresponding short vowel counterparts ă, ĕ, ĭ, ŏ, ŭ [a, ɛ, ɪ, ɔ, ʊ] into five single vowels with no length distinction: /a, ɛ, i, ɔ, u/.\nIn the [Italo-Western Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/italo-western-romance) varieties, short ǐ, ŭ [ɪ, ʊ] merged with long ē, ō [e(ː), o(ː)] instead of with long ī, ū [i(ː), u(ː)] as in Sardinian, which typically resulted in a seven vowel system, for example /a, ɛ, e, i, ɔ, o, u/ in [Italian](https://bliptext.com/articles/italian-phonology).\nAdams theorises that similarities in some vocabulary, such as pala (\"shoulderblade\") and acina (\"grape\") across Sardinian and African Romance, or spanu in Sardinian and spanus (\"light red\") in African Romance, may be evidence that some vocabulary was shared between Sardinia and Africa.\nA further theory suggests that the Sardinian word for \"Friday\", cenàpura or chenàpura (literally \"pure dinner\", in reference to parasceve, or Friday preparation for the [Sabbath](https://bliptext.com/articles/sabbath)), may have been brought to Sardinia by [North African Jews](https://bliptext.com/articles/maghrebi-jews).\nThe term cena pura is used by Augustine, although there is no evidence that its meaning in Africa extended beyond the Jewish religious context to simply refer to the day of Friday.\nIt is further speculated that the Sardinian word for the month of June, lámpadas (\"lamps\"), could have a connection to African usage due to references by [Fulgentius](https://bliptext.com/articles/fabius-planciades-fulgentius) and in a work on the [Nativity of John the Baptist](https://bliptext.com/articles/nativity-of-john-the-baptist) to a lampadarum dies (\"day of the lamps\") during the harvest in June.\nThere is also possible evidence of shared Sardinian and African Latin vocabulary in that Latin cartallus (\"basket\") results in the unique Sardinian word iscarteddu and [Maghrebi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/maghrebi-arabic) gertella.\nAdditionally, it is notable that Sardinian is the only Romance language in which the name for the [Milky Way](https://bliptext.com/articles/milky-way), sa (b)ía de sa bálla / báza, meaning \"the Way of Straw\", also occurs in Berber languages, hinting at a possible African Romance connection.\n[Blasco Ferrer](https://bliptext.com/articles/eduardo-blasco-ferrer) suggests that the Latin demonstrative ipse/-a, from which derive both the Sardinian definite article su/sa as well as the [subject personal pronouns](https://bliptext.com/articles/subject-personal-pronoun) isse/-a, could have syncretized with the Berber feminine prefix ta in African Latin.\nApart from Sardinian, the only other Romance varieties which take their article from ipse/-a (instead of ille/-a) are the Catalan dialects of the [Balearic islands and certain areas of Girona, the Vall de Gallerina and tàrbena](https://bliptext.com/articles/ca-article-salat), Provençal and medieval Gascon.\nBlasco Ferrer proposes that usage of ipse/-a was preferred over ille/-a in Africa under southern Italian influence, as observed in the 2nd century Act of the [Scillitan Martyrs](https://bliptext.com/articles/scillitan-martyrs) (Passio Scillitanorum) which substitutes ipse/-a for ille/-a.\nThis dialectal form then could have developed into *tsa, which is attested in [Old Catalan](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-catalan) documents like the [Homilies d'Organyà](https://bliptext.com/articles/homilies-d-organy) (e.g. za paraula: \"the words\"), and traversed the Mediterranean from Africa to Sardinia, the Balearics and southern Gaul.\nThe justification for positing Berber ta as possibly derivative of ipsa is that its allophonic pronunciation is [θa], which is often the phonetic outcome in Berber of [tsa].\nHowever, the connection between ipsa and ta remains highly speculative and without direct evidence.\n[Muhammad al-Idrisi](https://bliptext.com/articles/muhammad-al-idrisi) additionally observes cultural similarities between [Sardinians](https://bliptext.com/articles/sardinian-people) and Roman Africans, saying that \"the [Sardinians](https://bliptext.com/articles/sardinian-people) are ethnically Roman Africans, live like the [Berbers](https://bliptext.com/articles/berbers), shun any other nation of [Rûm](https://bliptext.com/articles/r-m); these people are courageous and valiant, that never part with their weapons.