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128-530: Hausa is a member of the Afroasiatic language family and is the most widely spoken language within the Chadic branch of that family. Despite originating from a non-tonal language family, Hausa utilizes differences in pitch to distinguish words and grammar. Ethnologue estimated that it was spoken as a first language by some 54 million people and as a second language by another 34 million, bringing

256-702: 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 . Over 500 million people are native speakers of an Afroasiatic language, constituting the fourth-largest language family after Indo-European , Sino-Tibetan , and Niger–Congo . Most linguists divide the family into six branches: Berber , Chadic , Cushitic , Egyptian , Semitic , and Omotic . The vast majority of Afroasiatic languages are considered indigenous to

384-492: A pitch accent . At present, there is no generally accepted reconstruction of Proto-Afroasiatic grammar, syntax, or morphology, nor one for any of the sub-branches besides Egyptian. This means that it is difficult to know which features in Afroasiatic languages are retentions, and which are innovations. Moreover, all Afroasiatic languages have long been in contact with other language families and with each other, leading to

512-581: A 'reliable source' informed him that the destruction of Birnin Zamfara happened around 1756, ninety-seven years before his arrival in Hausaland in 1853. Other sources claim that the capital was destroyed in 1762. Babari then established a new capital on the banks of the Gulbin Rima River . He called this new walled town Alkalawa because it was built on the official farmlands ( gandu ) of

640-509: A Cushitic-Omotic group. Additionally, the minority of scholars who favor an Asian origin of Afroasiatic tend to place Semitic as the first branch to split off. Disagreement on which features are innovative and which are inherited from Proto-Afroasiatic produces radically different trees, as can be seen by comparing the trees produced by Ehret and Igor Diakonoff . Responding to the above, Tom Güldemann criticizes attempts at finding subgroupings based on common or lacking morphology by arguing that

768-455: A branch of Afroasiatic persisted as late as the 1980s. In 1969, Harold Fleming proposed that a group of languages classified by Greenberg as Cushitic were in fact their own independent "Omotic" branch—a proposal that has been widely, if not universally, accepted. These six branches now constitute an academic consensus on the genetic structure of the family. Greenberg relied on his own method of mass comparison of vocabulary items rather than

896-495: A combination of any of these processes. There are 20 plural classes proposed by Newman (2000). Hausa marks tense differences by different sets of subject pronouns, sometimes with the pronoun combined with some additional particle. For this reason, a subject pronoun must accompany every verb in Hausa, regardless of whether the subject is known from previous context or is expressed by a noun subject. Hausa's modern official orthography

1024-467: A duality of Semitic and "Hamitic" any more than Indo-European implies a duality of Indic and "European". Because of its use by several important scholars and in the titles of significant works of scholarship, the total replacement of Hamito-Semitic is difficult. While Greenberg ultimately popularized the name "Afroasiatic" in 1960, it appears to have been coined originally by Maurice Delafosse , as French afroasiatique , in 1914. The name refers to

1152-683: A great influence in the way Hausa is spoken by the native Hausa speakers in these areas. In West Africa , Hausa's use as a lingua franca has given rise to a non-native pronunciation that differs vastly from native pronunciation by way of key omissions of implosive and ejective consonants present in native Hausa dialects, such as ɗ , ɓ and kʼ/ƙ , which are pronounced by non-native speakers as d , b and k respectively. This creates confusion among non-native and native Hausa speakers, as non-native pronunciation does not distinguish words like daidai ("correct") and ɗaiɗai ("one-by-one"). Another difference between native and non-native Hausa

1280-469: A lesser extent Gaananci ), the northernmost dialects have slight grammatical and lexical differences owing to frequent contact with the Zarma , Fula , and Tuareg groups and cultural changes owing to the geographical differences between the grassland and desert zones. These dialects also have the quality of bordering on non-tonal pitch accent dialects. This link between non-tonality and geographic location

1408-773: A long history of borrowing words from other languages, usually from the languages being spoken around and near Hausaland . Hausa has between 23 and 25 consonant phonemes depending on the speaker. The three-way contrast between palatals /c ɟ cʼ/ , plain velars /k ɡ kʼ/ , and labialized velars /kʷ ɡʷ kʷʼ/ is found only before long and short /a/ , e.g. /cʼaːɽa/ ('grass'), /kʼaːɽaː/ ('to increase'), /kʷʼaːɽaː/ ('shea-nuts'). Before front vowels, only palatals and labialized velars occur, e.g. /ciːʃiː/ ('jealousy') vs. /kʷiːɓiː/ ('side of body'). Before rounded vowels, only labialized velars occur, e.g. /kʷoːɽaː/ ('ringworm'). Hausa has glottalic consonants (implosives and ejectives) at four or five places of articulation (depending on

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1536-422: A majority of scholars: There is no agreement on the relationships between and subgrouping of the different Afroasiatic branches. Whereas Marcel Cohen (1947) claimed he saw no evidence for internal subgroupings, numerous other scholars have made proposals, with Carsten Peust counting 27 as of 2012. Common trends in proposals as of 2019 include using common or lacking grammatical features to argue that Omotic

1664-406: A noun or a verb, there is evidence for the existence of distinct noun and verb roots, which behave in different ways. As part of these templates, the alternation ( apophony ) between high vowels (e.g. i, u) and a low vowel (a) in verbal forms is usually described as one of the main characteristics of AA languages: this change codes a variety of different functions. It is unclear whether this system

1792-672: A proud martial reputation, likely stemming from its long history of nomadism. Although the majority of the Gobirawa ('people of Gobir') were Hausa, the ruling dynasty claimed Coptic descent, marking under their eyes with " the same mark found under the eye of the Pharaohs on the monuments ," called takin kaza ('the fowl's footprint') in Hausa . This ruling house descended from Bana Turmi, the first Sarkin Gobir, who died at Bilma. They arrived in

1920-585: A series of attacks on Zamfara, despite his sister Fara's marriage to Sarkin Zamfara Maroki. The Zamfarawa fiercely defended against these attacks. However, they eventually abandoned their sarki due to his constant taunting whenever they failed to finish off the Gobirawa. Consequently, the Gobirawa ravaged Birnin Zamfara , the capital of Zamfara, with little resistance. Maroki fled to Kiawa , an ancient hill fortress inhabited by Katsinawa, located about twenty miles east of Kaura Namoda . According to Barth,

