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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 ...
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 (12 to 18 kya ...
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Afroasiatic (Afro-Asiatic), also called Afrasian or Hamito-Semitic or Semito-Hamitic, is a large language family. They are mainly spoken in Western Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa and parts of the Sahel. There are around 300 Afroasiatic languages that are still spoken.
Afro-Asiatic (or Afroasiatic; also known as “Hamito-Semitic”) is an entity of genetically related languages which is often labeled a macro-family or language phylum due to the number and typological diversity of its member languages and the chronological depth of this entity.
- Introduction
- The Afroasiatic Languages
- History of The Project
- Present State of The Project
- Excursus: What Is etymology?
- Annual Reports
The Afroasiatic Index Project is a scholarly initiative that aims at creating an etymologicaldatabase of Afroasiatic languages.
Afroasiatic languages are a group of related languages spoken by various communities from a large area in West African centered around Lake Chad (Chadic), all the way across North Africa (Berber) into Egypt (Egyptian), Ethiopia, and Somalia, and down the Great Rift Valley to the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro (Cushitic / Omotic). Crossing over into Wester...
THE CUSHITIC LEXICON PROJECT
The predecessor of the Afroasiatic Index Project was the Cushitic Lexicon Project, or Cushlex. The purpose of the Cushitic Lexicon Project was to provide interested investigators with access to the comparative lexical information contained in cognate sets existing within the 80 odd members of the Cushitic and Omotic language families. The Cushitic Lexicon, whose infrastructure is now largely complete, was done using hardware and software resources (e.g., desktop computer systems and off-the-s...
THE AFROASIATIC INDEX PROJECT
From about 1994 two serious shortcomings in the Cushitic Lexicon approach became apparent. One was that the database programs and data formats were becoming obsolete. Another, more important, one was that programming and interface design were becoming white elephants. These also threatened to become even more of a burden as the Project, as a whole, began to look outward, beyond Cushitic and Omotic, toward the more general Afroasiatic language superfamily. Fortunately, just when the project th...
At present we hope to make once more available a prototype Semitic Index giving etymological relations within Semitic, but not yet to any branches of Afroasiatic outside Semitic, and follow up with a Cushitic Index Since, as indicated, the Cushitic index already notes cognates in other branches, a rudimentary, Cushitic-oriented Egyptian, Berber and...
Etymology is the study of word histories. For example, our word for pig meat, pork, is actually an Old French word, porc--borrowed after the Norman conquest brought French culture to the British Isles. In turn, Old French porc itself developed out of an earlier Latin word, porcus. Our English word pork, therefore, comes down to us, through the inte...
ÉRAINN, IVERNIC, IARNBÉLRE, IARMBERLA THE CHIEF BRONZE AGE LANGUAGE OF IRELAND Below is a tentative glossary showing words from the Érainn, Irish and English languages. It is likely that Érainn died out between 850 AD and 900 AD>Cormac tells us during the 800's but isolated speakers may have lingered longer just like with Cornish in 1800s.
Distribution of the Afro-Asiatic languages. Afro-Asiatic languages, formerly Hamito-Semitic languages, Family of about 250 languages spoken in North Africa, parts of sub-Saharan African, and the Middle East. It includes such languages as Arabic, Hebrew, Amharic, and Hausa.
