Sunday, November 13, 2011  Improbable regular cognates  In
Zenaga (the Berber language of Mauritania), the word for "slave"
is oʔḅḅäy.  In the "Shelha" Berber spoken near Touggourt, the
word for "black" is aɣəggal. (In Tamasheq - Malian Tuareg -
ɣǎggal means "to be brown".)  As you've probably guessed from
the title, these are originally the same word. The semantic
shift is sadly predictable, given Saharan history, but how can
the consonants be related? Well:  Zenaga ʔ regularly corresponds
to pan-Berber ɣ, eg iʔf "head" = iɣəf, iʔy "arm" = iɣil, iʔssi
"bone" = iɣəs.  Proto-Berber *ww becomes bb in Zenaga and gg(ʷ)
almost everywhere else in Berber, eg "year": Zenaga äššäbbaš =
pan-Berber asəgg(ʷ)as.  Pan-Berber l becomes Zenaga y word-
finally, eg ađ̣abbäy "male in-law" = pan-Berber aḍəgg(ʷ)al. But
if you add the feminine ending -t, the resulting cluster lt
becomes L. Sure enough, "slave (f.)" in Zenaga is toʔḅḅäL.  So
if you're tired of repeating Armenian "erku" = English "two"
every time you need an exa