Sumer in Mesopotamia (now mostly Iraq) was the home of the earliest known civilisation. Indeed, I have studied several different Sumerian epics, including a section of the famous Enuma Elish, and came to the conclusion that the grammar and syntax therein is essentially Bantu-like, but the diction and idioms are definitely Sotho-Tswana–like. In my books, both published and upcoming, I have sketched out the fascinating but cohesive history—unearthed by ancient ‘myths’—of how this amazing association came about.
Of course, all this makes nonsense of the conventional linguistic view that Indo-European languages bear no resemblance to any other language family…and certainly not the Bantu language family. In our exercise today, we will demonstrate the falsity of this assumption through the common etymology of words relating specifically to quantity and extent. Let us begin with the term ‘quantity’ itself. What we must bear in mind is that whenever we see the letter ‘q’ in any language, we must know that it is likely to be pronounced in very different ways in different languages. But broadly speaking, the original sound, it seems, was pronounced somewhat like the Setswana ‘g’—which is akin to that of Afrikaans and also the Spanish ‘j’. ‘Quantity’ is based on the Latin term quant(us), dictionary etymologies tell us, and the translation of this is “how much”. Quo qui, and qua, indeed, are used almost exactly like ko, ke, and ke wa in Setswana. ‘Quanta’’ asks the question “ke wa ante?’ (literally: ‘to what counter-side (i.e. extent) does it belong?’). I have seen the word ante (now kante in Setswana: ka (by means of) + ante) used in Sumerian and it basically means ‘on the contrary’ or ‘on the countering side’. Example: A re ke nnete, kante ke maaka (‘He says it is the truth, [but] on the contrary it is lies’). Thus, ‘ante-clockwise’ means ‘counter of clockwise’.
