North Africa used to speak a Latin language. This is super interesting. Today, North Africa
essentially speaks three languages, Arabic, Berber, or Twaric. Each of these have different dialects
depending on where you are. Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, even Egypt. Yet, thousands of
years ago, they spoke another one. At least some of them, it was mostly concentrated in what is now
Tunisia and Algeria plus a little bit of Western Libya their language was then African Romance or
African Latin. One that you would most likely understand today if you speak Portuguese, Spanish
Italian, even Romanian or French because those are all the Romance language family coming from
old Latin. Now if you did the math correctly you can probably figure out why. They spoke it a few
thousand years ago, around the time when North Africa was ruled by the Roman Empire
Yet while most areas of the empire kept Latin and developed their own Romance languages
that we know today, after the Roman Empire fell, some didn't. I even covered one before in a previous video, Dalmatian, but there were also other ones
like British Latin, Pannonian, Mozarabic, Moselle, Zarpathic. And here in North Africa we have another example
Maybe a video covering all of them together would be interesting as well
These regions are known collectively as Romania Submersa but let's focus on North Africa
first in this one. Because I want to take a little bit of a deep dive into this really interesting story and
try to understand. First what the background of it was. the historical context behind the creation, implementation and development of this language
Then understand what African Romance was like and where plus how it was spoken exactly. And finally
what happened to it. We know that it became extinct but in which way and why
Now, there's three ways that we can refer to this language. African Romance, African Latin or Afro Romance, which sounds more like a strange music type
The names tell us one thing directly. It was a Latin or Romance language spoken here in North Africa, but mostly if not only
in the areas that were provinces of the Roman Empire. It includes parts of modern Tunisia, Libya and Algeria for the most part
Actually a pretty fun fact, when the Romans first arrived in North Africa, in what is
now Tunisia, they actually called their province there Africa, it just referred to this area
at the time. It came to be in 146 BC following the defeat of Carthage in the third Punic War
The city of Carthage was destroyed and rebuilt as a Roman colony
This map shows a pink line called the Fossa Regia, essentially the border of the initial Roman occupied region
separating it from the rest of Numidia. And it shows us precisely where this North African Latin was first implemented
from where it developed and from where it expanded and grew. Eventually, the Romans themselves expanded and came to rule all of the northern coast
of the continent, dividing it into four provinces. From west to east, Mauritania, super far from what is Mauritania the country today
this was Morocco and northern Algeria, then Africa which was Tunisia and part of western
Libya, Syrenaica, the rest of Libya, and Egyptus. While Roman Latin spread further to most of Africa and part of Mauritania, it wasn't
widely spread all over the north part of the continent, and they kept speaking many of the local language
namely even some Berber dialects that belong to the native of the regions and which last until today the true original language of the region They predate Arabic which we will understand later arrived much much later Now at the time
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much to them for sponsoring this video and now let's get back to it. So now that we understand
the context, how it arrived, how it came to be, what was the language actually like
Like all Romance languages, African Romance descended from Vulgar Latin, the non-standard
in contrast to Classical Latin. It was spoken by soldiers and merchants throughout the Roman Empire
With the expansion of the empire, Vulgar Latin came to be spoken by inhabitants of the various
Roman controlled territories in North Africa. It's not hard to imagine, the soldiers arrive and as they conquer the region, they settle there
They begin interacting with the locals and the latter start to learn the language to
be able to answer back, maybe sell their goods. Soon, a Roman soldier marries a local woman and their children learn Latin mixed with
some local words, creating a new variant of the language. This process was certainly aided by merchants from other parts of the Empire too that came
to this region to take advantage of a new market that had opened up. And as the empire took over
the territory from a government point of view, it makes sense that they brought their administrative
language with them and so all state affairs started being handled in Latin. Imagine you're a Berber
store owner in Carthage and you need some type of license, you're gonna have to learn at least a
little bit of Latin to be able to deal with the bureaucracy of it. These little things all
contributed to the creation of the Romance African language, its establishment and expansion
Although we have evidence that the Romans weren't super strict with this, an inscription from one
of the gates to the theater at Leptis Magna shows Latin and Punic languages used at the same time
proving that they coexisted as languages for centuries. Punic was a type of Phoenician
spoken in the region by the Carthaginians before Roman conquest. Maybe if they had been stricter
and really eradicated all these other old languages from use. The region would still speak a Romance language up to today
but as we'll see further ahead, I don't think that would have been the case anyway. But still, the language lasted a long time
A 2015 study references that it was spoken for at least 15 centuries
That's 1,500 years. Some rural areas of Tunisia possibly as late as the ending of the 15th century itself
We don't really know what it sounded like, as you can imagine there were no recorders back then
and so we can kind of only guess its phonetical and lexical features
But we know that at least it sounded different than regular Latin because in this Historia Augusta document the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus who came from North Africa is said to have retained his African accent until old age So we know that at least it sounded
different from regular Latin. Augustino Vipo, a North African Roman philosopher, also wrote in his
work De Ordine from 386 AD how he was criticized by the Italians for his pronunciation and ysis
of other documents like military ledgers, registers of landowners, and notes from doctors
show that African Romans had slightly different ways of writing too. They call them Africanisms
and many of these have been things that they drew from the local existing languages, like
loanwords from Punic. African Latin included words such as ginga for henbane, or boba for mallow
Girba for mortar and Gelilla for the inner flesh of a gourd
