The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a
language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in h ...
of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic
subregion
A subregion is a part of a larger region or continent and is usually based on location. Cardinal directions, such as south are commonly used to define a subregion.
United Nations subregions
The Statistics Division of the United Nations (UN) ...
s of
Western Asia
Western Asia, West Asia, or Southwest Asia, is the westernmost subregion of the larger geographical region of Asia, as defined by some academics, UN bodies and other institutions. It is almost entirely a part of the Middle East, and includes Ana ...
,
North Africa
North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in ...
, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahara/ Sahel. With the exception of its Semitic branch, all branches of the Afroasiatic family are exclusively native to the African continent.
Afroasiatic languages have over 500 million native speakers, which is the fourth-largest number of native speakers of any language family (after
Indo-European
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
,
Sino-Tibetan
Sino-Tibetan, also cited as Trans-Himalayan in a few sources, is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Chinese languages. ...
Cushitic
The Cushitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken primarily in the Horn of Africa, with minorities speaking Cushitic languages to the north in Egypt and the Sudan, and to the south in Kenya and Tanzania. As o ...
,
Egyptian
Egyptian describes something of, from, or related to Egypt.
Egyptian or Egyptians may refer to:
Nations and ethnic groups
* Egyptians, a national group in North Africa
** Egyptian culture, a complex and stable culture with thousands of years of ...
, Semitic, and Omotic. The most widely spoken modern Afroasiatic language or dialect continuum by far is
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
, a ''
de facto
''De facto'' ( ; , "in fact") describes practices that exist in reality, whether or not they are officially recognized by laws or other formal norms. It is commonly used to refer to what happens in practice, in contrast with ''de jure'' ("by la ...
Proto-Arabic
Proto-Arabic is the name given to the hypothetical reconstructed ancestor of all the varieties of Arabic attested since the 9th century BC. There are two lines of evidence to reconstruct Proto-Arabic:
*Evidence of Arabic becomes more frequent ...
have around 313 million native speakers, concentrated primarily in the
Middle East
The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Province), East Thrace (Europ ...
and North Africa.
In addition to the languages spoken today, Afroasiatic includes many ancient languages, such as Egyptian, which forms a distinct branch of the family; and within the Semitic family,
Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to:
* Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire
* Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language
* Akkadian literature, literature in this language
* Akkadian cuneiform
Cuneiform is a logo- syllabi ...
,
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
Amorite
The Amorites (; sux, 𒈥𒌅, MAR.TU; Akkadian: 𒀀𒈬𒊒𒌝 or 𒋾𒀉𒉡𒌝/𒊎 ; he, אֱמוֹרִי, 'Ĕmōrī; grc, Ἀμορραῖοι) were an ancient Northwest Semitic-speaking people from the Levant who also occupied la ...
,
Ugaritic
Ugaritic () is an extinct Northwest Semitic language, classified by some as a dialect of the Amorite language and so the only known Amorite dialect preserved in writing. It is known through the Ugaritic texts discovered by French archaeologist ...
and
Aramaic
The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated in ...
Proto-Afroasiatic
Proto-Afroasiatic, sometimes also referred to as Proto-Afrasian, is the reconstructed proto-language from which all modern Afroasiatic languages are descended. Though estimations vary widely, it is believed by scholars to have been spoken as a ...
) was spoken, most agree that it was located within a region of
Northeast Africa
Northeast Africa, or ''Northeastern Africa'' or Northern East Africa as it was known in the past, is a geographic regional term used to refer to the countries of Africa situated in and around the Red Sea. The region is intermediate between North ...
. Proposed specific locations include the Horn of Africa,
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...
, the eastern Sahara, and the
Levant
The Levant () is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is ...
.
Etymology
In the early 19th century, linguists grouped the Berber,
Cushitic
The Cushitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken primarily in the Horn of Africa, with minorities speaking Cushitic languages to the north in Egypt and the Sudan, and to the south in Kenya and Tanzania. As o ...
and
Egyptian
Egyptian describes something of, from, or related to Egypt.
Egyptian or Egyptians may refer to:
Nations and ethnic groups
* Egyptians, a national group in North Africa
** Egyptian culture, a complex and stable culture with thousands of years of ...
languages within a "Hamitic" phylum, in acknowledgement of these languages' genetic relation with each other and with those in the Semitic phylum. The terms "Hamitic" and "Semitic" were etymologically derived from the
Book of Genesis
The Book of Genesis (from Greek ; Hebrew: בְּרֵאשִׁית ''Bəreʾšīt'', "In hebeginning") is the first book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. Its Hebrew name is the same as its first word, ( "In the beginning" ...
, which describes various Biblical tribes descended from
Ham
Ham is pork from a leg cut that has been preserved by wet or dry curing, with or without smoking."Bacon: Bacon and Ham Curing" in ''Chambers's Encyclopædia''. London: George Newnes, 1961, Vol. 2, p. 39. As a processed meat, the term "ham ...
and
Shem
Shem (; he, שֵׁם ''Šēm''; ar, سَام, Sām) ''Sḗm''; Ge'ez: ሴም, ''Sēm'' was one of the sons of Noah in the book of Genesis and in the book of Chronicles, and the Quran.
The children of Shem were Elam, Ashur, Arphaxad, Lu ...
, two sons of Noah. By the 1860s, the main constituent elements within the broader Afroasiatic family had been worked out.
Friedrich Müller introduced the name "Hamito-Semitic" for the entire language family in his ''Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft'' (1876).
Maurice Delafosse
Maurice Delafosse (20 December 1870 – 13 November 1926) was a French ethnographer and colonial official who also worked in the field of the languages of Africa. In a review of his daughter's biography of him he was described as "one of the most o ...
(1914) later coined the term "Afroasiatic" (often now spelled "Afro-Asiatic"). However, it did not come into general use until
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 ...
(1950) formally proposed its adoption. In doing so, Greenberg sought to emphasize the fact that 'Hamitic' was not a valid group and that language
cladistics
Cladistics (; ) is an approach to biological classification in which organisms are categorized in groups (" clades") based on hypotheses of most recent common ancestry. The evidence for hypothesized relationships is typically shared derived cha ...
did not reflect race. In current scholarly usage, the most commonly used names are "Afroasiatic", "Hamito-Semitic", and "Semito-Hamitic".
