Carl Friedrich Michael Meinhof (23 July 1857 – 11 February 1944) was a German

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

and one of the first linguists to study African languages.

Early years and career

Meinhof was born in Barzwitz near Rügenwalde in the Province of Pomerania. He studied at the

University of Tübingen The University of Tübingen, officially the Eberhard Karl University of Tübingen (german: Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen; la, Universitas Eberhardina Carolina), is a public research university located in the city of Tübingen, Baden-Wü ...

and at the University of Greifswald. In 1905 he became professor at the

School of Oriental Studies SOAS University of London (; the School of Oriental and African Studies) is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the federal University of London. Founded in 1916, SOAS is located in the Bloomsbury are ...

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

. On 5 May 1933 he became a member of the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...

Works

His most notable work was developing comparative

grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structure, structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clause (linguistics), clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraint ...

studies of the

Bantu languages The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀) are a large family of languages spoken by the Bantu people of Central, Southern, Eastern africa and Southeast Africa. They form the largest branch of the Southern Bantoid languages. The t ...

, building on the pioneering work of Wilhelm Bleek. In his work, Meinhof looked at the common

such as Swahili and Zulu to determine similarities and differences. In his work, Meinhof looked at

noun class In linguistics, a noun class is a particular category of nouns. A noun may belong to a given class because of the characteristic features of its referent, such as gender, animacy, shape, but such designations are often clearly conventional. Some ...

es with all Bantu languages having at least 10 classes and with 22 classes of nouns existing throughout the Bantu languages, though his definition of noun class differs slightly from the accepted one, considering the plural form of a word as belonging to a different class from the singular form (thus leading, for example, to consider a language like French as having four classes instead of two). While no language has all 22 (later: 23) classes active,

Venda Venda () was a Bantustan in northern South Africa, which is fairly close to the South African border with Zimbabwe to the north, while to the south and east, it shared a long border with another black homeland, Gazankulu. It is now part of the ...

has 20, Lozi has 18, and

Ganda Ganda may refer to: Places * Ganda, Angola * Ganda, Tibet, China * Ganda, the ancient Latin name of Ghent, a city in Belgium Other uses * Baganda or Ganda, a people of Uganda ** Luganda or Ganda language, a language of Uganda * ''Ganda'' and "Ga ...

has 16 or 17 (depending on whether the locative class 23 ''e-'' is included). All Bantu languages have a noun class specifically for humans (sometimes including other animate beings). Meinhof also examined other African languages, including groups classified at the time as

Kordofanian The Kordofanian languages are a geographic grouping of five language groups spoken in the Nuba Mountains of the Kurdufan, Sudan: Talodi–Heiban languages, Lafofa languages, Rashad languages, Katla languages and Kadu languages. The first four g ...

, Bushman, Khoikhoi, and

Hamitic Hamites is the name formerly used for some Northern and Horn of Africa peoples in the context of a now-outdated model of dividing humanity into different races which was developed originally by Europeans in support of colonialism and slavery. ...

. Meinhof developed a comprehensive classification scheme for African languages. His classification was the standard one for many years (Greenberg 1955:3). It was replaced by those of

Joseph Greenberg Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915 – May 7, 2001) was an American linguist, known mainly for his work concerning linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages. Life Early life and education Joseph Greenberg was born on ...

in 1955 and in 1963. In 1902, Meinhof made recordings of East African music. These are among the first recordings made of traditional

African music Given the vastness of the African continent, its music is diverse, with regions and nations having many distinct musical traditions. African music includes the genres amapiano, Jùjú, Fuji, Afrobeat, Highlife, Makossa, Kizomba, and others. The ...

Controversial views

In 1912, Carl Meinhof published ''Die Sprachen der Hamiten'' (The Languages of the Hamites). He used the term

. Meinhof's system of classification of the Hamitic languages was based on a belief that "speakers of Hamitic became largely coterminous with cattle herding peoples with essentially Caucasian origins, intrinsically different from and superior to the 'Negroes of Africa'."Kevin Shillington, ''Encyclopedia of African History'', CRC Press, 2005, p.797 However, in the case of the so-called

Nilo-Hamitic languages Paranilotic is a group of languages proposed by Carl Meinhof. Karl Lepsius had established the Nilotic languages as a family, with Western, Eastern, and Southern branches. Meinhof proposed that only Western were truly Nilotic, and that Eastern and ...

(a concept he introduced), it was based on the typological feature of gender and a "fallacious theory of language mixture." Meinhof did this in spite of earlier work by scholars such as Lepsius and Johnston demonstrating that the languages which he would later dub "Nilo-Hamitic" were in fact Nilotic languages with numerous similarities in vocabulary with other Nilotic languages. Merritt Ruhlen, ''A Guide to the World's Languages'', (Stanford University Press: 1991), p.109

Family

Carl Meinhof was the great-uncle (the brother of the grandfather) of

Ulrike Meinhof Ulrike Marie Meinhof (7 October 1934 – 9 May 1976) was a German left-wing journalist and founding member of the Red Army Faction (RAF) in West Germany, commonly referred to in the press as the "Baader-Meinhof gang". She is the reputed author ...

, a founding member of the German Red Army Faction (RAF), a

left-wing Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in soci ...

militant group, which operated in

West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...

in the 1970s and 1980s.

References

*Greenberg, Joseph H. 1955. ''Studies in African Linguistic Classification.'' New Haven: Compass Publishing Company. *Greenberg, Joseph H. 1963. ''The Languages of Africa.'' Bloomington: Indiana University Press. *Meinhof, Carl. 1906. ''Grundzüge einer vergleichenden Grammatik der Bantusprachen.'' Berlin: Reimer. * Pugach, Sara. 2004. "Images of race and redemption: The Protestant missionary contribution to Carl Meinhof's ''Zeitschrift für Kolonialsprachen''",
Le Fait Missionaire: Social Sciences and Missions
' 15 (December 2004), 59–96.

External links