Talk:Negro-Egyptian languages

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Negro-Egyptian languages (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

This is a recently accepted AfC article. Most AfC reviewers do not know much about linguistics, so this went through as seemingly genuine content.

This is obviously original research by someone going by the pseudonym "Asar Imhotep." The article was written by Daniel Power of God, who has had a history of writing up conspiracy theory content and inserting links related to such theories. Whoever made this up was obviously into Black Egyptian conspiracy theories, which are totally unscientific. The Asar Imhotep Online Institute is not even a real institute, but rather indicates that the material is actually self-published nonsense.

I'd like to have some input from linguistics experts here like Kwamikagami. If it's a widely known fringe theory like Joseph Greenberg's or Sergei Starostin's language groupings, then fine, but I've never heard of "Negro-Egyptian languages." The content is patent nonsense and would seriously horrify any real linguist. Once you understand all the jargon, you can see that the entire article is highly incoherent and bizarre. I appreciate the contributor's hard work writing this up, but such content would better be included on Uncyclopedia or a personal blog somewhere else. — Stevey7788 (talk) 17:47, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

So, Middle Egyptian is in one branch, along with some language families, while its daughter Coptic is in the other branch, with different language families? That alone is enough to show this is either a hoax or that the inventor is truly an idiot. As far as racial conspiracy theories go, this one claims that the ancestral African language had only ten words, which is far less than a dog or bird can understand. In other words, it suggests that Africans are sub-humans less intelligent than dogs -- bird-brains, if you will. I redirected it to Pseudoscientific language comparison, but really it and its rd's should simply be deleted. — kwami (talk) 18:12, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt that this is even pseudoscience. It's clear that this is an elaborate hoax. Either that, or the guy is on LSD. In addition, the similarities with some of the Gnostic gospels are striking. Archived at User:Stevey7788/Negro-Egyptian languages for your amusement, but it clearly shouldn't be in the article mainspace. — Stevey7788 (talk) 21:05, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Kwamikagami - Looking at the history of Cheikh Anta Diop at [1], we can see that there's been a lot of sockpupputeering. Be sure to take a look at the article history of Théophile Obenga too. This whole thing is just really bizarre. — Stevey7788 (talk) 21:22, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Stevey7788: can you detail any evidence of sockpuppetry? In any case, do you want to take him to ANI? Doug Weller talk 14:05, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sock puppetry? As in, having more than one account? While I understand that there may be strong visceral disagreement with the content of the article, it seems as if an attempt is being made to try to spin falsehoods about me. If you want to know whether or not I have only one account, you can simply ask me. I only have one account. - Daniel Power of God (talk) 19:08, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Doug Weller Some editors writing up Cheikh Anta Diop have had SPI's done on them way back in 2011. The edit warring has since stopped. I'll follow WP:QUICKSOCK for now and assume this is a genuine user. Sometimes there are users with similar behaviors who edit the same article because they are different people from the same school of thought or niche disciplines who are all interested in the same topic, rather than socks or meatpuppets running around. Instead of going on a witch hunt for accused socks (often ending up in false accusations and bitter arguments), I think it's better to stay focused on encyclopedia building unless uncivil edit warring starts to happen. Daniel Power of God is being very civil and constructive here and has not violated any Wikipedia policies so far. Better to be constructive for now and not needlessly get into feuds. — Stevey7788 (talk) 13:41, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Based on the initial commentary of Stevey7788 and Kwamikagami, it seems that some of the assessment made about the article were made in haste. When considering the quality of some the article's content, such as Asar Imhotep's work (which builds on the work of Obenga and Mboli), some of his work can be found in Google Scholar, which seems to be a default Wikipedia tool recommended for drafting new articles.

As indicated in the article, Imhotep recommended that "Negro-Egyptian" should be renamed "Cyena-Ntu." "Negro-Egyptian", as a title, was apparently proposed by its initial developer, Theophile Obenga; the Theophile Obenga Wikipedia article in English seems to have notable enough, and the linguistic-related content seems to be more extensive, in the Theophile Obenga Wikipedia article in French. Obenga's related work at the UNESCO symposium and his 1993 work are included in the article. Obenga (1993) was notable to the extent that Stanford Libraries and WorldCat include it. Obenga (1993) apparently was revised by Jean Claude Mboli in his 2010 work. Mboli (2010) was also notable to the extent that Stanford Libraries and WorldCat include it. The central piece of the article is actually Mboli's 2010 work. However, as Obenga and Mboli's work are in French, and this is a Wikipedia article in English, Imhotep's work, which is in English, has been especially used to develop the content for the article; this, along with an apparent inclination to make a hasty assessment (based on visceral disagreement?), may likely factor into the conclusion of Mboli's work as "patent nonsense."

