Re: CHAT: New to list

Wesley Parish scripsit:

> Ancient Egyptian wasn't Semitic as such, it was related though.  The name of
> the branch it belonged to, is the "Hamitic" languages, and they are mostly
> North African.  I don't think there were ever any north of the Mediterranean.
"Hamitic" isn't really considered a useful term any more, because it means
"Afro-Asiatic but not Semitic", and there is no reason to think that
Semitic is set apart from the other branches of Afro-Asiatic particularly.

A-A has five branches (Semitic, Egyptian, Berber, Chadic, Cushitic) according
to lumpers; splitters like the Ethnologue recognize Omotic as a sixth
branch.  The best-known languages of the five are Arabic, Egyptian,
Tamazight, Hausa, Somali respectively; no Omotic language is well-known.
There is no generally agreed-upon relationship between any subset of the
five branches.

--
John Cowan           http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan@ccil.org
To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all.  There
are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language
that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful.
        --_The Hobbit_

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