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 The languages of Africa are divided into several major language families: * Niger–Congo or perhaps Atlantic–Congo languages (includes Bantu and non-Bantu, and possibly Mande and others) are spoken in West, Central, Southeast and Souther ...

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-W� ...

and at the

University of Greifswald The University of Greifswald (; german: Universität Greifswald), formerly also known as “Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University of Greifswald“, is a public research university located in Greifswald, Germany, in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pom ...

. In 1905 he became professor at the School of Oriental Studies in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

. 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 political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...

Works

His most notable work was developing comparative

grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes domain ...

studies of the Bantu languages, building on the pioneering work of

Wilhelm Bleek Wilhelm Heinrich Immanuel Bleek (8 March 1827 – 17 August 1875) was a German linguist. His work included ''A Comparative Grammar of South African Languages'' and his great project jointly executed with Lucy Lloyd: The Bleek and Lloyd Archive o ...

. In his work, Meinhof looked at the common Bantu languages such as Swahili and Zulu to determine similarities and differences. In his work, Meinhof looked at noun classes 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 has 20, Lozi has 18, and Ganda 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, Bushman,

Khoikhoi Khoekhoen (singular Khoekhoe) (or Khoikhoi in the former orthography; formerly also '' Hottentots''"Hottentot, n. and adj." ''OED Online'', Oxford University Press, March 2018, www.oed.com/view/Entry/88829. Accessed 13 May 2018. Citing G. S. ...

, and Hamitic. 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 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.

Controversial views

In 1912, Carl Meinhof published ''Die Sprachen der Hamiten'' (The Languages of the Hamites). He used the term Hamitic. 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 (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 The Nilotic languages are a group of related languages spoken across a wide area between South Sudan and Tanzania by the Nilotic peoples. Etymology The word Nilotic means of or relating to the Nile River or to the Nile region of Africa. Dem ...

with numerous similarities in vocabulary with other Nilotic languages.

Merritt Ruhlen Merritt Ruhlen (May 10, 1944 – January 29, 2021) was an American linguist who worked on the classification of languages and what this reveals about the origin and evolution of modern humans. Amongst other linguists, Ruhlen's work was recognized ...

, ''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, a founding member of the German

Red Army Faction The Red Army Faction (RAF, ; , ),See the section "Name" also known as the Baader–Meinhof Group or Baader–Meinhof Gang (, , active 1970–1998), was a West German far-left Marxist-Leninist urban guerrilla group founded in 1970. The ...

(RAF), a left-wing 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