In the early 19th century, linguists grouped the Berber, Cushitic and Egyptian languages within a "Hamitic" phylum, in acknowledgement of these languages' genetic relation with each other and with those in the 查看更多內容

In the 9th century the Hebrew grammarian Judah ibn Quraysh of Tiaret in Algeria became the first to link two branches of Afroasiatic together; he perceived a relationship between Berber and Semitic. He knew of Semitic through his study of Arabic, Hebrew, … 查看更多內容

The Afroasiatic urheimat, the hypothetical place where Proto-Afroasiatic language speakers lived in a single linguistic community, or complex of communities, before the original language dispersed geographically and divided into distinct languages, is … 查看更多內容

Scholars generally treat the Afroasiatic language family as including at least the following five branches:
• 查看更多內容

In descending order of the number of speakers, widely-spoken Afroasiatic languages include:
• 查看更多內容

The earliest written evidence of an Afroasiatic language is an Ancient Egyptian inscription dated to c. 3400 BC (5,400 years ago). Symbols on Gerzean (Naqada II) pottery resembling Egyptian hieroglyphs date back to c. 4000 BC, suggesting an … 查看更多內容

Features observed in all known Afroasiatic language families include:
• bilabial, alveolar, velar, and glottal places of articulation
• a set of emphatic consonants, variously realized as glottalized, pharyngealized, or implosive 查看更多內容