Latin and Punic in Contact? The Case of the Bu Njem Ostraca
Latin and Punic in Contact? The Case of the Bu Njem Ostraca
复制标题
拉丁语和布匿语有联系吗？
作者：
J. Adams
Bu Njem的鸵鸟来自帝国北非边缘的一个军事前哨。该地区使用的是当地语言。除其他事项外，Ostraca记录了士兵与当地居民之间的联系，并包含各种非洲(布尼克或“利比亚”)单词和名字，其中一些以前没有记录。士兵本身在许多情况下都有非洲名字，或者与非洲有特殊联系的名字，很可能许多名字是在当地招募的。如果是这样的话，他们可能不会说流利的拉丁语，因此他们写的拉丁语提出了不寻常的问题。它到底是拉丁语，还是洋金或克里奥尔语？或者，相反，这种语言仅仅是官僚和公式化的拉丁语，没有什么特别的兴趣吗？最终，我们是否有确凿的证据证明拉丁语的地区性变异，在这种情况下，可能受到一种或几种底层语言的影响？
The ostraca of Bu Njem come from a military outpost on the North African fringes of the Empire. Vernacular languages were spoken in the area. The ostraca record, among other things, contact between soldiers and the local population, and contain various African (Punic or ‘Libyan’) words and names, some of them previously unrecorded. The soldiers themselves have in many cases African names, or names with a special African connection, and it is likely that many were recruited locally. If so they may not have been fluent Latin speakers, and consequently the Latin which they wrote raises unusual questions. Is it Latin at all, or perhaps a pidgin or Creole? Or, on the contrary, is the language merely bureaucratic and formulaic Latin of no great interest? Do we, at last, have some hard evidence for a regional variety of Latin, in this case perhaps influenced by a substratum language or languages?.