AA is a curious family in that the best known branches
show very little diversity --
Semitic languages don't seem to show as much diversity
as one would expect despite over 4,000 years of
documentation. There are about 30 or so. Part of this,
of course, is because Hebrew was on life-support for
over 2,000 years, Akkadian/Assyrian/Babylonian is long
dead, Aramaic is almost completely surrounded by
Arabic and before that had a large Semitic substrate.
But speakers of Ethiopian languages I've met whose
native languages are Tigrinya, Tigré and Amhara all
tell me that Arabic is not very far removed.
Egyptian was a single language.
Tamazight is essentially a continuum of dialects.
BUT
Cushitic, Omotic and Chadic are extremely diverse,
from what I understand --with 100s of languages.
What happened?
Are Tamazight, Semitic and Egyptian outliers?
OR
Did they expand quickly and swamp other unknown
branches?
While when I see a list of words from Semitic,
Egyptian and Tamazight I can see the relationship but
when the other branches are added, I need some
enlightened text to explain how they're related.
So what are the consequences of reconstructing AA and
relating it to IE and Nostratic?
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