Afroasiatic languages

High school (ages 12+)
People & Society

Name:

Date:

Step 1 · Read the article

Open the article and read it at the level above. Then answer the questions below in your own words.

https://smallwhale.org/articles/afroasiatic-languages

Write what each word means, using the article.

Do not copy the article. Write two things you learned, the way you would explain them to a friend.

Answers below are taken from the article’s stored facts, so they match what the student read.

1. What is the estimated number of speakers?Approximately 500 million individuals
2. What is the primary geographic distribution?North Africa, Horn of Africa, and the Middle East
3. How many people speak Afroasiatic languages?About 500 million people speak Afroasiatic languages today.
4. What are the six branches of Afroasiatic languages?The six branches are Semitic, Cushitic, Berber, Chadic, Egyptian, and Omotic.

Proto-Language: A reconstructed, hypothetical ancestor language from which related languages have descended.
Cognates: Words in different languages that have a common etymological origin.
Root-and-Pattern Morphology: A word formation system where meaning is derived from a consonantal root modified by vowels and affixes.
Lingua Franca: A language used for communication between people who speak different native languages.