Afroasiatic Languages

5/27/22, 7:14 PM Afroasiatic languages - Wikipedia
Afroasiatic languages
The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic),
Afroasiatic
also known as Hamito-Semitic,[2] or Semito-
Hamitic,[3] and sometimes also as Afrasian or Afrasian
Erythraean,[4] are a language family of about 300 Geographic
North Africa, Western Asia,
languages that are spoken predominantly in distribution Horn of Africa, Sahel, and Malta
Western Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and
Linguistic One of the world's primary
parts of the Sahara/Sahel.[5] With the exception of
classification language families
its Semitic branch, all other branches of the
Afroаsiatic family are spoken exclusively on the Proto- Proto-Afroasiatic
African continent. language
Subdivisions Berber
Afroasiatic languages have over 500 million native
speakers, which is the fourth-largest number of Chadic
native speakers of any language family (after Indo- Cushitic
European, Sino-Tibetan, and Niger–Congo).[6] The
Egyptian
phylum has six branches: Berber, Chadic, Cushitic,
Egyptian, Semitic, and Omotic.[4][7] The most Semitic
widely spoken modern Afroasiatic language or Omotic[1]
dialect continuum by far is Arabic, a de facto group
ISO 639-2 / 5 afa
of distinct language varieties within the Semitic
branch. The languages that evolved from Proto- Glottolog afro1255 (http://glottolo
Arabic have around 313 million native speakers, g.org/resource/languoid/i
concentrated primarily in the Middle East and d/afro1255)
North Africa.[8]
In addition to the languages spoken today,

Afroasiatic includes several important ancient
languages, such as Egyptian, which forms a distinct
branch of the family; and within the Semitic family,
Akkadian, Biblical Hebrew, and Old Aramaic. While
there is no consensus among historical linguists
concerning the original homeland of the Afroasiatic
family or the period when the parent language (i.e.
Proto-Afroasiatic) was spoken, most agree that it Distribution of the Afro-Asiatic languages
was located within a region of Northeast Africa.
Proposed specific locations include the Horn of
Africa, Egypt, the eastern Sahara, and the Levant.
Contents
Etymology
Distribution and branches
Demographics
Classification history
Subgrouping
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afroasiatic_languages 1/20
Date of Afroasiatic
Afroasiatic Urheimat
Similarities in grammar and syntax
Shared vocabulary
Etymological bibliography
See also
References
Citations
Works cited
General references
External links
Etymology
In the early 19th century, linguists grouped the Berber, Cushitic and Egyptian languages within a
"Hamitic" phylum, in acknowledgement of these languages' genetic relation with each other and
with those in the Semitic phylum.[9] The terms "Hamitic" and "Semitic" were etymologically
derived from the Book of Genesis, which describes various Biblical tribes descended from Ham
and Shem, two sons of Noah.[10] By the 1860s, the main constituent elements within the broader
Afroasiatic family had been worked out.[9]
Friedrich Müller introduced the name "Hamito-Semitic" for the entire language family in his
Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft (1876).[11] Maurice Delafosse (1914) later coined the term
"Afroasiatic" (often now spelled "Afro-Asiatic"). However, it did not come into general use until
Joseph Greenberg (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 did not reflect
race.[12] In current scholarly usage, the most commonly used names are "Afroasiatic", "Hamito-
Semitic", and "Semito-Hamitic".[13]
Individual scholars have also called the family "Erythraean" (Tucker 1966) and "Lisramic" (Hodge
1972). In lieu of "Hamito-Semitic", the Russian linguist Igor Diakonoff later suggested the term
"Afrasian", meaning "half African, half Asiatic", in reference to the geographic distribution of the
family's constituent languages.[14]
Distribution and branches

