Talk:Kayla dialect

Discussion from Talk:Kayla

The article needs to tell whether this language was spoken ONLY by the Beta Israel, or if it was also spoken by other Ethiopians.

Ok, the article has since been updated. Gringo300 19:30, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

But there is a yet unresolved problem, discussed at Talk:Kaïliña — the two articles need to be merged, since they are about the same language. Haven't found the time yet to do anything about it. — mark ✎ 21:32, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I would encourage you to resist the temptation to do so until we can resolve the issue. Please review the discussion at Talk:Kaïliña. Tomer ^TALK 04:55, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)

But really, I'm pretty strongly convinced by the fact that -inya (or -iña, for that matter) is simply the Amharic suffix for language names. As I understand from the sources I cited there, there are at least three Agaw languages, one of them extinct (Qwara); and one of them is Kayla-Kaila-Kailinya. The ethnonym for speakers of Kayla is Betə Israel (cf. Mann & Dalby 1987:16). Others call those speakers also Falasha/Felasha from Ge'ez 'immigrant, stranger' (cf. Ethnologue 2005) and Yihudi (obviously related to Beta Israel) (cf. Ethnologue 1992 as cited in Sommer 1992). The Beta Israel, speakers of Kayla-Kaïliña, have almost all moved to Israel; as the 15th edition of the Ethnologue says, "Most of the remaining Falasha went to Israel in 1999". This is probably the reason that a very recent sociolinguistic study of the area, Leyew (2002) (SILESR2002-031), doesn't even mention Kayla-Kaïliña speakers when he talks about the language still spoken there (called Kemant/Kimant by him and Ethnologue). It might also be the reason that after 1996, nothing was published on the so-called 'new' Kaïliña dialect. I don't see any reason to treat Kayla/Kaïliña as separate languages or even dialects. — mark ✎ 06:23, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Nor do I, except for the fact that we have not yet come to a consensus on the points you bring up. Do you have access to anything authoritative other than Ethnologue (not to disparage ethnologue, because I hold it up as a great resource)? I haven't had time to check w/ the authorities in the university library here by me (which has nearly a whole floor devoted to ethnic and linguistic items...) yet, and probably won't until after Pesach. In the meantime, I continue to resist your insistence that we summarily collapse these articles, without anything more significant than the apparent similarity between names. BTW. Tigre and Tigrinya, which appear, according to your given interpretation to be "a region" (Tigre) and "the language of that region" (Tigrinya), belies your conjecture. Tigre and Tigrinya are two entirely distinct languages... While I admit the potential parallel is weak, at best, without any significant evidence, I don't think there is justification to collapse the one into the other as yet. Tomer ^TALK 08:01, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)

I didn't base my interpretation on the Ethnologue. I have had the time to consult authorities in the university library and consequently I cited the authoritative Mann and Dalby, as well as the Ethiopian language specialist Hudson, as well as Lionel Bender (1976), as well as Sommers (1992) and Gamst (p.c. cited therein) to corroborate my statement that in this case, there is no single reason to assume that Kayla and Kaïliña are different dialects or languages. The Ethnologue is not of much help in this matter, because it even treats the Kemant and Kayla dialects — distinguished by Bender (1976) and by Quirin (1998) — as one language; presumably, they do that because virtually all Kayla speakers have moved to Israel.

I don't necessarily think 'Kayla' is a region. In Tigre/Tigrinya you have found a known exception, having caused confusion in the past (though this is 'corrected' in the 15th edition of the Ethnologue by renaming Tigré to Tingal, if I am right). I don't see why this particular example would make it more likely that Kayla and Kailina are different.