Individual scholars have also called the family "Erythraean" (Tucker 1966) and "Lisramic" (Hodge 1972). In lieu of "Hamito-Semitic", the Russian linguist
Igor Diakonoff
Igor Mikhailovich Diakonoff (occasionally spelled Diakonov, russian: link=no, И́горь Миха́йлович Дья́конов; 12 January 1915 – 2 May 1999) was a Russian historian, linguist, and translator and a renowned expert on th ...
later suggested the term "Afrasian", meaning "half African, half Asiatic", in reference to the geographic distribution of the family's constituent languages.
Distribution and branches
Scholars generally treat the Afroasiatic language family as including at least the following five branches:
* Berber
* Chadic
*
Cushitic
The Cushitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken primarily in the Horn of Africa, with minorities speaking Cushitic languages to the north in Egypt and the Sudan, and to the south in Kenya and Tanzania. As o ...
*
Egyptian
Egyptian describes something of, from, or related to Egypt.
Egyptian or Egyptians may refer to:
Nations and ethnic groups
* Egyptians, a national group in North Africa
** Egyptian culture, a complex and stable culture with thousands of years of ...
* Semitic
A sixth family's inclusion in Afroasiatic is disputed by a minority of scholars:
* Omotic
Although there is general agreement on these six families, linguists who study Afroasiatic raise some points of disagreement, in particular:
* The Omotic language branch is the most controversial member of Afroasiatic because the grammatical formatives to which most linguists have given the greatest weight in classifying languages in the family "are either absent or distinctly wobbly" (Hayward 1995). Greenberg (1963) and others considered it a subgroup of Cushitic, whereas others have raised doubts about its being part of proper Afroasiatic at all (e.g. Theil 2006).
* The Afroasiatic identity of Ongota is also broadly questioned, as is its position within Afroasiatic among those who accept it, due to the "mixed" appearance of the language and a paucity of research and data. Harold Fleming (2006) proposes that Ongota constitutes a separate branch of Afroasiatic. Bonny Sands (2009) finds the proposal by Savà and Tosco (2003) the most convincing: namely that Ongota is an East Cushitic language with a Nilo-Saharansubstratum. In other words, it would appear that the Ongota people once spoke a Nilo-Saharan language, then shifted to speaking a Cushitic language but retained some characteristics of their earlier Nilo-Saharan language.
* Beja, sometimes listed as a separate branch of Afroasiatic, is more often included in the Cushitic branch, which has a substantial degree of internal diversity.
* There is no consensus on the interrelationships of the five non-Omotic branches of Afroasiatic (see § Subgrouping below). This situation is not unusual, even among long-established language families: scholars also frequently disagree on the internal classification of the
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
, for instance.
* The extinct
Meroitic language
The Meroitic language () was spoken in Meroë (in present-day Sudan) during the Meroitic period (attested from 300 BCE) and became extinct about 400 CE. It was written in two forms of the Meroitic alphabet: Meroitic Cursive, which was written wi ...
has been proposed (
Bruce Trigger
Bruce Graham Trigger (June 18, 1937 – December 1, 2006) was a Canadian archaeologist, anthropologist, and ethnohistorian. He was appointed the James McGill Professor at McGill University in 2001.
Life
Born in Preston, Ontario (now part of C ...
, 1964,Trigger, Bruce G., ''‘Meroitic and Eastern Sudanic: A Linguistic Relationship?’'', Kush 12, 1964, 188–194. 1977Trigger, Bruce, G.,''‘The Classification of Meroitic: Geographical Considerations’'', Schriften zur Geschichte und Kultur des Alten Orients 13, 1977, 421–435.) as an unclassified Afroasiatic language, because it shares the
phonotactics
Phonotactics (from Ancient Greek "voice, sound" and "having to do with arranging") is a branch of phonology that deals with restrictions in a language on the permissible combinations of phonemes. Phonotactics defines permissible syllable struc ...
characteristic of the family, but there is not enough evidence to secure a classification (Fritz Hintze, 1974,Hintze, Fritz, ''‘Some Problems of Meroitic Philology’'', Abdel Gadir Mahmoud Abdalla (ed.), Studies of the Ancient Languages of the Sudan, Sudanese Studies 3, Khartoum University Press, Khartoum, 1974, 73–78.)
* The classification of Kujargé within Afroasiatic is not agreed upon. Blench (2008) notes that much of the basic vocabulary looks
Cushitic
The Cushitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken primarily in the Horn of Africa, with minorities speaking Cushitic languages to the north in Egypt and the Sudan, and to the south in Kenya and Tanzania. As o ...
, and speculates that Kujargé could even be a conservative language transitional between Chadic and Cushitic.
Demographics
In descending order of the number of speakers, widely-spoken Afroasiatic languages include:
*
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
( Semitic), the most widely spoken Afroasiatic language today, has over 300 million native speakers; additionally, Classical Arabic, an archaic form of the language, is the
liturgical language
A sacred language, holy language or liturgical language is any language that is cultivated and used primarily in church service or for other religious reasons by people who speak another, primary language in their daily lives.
Concept
A sacr ...
Hausa
Hausa may refer to:
* Hausa people, an ethnic group of West Africa
* Hausa language, spoken in West Africa
* Hausa Kingdoms, a historical collection of Hausa city-states
* Hausa (horse) or Dongola horse, an African breed of riding horse
See also
...
Nigeria
Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...
and southern
Niger
)
, official_languages =
, languages_type = National languageslingua franca'' by another 20 million across West Africa and the Sahel.
* Oromo (
Cushitic
The Cushitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken primarily in the Horn of Africa, with minorities speaking Cushitic languages to the north in Egypt and the Sudan, and to the south in Kenya and Tanzania. As o ...
), spoken in
Ethiopia
Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...
and
Kenya
)
, national_anthem = " Ee Mungu Nguvu Yetu"()
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, image_map2 =
, capital = Nairobi
, coordinates =
, largest_city = Nairobi
...
by around 34 million people.