\"\n# [The condaghe of Saint Peter of Silki (1065-1180), one of the first documents written in Sardinian. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/Condaghe///Silki.png]\n# [Vowel changes from Latin to Sardinian, theorized to have been shared with African Romance. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/Sardinian///vowels.png]\n\n## Other theories: Eastern Romance and Hispano-Romance\nMore recent research could point towards an alternate development for the Latin spoken in the province of [Mauretania](https://bliptext.com/articles/mauretania) in western North Africa.\nAlthough agreeing with previous studies that the Late Latin of the interior province of [Africa Proconsularis](https://bliptext.com/articles/africa-proconsularis) certainly displayed Sardinian vocalism, Adamik argues based on inscriptional evidence that the vowel system was not uniform across the entirety of the North African coast, and there is some indication that the Latin variety of [Mauretania Caesariensis](https://bliptext.com/articles/mauretania-caesariensis) was possibly changing in the direction of the asymmetric six-vowel system found in [Eastern Romance languages such as Romanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/history-of-the-romanian-language): /a, ɛ, e, i, o, u/.\nIn Eastern Romance, on the front vowel axis short ǐ [ɪ] merged with long ē [e(ː)] as /e/ while keeping short ĕ /ɛ/ as a separate phoneme (as in Italo-Western Romance), and on the back vowel axis short ŭ [ʊ] merged with long ū [u(ː)], while short ŏ [ɔ] merged with long ō [o(ː)] as /o/ (similar to in Sardinian.)\nDue to the vast size of Roman territory in Africa, it is indeed plausible (if not likely) based on the analysis above that multiple distinct Romance languages had evolved there from Latin, perhaps separating along provincial lines between a Mauretanian Romance variety spoken in the western regions and an \"Afro-Sardinian\" or \"Afro-Insular\" Romance group spoken in central North Africa and the Mediterranean islands.\nSome scholars also theorise that many of the [North African invaders of Hispania](https://bliptext.com/articles/umayyad-conquest-of-hispania) in the [Early Middle Ages](https://bliptext.com/articles/early-middle-ages) spoke some form of African Romance, with \"phonetic, [morphosyntactic](https://bliptext.com/articles/morphology-linguistics), lexical and [semantic](https://bliptext.com/articles/semantics) data\" from African Romance appearing to have contributed in the development of [Ibero-Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/iberian-romance-languages).\" It is suggested that African Latin [betacism](https://bliptext.com/articles/betacism) may have pushed the phonological development of [Ibero-Romance](https://bliptext.com/articles/iberian-romance-languages) varieties in favor of the now characteristic Spanish b/v merger as well as influencing the lengthening of stressed short vowels (after the loss of vowel length distinction) evidenced in lack of diphthongization of short e/o in certain words (such as teneo > tengo (\"I have\"), pectus > pecho (\"chest\"), mons > monte (\"mountain\".) In the area of vocabulary, it is possible that the meaning of rostrum (originally \"bird beak\") may have changed to mean \"face\" (of humans or animals), as in Spanish rostro, under the influence of African usage, and the African Latin-exclusive word centenarium (\"granary\") may have yielded the names of two towns in [Huesca](https://bliptext.com/articles/huesca) called Centenero.\nAdamik also finds evidence for dialectological similarity between [Hispania](https://bliptext.com/articles/hispania) and Africa based on rates of errors in the case system, a relation which could have increased from the 4th-6th centuries AD but was disrupted by the Islamic invasion.\n# [Map showing the provincial division of Roman North Africa: Mauretania, Numidia and Africa | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/Africaseptentrionalis-sb.jpg]\n# [Vowel changes from Latin to Romanian, which one scholar suggests as a possible path of development for the Latin of Mauretania. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/Development///of///vowels///from///Latin///to///Romanian.png]\n\n## Berber and Maghrebi Arabic\nScholars including Brugnatelli and Kossmann have identified at least 40 words in various [Berber](https://bliptext.com/articles/berber-languages) dialects which are certain to have been loans from Latin or African Romance.\nFor example, in [Ghadames](https://bliptext.com/articles/ghadam-s-language) the word \"anǧalus\" (, أندجالوس) refers to a spiritual entity, clearly using a word from the Latin \"angel\". A complete list of Latin/Romance loanwords is provided below under the section on Berber vocabulary.\nSome impacts of African Romance on [Maghrebi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/maghrebi-arabic) and [Maltese](https://bliptext.com/articles/maltese-language) are theorised.' For example, in [calendar](https://bliptext.com/articles/calendar) [month](https://bliptext.com/articles/month) names, the word furar \"February\" is only found in the Maghreb and in the [Maltese](https://bliptext.com/articles/maltese-language) language – proving the word's ancient origins.' The region also has a form of another Latin named [month](https://bliptext.com/articles/month) in awi/ussu < augustus.**' This word does not appear to be a loan word through Arabic, and may have been taken over directly from Late Latin or African Romance.'** Scholars theorise that a Latin-based system provided forms such as awi/ussu and furar, with the system then mediating Latin/Romance names through Arabic for some [month](https://bliptext.com/articles/month) names during the Islamic period.' The same situation exists for [Maltese](https://bliptext.com/articles/maltese-language) which mediated words from [Italian](https://bliptext.com/articles/italian-language), and retains both non-[Italian](https://bliptext.com/articles/italian-language) forms such as awissu/awwissu and frar, and [Italian](https://bliptext.com/articles/italian-language) forms such as april.' Lameen Souag likewise compares several [Maltese](https://bliptext.com/articles/maltese-language) lexical items with [Maghrebi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/maghrebi-arabic) forms to show that these words were borrowed directly from African Latin, rather than [Italian](https://bliptext.com/articles/italian-language) or Sicilian.\nBumerin (\"seal\"), coming from Latin bos marinus (\"sea cow\"), matches [Dellys](https://bliptext.com/articles/dellys) bū-mnīr and Moroccan bū-mrīn.\nIn the case of Maltese berdlieqa (\"purslane\") from Latin portulaca, equivalent Arabic words are found throughout North Africa and former [al-Andalus](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-andalus), including bǝrdlāqa in Dellys, bardilāqaš in [Andalusi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/andalusi-arabic) and burṭlāg in the desert regions of [El Oued](https://bliptext.com/articles/el-oued).\nAs mentioned above, the Maghrebi Arabic word gertella (\"basket\"), from Latin cartallus, could also hint at a promising African Romance-Sardinian lexical connection with the unique Sardinian word iscarteddu.\nLastly, in the area of grammar, Heath has suggested that the archaic [Moroccan Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/moroccan-arabic) genitive particle d could have derived from Latin de, as in Romance languages, although this structure is absent from Maltese and other Maghrebi Arabic varieties, making the theory controversial.\n\n# Characteristics\nStarting from African Romance's similarity with Sardinian, scholars theorise that the similarity may be pinned down to specific phonological properties.**' Sardinian lacks [palatization](https://bliptext.com/articles/palatalization-sound-change) of [velar stops](https://bliptext.com/articles/velar-stop) before front vowels, and features the pairwise merger of short and long non-low vowels.'** Evidence is found that both [isoglosses](https://bliptext.com/articles/isogloss) were present in African Latin (at least in the central province of Africa Proconsularis):\n# [The earliest known portrait of Saint Augustine in a 6th-century fresco, Lateran, Rome. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/Augustine///Lateran.jpg]\n\n## Berber vocabulary\nThe Polish Arabist Tadeusz Lewicki tried to reconstruct some sections of this language based on 85 lemmas mainly derived from Northwest African [toponyms](https://bliptext.com/articles/toponymy) and [anthroponyms](https://bliptext.com/articles/anthroponymy) found in medieval sources. Due to the historical presence in the region of Classical Latin, modern Romance languages, as well as the influence of the [Mediterranean Lingua Franca](https://bliptext.com/articles/mediterranean-lingua-franca) (that has Romance vocabulary) it is difficult to differentiate the precise origin of words in [Berber languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/berber-languages) and in the varieties of [Maghrebi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/maghrebi-arabic).\nThe studies are also difficult and often highly conjectural.\nDue to the large size of the North African territory, it is highly probable that not one but several varieties of African Romance existed, much like the wide variety of Romance languages in Europe.**' Moroever, other Romance languages spoken in Northwest Africa before the [European colonization](https://bliptext.com/articles/scramble-for-africa) were the [Mediterranean Lingua Franca](https://bliptext.com/articles/mediterranean-lingua-franca),'** a [pidgin](https://bliptext.com/articles/pidgin) with Arabic and Romance influences, and [Judaeo-Spanish](https://bliptext.com/articles/judaeo-spanish), a dialect of Spanish brought by [Sephardi Jews](https://bliptext.com/articles/sephardi-jews). Scholars are uncertain or disagree on the Latin origin of some of the words presented in the list, which may be attributed alternatively to Berber language internal etymology.\nScholars believe that there is a great number of Berber words, existing in various dialects, which are theorised to derive from late Latin or African Romance, such as the vocabulary in the following list.\nIt might be possible to reconstruct a chronology of which loans entered Berber languages in the Classical Latin period versus in Late Latin/Proto-Romance based on features; for example, certain forms such as afullus (from pullus, \"chicken\") or asnus (< asinus, \"donkey\") preserve the Classical Latin nominative ending -us, whereas other words like urṭu (< hortus, \"garden\") or muṛu (< murus, \"wall\") have lost final -s (matching parallel developments in Romance, perhaps in deriving from the accusative form after the loss of final -m.) Forms such as tayda (< taeda, \"pinewood\"), which seem to preserve the Latin diphthong ae, might also be interpreted as archaic highly conservative loans from the Roman Imperial period or earlier.\nHowever, the potential chronological distinction based on word endings is inconsistent; the form qaṭṭus (from cattus, \"cat\") preserves final -s, but cattus is only attested in Late Latin, when one would expect final -s to have been dropped.\nFurther, the -u endings may instead simply derive from accusative forms which had lost final -m; as a comparison, words drawn from 3rd declension nouns may vary between nominative-based forms like falku < falco (\"falcon\"), and accusative/oblique-case forms like atmun < temo (Acc: temonem, \"pole\", c.f. Italian timone) or amerkidu (\"divine recompense\") < merces (Acc: mercedem, \"pay/wages\", c.f. Italiian mercede.)\nNevertheless, when undisputed Latin-derived Berber words are compared with corresponding terms in Italian, Sardinian, Corsican, Sicilian and Maltese, shared phonological outcomes with Sardinian (and to some extent Corsican) seem apparent.\nFor evidence of the merger of Latin short ǐ, ŭ [ɪ, ʊ] with /i, u/ instead of /e, o/, compare how Latin pirus/a (\"pear tree/pear\") results in Berber ifires and Sardinian pira vs. Italian pero, and Latin pullus (\"chicken\") becomes Berber afullus and Sardinian puddu vs. Italian pollo.\nFor the lack of palatalization of velar stops, notice how Latin merces (\"pay/wages\") results in Berber amerkidu and Sardinian merchede vs. Italian mercede, and Latin cicer (\"chickpea\") becomes Berber ikiker and Sardinian chìghere vs. Italian cece.\nFor the other month names, see [Berber calendar](https://bliptext.com/articles/berber-calendar).\n\n# Citations\n\n## Sources\n\n### Primary sources\n\n### Secondary sources","revisionCount":0},"hasMore":false,"nextCursor":null}

History