[8][178] Such cognates tend to rely on relatively simple sound correspondences. [72] Peust notes that other factors that can obscure genetic relationships between languages include the poor state of present documentation and understanding of particular language families (historically with Egyptian, presently with Omotic). [60] The "Hamitic theory" would serve as the basis for Carl Meinhof's highly influential classification of African languages in his 1912 book Die Sprache der Hamiten. [119] The most widespread constraint is against two different labial consonants (other than w) occurring together in a root, a constraint which can be found in all branches but Omotic. All branches of Afroasiatic have a limited number of underlying vowels (between two and seven), but the number of phonetic vowels can be much larger. [112], The majority of AA languages are tonal languages: phonemic tonality is found in Omotic, Chadic, and Cushitic languages, but absent in Berber and Semitic. Belonging to the Mayan languages, Quekchí was one of the few survivors after colonizers came and now is the third-largest . Mande has been claimed to be equally or more divergent. [178] Identifying cognates is difficult because the languages in question are often separated by thousands of years of development and many languages within the family have long been in contact with each other, raising the possibility of loanwords. Most Nilo-Saharan languages are tonal, as are Niger-Congo languages. [90] Nevertheless, there is a long-accepted link between the speakers of Proto-Southern Cushitic languages and the East African Savanna Pastoral Neolithic (5000 ago), and archaeological evidence associates the Proto-Cushitic speakers with economic transformations in the Sahara dating c. 8,500 ago, as well as the speakers of the Proto-Zenati variety of the Berber languages with an expansion across the Maghreb in the 5th century CE. MWQyMjZmNTgyNTcwMWVkZiJ9 [145], Many AA languages use prefixes or suffixes (verbal extensions) to encode various pieces of information about the verb. Other sign languages are restricted to small areas or single villages, such as Adamorobe Sign Language in Ghana. The Niger–Congo languages have large numbers of genders (noun classes) which cause agreement in verbs and other words. Vossen, Rainer and Gerrit J. Dimmendaal (eds.). [145][178] In Akkadian, Egyptian, Berber, and Cushitic this forms a "stative conjugation", used to express the state or result of an action; the same endings as in Akkadian and Egyptian are also present in the West Semitic perfective verb form. [31][32], There are two extinct languages potentially related to modern Berber. A large majority of languages of this family are tonal such as Yoruba and Igbo, Akan and Ewe language. The most widely spoken languages in Algeria are Algerian Arabic and Berber. OGQ1NWYyOGYyMGJiNWFhZTk4ZDdiZDRhYmY5YzM3ZmJkMjA4Zjg5MDRmMTM3 Newman suggested a relationship between Semitic and the Hausa language, an idea that was taken up by early scholars of Afroasiatic. Learn more about the Khoisan language family on Ethnologue. Of the world's surviving language families, Afroasiatic has the longest written history, as both the Akkadian language of Mesopotamia and Ancient Egyptian are members. Cultural and linguistic innovations spread along trade routes and languages of peoples dominant in trade developed into languages of wider communication (lingua franca). [68] Three scholars who agree on an early split between Omotic and the other subbranches, but little else, are Harold Fleming (1983), Christopher Ehret (1995), and Lionel Bender (1997). [65] Typically, syllables only begin with a single consonant. Africa is arguably the most diverse continent in the world. [116][58] In some branches, it can also derive abstract nouns and participles. YjkyY2Y1NWFmODU5MTQzOTc2ZmNhYzFjOGEyN2MiLCJzaWduYXR1cmUiOiIx [53] Today, Semitic languages are spoken across North Africa, Western Asia, and the Horn of Africa, as well as on the island of Malta, making them the sole Afroasiatic branch with members originating outside Africa. [82] This theory connected the "Hamites", the originators of Hamitic languages, with (supposedly culturally superior) "Caucasians", who were assumed to have migrated into Africa and intermixed with indigenous "Negroid" Africans in