* Amharic ( Semitic), official
working language
A working language (also procedural language) is a language that is given a unique legal status in a supranational company, society, state or other body or organization as its primary means of communication. It is primarily the language of the dai ...
of
Ethiopia
Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...
, with over 25 million native speakers in addition to millions of other Ethiopians speaking it as a
second language
A person's second language, or L2, is a language that is not the native language (first language or L1) of the speaker, but is learned later. A second language may be a neighbouring language, another language of the speaker's home country, or a fo ...
.
* Somali (Cushitic), spoken by 21.8 million people in
Somalia
Somalia, , Osmanya script: 𐒈𐒝𐒑𐒛𐒐𐒘𐒕𐒖; ar, الصومال, aṣ-Ṣūmāl officially the Federal Republic of SomaliaThe ''Federal Republic of Somalia'' is the country's name per Article 1 of thProvisional Constituti ...
,
Djibouti
Djibouti, ar, جيبوتي ', french: link=no, Djibouti, so, Jabuuti officially the Republic of Djibouti, is a country in the Horn of Africa, bordered by Somalia to the south, Ethiopia to the southwest, Eritrea in the north, and the Red ...
Tigrinya
(; also spelled Tigrigna) is an Ethio-Semitic language commonly spoken Eritrea and in northern Ethiopia's Tigray Region by the Tigrinya and Tigrayan peoples. It is also spoken by the global diaspora of these regions.
History and literatur ...
(Semitic), spoken by around 9.73 million people in Eritrea and
Tigray Region
The Tigray Region, officially the Tigray National Regional State, is the northernmost regional state in Ethiopia. The Tigray Region is the homeland of the Tigrayan, Irob, and Kunama people. Its capital and largest city is Mekelle. Tigray ...
of Ethiopia.
* Afar (Cushitic), spoken by around 7.5 million people in Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Eritrea.
* Shilha ( Berber), spoken by around 7 million people in
Morocco
Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria t ...
.
* Kabyle (Berber), spoken by around 5.6 million people in
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
(Semitic), spoken by around 5 million native speakers, and additionally by 4 million second-language speakers in
Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
and the
Jewish diaspora
The Jewish diaspora ( he, תְּפוּצָה, təfūṣā) or exile (Hebrew: ; Yiddish: ) is the dispersion of Israelites or Jews out of their ancient ancestral homeland (the Land of Israel) and their subsequent settlement in other parts of th ...
liturgical language
A sacred language, holy language or liturgical language is any language that is cultivated and used primarily in church service or for other religious reasons by people who speak another, primary language in their daily lives.
Concept
A sacr ...
of
Judaism
Judaism ( he, ''Yahăḏūṯ'') is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion comprising the collective religious, cultural, and legal tradition and civilization of the Jewish people. It has its roots as an organized religion in t ...
and of
Samaritanism
Samaritanism is the Abrahamic, monotheistic, ethnic religion of the Samaritan people, an ethnoreligious group who, alongside Jews, originate from the ancient Israelites.
Its central holy text is the Samaritan Pentateuch, which Samaritans ...
.
*
Central Atlas Tamazight
Central Atlas Tamazight or Atlasic (also known as Central Morocco Tamazight, variant of tashelhit, Middle Atlas Tamazight, Tamazight, Central Shilha and, rarely, Beraber or Braber; native name: ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ ''Tamazight'' , ) is a Be ...
(Berber), spoken by around 4.6 million people in Morocco.
* Riffian (Berber), spoken by around 4.2 million people in Morocco.
*
Gurage languages
The Gurage languages (Gurage: ጉራጌ), also known as Guragie, is a dialect-continuum language, which belong to the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by the Gurage people, who inhabit the Gurage Zone within t ...
(Semitic), a group of languages spoken by more than 2 million people in
Ethiopia
Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...
.
* Tigre (Semitic), spoken by around 2 million people in Eritrea.
* Wolaitta (Omotic), spoken by around 1.6 million people in
Ethiopia
Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...
.
* Maltese (Semitic), spoken by around half a million people in
Malta
Malta ( , , ), officially the Republic of Malta ( mt, Repubblika ta' Malta ), is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago, between Italy and Libya, and is often considered a part of Southern Europe. It lies ...
and the
Maltese diaspora
Emigration from Malta was an important demographic phenomenon throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, leading to the creation of large Maltese communities in English-speaking countries abroad.
History
Nineteenth century
Mass emi ...
. It descended from
Siculo-Arabic
Siculo-Arabic ( ar, الْلهجَة الْعَرَبِيَة الْصَقلِيَة), also known as Sicilian Arabic, is the term used for varieties of Arabic that were spoken in the Emirate of Sicily (which included Malta) from the 9th century ...
independently from modern
Arabic dialects
The varieties (or dialects or vernacular languages) of Arabic, a Semitic language within the Afroasiatic family originating in the Arabian Peninsula, are the linguistic systems that Arabic speakers speak natively. There are considerable varia ...
, features
Romance
Romance (from Vulgar Latin , "in the Roman language", i.e., "Latin") may refer to:
Common meanings
* Romance (love), emotional attraction towards another person and the courtship behaviors undertaken to express the feelings
* Romance languages, ...
Latin script
The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern I ...
since at least the 14th century.
*
Assyrian Neo-Aramaic
Suret ( syr, ܣܘܪܝܬ) ( su:rɪtʰor su:rɪθ, also known as Assyrian or Chaldean, refers to the varieties of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) spoken by ethnic Assyrians, including those identifying as religious groups rather than eth ...
(Semitic), a variety of modern Aramaic, spoken by more than 500,000 people in the
Assyrian diaspora
Assyrian may refer to:
* Assyrian people, the indigenous ethnic group of Mesopotamia.
* Assyria, a major Mesopotamian kingdom and empire.
** Early Assyrian Period
** Old Assyrian Period
** Middle Assyrian Empire
** Neo-Assyrian Empire
* Assyrian ...