Scholars generally treat the Afroasiatic language
family as including at least the following five
branches:
Berber
Chadic
Cushitic
Egyptian A map showing the linguistic tree of Afroasiatic
Semitic languages (Ehret 2006)
A sixth family's inclusion in Afroasiatic is disputed:
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 Some linguists' proposals for grouping within
subgroup of Cushitic, whereas others have Afroasiatic
raised doubts about its being part of proper
Afroasiatic at all (e.g. Theil 2006), proposing an
earlier split from a common ancestral language.[1][15]
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.[16] Bonny Sands (2009) [17] finds the proposal by Savà and
Tosco (2003) the most convincing: namely that Ongota is an East Cushitic language with a
Nilo-Saharan substratum. In other words, it would appear that the Ongota people once spoke
a Nilo-Saharan language but then shifted to speaking a Cushitic language but retained some
characteristics of their earlier Nilo-Saharan language.[1]
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, for instance.
The extinct Meroitic language has been proposed (Bruce Trigger, 1964,[18] 1977[19]) as an
unclassified Afroasiatic language, because it shares the phonotactics characteristic of the
family, but there is not enough evidence to secure a classification (Fritz Hintze, 1974,[20][21]
The classification of Kujargé within Afroasiatic is not agreed upon. Blench (2008) notes that
much of the basic vocabulary looks Cushitic, and speculates that Kujargé could even be a
conservative language transitional between Chadic and Cushitic.[22]
Demographics
In descending order of the number of speakers, widely-spoken Afroasiatic languages include:
Arabic (Semitic), the today most widely spoken Afroasiatic language, has over 300 million
native speakers; additionally, Classical Arabic, an archaic form of the language, is the liturgical
language of Islam, the world's second-largest religion.
Hausa (Chadic), the dominant language of northern Nigeria and southern Niger, spoken as a
first language by over 40 million people and used as a lingua franca by another 20 million
across West Africa and the Sahel.[25]
Oromo (Cushitic), spoken in Ethiopia and Kenya by around 34 million people.
Amharic (Semitic), spoken in Ethiopia, with over 25 million native speakers in addition to
millions of other Ethiopians speaking it as a second language.[26]
Somali (Cushitic), spoken by 21.8 million people in Somalia, Somaliland,[27] Djibouti, eastern
Ethiopia and northeastern Kenya.[28]
Tigrinya (Semitic), spoken by around 9.73 million people in Eritrea and Tigray Region of
Ethiopia.[29]
Afar (Cushitic), spoken by around 7.5 million people in Ethiopia,

Djibouti, and Eritrea.[30]
Shilha (Berber), spoken by around 7 million people in
Morocco.[31]
Kabyle (Berber), spoken by around 5.6 million people in
Algeria.[32]
Hebrew (Semitic), spoken by around 5 million native speakers,
and additionally by 4 million second-language speakers in Israel
and the Jewish diaspora; Biblical Hebrew is the liturgical
language of Judaism[33] and of the Samaritan people.
Central Atlas Tamazight (Berber), spoken by around 4.6 million
people in Morocco.[34]
Riffian (Berber), spoken by around 4.2 million people in The Afroasiatic Hamar
Morocco.[35] people of Ethiopia are
suggested to have preserved
Gurage languages (Semitic), a group of languages spoken by
the original pastoralist
more than 2 million people in Ethiopia.[36]
lifestyle of the Proto-
Tigre (Semitic), spoken by around 2 million people in Eritrea.[37] Afroasiatic-speaking peoples
Wolaitta (Omotic), spoken by around 1.6 million people in of Northeast Africa.[23][24]
Ethiopia.
Maltese (Semitic), spoken by around half a million people in
Malta and the Maltese diaspora. It descended from Siculo-Arabic independently from modern
Arabic dialects, features Romance superstrates and has been written in the Latin script since
at least the 14th century.[38]
Assyrian Neo-Aramaic (Semitic), a variety of modern Aramaic, spoken by more than 500,000
people in the Assyrian diaspora.[39]
Classification history
In the 9th century the Hebrew grammarian Judah ibn Quraysh of Tiaret in Algeria 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.[11] In the course of
the 19th century, Europeans also began suggesting such relationships. In 1844, Theodor Benfey
proposed a language family consisting of Semitic, Berber, and Cushitic (he called the latter
"Ethiopic").[40] 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 Karl Richard Lepsius (1810–1884) who restricted Hamitic to the non-Semitic
languages in Africa, which are characterized by a grammatical gender system. This "Hamitic
language group" was proposed to unite various, mainly North-African, languages, including the
Ancient Egyptian language, the Berber languages, the Cushitic languages, the Beja language, and
the Chadic languages. Unlike Müller, Lepsius saw Hausa 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.[41]
In 1912, Carl Meinhof published Die Sprachen der Hamiten ("The Languages of the Hamites"), in
which he expanded Lepsius's model, adding the Fula, Maasai, Bari, Nandi, Sandawe and Hadza
languages to the Hamitic group. Meinhof's model was widely supported in the 1940s.[41] 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'."[42] 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
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.[43]
Leo Reinisch (1909) had already proposed linking Cushitic and