They also used original Latin words but with different meanings because of this different context
For instance, African Romans used rostrum for mouth while traditional Latin used it for beak
It's not super different but there is a difference. They used pulus for rooster too instead of the Latin galus
And so here we are. The Romans arrived, they brought their language with them
the language mixed with the local ones and ended up becoming a new variant of it
But then what happened to the language after the Romans left, or rather after the empire collapsed
Well, as we mentioned earlier, it stuck around for quite a while. The region where African Latin was most prevalent around Tunisia was conquered by the Vandals in 435
The kingdom of the Vandals and Alans, known as Barbarians, was established after around 80,000 soldiers sailed from Hispania to North Africa
They captured Carthage and asserted their rule over the region, expanding further into Mauritania, the Balearic Islands, even Corsica and Sardinia at some point
But while they spoke the Vandalic or Atlantic language among themselves, they didn't implement it in general
The ruling elite spoke it, but the masses were left to speak whatever they wished
and so African Latin survived. And in fact, it survived long enough
to make it to the point where they were ruled by Romans again
Kind of. In 534 AD, Belisarius, a Byzantine commander under Justinian I
conquered the regions again, annexing them to what was technically still the Eastern Roman Empire
It became known as the Praetorian Prefecture of Africa And this reinforced the usage of African Latin again, even though the Eastern Empire mostly relied on Greek as its language at this point
The administrative name changed to the Exorcate of Africa in 591, and it remained under Byzantine rule until the end of the 7th century
But then, the Arabs arrived. And so we arrive to the point where we can answer the third question that I had at the start of the video
which is what happened to this language and why did it become extinct
In around 647, the Umayyad Caliphate forces arrived. This caliphate had emerged in the peninsula of Arabia
it expanded into Egypt, Sironaika, and now it arrived in Libya and Tunisia
As they took over the territory, they of course brought their Arabic language with them
Although at first it seems they weren't super eager to implement it for the common folk
Maybe they wanted to be like the Vandals and have their language be one of only the ruling elite
And so they kept Latin as an administrative language at first. This is evidenced by the fact that the first coins in the region were inscribed in Latin
Some even depict Islamic phrases such as God is your God and there is no other in the Latin language
a variation of the Muslim declaration of faith. Some say they kept Latin to facilitate diplomacy, namely with Charlemagne
king of the Franks to the north, but who knows. The truth is that soon enough they replaced Latin with Arabic as the primary administrative language
And primary is key here because African Latin kept being partially used at a legal level and more importantly spoken on a day basis by the population In the 11th century when a local Arabic governor Abu Ubaidah Abd al al
was sworn into office, he is said to have proclaimed his oath in Arabic, Berber
and what they described as an unspecified town language, which I think we can interpret as a Roman's Latin variety
And by the common people, it was even more used, particularly in the coastal regions
And what's interesting is that this North African Romance then came to influence the
North African Arabic variant as well. Regardless it makes sense that it would slowly fade out
The grandson of that Punic store owner that was forced to learn Latin to get his license
from the Romans now had to learn Arabic to get his license from the Umayyads
The language survived until fairly late in some territorial pockets, mostly because of
the religious aspect. Latin was associated to Christianity while the new Arabic was linked to the invading Muslim faith
This was a concept that lasted until the 14th century and so the language lasted with it
Christian cemeteries dating from 945 to as late as 1046 in Tripolitania contained Latin inscriptions
demonstrating continued use of written Latin centuries into Islamic rule. There's also another
episode that shows how this Latin language was still at least a little bit in use by this point
which was the arrival of the Normans in Sicily and southern Italy in the 12th century
They set off on expansions into North Africa too, attempting to set up a new Christian kingdom of
Africa. It is said that they were aided by the remaining Christian population of Tunisia
and communicated in their own versions of Latin, still mutually understandable. The lack of official sources kind of makes us wonder which parts of this are true and which are just legend, but this sounds pretty believable
Soon after, the Almohad Caliphate retook the territory, so unlike the previous Byzantine reconquest, African Romans had no chance to revive itself and slowly faded more and more
Its last traces as a language are recorded during the Renaissance. In the 15th century, an Italian humanist, Paolo Pompilio, noted a testimony from a Catalan merchant
who claimed that villagers in the Aures mountains still spoke a form of Latin resembling Sardinian
But this is more hearsay than anything at this point. Actually, Sardinian changes the pronunciation of some vowels compared to Latin
and if the connection would be true, this would also give us an idea of what African Romance would have potentially sounded like
And in fact, if we go back to that North African Roman philosopher, Agustino Vipo, he also wrote that African ears have no quick perception of the shortness or length of Latin vowels, which also describes the evolution of vowels in Sardinian
The channel Native Lang did a fantastic video on this where they explained the vowel thing and how the language sounded in much more detail
I'm going to link it below if you want to dive deeper into it. A little after the period of the Renaissance, or actually still in the Renaissance, we have
another report about this. In the 16th century, Leo Africanus, a Spanish diplomat, also reported that North Africans
preserved a Romance language after the Islamic conquest. He called it Italian, but it must have meant some type of Romance language similar to it
And so we understand that despite the near eradication of African Romance by this time
due to that Islamic and Arabic conquest, its impact remained in the region of Tunisia especially
But of course, over the next few centuries up to today, those pockets of speakers completely
disappeared and the language became extinct. If you're interested in the Romania submersa
concept and want me to get into all of those other Latin languages that disappeared throughout Europe
let me know, maybe I can make a video about that. And you should definitely check out my video about
Dalmatian. I think it's also very interesting. Thank you for watching this video. Thank you to
my patrons and I will see you next time for more general knowledge