Tiaret
Tiaret ( ar, تاهرت / تيارت; Berber: Tahert or Tihert, i.e. "Lioness") is a major city in northwestern Algeria that gives its name to the wider farming region of Tiaret Province. Both the town and region lie south-west of the capital o ...
became the first to link two branches of Afroasiatic together; he perceived a relationship between Berber and Semitic. He knew of Semitic through his study of Arabic, Hebrew, and
Aramaic
The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated in ...
. In the course of the 19th century, Europeans also began suggesting such relationships. In 1844,
Theodor Benfey :''This is about the German philologist. For Theodor Benfey (born 1925) who developed a spiral periodic table of the elements in 1964, see Otto Theodor Benfey.''
Theodor Benfey (; 28 January 1809, in Nörten near Göttingen26 June 1881, in Götti ...
proposed a language family consisting of Semitic, Berber, and Cushitic (he called the latter "Ethiopic"). In the same year T.N. Newman suggested a relationship between Semitic and Hausa, but this would long remain a topic of dispute and uncertainty.
Friedrich Müller named the traditional Hamito-Semitic family in 1876 in his ''Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft'' ("Outline of Linguistics"), and defined it as consisting of a Semitic group plus a "Hamitic" group containing Egyptian, Berber, and Cushitic; he excluded the Chadic group. It was the
Egyptologist
Egyptology (from ''Egypt'' and Greek , '' -logia''; ar, علم المصريات) is the study of ancient Egyptian history, language, literature, religion, architecture and art from the 5th millennium BC until the end of its native religiou ...
Karl Richard Lepsius (1810–1884) who restricted Hamitic to the non-Semitic languages in Africa, which are characterized by a grammatical
gender system
Gender systems are the social structures that establish the number of genders and their associated gender roles in every society. A ''gender role'' is "everything that a person says and does to indicate to others or to the self the degree that ...
. This "Hamitic language group" was proposed to unite various, mainly North-African, languages, including the Ancient
Egyptian language
The Egyptian language or Ancient Egyptian ( ) is a dead Afro-Asiatic language that was spoken in ancient Egypt. It is known today from a large corpus of surviving texts which were made accessible to the modern world following the decipher ...
Chadic languages
The Chadic languages form a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken in parts of the Sahel. They include 150 languages spoken across northern Nigeria, southern Niger, southern Chad, the Central African Republic, and northern Cam ...
. Unlike Müller, Lepsius saw
Hausa
Hausa may refer to:
* Hausa people, an ethnic group of West Africa
* Hausa language, spoken in West Africa
* Hausa Kingdoms, a historical collection of Hausa city-states
* Hausa (horse) or Dongola horse, an African breed of riding horse
See also
...
and Nama as part of the Hamitic group. These classifications relied in part on non-linguistic anthropological and racial arguments. Both authors used the skin-color, mode of subsistence, and other characteristics of native speakers as part of their arguments for grouping particular languages together.
In 1912,
Carl Meinhof
Carl Friedrich Michael Meinhof (23 July 1857 – 11 February 1944) was a German linguist 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 Po ...
published ''Die Sprachen der Hamiten'' ("The Languages of the Hamites"), in which he expanded Lepsius's model, adding the
Fula
Fula may refer to:
*Fula people (or Fulani, Fulɓe)
*Fula language (or Pulaar, Fulfulde, Fulani)
**The Fula variety known as the Pulaar language
**The Fula variety known as the Pular language
**The Fula variety known as Maasina Fulfulde
*Al-Fula ...
,
Maasai Maasai may refer to:
* Maasai people
*Maasai language
* Maasai mythology
* MAASAI (band)
See also
* Masai (disambiguation)
* Massai
Massai (also known as: Masai, Massey, Massi, Mah–sii, Massa, Wasse, Wassil or by the nickname "Big Foot" Mas ...
, Bari, Nandi, Sandawe and Hadza languages to the Hamitic group. Meinhof's model was widely supported in the 1940s. 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'." 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 although earlier work by scholars such as Lepsius and Johnston had substantiated that the languages which he would later dub "Nilo-Hamitic" were in fact Nilotic languages, with numerous similarities in vocabulary to other Nilotic languages.
Leo Reinisch
Leo or Léo may refer to:
Acronyms
* Law enforcement officer
* Law enforcement organisation
* ''Louisville Eccentric Observer'', a free weekly newspaper in Louisville, Kentucky
* Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity
Arts a ...
(1909) had already proposed linking Cushitic and Chadic while urging their more distant affinity with Egyptian and Semitic. However, his suggestion found little acceptance.
Marcel Cohen Marcel Samuel Raphaël Cohen (February 6, 1884 – November 5, 1974) was a French linguist. He was an important scholar of Semitic languages and especially of Ethiopian languages. He studied the French language and contributed much to general lingui ...
(1924) rejected the idea of a distinct "Hamitic" subgroup and included
Hausa
Hausa may refer to:
* Hausa people, an ethnic group of West Africa
* Hausa language, spoken in West Africa
* Hausa Kingdoms, a historical collection of Hausa city-states
* Hausa (horse) or Dongola horse, an African breed of riding horse
See also
...
(a Chadic language) in his comparative Hamito-Semitic vocabulary. Finally,
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 ...
's 1950 work led to the widespread rejection of "Hamitic" as a language category by linguists. Greenberg refuted Meinhof's linguistic theories and rejected the use of racial and social evidence. In dismissing the notion of a separate "Nilo-Hamitic" language category, in particular, Greenberg was "returning to a view widely held a half-century earlier". He consequently rejoined Meinhof's so-called Nilo-Hamitic languages with their appropriate Nilotic siblings. He also added (and sub-classified) the Chadic languages, and proposed a new name, "Afroasiatic", for the family. Almost all scholars have accepted this classification as the new and continued consensus.
Greenberg developed his model fully in his book ''
The Languages of Africa
''The Languages of Africa'' is a 1963 book of essays by the linguist Joseph Greenberg, in which the author sets forth a genetic classification of African languages that, with some changes, continues to be the most commonly used one today. It is a ...