The evidence for a hasty assessment being made is found in the characterization of the article content as suggesting Africans to be "sub-humans less intelligent than dogs", among other "suggestions." This seems to be gross mischaracterization. As this was apparently based on the interpretation/understanding that "ancestral African language had only ten words", which seems to come from reading as far as the "Origins" section of the article (which is close to the top of the article), for clarification purposes, it seems fitting to consider one of the sources (e.g., Imhotep's) relating to it:

"The ancient Egyptian language is lexically poor (in numbers) because, like N[egro]-E[gyptian] itself, it is built off of a small number of onomatopoeia, which relied on metaphoric extension and lexical borrowings to expand its vocabulary mapping. We are reminded of what GJK Campbell-Dunn informed us of earlier regarding Bantu languages that is worth repeating here:

As the primary elements grammaticalised they became prefixes, suffixes and infixes. Stapleton (1903) on Comparative Congolese observed that “Bantu” was built up from a small number of “roots”. We do not distinguish between root and primary word. They both refer to things, concrete things of human experience. Thus not only are the noun prefixes (classifiers) derived from nouns, but even the suffixes. This is most evident in Mande, which applies the same suffixes to “nouns” and to “verbs”. (Campbell-Dunn, 2009a: 23-24)" (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312579007_Testing_Mboli's_Negro-Egyptian_Semantic_Map_with_Ancient_Egyptian_Lexemes).

This seems to show comparative analysis of African languages and an understanding of its differences, perhaps, in reference to Indo-European languages. It should be noted that Obenga, Mboli, and Imhotep, who are proponents of the Negro-Egyptian/Cyena-Ntu languages are all of African descent, which further highlights how grossly mischaracterized and hastily read the article apparently was. While not cited in the article, but related to the point and also from another of Imhotep's work:

"It’s important to note that the Sumerian lexicon has many qualities in common with other African languages, and that includes its highly polesymous word base as a result of not being a very lexically rich language. Foxvog gives us some insight into why one sign would have so many meanings in the Sumerian language.

The first out of the three given is: [in regards to Sumerian signs] It will usually have one or more logographic values, each with a different pronunciation. A single value may itself have more than one meaning, just as an English word may have more than one common meaning. Sumerian expresses the human experience with a relatively limited word stock; one must continually strive to develop a feeling for the basic meaning of any particular Sumerian word and how it can be used to convey a range of ideas for which English uses different individual words. (Foxvog, 2009: 15)

In other words, English has expanded over the years so much—this due to many borrowings and its inflectional nature—that it is able to convey many concepts without necessarily using the same word to convey every conceptual idea needed. In African languages, however, this isn’t necessarily the case which is why agglutination and tone became major features of many African languages.

We see this in Sumerian. The Sumerian and other African languages are lexically poor, but each lexical root is conceptually rich as these languages build-up their vocabularies by a process of metaphoric-extension on common lexical roots. This is a feature of the ancient Egyptian language. James P. Allen (the author of a Middle Egyptian grammar and dictionary), in his book The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (2005) stated the following about the Egyptian language: “[The] Egyptian [language] is rich in allegory and metaphor but relatively poor in vocabulary” (2005:13). In other words, the Egyptian language has relatively few actual words in the total lexicon, but these words have many uses because the Egyptians extend their meanings by way of metaphor and allegory" (http://www.asarimhotep.com/documents/DidtheGodRaDerivefromArabia2.pdf).

Outside of Imhotep's work, I can verify the accuracy of Imhotep's quoting of James Peter Allen in his own work on page 13: https://www.academia.edu/24688225/The_Ancient_Egyptian_Pyramid_Texts (and, here, on page 13: https://www.sbl-site.org/assets/pdfs/pubs/061538p-front.pdf). As Imhotep is a contributor to the development of Obenga's Negro-Egyptian, this would seem to clarify Imhotep's view on Sumerian, Egyptian, and on the nature of African languages. His view is that Egyptian, "Sumerian and other African languages are lexically poor, but each lexical root is conceptually rich as these languages build-up their vocabularies by a process of metaphoric-extension on common lexical roots." Hopefully, this additional information can clarify the gross mischaracterization.