Chadic while urging their more distant affinity with Egyptian
and Semitic. However, his suggestion found little acceptance. Distribution of the
Marcel Cohen (1924) rejected the idea of a distinct "Hamitic" Afroasiatic/Hamito-Semitic
subgroup and included Hausa (a Chadic language) in his languages in Africa
comparative Hamito-Semitic vocabulary. Finally, Joseph
Greenberg'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.[9] 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 (1963), in which he
reassigned most of Meinhof's additions to Hamitic to other language families, notably Nilo-
Saharan. Following Isaac Schapera and rejecting Meinhof, he classified the Khoekhoe language as
a member of the Khoisan languages, a grouping that has since proven inaccurate and excessively
motivated on the presence of click sounds.[1] 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.[44][45] 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.[45]
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.[46]
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 proposed that
Beja has to be removed from Cushitic, thus forming an independent branch of Afroasiatic.[47] Most
scholars, however, reject this proposal, and continue to group Beja as the sole member of a
Northern branch within Cushitic.[48][49]
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, Mao, Dizoid, Gonga–Gimojan (North Omotic apart from the preceding), Ongota,
and Kujarge.
Subgrouping
Proposed Afroasiatic sub-divisions

Greenberg (1963) Newman (1980) Fleming (post-1981) Ehret (1995)
Semitic Berber–Chadic Omotic Omotic

Egyptian Egypto-Semitic Erythraean
North Omotic
Berber Cushitic
Cushitic South Omotic
Cushitic
Ongota Erythrean
(excludes Omotic)
Northern Cushitic
Non-Ethiopian
(equals Beja) Cushitic
Chadic
Central Cushitic Beja
Berber
Eastern Cushitic Agaw
Egyptian
Western Cushitic
East–South Cushitic
(equals Omotic) Semitic
Southern Cushitic Beja Eastern Cushitic
Chadic Southern Cushitic
North Erythrean
Chadic
Boreafrasian
Egyptian
Berber
Semitic
Orel & Stolbova (1995) Diakonoff (1996) Bender (1997) Militarev (2000)
Berber–Semitic East–West Afrasian Omotic North Afrasian

