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| More from Britannica on "Semitic languages"... |
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| 216 Encyclopædia Britannica articles, from the full 32 volume encyclopedia | |
| > | Semitic languages group of languages spoken in northern Africa and the Middle East that constitutes one of the branches of the Afro-Asiatic (formerly Hamito-Semitic) language family. (The other branches are Egyptian, Berber, Cushitic, and Chadic.) The Semitic languages are divided into four groups: (1) Northern Peripheral, or Northeastern, with only one language, ancient Akkadian; (2) ... |
| > | Coptic language and that represents the final stage of the ancient Egyptian language. In contrast to earlier stages of Egyptian, which were written in monumental hieroglyphs, hieratic script, or demotic script, Coptic was written in the Greek alphabet, supplemented by seven letters borrowed from demotic writing. Coptic also replaced the religious terms and expressions of earlier ... |
| > | Berber languages group of languages that make up one of the constituent branches of the Afro-Asiatic (formerly Hamito-Semitic) language family; the other branches are Egyptian, Semitic, Cushitic, and Chadic. The Berber languages are spoken in scattered areas throughout northern Africa from Egypt westward to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Niger River northward to the Mediterranean Sea. ... |
| > | Afro-Asiatic languages family of genetically related languages that developed from a common parent language which presumably existed about the 6th–8th millennium BC and was perhaps located in the present-day Sahara. The Afro-Asiatic group is the main language family of northern Africa and southwestern Asia and includes such languages as Arabic, Hebrew, Amharic, and Hausa. The total number of ... |
| > | Amorite language one of the most ancient of the archaic Semitic languages, distributed in an area that is now northern Syria. Amorite is known almost exclusively from glosses and names, and the only known grammar is the grammar of names. Despite the unknown linguistic characteristics, Amorite is dated from the known chronology of proper names of the period in the last century of the 3rd ... |
| 44 Student Encyclopedia Britannica articles, specially written for elementary and high school students | |
| Semitic languages A language family that covers a broad geographical region and a vast historical period, the Semitic language group is part of an even larger language family known as Afro-Asiatic, or Hamito-Semitic. Such modern languages as Hebrew, Arabic, and Ethiopic belong to the Semitic language group. |
| African languages The 800 to 1,000 languages spoken in Africa today can be grouped into four families, or groups of languages thought to have common origins—Hamito-Semitic, or Afro-Asiatic, Niger-Congo-Kordofanian, Nilo-Saharan, and Khoisan. The language diversity of Africa is considerable as compared with Europe, where there are two language families—Finno-Ugric and Indo-European. In ... |
| Ethnic and Language Groups from the UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS article Although the Soviet Union contained more than 100 different ethnic groups, most were very small. According to the 1989 census, only 52 ethnic groups numbered 100,000 or more. Of these, 23 exceeded 1 million. Among the seven largest groups ethnic (and Russified) Russians led all others with 148 million, followed by Ukrainians (45 million), Uzbeks (17 million), Belorussians ... |
| Hammurabi (ruled 1792?–1750? BC). In a small room in the Louvre museum in Paris, France, stands a black diorite stela, or column. On it is inscribed in Akkadian, a Semitic language, the Code of Hammurabi. This collection of laws has been ascribed to the reign of Hammurabi, the sixth and best-known king of Babylon's First dynasty. |
| Afroasiatic from the language article The Afroasiatic family is divided into four main groups. The best known is Semitic. Arabic, with its many dialects, is the most widely used Semitic language. It is spoken in many countries of the Middle East and North Africa. Modern Hebrew, the standard language of Israel, is also a Semitic language. So is Amharic, the standard language of Ethiopia. |
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