2048-565: A single language family, and in 1876 Friedrich Müller first described them as a "Hamito-Semitic" language family. Müller assumed that there existed a distinct "Hamitic" branch of the family that consisted of Egyptian, Berber, and Cushitic. He did not include the Chadic languages, though contemporary Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius argued for the relation of Hausa to the Berber languages. Some scholars would continue to regard Hausa as related to

2176-595: A single language with multiple dialects. Other scholars, however, argue that they are a group of around twelve languages, about as different from each other as the Romance or Germanic languages. In the past, Berber languages were spoken throughout North Africa except in Egypt; since the 7th century CE, however, they have been heavily affected by Arabic and have been replaced by it in many places. There are two extinct languages potentially related to modern Berber. The first

2304-405: A spread of migrating farmers into Africa, but rather a gradual incorporation of animal husbandry into indigenous foraging cultures. Ehret, in a separate publication, argued that the two principles in linguistic approaches for determining the origin of languages which are the principles of fewest moves and greatest diversity had put “beyond reasonable doubt” that the language family “had originated in

2432-497: A syllable to begin with a vowel; however, in many Chadic languages verbs must begin with a consonant. In Cushitic and Chadic languages, a glottal stop or glottal fricative may be inserted to prevent a word from beginning with a vowel. Typically, syllables begin with only a single consonant. Diakonoff argues that proto-Afroasiatic did not have consonant clusters within a syllable. With the exception of some Chadic languages, all Afroasiatic languages allow both open syllables (ending in

2560-410: A total number of 14 vocalic phonemes. In comparison with the long vowels, the short /i, u/ can be similar in quality to the long vowels, mid-centralized to [ ɪ , ʊ ] or centralized to [ ɨ , ʉ ] . Medial /i, u/ can be neutralized to [ ɨ ~ ʉ ] , with the rounding depending on the environment. Medial /e, o/ are neutralized with /a/ . The short /a/ can be either similar in quality to

2688-525: A vowel) and closed syllables (ending in a consonant); many Chadic languages do not allow a syllable to end in a consonant. Most words end in a vowel in Omotic and Cushitic, making syllable-final consonant clusters rare. Syllable weight plays an important role in AA, especially in Chadic; it can affect the form of affixes attached to a word. Several Afroasiatic languages have large consonant inventories, and it

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2816-1124: A wide uniformity wherever it is spoken. However, linguists have identified dialect areas with a cluster of features characteristic of each one. Eastern Hausa dialects include Dauranci in Daura , Kananci in Kano , Bausanci in Bauchi , Gudduranci in Katagum Misau and part of Borno , and Hadejanci in Hadejiya . Western Hausa dialects include Sakkwatanci in Sokoto , Katsinanci in Katsina , Arewanci in Gobir , Adar , Kebbi , and Zanhwaranci in Zamfara , and Kurhwayanci in Kurfey in Niger. Katsina

2944-510: Is Afroasiatic at all, due its lack of several typical aspects of Afroasiatic morphology. There are between 40 and 80 languages in the Semitic family. Today, Semitic languages are spoken across North Africa, West 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. Arabic, spoken in both Asia and Africa,

3072-590: Is a Latin-based alphabet called boko , which was introduced in the 1930s by the British colonial administration. The letter ƴ (y with a right hook) is used only in Niger ; in Nigeria it is written ʼy . Tone and vowel length are not marked in writing. So, for example, /dàɡà/ "from" and /dáːɡáː/ "battle" are both written daga . The distinction between /r/ and /ɽ/ (which does not exist for all speakers)

3200-449: Is a common AA trait; the Chadic examples, for instance, show signs of originally deriving from affixes, which could explain the origins of the alterations in other languages as well. Gobir Gobir ( Demonym : Gobirawa ) was a city-state in what is now Nigeria . Founded by the Hausa in the 11th century, Gobir was one of the seven original kingdoms of Hausaland , and continued under Hausa rule for nearly 700 years. Its capital

3328-481: Is a consonantal structure into which various vocalic "templates" are placed. This structure is particularly visible in the verbs, and is particularly noticeable in Semitic. Besides for Semitic, vocalic templates are well attested for Cushitic and Berber, where, along with Chadic, it is less productive; it is absent in Omotic. For Egyptian, evidence for the root-and-template structure exists from Coptic. In Semitic, Egyptian, Berber, verbs have no inherent vowels at all;

3456-405: Is a large variety of vocalic systems in AA, and attempts to reconstruct the vocalic system of Proto-Afroasiatic vary considerably. 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. The quality of the underlying vowels varies considerably by language; the most common vowel throughout AA is schwa . In

3584-465: Is abruptly replaced with Dioula – Bambara as the main sahelian/Muslim lingua-franca of what become predominantly Manding areas, and native Hausa-speakers plummet to a very small urban minority. Because of this, and the presence of surrounding Akan , Gbe , Gur and Mande languages , Gaananci was historically isolated from the other Hausa dialects. Despite this difference, grammatical similarities between Sakkwatanci and Ghanaian Hausa determine that

3712-486: 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. Another widespread constraint is against two non-identical lateral obstruents , which can be found in Egyptian, Chadic, Semitic, and probably Cushitic. Such rules do not always apply for nouns, numerals, or denominal verbs , and do not affect prefixes or suffixes added to

3840-501: Is attested in Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, and Semitic: it usually affects features such as pharyngealization, palatalization , and labialization . Several Omotic languages have " sibilant harmony", meaning that all sibilants (s, sh, z, ts, etc.) in a word must match. Restrictions against the co-occurrence of certain, usually similar, consonants in verbal roots can be found in all Afroasiatic branches, though they are only weakly attested in Chadic and Omotic. The most widespread constraint

3968-485: Is by far the most widely spoken Afroasiatic language today, with around 300 million native speakers, while the Ethiopian Amharic language has around 25 million; collectively, Semitic is the largest branch of Afroasiatic by number of current speakers. Most authorities divide Semitic into two branches: East Semitic, which includes the extinct Akkadian language, and West Semitic, which includes Arabic, Aramaic,

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4096-570: Is disputed by some and might have been an invention of Bawa Jan Gwarzo (r. 1777–1795) to avoid paying tribute (murgu) to Bornu. British historian Murray Last observes that Egyptian merchants before the 15th-century seem to have given the Asben region the Coptic name 'Gubir'. He also points out that the Coptic word for henna is kouper , and it may not be a coincidence that the one time Gobir capital

