Episode 8 Language of the Fertile Crescent and Beyond

Language Families of the World

Dr John McWhorter

Film Review

70,000 years ago human began leaving Africa to establish permanent settlements in the Middle East. It’s believed these first African emigres spoke a proto-Afro-Asiatic language. At present the Afro-Asiatic family consists of roughly 300 languages spoken in northern Africa and the Middle East.

The best known Afro-Asiatic languages are Arabic and Hebrew from the Semitic subfamily; Amharic (spoken in Ethiopia); and Hausa (spoken in Nigeria alongside non-Afro-Asiatic languages).

Arabic was first spoken among Bedouin tribesmen on the Arabian Peninsula. Modern Standard Arabic, the language of the Koran, is an artificially preserved dead language similar to Latin. Arabs in different countries (eg Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria) speak totally different Arabic languages with totally different vocabulary and grammar. All Arabic languages have alveolar, epiglottal and pharyngeal stops.

Most Afro-Asiatic languages use triconsonant roots with vowel changes to designate past tense or to change a noun to a verb. An example in Arabic (or Hebrew) would be the consonant combination “slm,” meaning “peace” or “submission” (as found in the words “Islam,” “salaam,” and “Muslim).” The only other languages using triconsonant roots are two native America language in California. This finding led Mormon prophets to refer them as lost tribes of Israel.

Afro-Asiatic speakers invented the alphabet. McWhorter credits likely Egyptian laborers (around 1900-1800 BC) who started using phonetic symbols to record measurements because they were too buy to learn hieroglyphics. The Phoenicians (Phoenician was also an Afro-Asiatic language) adopted the symbols for use in maritime trade.

The Semitic languages tend to use consonants only in written language (using vowel symbols only for children and other beginning speakers.

Other Afro-Asiatic languages:

• Akkadian – an Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Assyria and Babylonia.
• Aramaic – an Afro-Asiatic language used as the lingua franca of the Middle East under the Persian empire. A few small Middle Eastern communities still speak it.
• Ge’ez – the Afro-Asiatic sub-family to which Amheric, Tigre and Trunye belong. Amheric is still spoken in Ethiopia and the latter two along the southern rim of the Arabian peninsula.

*Different types of stops (where air passage is blocked in pronunciation):

• An alveolar stop is a type of consonantal sound, made with the tongue in contact with the alveolar ridge located just behind the teeth. The most common alveolar stops are [t] and [d], as in English toe and doe, and the voiced nasal [n].
• The epiglottal or glottal stop is unvoiced and is produced by closing the glottis at the back of the mouth.
  
•  A pharyngeal consonant is made with the root of the tongue against the oropharynx (back of the throat)

Film can viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/6120000/6120016