'' (1963), in which he reassigned most of Meinhof's additions to Hamitic to other language families, notably Nilo-Saharan. Following
Isaac Schapera
Isaac Schapera FBA FRAI (23 June 1905 Garies, Cape Colony – 26 June 2003 London, England), was a social anthropologist at the London School of Economics specialising in South Africa. He was notable for his contributions of ethnographic an ...
and rejecting Meinhof, he classified the
Khoekhoe language
The Khoekhoe language (), also known by the ethnic terms Nama (''Namagowab'') , Damara (''ǂNūkhoegowab''), or Nama/Damara and formerly as Hottentot, is the most widespread of the non-Bantu languages of Southern Africa that make heavy use o ...
as a member of the
Khoisan languages
The Khoisan languages (; also Khoesan or Khoesaan) are a group of African languages originally classified together by Joseph Greenberg. Khoisan languages share click consonants and do not belong to other African language families. For much of ...
, a grouping that has since proven inaccurate and excessively motivated on the presence of click sounds. To Khoisan he also added the Tanzanian Hadza and Sandawe, though this view has been discredited as linguists working on these languages regard them as linguistic isolates. Despite this, Greenberg's classification remains a starting point for modern work on many languages spoken in Africa, and the Hamitic category (and its extension to Nilo-Hamitic) has no part in this.
Since the three traditional branches of the Hamitic languages (Berber, Cushitic and Egyptian) have not been shown to form an exclusive ( monophyletic) phylogenetic unit of their own, separate from other Afroasiatic languages, linguists no longer use the term in this sense. Each of these branches is instead now regarded as an independent subgroup of the larger Afroasiatic family.
In 1969, Harold Fleming proposed that what had previously been known as Western Cushitic is an independent branch of Afroasiatic, suggesting for it the new name "Omotic". This proposal and name have met with widespread acceptance.
Based on typological differences with the other Cushitic languages,
Robert Hetzron
Robert Hetzron, born Herzog (31 December 1937, Budapest – 12 August 1997, Santa Barbara, California), was a Hungarian-born linguist known for his work on the comparative study of Afro-Asiatic languages, as well as for his study of Cushitic ...
proposed that Beja has to be removed from Cushitic, thus forming an independent branch of Afroasiatic. Most scholars, however, reject this proposal, and continue to group Beja as the sole member of a Northern branch within Cushitic.
'' Glottolog'' does not accept that the inclusion or even unity of Omotic has been established, nor that of Ongota or the unclassified Kujarge. It therefore splits off the following groups as small families:
South Omotic
The Aroid or Ari-Banna (formerly South Omotic or Somotic) languages possibly belong to the Afro-Asiatic family and are spoken in Ethiopia.
Languages
There are five Aroid languages:
* ''Aari-Gayil languages''
** Aari
** Gayil
* ''Hamer-Karo ...
Little agreement exists on the subgrouping of the five or six branches of Afroasiatic: Semitic, Egyptian, Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, and Omotic. However,
Christopher Ehret
Christopher Ehret (born 27 July 1941), who currently holds the position of Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA, is an American scholar of African history and African historical linguistics particularly known for his efforts to correlate li ...
(1979), Harold Fleming (1981), and Joseph Greenberg (1981) all agree that the Omotic branch split from the rest first.
Otherwise:
* Paul Newman (1980) groups Berber with Chadic and Egyptian with Semitic, while questioning the inclusion of Omotic in Afroasiatic. Rolf Theil (2006) concurs with the exclusion of Omotic but does not otherwise address the structure of the family.
* Harold Fleming (1981) divides non-Omotic Afroasiatic, or "Erythraean", into three groups, Cushitic, Semitic, and Chadic-Berber-Egyptian. He later added Semitic and Beja to Chadic-Berber-Egyptian and tentatively proposed Ongota as a new third branch of Erythraean. He thus divided Afroasiatic into two major branches, Omotic and Erythraean, with Erythraean consisting of three sub-branches, Cushitic, Chadic-Berber-Egyptian-Semitic-Beja, and Ongota.
* Like Harold Fleming,
Christopher Ehret
Christopher Ehret (born 27 July 1941), who currently holds the position of Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA, is an American scholar of African history and African historical linguistics particularly known for his efforts to correlate li ...
(1995: 490) divides Afroasiatic into two branches, Omotic and Erythrean. He divides Omotic into two branches, North Omotic and South Omotic. He divides Erythrean into Cushitic, comprising Beja, Agaw, and East-South Cushitic, and North Erythrean, comprising Chadic and "Boreafrasian." According to his classification, Boreafrasian consists of Egyptian, Berber, and Semitic.
*
Vladimir Orel
Vladimir Emmanuilovich Orël (russian: Владимир Эммануилович Орëл; 9 February 1952 – 5 August 2007) was a Russian linguist and etymologist.
Biography
At the Moscow State University he studied theoretical linguistics ...
and Olga Stolbova (1995) group Berber with Semitic and Chadic with Egyptian. They split up Cushitic into five or more independent branches of Afroasiatic, viewing Cushitic as a Sprachbund rather than a
language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in h ...
.
* Igor M. Diakonoff (1996) subdivides Afroasiatic in two, grouping Berber, Cushitic, and Semitic together as East-West Afrasian (ESA), and Chadic with Egyptian as North-South Afrasian (NSA). He excludes Omotic from Afroasiatic.
*
Lionel Bender
Marvin Lionel Bender (August 18, 1934 – February 19, 2008) was an American linguist.
Life
Bender was born August 18, 1934, in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. He travelled throughout the world, particularly in Northeast Africa, and was an accompli ...
(1997) groups Berber, Cushitic, and Semitic together as "Macro-Cushitic". He regards Chadic and Omotic as the branches of Afroasiatic most remote from the others.
* Alexander Militarev (2000), on the basis of
lexicostatistics
Lexicostatistics is a method of comparative linguistics that involves comparing the percentage of lexical cognates between languages to determine their relationship. Lexicostatistics is related to the comparative method but does not reconstruct a ...
, groups Berber with Chadic and both more distantly with Semitic, as against Cushitic and Omotic. He places Ongota in South Omotic.