4224-428: Is first attested in writing around 3000 BCE and finally went extinct around 1300 CE, making it the language with the longest written history in the world. Egyptian is usually divided into two major periods, Earlier Egyptian (c. 3000–1300 BCE), which is further subdivided into Old Egyptian and Middle Egyptian, and Later Egyptian (1300 BCE-1300 CE), which is further subdivided into Late Egyptian, Demotic, and Coptic. Coptic

4352-419: Is hindered by the massive disparities in textual attestation between its branches: while the Semitic and Egyptian branches are attested in writing as early as the fourth millennium BC , Berber, Cushitic, and Omotic languages were often not recorded until the 19th or 20th centuries. While systematic sound laws have not yet been established to explain the relationships between the various branches of Afroasiatic,

4480-628: Is included, spoken around the Horn of Africa and in Sudan and Tanzania. The Cushitic family is traditionally split into four branches: the single language of Beja (c. 3 million speakers), the Agaw languages, Eastern Cushitic, and Southern Cushitic. Only one Cushitic language, Oromo , has more than 25 million speakers; other languages with more than a million speakers include Somali , Afar , Hadiyya , and Sidaama . Many Cushitic languages have relatively few speakers. Cushitic does not appear to be related to

4608-523: Is likely that this is inherited from proto-Afroasiatic. All Afroasiatic languages contain stops and fricatives ; some branches have additional types of consonants such as affricates and lateral consonants . AA languages tend to have pharyngeal fricative consonants, with Egyptian, Semitic, Berber, and Cushitic sharing ħ and ʕ . In all AA languages, consonants can be bilabial , alveolar , velar , and glottal , with additional places of articulation found in some branches or languages. Additionally,

4736-541: Is mostly used in older Russian sources. The elements of the name were derived from the names of two sons of Noah as attested in the Book of Genesis 's Table of Nations passage: "Semitic" from the first-born Shem , and "Hamitic" from the second-born Ham (Genesis 5:32). Within the Table of Nations, each of Noah's sons is presented as the common progenitor of various people groups deemed to be closely related: among others Shem

4864-529: Is named Birnin Lalle ('city of henna'). A manuscript in the possession of the alkali ( chief judge ) of Sabon Birni sheds more light on the tradition. According to this manuscript, Muhammad , the Islamic prophet , called on Bana Turmi to support him against his enemy Haibura. Wanting to be on the winning side, Bana Turmi sent half of his retainers to support Muhammad and the other half to Haibura. Haibura lost

4992-481: Is no information on whether Egyptian had tones. 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. In some Chadic and some Omotic languages every syllable has to have a tone, whereas in most Cushitic languages this is not the case. Some scholars postulate that Proto-Afroasiatic may have had tone, while others believe it arose later from

5120-613: Is not limited to Hausa alone, but is exhibited in other northern dialects of neighbouring languages; example includes differences within the Songhay language (between the non-tonal northernmost dialects of Koyra Chiini in Timbuktu and Koyraboro Senni in Gao ; and the tonal southern Zarma dialect, spoken from western Niger to northern Ghana ), and within the Soninke language (between

5248-451: Is not marked in orthography, but may be indicated with R̃ r̃ for the trill in linguistic transcription. Hausa has also been written in ajami , an Arabic alphabet , since the early 17th century. The first known work to be written in Hausa is Riwayar Nabi Musa by Abdullahi Suka in the 17th century. There is no standard system of using ajami , and different writers may use letters with different values. Short vowels are written regularly with

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5376-436: Is not the academic consensus. M. Victoria Almansa-Villatoro and Silvia Štubňová Nigrelli write that there are about 400 languages in Afroasiatic; Ethnologue lists 375 languages. Many scholars estimate fewer languages; exact numbers vary depending on the definitions of " language " and " dialect ". The Berber (or Libyco-Berber) languages are spoken today by perhaps 16 million people. They are often considered to constitute

5504-454: Is spoken by up to 53% of the population. It is very popular in the cities of Maradi , Diffa , Tahoua , Zinder , Tillaberi , Dosso , and Agadez . In Cameroon, Hausa is spoken in the north, including the cities of Ngaoundere , Garoua , and Maroua . In Ghana, Hausa is the lingua franca of the Zongo communities across the country. In Benin, Hausa is spoken in the north. Cities where it

5632-449: Is spoken include Parakou , Kandi , Natitingou , and Djougou . In Togo, Hausa is spoken in the north. Cities where it is spoken include Sokode , Kara , and Dapaong . In Chad, Hausa is spoken in the south. Cities where it is spoken include N'Djamena . In Sudan, Hausa is spoken in almost all the states of Jazirah , Blue Nile , and Kordofan , Darfur States, Gadaref State ,Red Sea State, White Nile State, River Nile Hausa presents

5760-472: Is that the Hamitic component inaccurately suggests that a monophyletic "Hamitic" branch exists alongside Semitic. In addition, Joseph Greenberg has argued that Hamitic possesses racial connotations , and that "Hamito-Semitic" overstates the centrality of the Semitic languages within the family. By contrast, Victor Porkhomovsky suggests that the label is simply an inherited convention, and doesn't imply

5888-718: 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. The second is the Guanche language , which was formerly spoken on the Canary Islands and went extinct in the 17th century CE. The first longer written examples of modern Berber varieties only date from the 16th or 17th centuries CE. Chadic languages number between 150 and 190, making Chadic

6016-502: Is the lack of agreement on the subgroupings of Afroasiatic (see Further subdivisions ) – this makes associating archaeological evidence with the spread of Afroasiatic particularly difficult. Nevertheless, there is a long-accepted link between the speakers of Proto- Southern Cushitic languages and the East African Savanna Pastoral Neolithic (5,000 years ago), and archaeological evidence associates

6144-695: Is the omission of vowel length in words and change in the standard tone of native Hausa dialects (ranging from native Fulani and Tuareg Hausa-speakers omitting tone altogether, to Hausa speakers with Gur or Yoruba mother tongues using additional tonal structures similar to those used in their native languages). Use of masculine and feminine gender nouns and sentence structure are usually omitted or interchanged, and many native Hausa nouns and verbs are substituted with non-native terms from local languages. Non-native speakers of Hausa numbered more than 25 million and, in some areas, live close to native Hausa. It has replaced many other languages especially in