I am more than willing to work with other editors to continue improving the overall quality of the article in the draftspace. - Daniel Power of God (talk) 19:08, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

To improve the quality of the article, we would need to be very very clear that this is pseudoscience -- or, in colloquial speech, bullshit -- and that it has no more linguistic standing than speculating about the language of Atlantis. Or perhaps Steve is correct and this is a hoax, and the authors frauds rather than idiots. Surely there is enough academic fraud out there that that's a real possibility.

The real question, though, is whether it's NOTABLE (after all, we have articles on all sorts of pseudoscientific nonsense, such as astrology), and as far as I can tell it's not. Thus it does not warrant a WP article of any quality. Thus we need to decide whether to delete it or redirect it. Now that I know about Obenga's article, that would be the appropriate destination -- except that Obenga himself would appear to not be NOTABLE, failing PROF and not having any other reason to have an article.

— kwami (talk) 21:24, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Earlier, I had mentioned that Obenga (1993) and Mboli (2010) were both included in WorldCat and Stanford Libraries. Both of these are referenced in the article.

Once again, I am willing to work with other editors to improve the overall quality of this article in the draftspace. I am also willing to work with other editors to improve the overall quality of Theophile Obenga's article. - Daniel Power of God (talk) 10:03, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Daniel Power of God: Hey, thanks for your contribution. That article involved a ton of hard work. Sorry that I was a bit mean and suspicious at first. But as a scientist, it's my obligation to respect different viewpoints in a civil manner.

However, you may just want to briefly explain the theory in Obenga's biography and post the rest on a website elsewhere. It's useful for people who want to learn about that theory, but unfortunately the community has decided that it's not exactly suitable content for Wikipedia. Sorry to tell you this, but I'm sure this great content would be much more useful on another site other than Wikipedia. — Stevey7788 (talk) 13:28, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Stevey7788: I appreciate your present recognition of it as a "contribution" involving "a ton of hard work," and recognition of it as "great content," though you apparently do not agree with the content of the article. In Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Negro-Egyptian languages, you recognized it for its "creativity" and recognized its "incredibly detailed linguistic evolution narrative" as being a "true marvel." Initially, you requested the additional input of Kwamikagami regarding the article. kwami recognized a way the article could be improved. To improve the article, kwami apparently recommended to make it clear that the topic is "pseudoscience," and indicated that the "real question" regarding the article was whether or not it was notable. Slatersteven apparently recognized the article topic as seeming to be "highly notable." I have included some sources to demonstrate the topic's notability here (e.g., WorldCat, Stanford Libraries) as well as in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Negro-Egyptian languages. RoySmith approved it to be a C-Class article, which shows that there is perceived merit in it being included in the mainspace. In Wikipedia:Introduction to deletion process#When to not use deletion_process?, it states: "Articles we are not interested in – some topics are of interest only to some people, but since Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, articles that interest some people should be kept." Though you apparently disagree with the content of the article, you did at least recognize it for its "creativity", as being "great content", and its "incredibly detailed linguistic evolution narrative" being a "true marvel." Others will likely find the article to be of interest, as Slatersteven recognized that it is "clearly a thing" that seems to be "highly notable." Therefore, it "should be kept" in the mainspace, and recommendations for improvement, such as made by kwami, can be done. - Daniel Power of God (talk) 16:31, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Daniel Power of God: Yes, but I'm just saying good things about it as non-Wikipedia/encyclopedic content. You should post it elsewhere, but Kwami and I have agreed that this is not likely suitable as article mainspace content due to the reasons already discussed above. There are many great things that I really enjoy reading but don't fit into Wikipedia. That's all for now. Thanks for taking the time to chip in. — Stevey7788 (talk) 16:40, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Daniel, I've published books that are on WorldCat and in the Cornell University library, but definitely a fringe theory and not something I would try to create an article here on WP for (nor for myself or my coauthor), not unless it started getting cited by mainstream sources. And I've also put a tone of work into an article (> series of articles) that was deemed too much detail and not notable enough for WP, and was moved elsewhere (in that case a stub was left because there was significant coverage in the media, but almost all of my work was removed). It happens. — kwami (talk) 21:09, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I also said it was very fringe and should be deleted (and was notable for all the wrong reasons). I would remind eds this page is supposed to be about improving (not deleting) the article. merging (and I would support that, as only one notable academic seems to support this theory) is separate.Slatersteven (talk) 08:17, 26 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]