Chadic–Egyptian Chadic
Berber African North Afrasian
Omotic Macro-Cushitic
Cushitic
Beja Chado-Berber
Semitic Berber
Agaw Egyptian
North–South Afrasian Cushitic
Sidamic Semitic
Semitic
East Lowlands Chadic South Afrasian
Rift Egyptian
Omotic
Cushitic
(excludes Omotic)
Little agreement exists on the subgrouping of the five or six branches of Afroasiatic: Semitic,
Egyptian, Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, and Omotic. However, Christopher Ehret (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.[50]
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 (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 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.
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 (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.[51]
Alexander Militarev (2000), on the basis of lexicostatistics, 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 1:01
Egyptian inscription dated to c. 3400 BC (5,400 years ago).[52]
Symbols on Gerzean (Naqada II) pottery resembling Egyptian Speech sample in the Semitic
hieroglyphs date back to c. 4000 BC, suggesting an earlier possible Neo-Aramaic language, a
descendant of Old Aramaic
dating. This gives us a minimum date for the age of Afroasiatic.
However, Ancient Egyptian is highly divergent from Proto-
Afroasiatic,[53] 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-languages.
Afroasiatic Urheimat
The Afroasiatic urheimat, the hypothetical place where Proto-Afroasiatic language speakers lived
in a single linguistic community, or complex of communities, before this original language
dispersed geographically and divided into distinct languages, is unknown. Afroasiatic languages
are today primarily spoken in West Asia, North Africa, 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.
While there is no definitive agreement on when or where the original homeland of this language
family existed, some link the first speakers to the first farmers in the Levant who would later
spread to North and East Africa.[54] Others argue the first speakers were pre-agricultural and
based in Northeast Africa.[54][55][56][57][58][15]
An indigenous African origin in Northeast Africa is supported by linguistic and archaeogenetic

data, but not undisputed. This region includes the majority of the diversity of the Afroasiatic
language family and has very diverse groups in close geographic proximity, sometimes considered
a telltale sign for a linguistic geographic origin.[59] It is argued that a subset of Proto-Afroasiatic-
speakers, having developed subsistence patterns of intensive plant collection and pastoralism,
migrated northwards from the Horn of Africa or the Eastern Sahara into modern day Egypt and
the Levant during the late Paleolithic, merging with local

populations of largely West-Eurasian ancestry, resulting in a
population which would later give rise to the Natufian culture,
which is frequently associated with early Afroasiatic-speaking
or specifically Semitic-speaking
communities. [58][24][60][61][54][55][57]
Roger Blench has proposed southwestern Ethiopia as the most

likely urheimat of the Afroasiatic language due to the high
internal diversification of the Omotic branch spoken in that
region.[56] A 2018 analysis of autosomal DNA using modern
populations as a reference found that the ancient Natufian
samples harbored a distinct ancestral component indigenous Proposed migration and expansion
to the Horn of Africa, most prevalent among Omotic-speakers routes of the Afroasiatic languages
in southwestern Ethiopia.[58][62][63] This Omotic-related according to the indigenous African
ancestry makes up 6.8% of the ancient Natufian ancestry, and (Red Sea) origin model.
may be associated with the spread of Proto-Afroasiatic and the
specific Y-haplogroup sublineage E-M215, also known as
"E1b1b", which is common among modern Afroasiatic-speaking groups and likely arose in
Northeast Africa.[63][64][15][60]
Similarities in grammar and syntax

Verbal paradigms in several Afroasiatic languages:
Language → Arabic Kabyle Somali Beja Hausa
↓ Number Verb → katab afeg imaad naw sha
Meaning → write fly come fail drink
1 ʼaktubu ttafgeɣ imaadaa anáw ina shan
2f taktubīna tináwi kina shan
tettafgeḍ
singular 2m timaadaa tináwa kana shan
taktubu
3f tettafeg tináw tana shan
3m yaktubu yettafeg yimaadaa ináw yana shan
2
taktubāni
dual 3f
3m yaktubāni
1 naktubu nettafeg nimaadnaa nínaw muna shan
2m taktubūna tettafgem
timaadaan tínawna kuna shan
plural 2f taktubna tettafgemt
3m yaktubūna ttafgen
yimaadaan ínawna suna shan
3f yaktubna ttafgent
Widespread (though not universal) features of the Afroasiatic languages include:
A set of emphatic consonants, variously realized as glottalized, pharyngealized, or implosive.