Date of Afroasiatic
The earliest written evidence of an Afroasiatic language is an Ancient Egyptian inscription dated to c. 3400 BC (5,400 years ago). Symbols on
Gerzean
The Gerzeh culture, also called Naqada II, refers to the archaeological stage at Gerzeh (also Girza or Jirzah), a prehistoric Egyptian cemetery located along the west bank of the Nile. The necropolis is named after el-Girzeh, the nearby contem ...
(Naqada II) pottery resembling
Egyptian hieroglyphs
Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1, ...
date back to c. 4000 BC, suggesting an earlier possible dating. This gives us a minimum date for the age of Afroasiatic. However, Ancient Egyptian is highly divergent from
Proto-Afroasiatic
Proto-Afroasiatic, sometimes also referred to as Proto-Afrasian, is the reconstructed proto-language from which all modern Afroasiatic languages are descended. Though estimations vary widely, it is believed by scholars to have been spoken as a ...
, and considerable time must have elapsed in between them. Estimates of the date at which the Proto-Afroasiatic language was spoken vary widely. They fall within a range between approximately 7500 BC (9,500 years ago), and approximately 16,000 BC (18,000 years ago). According to Igor M. Diakonoff (1988: 33n), Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken c. 10,000 BC. Christopher Ehret (2002: 35–36) asserts that Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken c. 11,000 BC at the latest, and possibly as early as c. 16,000 BC. These dates are older than those associated with other
proto-language
In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unattes ...
s.
Afroasiatic Urheimat
The Afroasiatic ''
urheimat
In historical linguistics, the homeland or ''Urheimat'' (, from German '' ur-'' "original" and ''Heimat'', home) of a proto-language is the region in which it was spoken before splitting into different daughter languages. A proto-language is the r ...
'', the hypothetical place where
Proto-Afroasiatic language
Proto-Afroasiatic, sometimes also referred to as Proto-Afrasian, is the reconstructed proto-language from which all modern Afroasiatic languages are descended. Though estimations vary widely, it is believed by scholars to have been spoken as a si ...
speakers lived in a single linguistic community, or complex of communities, before the original language dispersed geographically and divided into distinct languages, is unknown. Afroasiatic languages are today primarily spoken in
West Asia
Western Asia, West Asia, or Southwest Asia, is the westernmost subregion of the larger geographical region of Asia, as defined by some academics, UN bodies and other institutions. It is almost entirely a part of the Middle East, and includes Ana ...
,
North Africa
North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in ...
, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahel. Their distribution seems to have been influenced by the Sahara pump operating over the last 10,000 years.
There is no definitive agreement on when or where the original homeland of the language family existed, but some link the first speakers to the first farmers in the
Levant
The Levant () is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is ...
who would later spread to North and East Africa. Others argue the first speakers were pre-agricultural and based in
Northeast Africa
Northeast Africa, or ''Northeastern Africa'' or Northern East Africa as it was known in the past, is a geographic regional term used to refer to the countries of Africa situated in and around the Red Sea. The region is intermediate between North ...
.
Shared features with
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
in West Asia related to food production are suggested by some scholars to support a Levantine origin for Afroasiatic languages. The Levantine hypothesis does not account for the domestication of plants
endemic
Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found else ...
to the Horn of Africa such as
teff
''Eragrostis tef'', also known as teff, Williams lovegrass or annual bunch grass, is an annual grass, a species of lovegrass native to the Horn of Africa, notably to both Eritrea and Ethiopia. It is cultivated for its edible seeds, also known as ...
,
ensete
''Ensete'' is a genus of monocarpic flowering plants native to tropical regions of Africa and Asia. It is one of the three genera in the banana family, Musaceae, and includes the false banana or enset ('' E. ventricosum''), an economically impor ...
, and
niger seed
''Guizotia abyssinica'' is an erect, stout, branched annual herb, grown for its edible oil and seed. Its cultivation originated in the Eritrean and Ethiopian highlands, and has spread to other parts of Ethiopia. Common names include noog/nug ( ...
or for the lack of evidence for intrusive agricultural populations or the cultivation of
wheat
Wheat is a grass widely cultivated for its seed, a cereal grain that is a worldwide staple food. The many species of wheat together make up the genus ''Triticum'' ; the most widely grown is common wheat (''T. aestivum''). The archaeologi ...
,
barley
Barley (''Hordeum vulgare''), a member of the grass family, is a major cereal grain grown in temperate climates globally. It was one of the first cultivated grains, particularly in Eurasia as early as 10,000 years ago. Globally 70% of barley p ...
, or sorghum there prior to 3000 BC. A Northeast African origin is supported by the majority of scholars today. The region includes the majority of the diversity of the Afroasiatic language family and has very diverse groups in close geographic proximity, which is sometimes considered a telltale sign for a linguistic geographic origin. Igor M. Diakonoff placed the origin of the Afro-Asiatic languages in northeast Africa, with older strands south of Egypt, and newer elements straddling the Nile Delta and Sinai.
Christopher Ehret
Christopher Ehret (born 27 July 1941), who currently holds the position of Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA, is an American scholar of African history and African historical linguistics particularly known for his efforts to correlate li ...
argues that Proto-Afroasiatic speakers in Northeast Africa developed subsistence patterns of intensive plant collection and
pastoralism
Pastoralism is a form of animal husbandry where domesticated animals (known as " livestock") are released onto large vegetated outdoor lands (pastures) for grazing, historically by nomadic people who moved around with their herds. The a ...
, which gave the population an economic advantage that impelled the expansion of the Afroasiatic languages. Ehret suggests that a Proto-Semitic- or Proto-Semito-Berber-speaking population migrated from Northeast Africa to the Levant during the late Paleolithic and eventually gave rise to the Natufian culture. The linguist
Roger Blench
Roger Marsh Blench (born August 1, 1953) is a British linguist, ethnomusicologist and development anthropologist. He has an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and is based in Cambridge, England. He researches, publishes, and work ...
proposed southwestern Ethiopia as the most likely homeland of Afroasiatic, in part because of the high internal diversification of the Omotic branch spoken in that region.