It remains a fact that -inya is a suffix used for language names in Amharic. Now, all sources about the Central Agaw languages mention that virtually all speakers are perfectly bilingual in Amharic. This makes it very likely that Kaïliña is simply the Amharic designation for the Kayla language (formerly) spoken by the Beta Israel/Falasha that have moved to Israel in the nineties. Really, you shouldn't talk about finding justification to collapse the one into the other; rather, you should produce evidence that Kaïliña is, in fact, different from Kayla if you still want to keep them separate. According to all the sources I checked, it isn't. I did not only check linguistic sources, but also ethnographic and historiographic ones; not a single one of them distinguishes between Kayla and Kailina. I'm sorry if I sound impatient (frankly, I am impatient, no offense intended); to me, the issue is perfectly clear. — mark ✎ 10:10, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

To be honest, I'd be tempted to redirect them both to Kemant, Kayla being a "nearly identical" dialect of it. But certainly, when both the names (Kayla/Kail-inya) and the circumstances look identical, it should be assumed that the subject is the same unless evidence otherwise is provided. Note that neither Tigre nor Tigrinya are spoken in the area where Amharic dominates, so it would not be surprising if their rules for the usage of -inya are different - whereas Kayla is spoken in the Amharic zone. - Mustafaa 01:11, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Kayla/Kaïliña article/s

I move we merge both to Kaïliña, and copy/paste the Talk from Kayla to Talk:Kaïliña. Notifying you since you've participated on the Talk page at either or both of the articles. Tomer ^TALK 03:40, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. - Mustafaa 04:56, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

OK, So, maybe, since Mark "moved" it long ago, I should have said "I (now, after great consideration) second".  :-p Tomer ^TALK 04:59, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

Merging sounds good to me, too (obviously) :) — but I believe Kayla is the most commonly used term so I think we should merge/move Kaïliña to Kayla. — mark ✎ 09:20, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Discussion from Talk:Kaïliña

I suspect that this is the same Agaw dialect as Kayla (note the similarity in the names), cf. Jewish Encyclopedia, Ethnologue, Quirin 1998. In that case, the two should be merged. I wonder what the etymology of Kaïliña is; the dominant term seems to be Kayla or Kaila. — mark ✎ 23:41, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've noticed this as well, and assumed that it was a similar or related dialect or language, rather than the same one, since I've found references to both, but not on conjunction with each other. The Jewish community of Ethiopia is ancient, and was quite disperesed, so I think the assumption that the similarity in the names means they're the same thing is a bit premature. http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=QIM seems to be saying that Kayla and Qwara are two different languages, Qwara extinct, and Kayla extant, it also seems, on http://www.ethnologue.com/show_iso639.asp?code=cus to indicate that they are two different dialects, Qwara being another name for the Hwarasa dialect of w. Agaw. The Jewish encyclopedia article only muddies the issue, as it's most recent cited source is what appears to be an opinion piece in an a newspaper. (A Lost Related Tribe, in Weekly Writing). What further bugs me is that the author of the cited reference has another piece, called "1998. Language Death - the Case of Qwarenya (Ethiopia), in ed(s) ed. M Brenzinger Endangered Languages in Africa, pp.143-161. Rudiger Koppe Verlag. ISBN 389645305X.", which makes me wonder if Qwarenya is the language of Qwara, which in other places seems to be a placename rather than a language...which seems to support the idea that perhaps Kayla is a placename and Kaylinya is the language spoken there. The omniglot article also seems to support your theory. There's also an article at http://www.hrelp.org/grants/projects/index.php?lang=16 which is interesting, but not incredibly informative. The Jewish Language Research website doesn't list any of these possibilities. Sooooooooo I'm not sure where to go from here... I'm not sure who wrote the original Jewish languages article, but I have only followed the classifications given there. I also didn't write the original Kayla article. I see that a number of websites have copied the (apparently quite probably incorrect) information listed in the Jewish languages article. Tomer ^TALK 00:54, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

This is highly intriguing. There's an awful lot of different terms here, and of course it never is perfectly clear to which dialect they refer or don't refer. I've some additional info (only muddling the issue, I'm afraid), from Sommers (1992) 'A survey on language death in Africa' in Brenzinger (ed.) Language Death. Factual and Theoretical Explorations with Special Reference to East Africa., esp. 358–359:

Kimaneney (Quara)

(1.1) Mann & Dalby (eds.) (1987:16) mention Kimanteney as authoglossonym. Bender (1976:10) lists kimanta 'people' as self-applied name.

