language family of ~500+ million speakers across North Africa, Horn of Africa, and the Middle East
branches: Semitic (Arabic, Hebrew, Amharic, Tigrinya), Berber (Tamazight), Chadic (Hausa), Cushitic (Oromo, Somali), Egyptian (extinct, survived as Coptic), Omotic
Arabic: ~400 million speakers, liturgical language of Islam, one of the six UN official languages
Hebrew: revived from liturgical to spoken language in the 19th-20th century
Semitic root system: three-consonant roots carry core meaning, vowel patterns inflect grammar
Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and Akkadian cuneiform are the oldest attested writing systems, both Afroasiatic
the Phoenician alphabet, ancestor of Greek and Latin scripts, was Semitic
deep time depth: proto-Afroasiatic estimated at ~12,000-18,000 years ago, contemporary with the Neolithic revolution