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Afroasiatic languages

There are some 250, maybe more, Afroasiatic (aka Afrasian, Erythraic, Lisramic, Hamito-Semitic) languages spoken in Africa. They are commonly grouped in 6 branches as follows (cfr Hayward 2000):

• Ancient Egyptian & Coptic -- extinct
• Berber -- less than 10 languages, incl. Tuareg
• Chadic -- some 150-200 languages, incl. Hausa
• Cushitic -- some 30-50 languages, incl. Somali, Oromo
• Omotic -- up to 30 languages, incl. Wolaytta, Kefa, Basketo
• Semitic -- some 20 languages, incl. Amharic, Tigrinya, several varieties of Arabic

A SELECTION OF PRINTED SOURCES

Hayward, Richard J. 2000. Afroasiatic. In: African languages: an introduction (ed. by Bernd Heine & Derek Nurse), p. 74-98. Cambridge University Press.

Heine, Bernd; Schadeberg, Thilo C.; Wolff, Ekkehard. (Eds.) 1981. Die Sprachen Afrikas, Bd 2: Afroasiatisch. Helmut Buske Verlag.

Hodge, Carleton Taylor. 1970. Afroasiatic: an overview. In: Current trends in linguistics, v. 6: linguistics in south west Asia and northern Africa (ed. by Thomas Albert Sebeok), p. 237-254. Mouton & Co.

Hodge, Carleton Taylor. 2001. Afroasiatic. In: Africa and Africans in antiquity (ed. by Edwin M. Yamauchi), p. 15-27. Michigan State University Press.

Perrot, Jean. (Ed.) 1981. Les langues dans le monde ancien et moderne, v. 1: les languages de l'Afrique subsaharienne. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).

Perrot, Jean; Cohen, Daniel. (Eds.) 1988. Les langues dans le monde ancien et moderne, v. 3: les langues chamito-semitique. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).

Afro-Asiatic languages, according to SIL's Ethnologue.
www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=89997

Afro-Asiatic languages, according to Wikipedia.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afro-asiatic

The Afroasiatic Index Project. Oriental Institute, University of Chicago.
oi.uchicago.edu/OI/PROJ/CUS/AAindex.html

Roger M. Blench, 2000
The Afro-Asiatic languages: classification and reference list (PDF). Mallam Dendo, Cambridge.
www.rogerblench.info/RBOP.htm

C. Chanard
Systèmes alphabétiques des langues africaines d'après "Alphabets des langues africaines", Unesco-SIL 1993. LLACAN (Langage, Langues et Cultures d'Afrique Noire).
sumale.vjf.cnrs.fr/phono

M. ben Hamed, P. Darlu, 2003
Origine et expansion de l'Afro-Asiatique: méthodologie pour une approche pluridisciplinaire. From: Bulletins et mémoires de la Société d'Anthropologie de Paris, v. 15.
bmsap.revues.org/document564.html

Helene Fatima Idris, 2003
Swedish contributions to African linguistics, with a focus on Nilo-Saharan and Afro-Asiatic languages (PDF). Africa & Asia: Göteborg working papers on Asian and African languages and literatures, v. 3, p. 53-63.
www.african.gu.se/aa/downloads/aa03053.pdf

Alexander Militarev
Afro-Asiatic etymologies.
starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/main.cgi?root=config

See separate pages for:

• Berber languages
• Chadic languages
• Cushitic languages
• Omotic languages
• Semitic languages