(1.2) Several other variants of the language name are found in the literature: Kemant, Kimanta, Qemant, Kimantinya, Chemant, Kamant. Mann & Dalby (1987) mention East Kimanta and West Kimanta as dialects. The Ethnologue adds Qwera (Quara, Kara of Kwarasa [there's your place name ~ MD]), Kayla (Falasha, Felasha or Yihudi) and Qemant as dialect names; the Ethnologue mentions that Quara is extinct. This "dialect" is mentioned in Mann & Dalby as a separate language called Beta Israel (ethnonym). The authors list Fälasa, Falasha as xenonyms and Qwara, Quara, Hwara, Yihudi and Kayla as other variants of the language name. Gamst (p.c.) proposes that "Quara, Quarinya, spoken by a few Falasha in Quara (to the west of Qemantland), is nearly the same language as Qemant." We are therefore treating both "languages" together in this survey, which contradicts Bender who regards Kemant and Felasha as two separate languages.

(1.3) Gamst mentions Kemant and Kemantnäy as self-applied names; Mann & Dalby mention Kimanta.

(1.4) Cf. .2 where we mentioned Fälasa and Falasha as xenonyms for a "dialect" of Kemant. Ethnologue adds that the Falasha are also referred to as "Black Jews". Bender (1976:8) treats Felasha (from Geez falas 'immigrant' [nice factoid for the Beta Israel article ~ MD]) and Yihudi as variants of the glossonym Felasha while he mentions that Kwara or Qwara is the name for a region northwest of Lake Tana.

...

(3.3) According to Gamst, Kemant is threatened by extinction.

Soooo... it's late, that'll be it for now. To be continued! — mark ✎ 01:55, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You're right. It's additional information, but does nothing to clarify the situation. Hopefully I'll have time to check out what Current Trends in Linguistics has to say about the situation later next week. (I am currently enrolled in 4 CS programming classes, and have spent more time wikiing than I should in the past few weeks...to the detriment of my schoolwork...) In the meantime, if you have time to do so, and have access to the Current Trends in Linguistics series (an exhaustive and thoroughly documented collection), please check it out. This is something that we should try to resolve sooner rather than later. For the time being, however, I'm content to leave the articles sit as they are. In the meantime, I'm going to add a See also link to the Kayla page pointing to Kaïliña article and vv. Tomer ^TALK 07:05, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

BTW. If you have the time to do so, please also check out the status of Qwara/Kwara. Presently, Qwara is a redirect, created by me, based on what I found on Jewish languages. Also keep in mind the variants we found earlier, Qwarenya/Qwareña. Tomer ^TALK 07:09, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

They are surely the same: -inya is simply the Amharic ending for language name (hence Amharic "amarinya", "tigrinya", "guraginya"...) - Mustafaa 19:20, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Aha! So Kayla and Kailina are the same; but there's more to be explained. After checking some more sources I think we can be sure of the existence of at least two separate Agaw dialects/languages (just like Bender 1976:8 says; but unlike Ethnologue and Sommer 1992): first, Qemant-Kemant-Chemant-Kamant-Kimantinya-Kimanteney, and secondly Kayla-Kaila-Kailinya (ethnonym Betə Israel (cf. Mann & Dalby 1987:16), xenonyms Falasha/Felasha from Ge'ez 'immigrant, stranger'; Yihudi (cf. Ethnologue 1992 as cited in Sommer 1992). Kemant could be extinct by now (Sommer 1992 mentions that "according to Gamst, Kemant is threatened by extinction"). In any case, a huge language shift is going on here; all speakers are bilingual in Amharic and according to Ethnologue, only 1650 native speakers of Kemant were left, out of an ethnic group of about 170,000 people in 1998. Endangered, to say the least.

