ABSTRACT
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 was realised that some other languages were further related to this group, the term ‘Hamitic’, based on the name of Shem’s younger brother Ham (Cham), the biblical ancestor of Egypt and Kush, was coined for the entire family. Later the composite term Hamito-Semitic (sometimes Semito-Hamitic) was introduced. However, this created the wrong impression that there exists a ‘Hamitic’ branch opposed to Semitic. Of all the other terms proposed (Erythraic, Lisramic, Lamekhite), ‘Afroasiatic’ has been gaining ground. Even this name has the inconvenience of being misinterpreted as a group including all the languages of Africa and Asia. To dispel this, a further contraction, Afrasian, has also been used.