VSO typology with SVO tendencies.
A two-gender 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 suffixes.
Nisba derivation in -j (earlier Egyptian) or -ī (Semitic)[65]
Morphology in which words inflect by changes within the root (vowel changes or gemination)
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 languages 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 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.[66][67]
Shared vocabulary
The following are some examples of Afroasiatic cognates, including 1:11
ten pronouns, three nouns, and three verbs.
Speech sample in Shilha
Source: Christopher Ehret, Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic (Berber branch)
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).
Note: Ehret does not make use of Berber in his etymologies,

1:02
stating (1995: 12): "the kind of extensive reconstruction of
proto-Berber lexicon that might help in sorting through Speech sample in Somali
alternative possible etymologies is not yet available." The (Cushitic branch)
Berber cognates here are taken from the previous version of
the table in this article and need to be completed and
referenced.
0:44
Abbreviations: NOm = 'North Omotic', SOm = 'South Omotic'. Speech sample in Classical
MSA = 'Modern South Arabian', PSC = 'Proto-Southern Arabic (Semitic branch)
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 ˇ over a vowel indicates rising tone, and a
circumflex ^ over a vowel indicates falling tone. V indicates a vowel of unknown quality. Ɂ
indicates a glottal stop. * indicates reconstructed forms based on comparison of related
languages.
Proto-
Omotic Cushitic Chadic Egyptian Semitic Berber
Afroasiatic
*Ɂân- / *Ɂîn- or
*ân- / *în- ‘I’ *in- ‘I’ (Maji nek / nec ‘I,
*Ɂâni ‘I’ *nV ‘I’ jnk 'I' *Ɂn ‘I’
(independent (NOm)) me’
pronoun)
*i ‘me,
*i or *yi ‘me, my’ i ‘I, me, my’ .j (1s. inu / nnu / iw
*i or *yi ‘my’ my’ *-i ‘me, my’
(bound) (Ari (SOm)) suffix) ‘my’
(bound)
*nona /
*Ɂǎnn- / *Ɂǐnn- nekni /
*nuna / *Ɂǎnn- / *Ɂǐnn-
or *ǎnn- / *ǐnn- — jnn ‘we’ *Ɂnn ‘we’ necnin /
*nina ‘we’
‘we’ neccin ‘we’
(NOm)
netta "he"
*Ɂânt- / *Ɂînt- or
*int- ‘you’ *Ɂânt- ‘you’ ntk, *ʲānt- (keyy / cek
*ânt- / *înt- ‘you’ — *Ɂnt ‘you’ (sing.)
(sing.) (sing.) ‘you’ (sing.) "you" (masc.
(sing.)
sing.))
*ku, *ka ‘you’ *ku ‘your’ *ka, *ku .k, (2s. inek / nnek / -
-ka (2s. masc.
(masc. sing., — (masc. sing.) (masc. masc. k "your"
suffix) (Arabic)
bound) (PSC) sing.) suffix) (masc. sing.)
*ki ‘you’ .ṯ, (fem. -ki (2s. fem. -m / nnem /
*ki ‘you’ (fem. *ki ‘your’ (fem.
— (fem. sing. suffix, sing. suffix) inem "your"
sing., bound) sing.)
sing.) < *ki) (Arabic) (fem. sing.)
*kun -kent, kennint
*kūna ‘you’ *kuna ‘your’ .ṯn, *-ṯin *-kn ‘you, your’
— ‘you’ "you" (fem.
(plural, bound) (pl.) (PSC) ‘you’ (pl.) (fem. pl.)
(pl.) pl.)
sw, *suw
-s / nnes /
*si, *isi ‘he, she, *Ɂusu ‘he’, ‘he, him’, *-šɁ ‘he’, *-sɁ
*is- ‘he’ *sV ‘he’ ines
it’ *Ɂisi ‘she’ sj, *siʲ ‘she, ‘she’ (MSA)
"his/her/its"
her’
mā (Arabic,
*ma- ma? /
*ma, *mi *mi, *ma mj ‘what?’, Hebrew) / mu?
*ma, *mi ‘what?’ ‘what?’ mayen? /
(interr. root) ‘what?’ ‘who?’ (Assyrian)
(NOm) min? "what?"
‘what?’
mamek? /
*wä / *wɨ *wa
*wa, *wi ‘what?’ *w- ‘what?’ wj ‘how ...!’ mamec? /
‘what?’ (Agaw) ‘who?’
amek? "how?
*d-m-
*dam- *dm / dǝma
*dîm- / *dâm- *dîm- / *dâm- ‘blood’ jdmj ‘red idammen
‘blood’ (Assyrian) / dom
‘blood’ ‘red’ (West linen’ "bloods"
(Gonga) (Hebrew) ‘blood’
Chadic)
*itsim- *itsan or *isan *sin sn, *san aẖ (Hebrew) uma / gʷma
*îts ‘brother’
‘brother’ ‘brother’ ‘brother’ ‘brother’ "brother" "brother"
*ism (Arabic) /
*sum(ts)- smj ‘to
*sǔm / *sǐm- *sǔm / *sǐm- *ṣǝm shǝma isen / isem
‘name’ report,
‘name’ ‘name’ ‘name’ (Assyrian) "name"
(NOm) announce’
‘name’
litsʼ- ‘to
*alǝsi ns, *līs
*-lisʼ- ‘to lick’ lick’ (Dime — *lsn ‘tongue’ iles "tongue"
‘tongue’ ‘tongue’
(SOm))
*-umaaw- / *- *mwt / mawta
*mǝtǝ mwt, ‘to
*-maaw- ‘to die’ — am-w(t)- ‘to (Assyrian) ‘to mmet "to die"
‘to die’ die’
die’ (PSom-II) die’
*-bǐn- ‘to build, to bin- ‘to *mǐn- / *mǎn- *bn ‘to — *bnn / bani bni / bnu /
create; house’ build, ‘house’; man- build’; (Assyrian) / bna "to build"
create’ ‘to create’ *bǝn- bana (Hebrew)
(Beja) ‘house’ ‘to build’
(Dime
(SOm))
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.[68] The
following table contains the thirty roots or so (out of thousands) that represent a fragile consensus
of present research:
Proto-Afroasiatic
Number Meaning Berber Chadic Cushitic Egyptian Omotic Semitic
Form
1 *ʔab father ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
2 (ʔa-)bVr bull ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
3 (ʔa-)dVm red, blood ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