Various scholars have hypothesized on the origins of Afroasiatic based on genetic evidence. Y Haplogroup E-M215 is common among modern Afroasiatic-speaking groups and has been associated with an ancestral Afroasiatic population in Northeast Africa. In a 2014 autosomal DNA study, Hodgson et al. postulate that the Afroasiatic languages may have been spread by an ancestral population(s) carrying a newly-identified non-African genetic component, which the researchers dub the "Ethio-Somali". The genetic component is prevalent among modern Afroasiatic-speaking populations and is found at its highest levels among those in the Horn of Africa. The researchers suggest that the original Ethio-Somali carrying population(s) probably migrated from the Near East to Northeast Africa in the pre-agricultural period (~12–23 ka) and that a descendant population migrated back to the Levant prior to 4000 BC and developed the Semitic branch of Afroasiatic.
Similarities in grammar and syntax
Widespread (though not universal) features of the Afroasiatic languages include:
* A set of emphatic consonants, variously realized as glottalized, pharyngealized, or implosive.
* VSO
typology
Typology is the study of types or the systematic classification of the types of something according to their common characteristics. Typology is the act of finding, counting and classification facts with the help of eyes, other senses and logic. Ty ...
gender
Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures ...
system in the singular, with the feminine marked by the sound /t/.
* All Afroasiatic subfamilies show evidence of a causative affix ''s''.
* Semitic, Berber, Cushitic (including Beja), and Chadic support
possessive suffix
In linguistics, a possessive affix (from la, affixum possessivum) is an affix (usually suffix or prefix) attached to a noun to indicate its possessor, much in the manner of possessive adjectives.
Possessive affixes are found in many languages o ...
es.
*
Nisba
The Arabic language, Arabic word nisba (; also transcribed as ''nisbah'' or ''nisbat'') may refer to:
* Arabic nouns and adjectives#Nisba, Nisba, a suffix used to form adjectives in Arabic grammar, or the adjective resulting from this formation
**c ...
derivation in ''-j'' (earlier Egyptian) or ''-ī'' (Semitic)
*
Morphology
Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to:
Disciplines
* Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts
* Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies ...
in which words inflect by changes within the root (vowel changes or
gemination
In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from ''gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from s ...
) as well as with prefixes and suffixes.
One of the most remarkable shared features among the Afroasiatic languages is the prefixing verb conjugation (see the table at right), with a distinctive pattern of prefixes beginning with /ʔ t n j/, and in particular a pattern whereby third-singular masculine /j-/ is opposed to third-singular feminine and second-singular /t-/.
According to Ehret (1996),
tonal language
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey emph ...
s appear in the Omotic and Chadic branches of Afroasiatic, as well as in certain Cushitic languages. The Semitic, Berber and Egyptian branches generally do not use tones phonemically.
The Berber and Semitic branches share certain grammatical features (e.g. alternative feminine endings *-ay/*-āy; corresponding vowel templates for verbal conjugations) which can be reconstructed for a higher-order proto-language (provisionally called "Proto-Berbero-Semitic" by Kossmann & Suchard (2018) and Van Putten (2018)). Whether this proto-language is ancestral to Berber and Semitic only, or also to other branches of Afroasiatic, still remains to be established.
Shared vocabulary
The following are some examples of Afroasiatic cognates, including ten
pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase.
Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not c ...
s, three
noun
A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for:
* Living creatures (including people, alive, ...
s, and three
verb
A verb () is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descr ...
s.
:'' Source:'' Christopher Ehret, ''Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic'' (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).
:''Note:'' Ehret does not make use of Berber in his etymologies, stating (1995: 12): "the kind of extensive reconstruction of proto-Berber lexicon that might help in sorting through alternative possible etymologies is not yet available." The Berber cognates here are taken from the previous version of the table in this article and need to be completed and referenced.
:''Abbreviations:'' NOm = 'North Omotic', SOm = 'South Omotic'. MSA = 'Modern South Arabian', PSC = 'Proto-Southern Cushitic', PSom-II = 'Proto-Somali, stage 2'. masc. = 'masculine', fem. = 'feminine', sing. = 'singular', pl. = 'plural'. 1s. = 'first person singular', 2s. = 'second person singular'.
:''Symbols:'' Following Ehret (1995: 70), a
caron
A caron (), háček or haček (, or ; plural ''háčeks'' or ''háčky'') also known as a hachek, wedge, check, kvačica, strešica, mäkčeň, varnelė, inverted circumflex, inverted hat, flying bird, inverted chevron, is a diacritic mark ( ...
ˇ over a vowel indicates rising tone, and a circumflex ^ over a vowel indicates falling tone. V indicates a
vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
of unknown quality. Ɂ indicates a glottal stop. * indicates reconstructed forms based on comparison of related languages.
There are two etymological dictionaries of Afroasiatic, one by Christopher Ehret, and one by Vladimir Orel and Olga Stolbova. The two dictionaries disagree on almost everything. The following table contains the thirty roots or so (out of thousands) that represent a fragile consensus of present research:
Etymological bibliography
Some of the main sources for Afroasiatic etymologies include:
* Cohen, Marcel. 1947. ''Essai comparatif sur le vocabulaire et la phonétique du chamito-sémitique.'' Paris: Champion.
* Diakonoff, Igor M. et al. 1993–1997. "Historical-comparative vocabulary of Afrasian," ''St. Petersburg Journal of African Studies'' 2–6.
* Ehret, Christopher. 1995. ''Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic (Proto-Afrasian): Vowels, Tone, Consonants, and Vocabulary'' (= ''University of California Publications in Linguistics'' 126). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
* Orel, Vladimir E. and Olga V. Stolbova. 1995. ''Hamito-Semitic Etymological Dictionary: Materials for a Reconstruction.'' Leiden: Brill. .
See also
*
Afroasiatic phonetic notation Comparative work of the Afroasiatic languages uses a semi-conventionalized set of symbols that are somewhat different than the International Phonetic Alphabet and other phonetic notations. The more salient differences include the letters for IPA , ...