Quirin (1998) leads me to believe that an important reason for Qemant and Kayla being separate languages is that their speakers (coming from a common Agaw base) developed separate identities from the beginning of the 14th century on. However, apparently there's a lot of fuss going on in Beta Israel historiography (cf. e.g. [1]) and I don't know enough about it at present to judge sources like this (though Qurin seems to have done his homework).

Anyway, a third dialect seems to be Qwera/Quara/Qwarina/'Kara of Kwarasa'/Hwara/Hwarasa; this one appears to be extinct (cf. Ethnologue). It seems to have been related more closely to Qemant — Gamst (p.c. to Sommer, Sommer 1992:358) proposes that "Quara, Quarinya, spoken by a few Falasha in Quara (to the west of Qemant-land), is nearly the same language as Qemant."

I've listed my sources below; we'll probably be able to use them in some of the articles. — mark ✎ 00:28, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Bender, M. Lionel (ed.) (1976) The non-Semitic languages of Ethiopia. East Lansing, Michigan: African Studies Center, Michigan State University.
• Mann, Michael & Dalby, David (eds.) (1987) A thesaurus of African languages. Londen/München etc.: Hans Zell Publishers.
• Quirin, James (1998) 'Caste and class in historical north-west Ethiopia: the Beta Israel (Falasha) and Kemant, 1300-1900', The Journal of African History, 39, 2, 195–220.
• Sommer, Gabriele (1992) 'A survey on language death in Africa', in Brenzinger, Matthias (ed.) Language Death. Factual and Theoretical Explorations with Special Reference to East Africa, Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 301–417.

Addendum. [2] classifies Xamtanga, Xamir, †Kayla as Cushitic > Central (Agaw) > East (1.1.1) and Kemant, †Quara as Cushitic > Central (Agaw) > West (1.1.2). This could well be related to Mann & Dalby's (1987:16) distinction of 'Kimanta' into East Kimanta and West Kimanta. Note that Hudson marks both Kayla and Quara as †extinct; the Kemant speaker count of 1650 given by him and Ethnologue seems to come from Tosco 2000. Does anyone have access to Tosco (2000) 'Cushitic overview' in Journal of Ethiopian Studies 33, 87-121? — mark ✎ 00:42, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hebrew loanwords

Both this article & Kayla claim that these local languages have a number of loanwords from Hebrew. However, there is still some dispute whether the native speakers are descended from Jewish refugees who arrived in Ethiopia at some ancient date, were converts, or came from an archaizing branch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. It would be helpful to cut thru the inevitable POV disputes if some examples of these loanwords (& any arguments for the date of their borrowing) were added to this article. -- llywrch 22:57, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The origin of the community, disputed as it may be, really has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not there are, or were, Hebrew loanwords in Kayla or Kaïliña, which I think we have general consensus, are the same language. I have read the assertion (elsewhere) that there are Hebrew loanwords in Kaïliña and Kayla, from sources that seem to think these two names refer to two distinct languages, but I personally find that assertion to be rather suspect, since Ge'ez, not Hebrew, was the sacred tongue of the Beta Israel, to the extent that even their sifre torah are written in Ge'ez... That said, however, I maintain that any dispute about the origin of the community is irrelevant in any discussion of whether or not there exist a large number of Hebrew loanwords in the language(s). There is a large school of thought that says that most of the speakers of Karaim and Krymchak are descended from converts; are we to understand that the assertion that there are large numbers of Hebrew loanwords in those languages is unworthy equal doubt? Tomer ^TALK 03:01, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

So what are the Hebrew loan words in this language? Examples? -- llywrch 03:51, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Kayla/Kaïliña article/s

I move we merge both to Kaïliña, and copy/paste the Talk from Kayla to Talk:Kaïliña. Notifying you since you've participated on the Talk page at either or both of the articles. Tomer ^TALK 03:44, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