land, field,
4 *(ʔa-)dVm ✔ ✔
soil
5 ʔa-pay- mouth ✔ ✔ ✔
house,
6 ʔigar/ *ḳʷar- ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
enclosure
7 *ʔil- eye ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
8 (ʔi-)sim- name ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
9 *ʕayn- eye ✔ ✔
10 *baʔ- go ✔ ✔ ✔
11 *bar- son ✔ ✔ ✔
12 *gamm- mane, beard ✔ ✔ ✔
13 *gVn cheek, chin ✔ ✔
14 *gʷarʕ- throat ✔ ✔ ✔
15 *gʷinaʕ- hand ✔ ✔
16 *kVn- co-wife ✔ ✔ ✔
17 *kʷaly kidney ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
18 *ḳa(wa)l-/ *qʷar- to say, call ✔ ✔
19 *ḳas- bone ✔ ✔ ✔
20 *libb heart ✔ ✔ ✔
21 *lis- tongue ✔ ✔ ✔
22 *maʔ- water ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
23 *mawVt- to die ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
24 *sin- tooth ✔ ✔ ✔
25 *siwan- know ✔ ✔ ✔
26 *inn- I, we ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
27 *-k- thou ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
28 *zwr seed ✔ ✔
29 *ŝVr root ✔ ✔
to sleep,
30 *šun ✔ ✔
dream
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. ISBN 90-04-10051-2.
See also
Afroasiatic phonetic notation
Languages of Africa
Languages of Asia
Proto-Afroasiatic language
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External links
Afro-Asiatic (https://archive.today/20130113032053/http://multitree.org/codes/afas) 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
Afro-Asiatic and Semitic genealogical trees (https://web.archive.org/web/20090104234232/htt
p://community.livejournal.com/terra_linguarum/95880.html), 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, Moscow, 2004; short annotations
of the talks given there (https://web.archive.org/web/20100818025156/http://community.livejour
nal.com/terra_linguarum/95627.html) (in Russian)
The prehistory of a dispersal: the Proto-Afrasian (Afroasiatic) farming lexicon (http://starling.rin
et.ru/Texts/afrfarm.pdf), by Alexander Militarev in "Examining the Farming/Language Dispersal
Hypothesis", eds. P. Bellwood & C. Renfrew. (McDonald Institute Monographs.) Cambridge:
McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2002, p. 135–50.
Once More About Glottochronology And The Comparative Method: The Omotic-Afrasian case
(http://starling.rinet.ru/Texts/fleming.pdf), by Alexander Militarev in "Aspects of Comparative
Linguistics", v. 1. Moscow: RSUH Publishers, 2005, pp. 339–408.
Root Extension And Root Formation In Semitic And Afrasian (http://starling.rinet.ru/Texts/semr
oot.pdf), by Alexander Militarev in "Proceedings of the Barcelona Symposium on comparative
Semitic", 19-20/11/2004. Aula Orientalis 23/1-2, 2005, pp. 83–129.
Akkadian-Egyptian lexical matches (http://starling.rinet.ru/Texts/akkegypt.pdf), by Alexander
Militarev in "Papers on Semitic and Afroasiatic Linguistics in Honor of Gene B. Gragg." Ed. by
Cynthia L. Miller. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 60. Chicago: The Oriental Institute,
2007, p. 139–145.
A comparison of Orel-Stolbova's and Ehret's Afro-Asiatic reconstructions (http://www.tufs.ac.jp/
ts/personal/ratcliffe/comp%20&%20method-Ratcliffe.pdf)
"Is Omotic Afro-Asiatic?" (http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/hf/iln/LING2110/v07/THEIL%20Is%2
0Omotic%20Afroasiatic.pdf) by Rolf Theil (2006)
NACAL (http://www.nacal.org) The North American Conference on Afroasiatic Linguistics, now
in its 35th year
Afro-Asiatic webpage (http://www.rogerblench.info/Language/Afroasiatic/AAOP.htm) of Roger
Blench (with family tree (http://rogerblench.info/Language/Afroasiatic/General/AALIST.pdf)).
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5/27/22, 7:14 PM Afroasiatic languages - Wikipedia