ancient times. [174] Most grammars of AA posit a distinction between perfective and imperfective verbal aspects, which can be found in Cushitic, Berber, Semitic, most Chadic languages, and some Omotic languages. [45] An estimate at the youngest end of this range still makes Afroasiatic the oldest proven language family. [41], The Egyptian branch consists of a single language, Ancient Egyptian, which was historically spoken in the lower Nile Valley. [152][g] Another common method of forming plurals is reduplication. [101], Egyptian, Cushitic, Berber, Omotic, and most languages in the Semitic branch all require a syllable to begin with a consonant (with the exception of some grammatical prefixes). [92] Most scholars more narrowly place the homeland near the geographic center of its present distribution,[15] "in the southeastern Sahara or adjacent Horn of Africa. [178] Christopher Ehret has proposed that Proto-Afroasiatic originally had as many as thirty-seven separate verbal extensions, many of which then became fossilized as third consonants. [33] The first is the Numidian language, represented by over a thousand short inscriptions in the Libyco-Berber alphabet, found throughout North Africa and dating from the 2nd century BCE onward. Because many Africans are at least bilingual, there are two possible ways to determine the most spoken African languages: by the number of native speakers or by overall numbers, including L2 speakers. [29] In the past, Berber languages were spoken throughout North Africa except in Egypt;[30] since the 7th century CE, however, they have been heavily affected by Arabic and have been replaced by it in many places. However, in recent years, African countries have become increasingly supportive of maintaining linguistic diversity. Some neighbouring Bantu languages (notably Xhosa and Zulu) have clicks as well, but these were adopted from Khoisan languages. [139] Moreover, all Afroasiatic languages have long been in contact with other language families and with each other, leading to the possibility of widespread borrowing both within Afroasiatic and from unrelated languages. [13] In 1855, Ernst Renan named these languages, related to Semitic but not Semitic, "Hamitic," in 1860 Carl Lottner proposed that they belonged to a single language family, and in 1876 Friedrich Müller first described them as a "Hamito-Semitic" language family. ZGIzYzc3OGFjYjMyY2MwMGZiMTc3YmM2MTI4OWU2OGVlYzBlYjY2ZjA2YjFj [161] Coptic and Egyptian grammar also refers to nouns having a "free" (absolute) state, a "construct state," and a "pronominal state." [200] Modern Chadic numeral systems are sometimes decimal, having separate names for the numbers 1-10, and sometimes base-5, deriving the numbers 6-9 from the numbers 1-5 in some way. M2VhNDU4M2Y0MDg3MTVjNjM5ZTc5MzkyZWFkZjZmODY3MGJhMzRjMjc5MzY3 MDJlMzI2YjIxYmU2ZDViOWUyN2FiYWM0N2Q5NDNhOWQxMzVkZWFlNGYwMmQ1 Both the Nilo-Saharan and the Khoi-San phyla are fully tonal. NTk3ZTJiOGQxMGNkMWRiZWI1ZTNlOGQxMjZmOWIzNjE5YzEzNDRjYWE4YmEx OTJmMTdmYTMzMDA1MGIzNmFmZGQ4YWYzOTVmMGZiMmU0YzE1NTlmYzI4NTYx The Niger-Congo languages inhabit Western, Central, Eastern and Southern Africa. [134] Besides for Semitic, vocalic templates are well attested for Cushitic and Berber,[170] where, along with Chadic, it is less productive; it is absent in Omotic. [36] Most Chadic languages are located in the Chad basin, with the exception of Hausa. Some prominent Africans such as former Malian president and former Chairman of the African Commission, Alpha Oumar Konaré, have referred to cross-border languages as a factor that can promote African unity.[23]. [192], The forms of the pronouns are very stable throughout Afroasiatic (excluding Omotic),[142] and they have been used as one of the chief tools for determining whether a language belongs to the family. [142], Afroasiatic Languages use the processes of reduplication and gemination (which often overlap in meaning) to derive nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs throughout the AA language family. The Khoisan languages are also tonal. Swahili. [155] A common pattern in AA languages with case is for the nominative to marked by -u or -i, and the accusative to be marked by -a. Today, linguists often use "Niger–Congo" to refer to this entire family, including Kordofanian as a subfamily. This