Merged. Although I now find myself suspecting that "Kayla language" would be the better title... - Mustafaa 19:11, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

As I said on Talk:Kayla :P — mark ✎ 12:37, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

On the merger

Pages have been merged now, and moved to Kayla language since that's the most common term in all sources cited above. I've past the old talk from Talk:Kayla above; I needed to delete it so the edit history is lost but luckily everyone has signed his comments. I needed to delete Kayla language as well before being able to move Kaïliña language to here; as the edit histories were very much the same (or, in other words, as there was nothing much to merge), I don't think that has created a copyright or attribution problem. — mark ✎ 13:01, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It all looks good. Even if you had had to delete everything, the comments could have been signed after the fact by going through the history. On the deletion of Kayla, however, there was something on that page about a Sesame Street character named Kayla...I have never seen Sesame Street, so I can't speak to the veracity of that claim, but I'm not sure it should have been deleted outright, rather that it should perhaps have been turned into a stub. Also, long ago, based on the information I was working with off Jewish languages which I believe must have come from somewhere, I long ago made Qwara a redirect to Kayla. From what I've read subsequently, it appears that perhaps Qwara/Qwarenya is distinct from Kayla/Kaïlinya. Unfortunately, nothing I've read has amounted to anything more than lists of languages and dialects. Is there any information in the journals and such you have available that speaks to this? Tomer ^TALK 04:24, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)

On Quara, I wrote above: A third dialect seems to be Qwera/Quara/Qwarina/'Kara of Kwarasa'/Hwara/Hwarasa; this one appears to be extinct (cf. Ethnologue). It seems to have been related more closely to Qemant — Gamst (p.c. to Sommer, Sommer 1992:358) proposes that "Quara, Quarinya, spoken by a few Falasha in Quara (to the west of Qemant-land), is nearly the same language as Qemant." And the difference between Kemant and Kayla, according to Quirin (1998), is mainly one due to the separate history of their respective speaker communities. — mark ✎ 07:43, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Excuse me while I snicker, only half in jest, but wasn't it you 2 months ago who dismissed Ethnologue as a reliable source wrt linguistics? :-p Tomer ^TALK 08:40, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)

No, I don't think so. Not in general, at least — my experience with Ethnologue in the field of African languages is mostly favorable (see Talk:Ethnologue#Dialects). But yes, in individual cases, the Ethnologue can very well be wrong. In this case, I think it lumps together Qimant and Kayla too easily (given what Quirin 1998 says). I regard Gamst's information on Quara (p.c. as cited in Sommer 1992) as the most reliable, since he's an expert in this area. His statement justifies Ethnologue's decision to call Quara a Qimant dialect. — mark ✎ 10:56, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Appleyard

Here's a source that makes sense to me...

"I have argued elsewhere that there are essentially four Agaw languages, or clusters of dialects: a northern branch represented by the fairly homogeneous Bilin; a central cluster of dialects covering Reinisch's Chamir, Conti Rossini's Khamta and my own Xamtanga; a western cluster incorporating Kemant (both Conti Rossini's and my own data) and the dialect of the Falashas (Flad's Falashan, Reinisch's Quara and my Quarenya, and also includingh material from Falasha manuscripts); a southern branch consisting essentially of Awngi. To some extent, of course, this is an oversimplification... where do we place the Falasha dialect known to date only from notes by Faïtlovich and called by him Kaïlina? Though the lexical data recorded by him are all too brief, there are strong indications that this dialect forms a link between the western and central branches [of Agaw]." (David Appleyard, "Preparing a Comparative Agaw Dictionary", in Cushitic & Omotic Languages: Proceedings of teh 3rd International Symposium Berlin, Mar. 17-19, 1994, ed. Griefenow-Mewis & Voigt. - Mustafaa 17:06, 18 July 2005 (UTC)