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Afroasiatic languages information


Afroasiatic
Hamito-Semitic, Semito-Hamitic, Afrasian
Geographic
distribution
North Africa, West Asia, Horn of Africa, Sahel, and Malta
Linguistic classificationOne of the world's primary language families
Proto-languageProto-Afroasiatic
Subdivisions
  • Berber
  • Chadic
  • Cushitic
  • Egyptian
  • Semitic
  • Omotic[1]
ISO 639-2 / 5afa
Glottologafro1255
Distribution of the Afroasiatic languages

The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic, sometimes Afrasian), also known as Hamito-Semitic or Semito-Hamitic, are a language family (or "phylum") of about 400 languages spoken predominantly in West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahara and Sahel.[2] Over 500 million people are native speakers of an Afroasiatic language, constituting the fourth-largest language family after Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, and Niger–Congo.[3] Most linguists divide the family into six branches: Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, Semitic, and Omotic.[4] The vast majority of Afroasiatic languages are considered indigenous to the African continent, including all those not belonging to the Semitic branch.

Arabic, if counted as a single language, is by far the most widely spoken within the family, with around 300 million native speakers concentrated primarily in the Middle East and North Africa.[2] Other major Afroasiatic languages include the Chadic Hausa language with over 34 million native speakers, the Semitic Amharic language with 25 million, and the Cushitic Somali language with 15 million. Other Afroasiatic languages with millions of native speakers include the Cushitic Sidaama language, the Semitic Tigrinya language and the Omotic Wolaitta language, though most languages within the family are much smaller in size.[5] There are many well-attested Afroasiatic languages from antiquity that have since died or gone extinct, including Egyptian and the Semitic languages Akkadian, Biblical Hebrew, Phoenician, Amorite, and Ugaritic. There is no consensus among historical linguists as to precisely where or when the common ancestor of all Afroasiatic languages, known as Proto-Afroasiatic, was originally spoken. However, most agree that the Afroasiatic homeland was located somewhere in northeastern Africa, with specific proposals including the Horn of Africa, Egypt, the eastern Sahara. A significant minority of scholars argues for an origin in the Levant. The reconstructed timelines of when Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken vary extensively, with dates ranging from 18,000 BC to 8,000 BC. Even the latest plausible dating makes Afroasiatic the oldest language family accepted by contemporary linguists.[6]

Comparative study of Afroasiatic is hindered by the massive disparities in textual attestation between its branches: while the Semitic and Egyptian branches are attested in writing as early as the fourth millennium BC, Berber, Cushitic, and Omotic languages were often not recorded until the 19th or 20th centuries.[7] While systematic sound laws have not yet been established to explain the relationships between the various branches of Afroasiatic, the languages share a number of common features. One of the most important for establishing membership in the branch is a common set of pronouns.[8] Other widely shared features include a prefix m- which creates nouns from verbs, evidence for alternations between the vowel "a" and a high vowel in the forms of the verb, similar methods of marking gender and plurality, and some details of phonology such as the presence of pharyngeal fricatives. Other features found in multiple branches include a specialized verb conjugation using suffixes (Egyptian, Semitic, Berber), a specialized verb conjugation using prefixes (Semitic, Berber, Cushitic), verbal prefixes deriving middle (t-), causative (s-), and passive (m-) verb forms (Semitic, Berber, Egyptian, Cushitic), and a suffix used to derive adjectives (Egyptian, Semitic).

  1. ^ Sands 2009, pp. 559–580.
  2. ^ a b Almansa-Villatoro & Štubňová Nigrelli 2023, p. 3.
  3. ^ Eberhard, Simons & Fennig 2021, Summary by language family.
  4. ^ Sands 2009, p. 565.
  5. ^ Meyer & Wolff 2019, p. 249.
  6. ^ Nichols 2003, p. 300.
  7. ^ Gragg 2019, p. 41.
  8. ^ Güldemann 2018, p. 315-316.

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Berber languages

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the Cushitic, Afroasiatic language family respectively. The Arab ethnic minority speak languages belonging to the separate Afroasiatic family, with the...

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Chadic languages

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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...

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Omotic languages

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language. Omotic is generally considered the most divergent branch of the Afroasiatic languages. In early work up to Greenberg (1963), the languages had...

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population. Other Afroasiatic languages with a significant number of speakers include the Cushitic Sidamo, Afar, Hadiyya and Agaw languages, as well as the...

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Languages of Nigeria

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Africa as a whole, and the country contains languages from the three major African language families: Afroasiatic, Nilo-Saharan and Niger–Congo. Nigeria also...

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Egyptian language

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oldest Afroasiatic language documented in written form, its morphological repertoire is very different from that of the rest of the Afroasiatic languages in...

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Austronesian, Japonic, Dravidian, Indo-European, Afroasiatic, Turkic, Sino-Tibetan, Kra–Dai and Koreanic. Many languages of Asia, such as Chinese, Sanskrit, Arabic...

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Uralic languages; some languages from the similarly controversial Altaic family; the Afroasiatic languages; as well as the Dravidian languages (sometimes...

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Modern South Arabian languages

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Ethiosemitic and Sayhadic languages, the Western branch, they form the South Semitic sub-branch of the Afroasiatic language family's Semitic branch. In...

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Languages of Mauritania

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The languages of Mauritania mainly consist of various Afroasiatic languages, including: Zenaga-Berber, Tamasheq-Berber, Hassaaniya Arabic and Standard...

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Etymological dictionary

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Snoj [13] – Swedish Etymological Dictionary by Elof Hellquist [14] – Afroasiatic Etymological Dictionary by S. A. Starostin et al. [15] – Arabic Etymological...

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Ometo languages

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Languages of the World. 15th edition. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics. Hayward, Richard J. 2003. 'Omotic: the "empty quarter" of Afroasiatic linguistics'...

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Ethiopian Semitic languages

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Semitic, part of the Afroasiatic language family. With 57,500,000 total speakers as of 2019, including around 25,100,000 second language speakers, Amharic...

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Eritreans

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Ethiopian people of Eritrean descent Most languages spoken in Eritrea are from the Afroasiatic and Nilo-Saharan language family. Tigrinya Tigre Dahalik Arabic...

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South Semitic languages

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could not estimate when or where the ancestor of all Semitic languages diverged from Afroasiatic but it suggested that the divergence of the East, Central...

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Semitic root

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of quadriliterals, and in some languages also biliterals). Such roots are also common in other Afroasiatic languages. While Berber mostly has triconsonantal...

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Afar language

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Languages of the Gambia

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several other languages. Gambian Sign Language is used by the deaf. English is the main language for official purposes and education. Languages portal The...

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Meroitic language

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Afrasianist phonetic notation

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Borean languages

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Eurasia, as well as the Afroasiatic languages of North Africa and the Horn of Africa, and the Eskimo–Aleut and the Na-Dene languages of the New World. Murray...

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Somali language

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the Afroasiatic family, specifically, Lowland East Cushitic in addition to Afar and Saho. Somali is the best-documented of the Cushitic languages, with...

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Amharic

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Ethiopian Semitic language, which is a subgrouping within the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages. It is spoken as a first language by the Amharas...

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