principal language family of northern Africa and the Middle East. Estimated at having about 170 million to 180 million speakers, the family is called Afro-Asiatic by some scholars because of its geographic distribution. The name Hamito-Semitic, although traditional, is somewhat misleading, because it reflects a now-discredited idea that the family has two main branches. Actually, the Hamito-Semitic family has five equally independent branches or subfamilies: Semitic, Berber, Egyptian, Cushitic, and Chadic. These five branches display enough similarities of grammar, word formation, sound systems, and vocabulary to indicate that they descended from a common ancestor. (The relationship of some or all of the Chadic languages to the family, however, is disputed by some scholars.)

The SEMITIC LANGUAGES, (q.v.) include the ARABIC LANGUAGE, and the HEBREW LANGUAGE, (qq.v.), as well as Amharic (the official language of Ethiopia) and ancient tongues such as the ASSYRO-BABYLONIAN LANGUAGE, (q.v.) or Akkadian, the ARAMAIC LANGUAGE, (q.v.), Phoenician, Moabite, and so forth. The Egyptian branch of Hamito-Semitic consists of the ancient EGYPTIAN LANGUAGE, (q.v.), including its last phase, the COPTIC LANGUAGE, (q.v.), which survived until about the 14th century. The Berber branch of the Hamito-Semitic family includes Tuareg and other languages of northern and northwestern Africa. Many Berber-speaking people are bilingual, using Arabic as well, and the Berber languages are written in the Arabic script. The Cushitic languages are spoken in Ethiopia and Somalia, along the Red Sea; they include Galla (spoken in Kenya and southern Ethiopia), written in the Ethiopic script, and Somali, written in the Latin alphabet. The Chadic languages are spoken in central and West Africa. The most important of these is Hausa, native to northern Nigeria and neighboring areas, but also serving as a regional lingua franca spoken by millions of nonnative speakers. Traditionally written in Arabic, in the 20th century Hausa began to be written in the Latin alphabet. See also AFRICAN LANGUAGES,.