6272-462: Is the only stage written alphabetically to show vowels, whereas Egyptian was previously written in Egyptian hieroglyphs , which only represent consonants. In the Coptic period, there is evidence for six major dialects, which presumably existed previously but are obscured by pre-Coptic writing; additionally, Middle Egyptian appears to be based on a different dialect than Old Egyptian, which in turn shows dialectal similarities to Late Egyptian. Egyptian

6400-476: Is the westernmost area in which the Hausa language is a major lingua-franca among sahelian/Muslim West Africans, including both Ghanaian and non-Ghanaian zango migrants primarily from the northern regions, or Mali and Burkina Faso . Ghana also marks the westernmost boundary in which the Hausa people inhabit in any considerable number. Immediately west and north of Ghana (in Côte d'Ivoire , and Burkina Faso), Hausa

6528-461: Is to use a computational methodology such as lexicostatistics , with one of the earliest attempts being Fleming 1983. This is also the method used by Alexander Militarev and Sergei Starostin to create a family tree. Fleming (2006) was a more recent attempt by Fleming, with a different result from Militarev and Starostin. Hezekiah Bacovcin and David Wilson argue that this methodology is invalid for discerning linguistic sub-relationship. They note

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6656-640: Is transitional between Eastern and Western dialects. Sokoto is used in a variety of classical Hausa literature , and is often known as Classical Hausa . Northern Hausa dialects include Arewa (meaning 'North') and Arewaci . Zazzaganci in Zazzau is the major Southern dialect. The Daura ( Dauranchi ) and Kano ( Kananci ) dialects are the standard. The BBC , Deutsche Welle , Radio France Internationale and Voice of America offer Hausa services on their international news web sites using Dauranci and Kananci. In recent language development Zazzaganci took over

6784-722: Is used as a lingua franca by non-native speakers in most of northern Nigeria , southern Niger , northern Cameroon , northern Ghana , northern Benin , northern Togo , southern Chad and parts of Sudan . In Nigeria, Hausa is dominant throughout the north , but not dominant in the states of Kwara , Kogi and Benue . States (or cities) in which Hausa is spoken predominantly include Kano , Kaduna , Katsina, Daura , Gobir, Zaria , Sokoto, Birnin Kebbi , Gusau , Dutse , Hadejia , Bauchi, Misau , Zamfara , Gombe, Nafada , Maiduguri, Yobe , Yola , Jalingo , Jos , Lafia , Nasarawa , Minna, Kontagora , Keffi and Abuja. In Niger, Hausa

6912-539: Is usually identified by the use of c for ky , and j for gy . This is attributed to the fact that Ghana's Hausa population descend from Hausa-Fulani traders settled in the zongo districts of major trade-towns up and down the previous Asante , Gonja and Dagomba kingdoms stretching from the sahel to coastal regions, in particular the cities of Accra ( Sabon Zango , Nima ), Takoradi and Cape Coast Gaananci exhibits noted inflected influences from Zarma , Gur , Jula - Bambara , Akan , and Soninke , as Ghana

7040-609: The African continent , including all those not belonging to the Semitic branch. Arabic , if counted as a single language, is by far the most widely spoken within the family, with around 300 million native speakers concentrated primarily in the Middle East and North Africa. Other major Afroasiatic languages include the Cushitic Oromo language with 45 million native speakers, Chadic Hausa language with over 34 million,

7168-660: The Asben region between the 12th and 14th centuries, establishing a state with the Idirfunawa (Hausawa in Adrar ) they met there. By the 15th-century, Gobir had 'many villages inhabited by shepherds and other herdsmen,' according to Leo Africanus . It utilised its large number of artisans and linen weavers to produce and export textiles and shoes, 'made like those of the ancient Romans ,' as far as Timbuktu and Gao through Wangara traders. However, due to constant pressure from

7296-736: The Battle of Tsuntua ), dan Fodio managed to conquer the surrounding territory. His forces seized the Gobir capital, Alkalawa , in October 1808, killing Sarki Yunfa. The state was then partially absorbed into Sokoto. Resistance against the Jihadists was continued in the north-east by Sarkin Ali dan Yakubu and Sarki Mayaki. With the help of the Hausa ruler of Katsina the latter built a new capital of Gobir in Tibiri , 10 km north of Maradi in 1836. When

7424-646: The Bori cult , representing the Takurabow or Inna Baka ('the Black Inna'), the dynastic goddess of Gobir. This sections lists the holders of the title of Sarkin Gobir ('lord of Gobir'). The list is derived from the Sokoto Provincial Gazetteer compiled by P G Harris , a British colonial administrator. Other lists exist, including one by E J Arnett (another colonial official), which

7552-532: The Haoussa Foulane , Badji Haoussa, Guezou Haoussa, and Ansongo districts of northeastern Mali (where it is designated as a minority language by the Malian government), but there are very little linguistic resources and research done on these particular dialects at this time. Gaananci forms a separate group from other Western Hausa dialects, as it now falls outside the contiguous Hausa-dominant area, and

7680-721: The Nilotic languages ; it is unclear whether the Dizoid group of Omotic languages belongs to the Northern or Southern group. The two Omotic languages with the most speakers are Wolaitta and Gamo-Gofa-Dawro , with about 1.2 million speakers each. A majority of specialists consider Omotic to constitute a sixth branch of Afroasiatic. Omotic was formerly considered part of the Cushitic branch; some scholars continue to consider it part of Cushitic. Other scholars have questioned whether it

7808-518: The Omotic languages to constitute a sixth branch. Due to the presumed distance of relationship between the various branches, many scholars prefer to refer to Afroasiatic as a "linguistic phylum" rather than a "language family". G.W. Tsereteli goes even further and outright doubts that the Afro-Asiatic languages are a genetic language family altogether, but are rather a sprachbund. However, this

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7936-692: 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. An origin somewhere on the African continent has broad scholarly support, and is seen as being well-supported by the linguistic data. Most scholars more narrowly place