can be found in Semitic, Egyptian, Beja, Berber, and Chadic. [7] Contrasting proposals of an early emergence, Tom Güldemann has argued that less time may have been required for the divergence than is usually assumed, as it is possible for a language to rapidly restructure due to areal contact, with the evolution of Chadic (and likely also Omotic) serving as pertinent examples. [18], The term Semitic had already been coined in 1781 by August Ludwig von Schlözer, following an earlier suggestion by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in 1710. [134] In contemporary Omotic, Chadic, and Cushitic languages, tone is primarily a grammatical feature: it encodes various grammatical functions, only differentiating lexical roots in a few cases. [134] This structure is particularly visible in the verbs,[169] and is particularly noticeable in the triliteral Semitic verb. One of the most important for establishing membership in the branch is a common set of pronouns. Hombert & Philippson (2009)[14] list a number of African languages that have been classified as language isolates at one point or another. [47] Egyptian was replaced by Arabic as the spoken language of Egypt,[48] but Coptic continues to be the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church. In current scholarship, the most common names for the family are Afroasiatic (or Afro-Asiatic), Hamito-Semitic, and Semito-Hamitic. [69] The minority of scholars who favor an Asian origin of Afroasiatic instead tend to place Semitic as the first branch to split off. Widespread syntactical structures include the common use of adjectival verbs and the expression of comparison by means of a verb 'to surpass'. [116] Whereas Igor M. Diakonoff proposed that Proto-AA had a three vowel system of long and short a, i, and u,[130] Christopher Ehret proposed a five vowel system with long and short a, e, o, i, and u,[132] and Vladimir Orel and Olga Stolbova instead proposed a six vowel system with a, e, o, i, ü ([y]), and u. NmU5Y2Y4MDcwODQ1MjlhNjM1N2QwNTZhMWIyYzYwNDRhNDgwMzIzYzkzNDJj [112] In all AA languages, consonants can be bilabial, alveolar, velar, and glottal, with additional places of articulation found in some branches or languages. Afrikaans evolved from the Dutch vernacular[9][10] of South Holland (Hollandic dialect)[11][12] spoken by the mainly Dutch settlers of what is now South Africa, where it gradually began to develop distinguishing characteristics in the course of the 18th century, including the loss of verbal conjugation (save for 5 modal verbs), as well as grammatical case and gender. [202] In some Berber languages, the roots for one and two are also borrowed from Arabic. In addition, the languages of Africa include several unclassified languages and sign languages. [33] The first longer written examples of modern Berber varieties only date from the 16th or 17th centuries CE. In Cushitic and Semitic, nouns exist in the "free state" or the "construct state". Your access to this site was blocked by Wordfence, a security provider, who protects sites from malicious activity. [5], Afroasiatic languages are spoken throughout North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Western Asia and parts of the Sahel. There are five Khoisan families that have not been shown to be related to each other: Khoe, Tuu and Kx’a, which are found mainly in Namibia and Botswana, as well as Sandawe and Hadza of Tanzania, which are language isolates. [150] In addition to marking plurals via a number of affixes (with the suffixes -*uu/-*w and -*n(a) widely attested), several AA languages make use of internal vowel change (apophony) and/or insertion (epenthesis). Greenberg, Joseph H. (1983). Copyright © 2023 The President and Fellows of Harvard College, Department of African and African American Studies, Introduction to African Languages and Cultures, 2016 African Languages in the Disciplines Conference, 2015 African Languages in the Disciplines Conference, 2014 African Languages in the Disciplines Conference, 2013 African Languages in the Disciplines Conference, 2012 African Languages in the Disciplines Conference, 2011 African Languages in the Disciplines Conference. [24] Most specialists consider the Omotic languages to constitute a sixth branch. [149] A system K (masculine), T (feminine), and H (plural) can be found in Cushitic, Chadic, with masculine K also appearing in Omotic. [193] Also common are dependent/affix pronouns (used for direct objects and to mark possession). [81] On the other hand, the classification also relied on non-linguistic anthropological and culturally contingent features, such as skin color, hair type, and lifestyle. The Oromo are the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia and account for up to 40% of the entire population. eyJtZXNzYWdlIjoiMjgyM2FjZDY3OTI4YzEzYzZmNDc4ZTE2NGViYTE1MGQ5 Swahili, or Kiswahili, as the speakers of the language call it, is the most widely spoken African language south of the Sahara. [88], Likewise, no consensus exists as to where proto-Afroasiatic originated. [87], There is no consensus as to when Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken. [107], "Afro-Asiatic" redirects here. [136], Some scholars postulate that Proto-Afroasiatic was a tonal language, with tonality subsequently lost in some branches: Christopher Ehret has postulated a tonal system of at least two tonal phonemes, falling tone, rising tone, and possibly a third tone, level tone. The main subfamilies of Afroasiatic are Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Omotic, Egyptian and Semitic. [153] The Semitic genitive case in -i is probably related to "nisba" adjective derivation. These include Arabic, Somali, Amharic, Oromo, Igbo, Swahili, Hausa, Manding, Fulani and Yoruba, which are spoken as a second (or non-first) language by millions of people. [71], Responding to the above, Tom Güldemann criticizes attempts at finding subgroupings based on common or lacking morphology by arguing that the presence or absence of morphological features is not a useful way of discerning subgroupings in Afroasiatic, because it can not be excluded that families currently lacking certain features did not have them in the past; this also means that the presence of morphological features cannot be taken as defining a subgroup. [77] In the same year T.N. Map 1 (found below) has listed up to three of the most widely spoken languages in each African country. [182] Prefixes of ʔ- (glottal stop) for the first person singular and y- for the third person masculine can also be reconstructed. [32] The second is the Guanche language, which was formerly spoken on the Canary Islands and went extinct in the 17th century CE. These include Arabic, Somali, Amharic, Oromo, Igbo, Swahili, Hausa, Manding, Fulani and Yoruba, which are spoken as a second (or non-first) language by millions of people. Beside the possibilities listed above, there are: Roger Blench notes a couple additional possibilities: Below is a list of language isolates and otherwise unclassified languages in Africa, from Vossen & Dimmendaal (2020:434):[15], Many African countries have national sign languages, such as Algerian Sign Language, Tunisian Sign Language, Ethiopian Sign Language. [45] Militarev associates the speakers of Proto-Afroasiatic with the Levantine Post-Natufian Culture, arguing that the reconstructed lexicon of flora and fauna, as well as farming and pastoralist vocabulary indicates that Proto-AA must have been spoken in this area. Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed grouping of some one hundred diverse languages. MWZhNmNjZjNjZjNmZGQzNGJmOTYxOWMxZmIyZjI1OTcyNTc0MTdmYTdlM2Ez Africa, 33(3), 237–265. [168], A widely attested feature in AA languages is a consonantal structure into which various vocalic "templates" are placed. YTA3NTVlYzVkYWViYWYwMzJjZmQ0M2Y3NDMyMDdhZjViNDk4YTdlZWE0NDAx As of 2018, the languages most commonly spoken by individuals inside of South African households were isiZulu at 25.3 percent, isiXhosa at 14.8 percent and Afrikaans at 12.2 percent. Here are the language origins of the 100 most spoken languages: Indo-European languages have the widest spread worldwide. Besides the former colonial languages of English, French, Portuguese, Dutch (Afrikaans) and Spanish, the following languages are official at the national level in Africa (non-exhaustive list): The colonial borders established by European powers following the Berlin Conference in 1884–1885 divided a great many ethnic groups and African language speaking communities. Benin Official Language: French NGMzYTdlYjc0MGQwMTk1YWEyZjFlOTRlMGVhYmJkY2Y1MmJhNGRkNmUyNGMz [148][165] It forms agent nouns, place nouns, and instrument nouns. Heine, Bernd and Derek Nurse (editors) (2000). rather than the subject and object. [175] The Egyptian verbal system diverges greatly from that found in the other branches. [181] These prefixes are clearly cognate across the branches, although their use within the verbal systems of the individual languages varies. Ehret's dictionary lists "Proto-South-Cushitic, Almansa-Villatoro & Štubňová Nigrelli 2023, "The Prehistory of a Dispersal: The Proto-Afrasian (Afroasiatic) Farming Lexicon", "Once more about glottochronology and the comparative method: the Omotic-Afrasian case", Afro-Asiatic and Semitic genealogical trees, short annotations of the talks given there, Root Extension And Root Formation In Semitic And Afrasian, A comparison of Orel-Stolbova's and Ehret's Afro-Asiatic reconstructions, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Afroasiatic_languages&oldid=1158834362, Linguist H. Fleming proposed that the near-extinct. [164], A prefix in m- is the most widely attested affix in AA that is used to derive nouns. [196], Another factor making comparisons of AA numeral systems difficult is the possibility of borrowing. In Cushitic and Chadic languages, a glottal stop or glottal fricative may be inserted to prevent a word from beginning with a vowel. [50] Omotic is typically split into North Omotic (or Aroid) and South Omotic, with the latter more influenced by the Nilotic languages; it is unclear whether the Dizoid group of Omotic languages belongs to the Northern or Southern group. Sign language systems extant in Africa include the Paget Gorman Sign System used in Namibia and Angola, the Sudanese Sign languages used in Sudan and South Sudan, the Arab Sign languages used across the Arab Mideast, the Francosign languages used in Francophone Africa and other areas such as Ghana and Tunisia, and the Tanzanian Sign languages used in Tanzania. Tone melodies play an important role, meaning that it is often possible to state significant generalizations by separating tone sequences ("melodies") from the segments that bear them. MDM4NTU0YmI3M2JiN2Y5ZDYwNDVmZDE3MDFjMGY5MGJlYTBjZjFjMzI4YmIx NzgxMjUyN2M1OThmN2FkYjlkZjExOWYzMTFjMzMxOGQ0Zjc4YTg3M2FjYTNh The earliest Afroasiatic languages are associated with the Capsian culture, the Saharan languages are linked with the Khartoum Mesolithic/Neolithic cultures. NzdiOTY2NDc1NjcxZDEyZTY5NzcyZWM1YmQ5ZDFmMDZiY2M1NzlhYzYyZTcx YjZmYTM3NjA4Y2FkNTNlYjJkYzA2MmE3MTViOGEzNTAzNjAzNzIzZDU1MWRj [60] These six branches now constitute an academic consensus on the genetic structure of the family. While there is no consensus among historical linguists as to where Proto-Afroasiatic—the common ancestor of all Afroasiatic languages—was originally spoken, most agree on a place of origin situated somewhere in northeastern Africa. This hypothetical family would reach an expennse that stretches from the Nile Valley to northern Tanzania and into Nigeria and DR Congo, with the Songhay languages along the middle reaches of the Niger River as a geographic outlier. [148], A widespread pattern of gender and number marking in Afroasiatic is a consonant N for masculine, T for feminine, and N for plural. 'Some areal characteristics of African languages.' Afrikaans is Indo-European, as is most of the vocabulary of most African creole languages. It is home to nearly 2,000 languages, and French is one of the most widely spoken, along with English, Swahili, and Hausa. ODBmZDlhOGY3NjBmN2ZjNWM4OTY5OGM0MDMwMDZhNWEyMjU0NjU3M2RmNDFk If you think back to Module 5, you will remember that these are only a few of the over 1000 languages spoken in Africa! Some linguistic features are particularly common among languages spoken in Africa, whereas others are less common. [205] Thus, it is possible that the numerals in Egyptian, Berber, and Semitic are more closely related, whereas the Cushitic and Chadic numerals are more closely related to each other. [8] Work is also hampered because of the poor state of documentation of many languages. [190], Due to its presence in the oldest attested and best-known AA branches, nisba derivation is often thought of as a "quintessentially Afroasiatic feature". ZGRkNDFhMWRmNGVkMjExMjI4YzA5ZDQ2OTU3NjVkNDRjOWNmMjQwMTA5MjQ1 The Linguistic Prehistory of Southern Africa: Bush, Kwadi, Hottentot, and Bantu Linguistic Relationships. [17] Within the Table of Nations, each of Noah's sons is presented as being the progenitor of several apparently-related people groups: Shem was the father of the Jews, Assyrians, and Arameans, among myriad others; Ham likewise sired the Egyptians and Cushites. Quite often, only one term is used for both animal and meat; the word nama or nyama for animal/meat is particularly widespread in otherwise widely divergent African languages. Malagasy belongs to the Austronesian languages and is the westernmost branch of the family. Keep reading to get to know 5 of the most spoken rare languages in America and their histories! Some languages have an additional feminine plural form in -t that is not listed here. [114] It is generally agreed that only the obstruents had a contrast between voiceless and voiced forms in Proto-Afroasiatic, whereas continuants were voiceless. [21] The name refers to the fact that it is the only major language family with large populations in both Africa and Asia. [67] In contrast to scholars who argue for an early split of Chadic from Afroasiatic, scholars of the Russian school tend to argue that Chadic and Egyptian are closely related. [112] [157][158] Zygmont Frajzyngier states that a general characteristic of case marking in AA languages is that it tends to mark roles such as genitive, dative, locative, etc. In 2021, the UN designated July 7 as World Kiswahili Language Day. [79] Some scholars would continue to regard Hausa as related to the other Afroasiatic languages, but the idea was controversial: many scholars refused to admit that the largely unwritten, "Negroid" Chadic languages were in the same family as the "Caucasian" ancient civilizations of the Egyptians and Semites. OWQ4NDFiMmI3NDVhNmFmYWUyZjUyZmNmNjIzYmVlYTYwYWNmYjZhNjgwN2Uw [106], Several Afroasiatic languages have large consonant inventories, and it is likely that this is inherited from proto-Afroasiatic:[107] Vladimir Orel and Olga Stolbova reconstruct 32 consonant phonemes,[108] while Christopher Ehret reconstructs 42. The five that are universally agreed upon are Berber (also called "Libyco-Berber"), Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, and Semitic. [98][99] Scholar Jared Diamond and archaeologist Peter Bellwood have taken up Militarev's arguments as part of their general argument that the spread of linguistic macrofamilies (such as Indo-European, Bantu, and Austro-Asiatic) can be associated with the development of agriculture; they argue that there is clear archaeological support for farming spreading from the Levant into Africa via the Nile valley. There are also many less widely spoken languages that may be considered endangered languages. Such shared traits probably are not due to a common origin of all African languages. Since the colonial era, Indo-European languages such as Afrikaans, English, French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish have held official status in many countries, and are widely spoken, generally as lingua francas. The languages on this map are also classified by language family. Nzg2MWZlMWZjYTQ3NTVhZDhiZjAxMDBjYzYxNTM0ZTE4NjAwNTgwODYwMzJk [110] All Afroasiatic languages contain stops and fricatives; some branches have additional types of consonants such as affricates and lateral consonants. [76], A relationship between Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic and the Berber languages was perceived as early as the 9th century CE by the Hebrew grammarian and physician Judah ibn Quraysh, who is regarded as a forerunner of Afroasiatic studies. ZGI2ZTU5Y2RkNWYzN2ZhOTk2ZmZiNmYzOTFhOWFmYTYyMmIyYTE2OWU5OGJi [201] Andrzej Zaborski further notes that the numbers "one," "two," and "five" are particularly susceptible to replacement by new words, with "five" often based on a word meaning "hand". The Niger–Congo languages constitute the largest language family spoken in West Africa and perhaps the world in terms of the number of languages. [142] These pronouns tend to show a masculine "u" and a feminine "i". The family's most extensive branch, the Semitic languages (including Arabic, Amharic and Hebrew among others), is the only branch of Afroasiatic that is spoken outside Africa.[6].
Klausur Amerikanische Revolution,
Phil Schaller Telefonnummer,
Articles T