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Definition: Afro-Asiatic language from The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide

Any of a family of languages spoken throughout the world. There are two main branches, the languages of North Africa and the languages originating in Syria, Mesopotamia, Palestine, and Arabia, but now found from Morocco in the west to the Gulf in the east.

The North African languages include ancient Egyptian, Coptic, and Berber, while the Asiatic languages include the largest number of speakers – modern Arabic – as well as Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac. The scripts of Arabic and Hebrew are written from right to left.


Afroasiatic Languages

From The World's Major Languages
1 Introduction The approximately 250 Afroasiatic languages, spoken by about 340 million ethnically and racially different people, occupy today the major part of the Middle East, all of North Africa, much of North-East Africa and a considerable area in what may roughly be defined as the northwestern corner of Central Africa. Though the distribution and spread of the specific languages was substantially different, about the same area was covered by Afroasiatic languages in antiquity. In the Middle Ages, Sicily and the southern half of Spain were also conquered by those who were to become the largest Afroasiatic-speaking people, the Arabs. Today, only Maltese represents this family as a native language in Europe. The term ‘Semitic’ was proposed in 1781 for a group of related tongues, taken from the Bible (Genesis 10-11) where Noah's son Shem is said to be the ancestor of the speakers of these languages - showing, incidentally, awareness of linguistic relationships at this time. When it…
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Full text Article Afroasiatic languages

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
(ăf´´rōā´´zhēăt'ĭk), formerly Hamito-Semitic languages (hăm'ĭtō-sӘmĭt'ĭk), family of languages spoken by more than 250 million people in N Africa; much of the Sahara; parts of E, central, and W Africa; and W Asia (especially the Arabian peninsula, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel). Since…
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Full text Article Ethiopic

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
(ēthēŏp'ĭk), extinct language of Ethiopia belonging to the North Ethiopic group of the South Semitic (or Ethiopic) languages, which, in turn, belong to the Semitic subfamily of the Afroasiatic family of languages (see Afroasiatic languages ). Ethiopic (also called Geez or classical Ethiopic) ceased…
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Full text Article Egyptian language

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
extinct language of ancient Egypt, a member of the Afroasiatic family of languages (see Afroasiatic languages ). The development of ancient Egyptian is usually divided into four periods: (1) Old Egyptian, spoken and written in Egypt during the IV to VI dynasties of the Old Kingdom (3d millennium…
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Full text Article Akkadian

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
(Әkā'dēӘn), extinct language belonging to the East Semitic subdivision of the Semitic subfamily of the Afroasiatic family of languages (see Afroasiatic languages ). Also called Assyro-Babylonian, Akkadian (or Accadian) was current in ancient Mesopotamia (now Iraq) from about 3000 B.C. until the time…
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Full text Article Amharic

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
(ămhâr'ĭk), language of Ethiopia belonging to the South Ethiopic group of South Semitic languages, which, in turn, belong to the Semitic subfamily of the Afroasiatic family of languages (see Afroasiatic languages ). The official tongue of Ethiopia since the 14th cent., Amharic is spoken by about 20…
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Full text Article Hebrew language

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
member of the Canaanite group of the West Semitic subdivision of the Semitic subfamily of the Afroasiatic family of languages (see Afroasiatic languages ). Hebrew was the language of the Jewish people in biblical times, and most of the Old Testament was written in Hebrew. The oldest extant example…
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Full text Article Aramaic

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
(ârӘmā'ĭk), language belonging to the West Semitic subdivision of the Semitic subfamily of the Afroasiatic family of languages (see Afroasiatic languages ). At some point during the second millenium B.C. , the Aramaeans abandoned their desert existence and settled in Syria, bringing their language, …
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Full text Article Syriac

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
(sēr'ēăk´´), late dialect of Aramaic , which is a West Semitic language (see Afroasiatic languages ). The early Christians of Mesopotamia and Syria gave the Greek name Syriac to the Aramaic dialect they spoke when the term Aramaic acquired the meaning of “pagan” or “heathen.” The oldest Syriac…
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Full text Article Arabic languages

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
members of the West Semitic group of the Semitic subdivision of the Afroasiatic family of languages (see Afroasiatic languages ). The Arabic languages comprise North Arabic (or simply Arabic) and South Arabian (or Himyaritic or South Arabic); South Arabian differs sufficiently from North Arabic to…
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Full text Article Semitic languages

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
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