8064-585: The Semitic languages had already been coined in 1781 by August Ludwig von Schlözer , following an earlier suggestion by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in 1710. Hamitic was first used by Ernest Renan in 1855 to refer to languages that appeared similar to the Semitic languages, but were not themselves provably a part of the family. The belief in a connection between Africans and the Biblical Ham, which had existed at least as far back as Isidore of Seville in

8192-584: The Tuaregs , its economy suffered, and the Gobirawa were forced to move southwards. The Tuaregs had established the Sultanate of Agadez earlier in the century, replacing Gobir as the dominant power in the Aïr mountains. After fleeing Asben, the Gobirawa first moved to Maigali and later to Goran Rami, near present-day Sabon Birni . In the early 18th-century, they moved their capital to Birnin Lalle . According to

8320-410: The comparative method of demonstrating regular sound correspondences to establish the family. An alternative classification, based on the pronominal and conjugation systems, was proposed by A.N. Tucker in 1967. As of 2023, widely accepted sound correspondences between the different branches have not yet been firmly established. Nevertheless, morphological traits attributable to the proto-language and

8448-500: The glottal stop ( ʔ ) usually exists as a phoneme, and there tends to be no phonemic contrast between [p] and [f] or [b] and [v]. In Cushitic, the Ethiopian Semitic language Tigrinya , and some Chadic languages, there is no underlying phoneme [p] at all. Most, if not all branches of Afroasiatic distinguish between voiceless , voiced , and " emphatic " consonants. The emphatic consonants are typically formed deeper in

8576-404: 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. 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 . On one hand,

8704-656: The "Hamitic" classification was justified partially based on linguistic features: for example, Meinhof split the presently-understood Chadic family into "Hamito-Chadic", and an unrelated non-Hamitic "Chadic" based on which languages possessed grammatical gender. On the other hand, the classification also relied on non-linguistic anthropological and culturally contingent features, such as skin color, hair type, and lifestyle. Ultimately, Meinhof's classification of Hamitic proved to include languages from every presently-recognized language family within Africa. The first scholar to question

8832-507: The 6th century AD, led scholars in the early 19th century to speak vaguely of "Hamian" or "Hamitish" languages. The term Hamito-Semitic has largely fallen out of favor among linguists writing in English, but is still frequently used in the scholarship of various other languages, such as German. Several issues with the label Hamito-Semitic have led many scholars to abandon the term and criticize its continued use. One common objection

8960-522: The African branches of Afroasiatic are very diverse; this suggests the rapid spread of Semitic out of Africa. Proponents of an origin of Afroasiatic within Africa assume the proto-language to have been spoken by pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherers , arguing that there is no evidence of words in Proto-Afroasiatic related to agriculture or animal husbandry. Christopher Ehret, S.O. Y. Keita, and Paul Newman also argue that archaeology does not support

9088-506: The Agadez cities of Manni and Adrar. However, his army eventually grew tired of the incessant campaigning and deserted him. Consequently, he was killed by Agadez forces. His son, Gofe, and his daughter, the Magajiya , both fell while fighting beside their father. Soba's successor, Uban Iche (or Ibn Ashe), was murdered by his son, Babari. Babari took the title of sarki and immediately led raids into Katsina, Kano , and Shirra in Katagum . After reigning as Sarkin Gobir for 15 years, he began

9216-561: The Canaanite languages (including Hebrew), as well as the Ethiopian Semitic languages such as Ge'ez and Amharic. The classification within West Semitic remains contested. The only group with an African origin is Ethiopian Semitic. The oldest written attestations of Semitic languages come from Mesopotamia, Northern Syria, and Egypt and date as early as c. 3000 BCE. There are also other proposed branches, but none has so far convinced

9344-627: The Chief Alkali of Zamfara. These farms were originally given to Gobirawa immigrants by Sarkin Zamfara Malu (or Maliki), the father of Sarkin Zamfara Babba (c. 1715). Gobir is particularly remembered as the chief opponent of Fulani Islamic reformer Usman dan Fodio . Bawa, a ruler of Gobir, appears to have invited dan Fodio to the area in 1774; dan Fodio made his home in the small town of Degel , and began preaching. Dan Fodio

9472-456: The Egyptian word rmṯ ("person")—and Erythraean —referring to the core area around which the languages are spoken, the Red Sea —have also been proposed. Scholars generally consider Afroasiatic to have between five and eight branches. The five that are universally agreed upon are Berber (also called "Libyco-Berber"), Chadic , Cushitic , Egyptian , and Semitic . Most specialists consider

9600-542: The German geographer Heinrich Barth , who explored the region in the mid 19th-century, after their conquest, the Gobirawa agreed with the Tuaregs that they would not be exterminated and that Tuareg kings should always marry a black woman. Around 1715, together with Agadez, Gobir aided Zamfara in its successful revolt against Kebbi , which at the time was the dominant power in western Hausaland. This alliance strengthened

9728-753: The Gobir Sultan revolted against the Sokoto Caliphate that same year, Sokoto Sultan Muhammed Bello crushed the rebellion at the Battle of Gawakuke . In present Niger the old dynasty of the Hausa rulers of Gobir is still continued today. A rival branch of the dynasty has its seat in Sabon Birni north of Sokoto in Nigeria . The former Sarkin Gobir Muhammadu Bawa ruled in Sabon Birni from 1975 to 2004. Like most of

9856-455: The Horn of Africa, Egypt, and the eastern Sahara. A significant minority of scholars argues for an origin in the Levant . The reconstructed timelines of when Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken vary extensively, with dates ranging from 18,000 BC to 8,000 BC. Even the latest plausible dating makes Afroasiatic the oldest language family accepted by contemporary linguists. Comparative study of Afroasiatic

9984-423: The Horn of Africa”. A significant minority of scholars supports an Asian origin of Afroasiatic, most of whom are specialists in Semitic or Egyptian studies. The main proponent of an Asian origin is the linguist Alexander Militarev , who argues that Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken by early agriculturalists in the Levant and subsequently spread to Africa. Militarev associates the speakers of Proto-Afroasiatic with

10112-542: 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. 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

10240-785: The Niger River to ravage Gurma . They continued the campaign as far south as Ilorin in Yorubaland . Some of the Gobirawa remained in Ilorin, eventually settling there permanently. The Gobirawa community continued to thrive in Ilorin, leading to a close relationship between the Yoruba and the Gobirawa. Today, they are represented in the Ilorin Emirate Council by the Sarkin Gobir of Ilorin. Soba resumed his wars in

