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Andre Agassi | References | References |
Andre Agassi | Sources | Sources
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Andre Agassi | External links | External links
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Andre Agassi | Table of Content | