język: Numidian language

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

Numidian ( n(y)uu-MID-ee-ən) was an Afroasiatic language or dialect spoken in ancient Numidia. The script in which it was written, the Libyco-Berber alphabet (from which Tifinagh descended), has been almost fully deciphered and most characters (apart from a few exceptions restricted to specific areas) have known values. Libyco-Berber inscriptions are attested from the 3rd century BC to the 3rd century AD. As most surviving inscriptions are funerary steles with a simple format, only a few words have known meanings. The language can be confidently identified only as belonging to the Afroasiatic family, although it was likely part of the Berber languages, a part of a larger Libyco-Berber diale…

Evidence: 66 • authority: 72

The Berber languages, also known as Amazigh or Tamazight, are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They comprise a group of closely related languages spoken by Berber communities, who are indigenous to North Africa. Historically, they have been written with the ancient Libyco-Berber script, which now exists in the form of Tifinagh. Today, they may also be written in the Berber Latin alphabet or the Arabic script, with Latin being the most widespread. The Berber languages have a level of variety similar to the Romance languages, and with few exceptions form a dialect continuum. Regardless, they are frequently referred to as a single collective language, often as "Berber", "Tamazight"…

Evidence: 60 • authority: 72

The Northern Berber languages are a dialect continuum spoken across the Maghreb, constituting a subgroup of the Berber branch of the Afroasiatic language family. Their continuity has been broken by the spread of Arabic, and to a lesser extent by the Zenati group within Northern Berber. The Zenati idioms share certain innovations not found in the surrounding languages; notably a softening of k to sh and an absence of a- in certain words, such as "hand" (afus vs. fus.)

Evidence: 60 • authority: 72

The Afroasiatic languages (also known as the Afro-Asiatic, Afrasian, Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic languages) are 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, Omotic, and Semitic. The vast majority of Afroasiatic languages are considered indigenous to the African continent, including all those not belonging to the Semitic…

Evidence: 45 • authority: 72

An extinct language may be narrowly defined as a language with no native speakers and no descendant languages. Under this definition, a language becomes extinct upon the death of its last native speaker, the terminal speaker. A language like Latin is not extinct in this sense, because it evolved into the modern Romance languages; it is impossible to state when Latin became extinct because there is a diachronic continuum (compare synchronic continuum) between ancestors Late Latin and Vulgar Latin on the one hand and descendants like Old French and Old Italian on the other; any cutoff date for distinguishing ancestor from descendant is arbitrary. For many languages which have become extinct i…

Evidence: 34 • authority: 72

Human habitation in the North African region began over two million years ago. Remains of Homo erectus during the Middle Pleistocene period, has been found in North Africa. The Berbers, who generally antedate by many millennia the Phoenicians and the establishment of Carthage, are understood to have arisen out of social events shaped by the confluence of several earlier peoples, i.e., the Capsian culture, events which eventually constituted their ethnogenesis. Thereafter Berbers lived as an independent people in North Africa, including the Tunisian region. On the most distant prehistoric epochs, the scattered evidence sheds a rather dim light. Also obscure is the subsequent "pre-Berber" sit…

Evidence: 34 • authority: 80

Ancient Egyptian’s Place in the Afroasiatic Language Family

Evidence: 34 • authority: 80

Chapter 9 Ancient Egyptian’s Place in the Afroasiatic Language Family