10368-577: The Sarkin Gobir. According to local tradition, the Sarkin Anna held a similar position in the original Gobir polity. The Sarkin Anna is also the custodian of the royal regalia of Gobir, which includes a sabre, two bracelets (one gold and one silver), a bow, and a quiver. Another powerful titleholder in Gobir was the Inna , an office typically given to the sarki's sister. She served as the high priestess of

10496-797: The Semitic Amharic language with 25 million, and the Cushitic Somali language with 15 million. Other Afroasiatic languages with millions of native speakers include the Semitic Tigrinya and Modern Hebrew , the Cushitic Sidaama , and the Omotic Wolaitta language , though most languages within the family are much smaller in size. There are many well-attested Afroasiatic languages from antiquity that have since died or gone extinct , including Egyptian and

10624-407: The Semitic languages Akkadian , Biblical Hebrew , Phoenician , Amorite , and Ugaritic . There is no consensus among historical linguists as to precisely where or when the common ancestor of all Afroasiatic languages, known as Proto-Afroasiatic , was originally spoken. However, most agree that the Afroasiatic homeland was located somewhere in northeastern Africa, with specific proposals including

10752-411: The battle and was slain at Badr . After the battle, Muhammad saw a group of Gobirawa fleeing and ordered them to be captured. When they were brought before him, he asked why they had fled, as victory was theirs. They revealed that they had been fighting for Haibura, exposing Bana Turmi's duplicity. Muhammad then declared that the Gobirawa would suffer from divided counsel and internal dissension until

10880-626: The development of agriculture; they argue that there is clear archaeological support for farming spreading from the Levant into Africa via the Nile valley. Afroasiatic languages share a number of phonetic and phonological features. Egyptian, Cushitic, Berber, Omotic, and most languages in the Semitic branch require every syllable to begin with a consonant (with the exception of some grammatical prefixes). Igor Diakonoff argues that this constraint goes back to Proto-Afroasiatic. Some Chadic languages allow

11008-441: The dialect). They require movement of the glottis during pronunciation and have a staccato sound. They are written with modified versions of Latin letters. They can also be denoted with an apostrophe , either before or after depending on the letter, as shown below: Hausa vowels occur in five different vowel qualities, all of which can be short or long, totaling 10 monophthongs . In addition, there are four diphthongs , giving

11136-529: The dialect, and the origin of the Ghanaian Hausa people themselves, are derived from the northwestern Hausa area surrounding Sokoto. Hausa is also widely spoken by non-native Gur , and Mandé Ghanaian Muslims, but differs from Gaananci, and rather has features consistent with non-native Hausa dialects. Hausa is also spoken in various parts of Cameroon and Chad, which combined the mixed dialects of Northern Nigeria and Niger. In addition, Arabic has had

11264-446: The different languages, central vowels are often inserted to break up consonant clusters (a form of epenthesis ). Various Semitic, Cushitic, Berber, and Chadic languages, including Arabic, Amharic, Berber, Somali, and East Dangla, also exhibit various types of vowel harmony . The majority of AA languages are tonal languages : phonemic tonality is found in Omotic, Chadic, and Cushitic languages, but absent in Berber and Semitic. There

11392-472: The end of time. Bana Turmi then led the Gobirawa out of Yemen and died at the salt wells of Bilma . His grandson, Bala, then led the Gobirawa further west into the land of Asben, where they aligned with the Idirfunawa of the Adrar against the Tuaregs . According to historian Boubé Gado  [ de ] , some claim that Bana Turmi, whose actual name is Bawo na Turmi, was the son of Bawo and

11520-487: The establishment of cognates throughout the family have confirmed its genetic validity . There is no consensus as to when Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken. The absolute latest date for when Proto-Afroasiatic could have been extant is c.  4000 BCE , after which Egyptian and the Semitic languages are firmly attested. However, in all likelihood these languages began to diverge well before this hard boundary. The estimations offered by scholars as to when Proto-Afroasiatic

11648-426: The evolution of Chadic (and likely also Omotic) serving as pertinent examples. Likewise, no consensus exists as to where proto-Afroasiatic originated. Scholars have proposed locations for the Afroasiatic homeland across Africa and West Asia. Roger Blench writes that the debate possesses "a strong ideological flavor", with associations between an Asian origin and "high civilization". An additional complicating factor

11776-566: The existence of "Hamitic languages" was Marcel Cohen in 1924, with skepticism also expressed by A. Klingenheben and Dietrich Westermann during the 1920s and '30s. However, Meinhof's "Hamitic" classification remained prevalent throughout the early 20th century until it was definitively disproven by Joseph Greenberg in the 1940s, based on racial and anthropological data. Instead, Greenberg proposed an Afroasiatic family consisting of five branches: Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, and Semitic. Reluctance among some scholars to recognize Chadic as

11904-503: The fact that it is the only major language family with large populations in both Africa and Asia. Due to concerns that "Afroasiatic" could imply the inclusion of all languages spoken across Africa and Asia, the name "Afrasian" ( Russian : afrazijskije ) was proposed by Igor Diakonoff in 1980. At present it predominantly sees use among Russian scholars. The names Lisramic —based on the Afroasiastic root *lis- ("tongue") and

12032-461: The grandson of Bayajidda . This connects the Gobir tradition with the more well known Bayajidda legend of Daura . Gobir was one of the seven original kingdoms of Hausaland , tracing a lineage back to the 11th century. It was the northernmost of the Hausa states and was depended on to protect its sister states from northern adversaries, particularly the Tuareg tribes. From its founding, Gobir had

12160-607: The help of vowel marks , which are seldom used in Arabic texts other than the Quran. Many medieval Hausa manuscripts in ajami , similar to the Timbuktu Manuscripts , have been discovered recently; some of them even describe constellations and calendars . Afroasiatic language family The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic , sometimes Afrasian ), also known as Hamito-Semitic or Semito-Hamitic , are

12288-436: The homeland near the geographic center of its present distribution, "in the southeastern Sahara or adjacent Horn of Africa." The Afroasiatic languages spoken in Africa are not more closely related to each other than they are to Semitic, as one would expect if only Semitic had remained in a West Asian homeland while all other branches had spread from there. Likewise, all Semitic languages are fairly similar to each other, whereas

