Afroasiatic languages

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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 branch (which originated in West Asia). The five most spoken languages in the family are: Arabic (of all varieties), which is by far the most widely spoken within the family, with estimates of the number of native speakers ranging between 300 and 411 million, concentrated primarily in West Asia and North...

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