Afro-Asiatic languages in the context of "Japhetites"

Robert Hetzron, born Herzog (31 December 1937, Budapest – 12 August 1997, Santa Barbara, California), was a Hungarian-born linguist known for his work on the comparative study of Afro-Asiatic languages, as well as for his study of Cushitic and Ethiopian Semitic languages.

In Afro-Asiatic languages, the first noun in a genitive phrase that consists of a possessed noun followed by a possessor noun often takes on a special morphological form, which is termed the construct state (Latin status constructus). For example, in Arabic and Hebrew, the word for "queen" standing alone is malika ملكة and malka מלכה respectively, but when the word is possessed, as in the phrase "Queen of Sheba" (literally "Sheba's Queen"; or, rather, "Queen-of Sheba"), it becomes malikat sabaʾ ملكة سبأ and malkat šəva מלכת שבא respectively, in which malikat and malkat are the construct state (possessed) form and malika and malka are the absolute (unpossessed) form.

The phenomenon is particularly common in Semitic languages (such as Arabic, Hebrew, and Syriac), in Berber languages, and in the extinct Egyptian language.

Lowland East Cushitic is a group of roughly two dozen diverse languages of the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic family. Its largest representatives are Oromo and Somali.

The Hausa (autonyms for singular: Bahaushe (m), Bahaushiya (f); plural: Hausawa and general: Hausa; exonyms: Ausa; Ajami: مُتَنٜىٰنْ هَوْسَا / هَوْسَاوَا) are a native ethnic group in West Africa. They speak the Hausa language, which is the second most spoken language after Arabic in the Afro-Asiatic language family. The Hausa are a culturally homogeneous people based primarily in the Sahelian and the sparse savanna areas of southern Niger and northern Nigeria respectively, numbering around 86 million people, with significant populations in Benin, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Chad, the Central African Republic, Togo, and Ghana, as well as smaller more recent populations in Sudan, Eritrea.

Predominantly Hausa-speaking communities are scattered throughout West Africa and on the traditional Hajj route north and east traversing the Sahara, with an especially large population in and around the town of Agadez. Other Hausa have also moved to large neighbouring coastal cities in the region such as Lagos, Port Harcourt, Accra, Abidjan and Cotonou as well as to parts of North Africa such as Libya over the course of the last 500 years. The Hausa are traditionally agriculturists who live in small villages as well as in precolonial towns and cities. The Hausa aristocracy had historically developed an equestrian based culture. Still a status symbol of the traditional nobility in Hausa society, the horse still features in the Eid day celebrations, known as Ranar Sallah (in English: the Day of the Prayer). Daura is the cultural center of the Hausa people. The town predates all the other major Hausa towns in tradition and culture.

In Semitic linguistics, an emphatic consonant is an obstruent consonant which originally contrasted, and often still contrasts, with an analogous voiced or voiceless obstruent by means of a secondary articulation. In specific Semitic languages, the members of the emphatic series may be realized as uvularized, pharyngealized, velarized or ejective, or by plain voicing contrast; for instance, in Arabic, emphasis involves retraction of the dorsum (or root) of the tongue, which has variously been described as velarization or pharyngealization depending on where the locus of the retraction is assumed to be. The term is also used, to a lesser extent, to describe cognate series in other Afro-Asiatic languages, where they are typically realized as ejective, implosive or pharyngealized consonants.

In Semitic studies, emphatic consonants are commonly transcribed using the convention of placing a dot under the closest plain consonant in the Latin alphabet. However, exceptions exist: original emphatic k developed into /q/ in most Semitic languages; strictly speaking, it has thus ceased to be an emphatic version of k and has become a different consonant, being most commonly transcribed as q (rather than ḳ) accordingly.

This is a list of ethnic groups in Ethiopia that are officially recognized by the government. It is a list taken from the 2007 Ethiopian National Census: Population size and percentage of Ethiopia's total population according to the 1994 and 2007 censuses follows each entry.

Ethiopia's population is highly diverse, containing over 80 different ethnic groups. Most people in Ethiopia speak Afro-Asiatic languages, mainly of the Cushitic and Semitic branches. The former includes the Oromo and Somali, and the latter includes the Amhara and Tigray. Together these four groups make up three-quarters of the population.

The Agaw or Central Cushitic languages are Afro-Asiatic languages spoken by several groups in Ethiopia and, in one case, Eritrea. They form the main substratum influence on Amharic and other Ethiopian Semitic languages.

The Aroid or Ari-Banna (sometimes South Omotic or Somotic) languages possibly belong to the Afro-Asiatic family and are spoken in Ethiopia.