12416-548: The innovation of writing and speaking the current Hausa language use. The western to eastern Hausa dialects of Kurhwayanci , Dam agaram and Adarawa , represent the traditional northernmost limit of native Hausa communities. These are spoken in the northernmost sahel and mid- Saharan regions in west and central Niger in the Tillaberi , Tahoua , Dosso , Maradi , Agadez and Zinder regions. While mutually comprehensible with other dialects (especially Sakkwatanci , and to

12544-405: The languages share a number of common features. One of the most important for establishing membership in the branch is a common set of pronouns. Other widely shared features include a prefix m- which creates nouns from verbs, evidence for alternations between the vowel "a" and a high vowel in the forms of the verb, similar methods of marking gender and plurality, and some details of phonology such as

12672-888: The largest family in Afroasiatic by number of extant languages. The Chadic languages are typically divided into three major branches, East Chadic, Central Chadic, and West Chadic. Most Chadic languages are located in the Chad Basin , with the exception of Hausa . Hausa is the largest Chadic language by native speakers, and is spoken by a large number of people as a lingua franca in Northern Nigeria. It may have as many as 80 to 100 million first and second language speakers. Eight other Chadic languages have around 100,000 speakers; other Chadic languages often have few speakers and may be in danger of going extinct. Only about 40 Chadic languages have been fully described by linguists. There are about 30 Cushitic languages, more if Omotic

12800-462: The long /aː/ , or it can be as high as [ ə ] , with possible intermediate pronunciations ( [ ɐ ~ ɜ ] ). The 4 diphthongs in Hausa are /ai, au, iu, ui/ . Hausa is a tonal language . Each of its five vowels may have low tone, high tone or falling tone. In standard written Hausa, tone is not marked. In recent linguistic and pedagogical materials, tone is marked by means of diacritics. An acute accent ( ´ ) may be used for high tone, but

12928-602: The method's inability to detect various strong commonalities even between well-studied branches of AA. 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. The French orientalist Guillaume Postel had also pointed out similarities between Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic in 1538, and Hiob Ludolf noted similarities also to Ge'ez and Amharic in 1701. This family

13056-558: The mid-18th century, attacking a former ally, Katsina . While the Gobirawa were engaged in a seven-year siege against the Katsina city of Maradi , Agadez descended upon Goran Rami, the capital of Gobir. The Zamfarawa immediately came to Gobir's aid, secretly surrounding the Agadez forces at night with a fence of thorns before launching an attack. Upon his return after the failed siege of Maradi, Soba immediately set out for revenge, sacking

13184-422: The most common names for the family are Afroasiatic (or Afro-Asiatic ), Hamito-Semitic , and Semito-Hamitic . Other proposed names that have yet to find widespread acceptance include Erythraic / Erythraean , Lisramic , Noahitic , and Lamekhite . Friedrich Müller introduced the name Hamito-Semitic to describe the family in his Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft (1876). The variant Semito-Hamitic

13312-572: The non-tonal northernmost dialects of Imraguen and Nemadi spoken in east-central Mauritania ; and the tonal southern dialects of Senegal , Mali and the Sahel ). The Ghanaian Hausa dialect ( Gaananci ), spoken in Ghana and Togo , is a distinct western native Hausa dialect-bloc with adequate linguistic and media resources available. Separate smaller Hausa dialects are spoken by an unknown number of Hausa further west in parts of Burkina Faso , and in

13440-481: The north-central and north-eastern part of Nigeria and continues to gain popularity in other parts of Africa as a result of Hausa movies and music which spread out throughout the region. There are several pidgin forms of Hausa. Barikanchi was formerly used in the colonial army of Nigeria. Gibanawa is currently in widespread use in Jega in northwestern Nigeria, south of the native Hausa area. The Hausa language has

13568-594: 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. An important development in the history of Afroasiatic scholarship – and the history of African linguistics – was the creation of the " Hamitic theory " or "Hamitic hypothesis" by Lepsius, fellow Egyptologist Christian Bunsen , and linguist Christian Bleek . This theory connected

13696-435: The poor state of present documentation and understanding of particular language families (historically with Egyptian, presently with Omotic). Gene Gragg likewise argues that more needs to be known about Omotic still, and that Afroasiatic linguists have still not found convincing isoglosses on which to base genetic distinctions. One way of avoiding the problem of determining which features are original and which are inherited

13824-483: The possibility of widespread borrowing both within Afroasiatic and from unrelated languages. There are nevertheless a number of commonly observed features in Afroasiatic morphology and derivation, including the use of suffixes , infixes , vowel lengthening and shortening as a morphological change, as well as the use of tone changes to indicate morphology. Further commonalities and differences are explored in more detail below. A widely attested feature in AA languages

13952-453: The presence of pharyngeal fricatives . Other features found in multiple branches include a specialized verb conjugation using suffixes (Egyptian, Semitic, Berber), a specialized verb conjugation using prefixes (Semitic, Berber, Cushitic), verbal prefixes deriving middle (t-), causative (s-), and passive (m-) verb forms (Semitic, Berber, Egyptian, Cushitic), and a suffix used to derive adjectives (Egyptian, Semitic). In current scholarship,

14080-420: 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. Peust notes that other factors that can obscure genetic relationships between languages include

14208-559: The relationship between the Gobirawa and the Zamfarawa. The Gobirawa continued to move peacefully into the fertile Zamfara region, a process that began early in the 18th-century. The rulers of Zamfara initially welcomed them as useful warriors and granted them farms. However, the relationship soon deteriorated after Sarkin Gobir Soba besieged Zabarma for three years, plundering on a large scale. Afterward, Soba led his forces across

14336-778: The root. Roots that may have contained sequences that were possible in Proto-Afroasiatic but are disallowed in the daughter languages are assumed to have undergone consonant dissimilation or assimilation . A set of constraints, developed originally by Joseph Greenberg on the basis of Arabic, has been claimed to be typical for Afroasiatic languages. Greenberg divided Semitic consonants into four types: "back consonants" ( glottal , pharyngeal , uvular , laryngeal , and velar consonants ), "front consonants" ( dental or alveolar consonants ), liquid consonants , and labial consonants . He showed that, generally, any consonant from one of these groups could combine with consonants from any other group, but could not be used together with consonants from

