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Ancient Egyptian, a "Hamito-Semitic" language

Posted By: Charles Pope
Date: Friday, 20 September 2002, at 8:48 a.m.

In Response To: Words derived from Egyptian words. (Jerod)

Here's a quote from "Cracking Codes: The Rosetta Stone and Decipherment" by Richard Parkinson.

"The Egyptian language belongs to the Afro-Asiatic language family (also known as Hamito-Semitic), which spreads geographically over northern Africa, the eastern Mediterranean and western Asia. Branches of the family include Egyptian, Semitic, Cushitic, Omotic, Berber and Chadic. Egyptian shows closest connections with Beja (Northern Cushitic), Semitic and Berber. Attempts to trace underlying 'super-families' of languaged that would, for example, link Afro-Asiatic and Indo-European are highly speculative, because they involve vast time-depth and a paucity of similar features so that the established comparative method (referred to earlier) breaks down and 'genetic' relationships cannot be proven in the same way."

Sounds like attempts may been made, but the author dismisses them as "speculative" and also does not provide any references. Most academics would also consider the work of Michael Astour and Martin Bernal to be highly speculative. However, it seems to me that it is necessary (as Astour and Bernal have done) to take history and culture into account when trying to establish language links. Hopefully, my work will go a long way toward supporting future language studies.

-CP

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