LING 1020 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Baiso Language, Northeast Africa, Chadic Languages
Document Summary
Most widely spoken = arabic & hebrew. Semitic: north africa & middle east, 2 branches. Short vowels mean different things than long vowels. Emphatic consonants consonants with more than one place of articularion. Roots a pattern of consonants (usually three) Vowel template vowels get inserted into the root to get different, related meanings (book, writer, he wrote, etc). Berber: mountains of algeria & morocco, deserts of mali & niger, got its name from the romans mocking the civilizations berber is derived from the word barbarians , features. Egyptian: coptic is the only surviving language from this family, features. Chadic: hausa = largest language family (194 languages in total, features. Implosives you suck in air as you pronounce them. Cushitic: northeastern africa, 45 languages in this family. Omotic: cluster of 25-30 languages in southwest ethiopia, 300,000 speakers total, features. Tonal morphology changing the tone of the word pronunciation means different things.