14464-551: The same group. Additionally, he showed that Proto-Semitic restricted a sequence of two identical consonants in the first and second position of the triliteral root. These rules also have a number of exceptions: Similar exceptions can be demonstrated for the other AA branches that have these restrictions to their root formation. James P. Allen has demonstrated that slightly different rules apply to Egyptian: for instance, Egyptian allows two identical consonants in some roots, and disallows velars from occurring with pharyngeals. There

14592-472: The sarki, was the ubandawaki ('commander of the cavalry'), who was responsible for overseeing the army. The officials of the central government consisted of: Today at Tibiri in Niger , a 'rump state' of Gobir still exists, ruled by the pre-jihad aristocracy of Gobir. The head or priest-chief of the animists, known as the Sarkin Anna , is considered the 'brother' and, in some sense, the 'equal' of

14720-580: The states of Hausaland, Gobir practiced the sarauta (kingship) system. The head of state was the sarki, appointed by an electoral college known as the Taran Gobir ('Gobir nine'). The grand electors had to reach a unanimous decision on a successor, and this electoral college also served as the sarki's council . The sarki exercised authority through three groups of officials: members of the ruling dynasty, public servants, and governors of towns and regions. The highest-ranking titleholder in Gobir, apart from

14848-419: The throat than the others; they can be realized variously as glottalized , pharyngealized , uvularized , ejective , and/or implosive consonants in the different branches. It is generally agreed that only the obstruents had a contrast between voiceless and voiced forms in Proto-Afroasiatic, whereas continuants were voiceless. A form of long-distance consonant assimilation known as consonant harmony

14976-478: The throne in 1803, he soon found himself in conflict with dan Fodio, and after failing to assassinate him, exiled dan Fodio and his followers from Degel. Dan Fodio responded by assembling the nomadic Fulani clans into a jihadist army, beginning the Fulani War and eventually establishing the Sokoto Caliphate . Despite some initial successes by the forces of Gobir and the other Hausaland states (most notably at

15104-460: The total number of Hausa speakers to an estimated 88 million. In Nigeria, the Hausa film industry is known as Kannywood . Hausa belongs to the West Chadic languages subgroup of the Chadic languages group, which in turn is part of the Afroasiatic language family. Native speakers of Hausa, the Hausa people , are mostly found in southern Niger and northern Nigeria . The language

15232-525: The usual practice is to leave high tone unmarked. Except for the Zaria and Bauchi dialects spoken south of Kano , Hausa distinguishes between masculine and feminine genders. Hausa, like the rest of the Chadic languages in particular and Afro-Asiatic languages in general, is known for its complex, irregular pluralization of nouns. Noun plurals in Hausa are derived using a variety of morphological processes, such as suffixation, infixation, reduplication, or

15360-609: The vowels found in a given stem are dependent on the vocalic template. In Chadic, verb stems can include an inherent vowel as well. Most Semitic verbs are triliteral (have three consonants), whereas most Chadic, Omotic, and Cushitic verbs are biliteral (having two consonants). The degree to which the Proto-AA verbal root was triliteral is debated. It may have originally been mostly biconsonantal, to which various affixes (such as verbal extensions ) were then added and lexicalized. Although any root could theoretically be used to create

15488-429: The written ancient languages known from its area, Meroitic or Old Nubian . The oldest text in a Cushitic language probably dates from around 1770; written orthographies were only developed for a select number of Cushitic languages in the early 20th century. The Egyptian branch consists of a single language, Egyptian (often called "Ancient Egyptian"), which was historically spoken in the lower Nile Valley. Egyptian

15616-576: Was formally described and named "Semitic" by August Ludwig von Schlözer in 1781. In 1844, Theodor Benfey first described the relationship between Semitic and the Egyptian language and connected both to the Berber and the Cushitic languages (which he called "Ethiopic"). In the same year T.N. Newman suggested a relationship between Semitic and the Hausa language, an idea that was taken up by early scholars of Afroasiatic. In 1855, Ernst Renan named these languages, related to Semitic but not Semitic, "Hamitic," in 1860 Carl Lottner proposed that they belonged to

15744-430: Was given some role in the education of Bawa's nephew and later successor, Yunfa (r. 1803–8), but also publicly attacked what he saw as the abuses of the Hausa elite, particularly the burden they placed on the poor. Sarki Nafata (r. 1797–98) reversed Bawa's tolerant policy, and feared the increase of arms amongst dan Fodio's followers. The next two rulers vacillated between repressive and liberal measures. When Yunfa took

15872-540: Was replaced by Arabic as the spoken language of Egypt, but Coptic continues to be the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church . The c. 30 Omotic languages are still mostly undescribed by linguists. They are all spoken in southwest Ethiopia except for the Ganza language , spoken in Sudan. Omotic is typically split into North Omotic (or Aroid) and South Omotic, with the latter more influenced by

16000-419: Was spoken vary widely, ranging from 18,000   BCE to 8,000   BCE. An estimate at the youngest end of this range still makes Afroasiatic the oldest proven language family. 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

16128-894: Was the city of Alkalawa . In the early 19th century elements of the ruling dynasty fled north to what is today Niger from which a rival dynasty developed ruling as Sarkin Gobir ( Sultan of Gobir ) at Tibiri . In 1975 a reunited traditional sultanate took up residence in Sabon Birni , Nigeria . According to records preserved by the Gobir ruling house, they trace their descent from the nomadic Copts (or Kibdawa) of Arabia . They are said to have migrated from Kabila, north of Mecca , to Gubur in Yemen , where they established their first king (Sarkin Gobir), Bana Turmi. From there, they passed through Khartoum and Bornu to Asben , Surukul, Birnin Lalle , Magali, and finally Goran Rami. Historians S. J. Hogben and A. H. M. Kirk-Greene noted that this claim

16256-683: Was the father of the Jews , Assyrians , and Arameans , while Ham was the father of the Egyptians and Cushites . This genealogy does not reflect the actual origins of these peoples' languages: for example, the Canaanites are descendants of Ham according to the Table, even though Hebrew is now classified as a Canaanite language , while the Elamites are ascribed to Shem despite their language being totally unrelated to Hebrew. The term Semitic for

16384-623: Was the first language to branch off, often followed by Chadic. 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, and scholars who rely on percentage of shared lexicon often group Chadic with Berber. 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). In contrast, scholars relying on shared lexicon often produce

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