In addition to the languages spoken today,

Distribution and branches

A sixth family's inclusion in Afroasiatic is disputed:

Although there is general agreement on these six

The Omotic language branch is the most

Afar (Cushitic), spoken by around 7.5 million people in Ethiopia,

became largely coterminous with cattle herding peoples with

Leo Reinisch (1909) had already proposed linking Cushitic and

Proposed Afroasiatic sub-divisions

Semitic Berber–Chadic Omotic Omotic

Berber–Semitic East–West Afrasian Omotic North Afrasian

An indigenous African origin in Northeast Africa is supported by linguistic and archaeogenetic

the Levant during the late Paleolithic, merging with local

Roger Blench has proposed southwestern Ethiopia as the most

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.

Note: Ehret does not make use of Berber in his etymologies,

3 (ʔa-)dVm red, blood ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

12 *gamm- mane, beard ✔ ✔ ✔

13 *gVn cheek, chin ✔ ✔

18 *ḳa(wa)l-/ *qʷar- to say, call ✔ ✔

Some of the main sources for Afroasiatic etymologies include:

Cohen, Marcel. 1947. Essai comparatif sur le vocabulaire et la phonétique du chamito-

38. Borg 1998.

818X.2008.00085.x (https://doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1749-818X.2008.00085.x). ISSN 1749-818X

Bender, Lionel et al. 2003. Selected Comparative-Historical Afro-Asiatic Studies in Memory of

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Afroasiatic_languages&oldid=1088660524"

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18 ḳa(wa)l-/ qʷar- to say, call ✔ ✔