Afroasiatic

Afroasiatic, also written Afro-Asiatic, is a major language family that groups hundreds of languages spoken in Africa north of the equator and in the Middle East. It includes languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, Amharic, Somali, Hausa, Berber languages, Oromo, and the ancient Egyptian family, with many extinct languages known from inscriptions. The family is of central importance to comparative and historical linguistics.

Classification within Afroasiatic is commonly organized into six branches: Semitic, Berber (Tamazight), Cushitic, Chadic, Omotic, and Egyptian. Semitic covers Arabic, Hebrew, Amharic, and related languages; Berber encompasses the Tamazight languages; Cushitic includes Somali and Oromo; Chadic contains Hausa and related tongues; Omotic includes several languages of southwestern Ethiopia; Egyptian refers to ancient Egyptian and its descendant Coptic.

Geographically, Afroasiatic languages are spoken across North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, and parts of the Middle East. Arabic is the most widely spoken member, with extensive use as a lingua franca in the region. Other widely spoken languages include Amharic, Somali, Hausa, and various Berber languages.

Origins and history are debated among scholars. Proto-Afroasiatic is the reconstructed ancestor, with proposed homeland fluctuations around the Levant–Nile region or northeastern Africa. Dates for the proto-language range roughly from the late Neolithic to the early Holocene, with earliest written Afroasiatic records appearing in ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian sources for some Semitic languages.

Linguistic features commonly associated with Afroasiatic languages include rich consonant inventories with emphatic sounds and, in several branches, root-and-pattern morphology that shapes verb and noun systems. The family’s breadth and depth make it a key focal point for studies of language development and historical contact in Africa and the Near East.