Languages of Asia
A wide variety of languages are spoken throughout Asia, comprising different language families and some unrelated isolates. The major language families include Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Caucasian, Dravidian, Indo-European, Afroasiatic, Turk ...
*
Proto-Afroasiatic language
Proto-Afroasiatic, sometimes also referred to as Proto-Afrasian, is the reconstructed proto-language from which all modern Afroasiatic languages are descended. Though estimations vary widely, it is believed by scholars to have been spoken as a si ...
*
Nostratic languages
Nostratic is a controversial hypothetical macrofamily, which includes many of the indigenous language families of Eurasia, although its exact composition and structure vary among proponents. It typically comprises Kartvelian, Indo-European and ...
*Anthony, David. 2007. '' The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World.'' Princeton: Princeton University Press.
*
*Bender, Lionel et al. 2003. ''Selected Comparative-Historical Afro-Asiatic Studies in Memory of Igor M. Diakonoff.'' LINCOM.
*
*Bomhard, Alan R. 1996. ''Indo-European and the Nostratic Hypothesis.'' Signum.
*Diakonoff, Igor M. 1988. ''Afrasian Languages.'' Moscow: Nauka.
*Diakonoff, Igor M. 1996. "Some reflections on the Afrasian linguistic macrofamily." ''Journal of Near Eastern Studies'' 55, 293.
*Diakonoff, Igor M. 1998. "The earliest Semitic society: Linguistic data." ''Journal of Semitic Studies'' 43, 209.
*Dimmendaal, Gerrit, and Erhard Voeltz. 2007. "Africa". In Christopher Moseley, ed., ''Encyclopedia of the world's endangered languages''.
*Ehret, Christopher. 1995. ''Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic (Proto-Afrasian): Vowels, Tone, Consonants, and Vocabulary.'' Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
*Ehret, Christopher. 1997 Abstract of "The lessons of deep-time historical-comparative reconstruction in Afroasiatic: reflections on ''Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic: Vowels, Tone, Consonants, and Vocabulary'' (U.C. Press, 1995)", paper delivered at the Twenty-fifth Annual Meeting of the North American Conference on Afro-Asiatic Linguistics, held in Miami, Florida, on 21–23 March 1997.
*Finnegan, Ruth H. 1970. "Afro-Asiatic languages West Africa". ''Oral Literature in Africa'', pg 558.
*Fleming, Harold C. 2006. ''Ongota: A Decisive Language in African Prehistory.'' Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
*Greenberg, Joseph H. 1950 "Studies in African linguistic classification: IV. Hamito-Semitic." ''Southwestern Journal of Anthropology'' 6, 47–63.
*Greenberg, Joseph H. 1955. ''Studies in African Linguistic Classification.'' New Haven: Compass Publishing Company. (Photo-offset reprint of the ''SJA'' articles with minor corrections.)
*Greenberg, Joseph H. 1963. ''The Languages of Africa''. Bloomington: Indiana University. (Heavily revised version of Greenberg 1955.)
*Greenberg, Joseph H. 1966. ''The Languages of Africa'' (2nd ed. with additions and corrections). Bloomington: Indiana University.
*Greenberg, Joseph H. 1981. "African linguistic classification." ''General History of Africa, Volume 1: Methodology and African Prehistory'', edited by Joseph Ki-Zerbo, 292–308. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
*Greenberg, Joseph H. 2000–2002. ''Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family, Volume 1: Grammar, Volume 2: Lexicon.'' Stanford: Stanford University Press.
*Hayward, R. J. 1995. "The challenge of Omotic: an inaugural lecture delivered on 17 February 1994". London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
*Heine, Bernd and Derek Nurse. 2000. ''African Languages'', Chapter 4. Cambridge University Press.
*Hodge, Carleton T. (editor). 1971. ''Afroasiatic: A Survey.'' The Hague – Paris: Mouton.
*Hodge, Carleton T. 1991. "Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic." In Sydney M. Lamb and E. Douglas Mitchell (editors), ''Sprung from Some Common Source: Investigations into the Prehistory of Languages'', Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 141–165.
*Huehnergard, John. 2004. "Afro-Asiatic." In R.D. Woodard (editor), ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World’s Ancient Languages'', Cambridge – New York, 2004, 138–159.
*Militarev, Alexander. "Towards the genetic affiliation of Ongota, a nearly-extinct language of Ethiopia," 60 pp. In ''Orientalia et Classica: Papers of the Institute of Oriental and Classical Studies'', Issue 5. Moscow. (Forthcoming.)
*Newman, Paul. 1980. ''The Classification of Chadic within Afroasiatic.'' Leiden: Universitaire Pers Leiden.
*Theil, R. 2006 Is Omotic Afro-Asiatic? Proceedings from the David Dwyer retirement symposium, Michigan State University, East Lansing, 21 October 2006.
*
*
*
*Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2020). ''Revivalistics: From the Genesis of Israeli to Language Reclamation in Australia and Beyond'' Oxford University Press /
External links
Afro-Asiatic at the Linguist List MultiTree Project (not functional as of 2014): Genealogical trees attributed to Delafosse 1914, Greenberg 1950–1955, Greenberg 1963, Fleming 1976, Hodge 1976, Orel & Stolbova 1995, Diakonoff 1996–1998, Ehret 1995–2000, Hayward 2000, Militarev 2005, Blench 2006, and Fleming 2006
presented by Alexander Militarev at his talk "Genealogical classification of Afro-Asiatic languages according to the latest data" at the conference on the 70th anniversary of
V.M. Illich-Svitych
Vladislav Markovich Illich-Svitych (russian: Владисла́в Ма́ркович И́ллич-Сви́тыч, also transliterated as Illič-Svityč; September 12, 1934 – August 22, 1966) was a Soviet linguist and accentologist. He was a fo ...
"Is Omotic Afro-Asiatic?" by Rolf Theil (2006)
NACAL The North American Conference on Afroasiatic Linguistics, now in its 35th year
of
Roger Blench
Roger Marsh Blench (born August 1, 1953) is a British linguist, ethnomusicologist and development anthropologist. He has an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and is based in Cambridge, England. He researches, publishes, and work ...