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The Afroasiatic languages,also known as Hamito-Semitic or Semito-Hamitic,are a language family of about 400 languages spoken predominantly in West Asia,North Africa,the Horn of Africa,and parts of the Sahara and Sahel. 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. Most linguists divide the family into six branches:Berber,Chadic,Cushitic,Egyptian,Semitic,and Omotic. The vast majority of Afroasiatic languages are considered indigenous to the African continent,including all those not belonging to the Semitic branch.
The Chadic languages form a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken in parts of the Sahel. They include 196 languages spoken across northern Nigeria,southern Niger,southern Chad,and northern Cameroon. By far the most widely spoken Chadic language is Hausa,a lingua franca of much of inland Eastern West Africa,particularly Niger and the northern half of Nigeria. Hausa,along with Mafa and Karai Karai,are the only three Chadic languages with more than 1 million speakers.
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 Sudan,and to the south in Kenya and Tanzania. As of 2012,the Cushitic languages with over one million speakers were Oromo,Somali,Beja,Afar,Hadiyya,Kambaata,and Sidama.
The Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed family of around 210 African languages spoken by somewhere around 70 million speakers,mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers,including historic Nubia,north of where the two tributaries of the Nile meet. The languages extend through 17 nations in the northern half of Africa:from Algeria to Benin in the west;from Libya to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the centre;and from Egypt to Tanzania in the east.
The number of languages natively spoken in Africa is variously estimated at between 1,250 and 2,100,and by some counts at over 3,000. Nigeria alone has over 500 languages,one of the greatest concentrations of linguistic diversity in the world. The languages of Africa belong to many distinct language families,among which the largest are:
The Omotic languages are a group of languages spoken in southwestern Ethiopia,in the Omo River region and southeastern Sudan in Blue Nile State. The Geʽez script is used to write some of the Omotic languages,the Latin script for some others. They are fairly agglutinative and have complex tonal systems. The languages have around 7.9 million speakers. The group is generally classified as belonging to the Afroasiatic language family,but this is disputed by some linguists.
Ongota is a moribund language of southwest Ethiopia. UNESCO reported in 2012 that out of a total ethnic population of 115,only 12 elderly native speakers remained,the rest of their small village on the west bank of the Weito River having adopted the Tsamai language instead. The default word order is subject–object–verb. The classification of the language is obscure.
The Kuliak languages,also called the Rub languages,are a group of languages spoken by small relict communities in the mountainous Karamoja region of northeastern Uganda.
Lowland East Cushitic is a group of roughly two dozen diverse languages of the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic family. Its largest representatives are Oromo and Somali.
The South Cushitic or Rift languages of Tanzania are a branch of the Cushitic languages. The most numerous is Iraqw,with one million speakers. Scholars believe that these languages were spoken by Southern Cushitic agro-pastoralists from Ethiopia,who began migrating southward into the Great Rift Valley in the third millennium BC.
The Maa languages are a group of closely related Eastern Nilotic languages spoken in parts of Kenya and Tanzania by more than a million speakers. They are subdivided into North and South Maa. The Maa languages are related to the Lotuko languages spoken in South Sudan.
In early 20th century classification of African languages,Sudanic was a generic term for languages spoken in the Sahel belt,from Ethiopia in the east to Senegal in the west.
The Modern South Arabian languages (MSALs),also known as Eastern South Semitic languages,are a group of endangered languages spoken by small populations inhabiting the Arabian Peninsula,in Yemen and Oman,and Socotra Island. Together with the Ethiosemitic and Sayhadic languages,the Western branch,they form the South Semitic sub-branch of the Afroasiatic language family's Semitic branch.
Proto-Afroasiatic (PAA),also known as Proto-Hamito-Semitic,Proto-Semito-Hamitic,and 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 single language around 12,000 to 18,000 years ago,that is,between 16,000 and 10,000 BC. Although no consensus exists as to the location of the Afroasiatic homeland,the putative homeland of Proto-Afroasiatic speakers,the majority of scholars agree that it was located within a region of Northeast Africa.
Harold Crane Fleming was an American anthropologist and historical linguist specializing in the cultures and languages of the Horn of Africa. As an adherent of the Four Field School of American anthropology,he stressed the integration of physical anthropology,linguistics,archaeology,and cultural anthropology in solving anthropological problems.
The Aroid or Ari-Banna languages possibly belong to the Afro-Asiatic family and are spoken in Ethiopia.
Proto-Berber or Proto-Libyan is the reconstructed proto-language from which the modern Berber languages descend. Proto-Berber was an Afroasiatic language,and thus its descendant Berber languages are cousins to the Egyptian language,Cushitic languages,Semitic languages,Chadic languages,and the Omotic languages.
The Proto-Afroasiatic homeland is the hypothetical place where speakers of the Proto-Afroasiatic language lived in a single linguistic community,or complex of communities,before this original language dispersed geographically and divided into separate distinct languages. Afroasiatic languages are today mostly distributed in parts of Africa,and Western Asia.
Human habitation in the North African region began over one million years ago. Remains of Homo erectus during the Middle Pleistocene period,has been found in North Africa. The Berbers,who generally antedate by many millennia the Phoenicians and the establishment of Carthage,are understood to have arisen out of social events shaped by the confluence of several earlier peoples,i.e.,the Capsian culture,events which eventually constituted their ethnogenesis. Thereafter Berbers lived as an independent people in North Africa,including the Tunisian region.
Proto-Cushitic is the reconstructed proto-language common ancestor of the Cushitic language family. Its words and roots are not directly attested in any written works,but have been reconstructed through the comparative method,which finds regular similarities between languages not explained by coincidence or word-borrowing,and extrapolates ancient forms from these similarities.
References
- ↑ Africa, Unesco International Scientific Committee for the Drafting of a General History of (3 November 1992). UNESCO General History of Africa, Vol. III, Abridged Edition: Africa from the Seventh to the Eleventh Century. University of California Press. pp. 616–643. ISBN 978-0-520-06698-4.
- ↑ Atkinson, Ronald (July 2000). "Africa, Asia, and Latin America". Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 570: 192–193. doi:10.1177/0002716200570001019.
- ↑ Jackson, Kennell (2000). The Historian. 62 (4): 857–858.
{{cite journal}}: Missing or empty|title=(help) - ↑ Robertshaw, Peter (March 2000). Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 6 (1): 150–151.
{{cite journal}}: Missing or empty|title=(help) - ↑ Brizuela-Garcia, Esperanza (2003). "A History of Africa". African Studies Review. 46 (2): 134–136. doi:10.2307/1514850. JSTOR 1514850. S2CID 144553885.
- ↑ MacEachern, Scott (2003). "HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS AND AFRICAN HISTORY the Civilizations of Africa: A History to 1800. By CHRISTOPHER EHRET. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia; Oxford: James Currey 2002. Pp. Xii+480. $50 (ISBN 0-8139-2084-1); $22.50; £18.95, paperback (ISBN 0-85255-475-3)". Journal of African History. 44 (2): 342–343. doi:10.1017/s0021853703228553. S2CID 162352245.
- ↑ Wolff, Ekkehard (2000). Afrika und Übersee. 83: 115–139.
{{cite journal}}: Missing or empty|title=(help) - ↑ Ratcliffe, Robert. "Afroasiatic Comparative Lexica: Implications for Long (and Medium) Range Language Comparison" (PDF).
- ↑ Blažek, Václav. "The first comparative dictionary of Nilo-Saharan" (PDF).[ dead link ]
- ↑ Philippson, Gerard (2003). Journal of African Languages and Linguistics. 24 (2): 204–207.
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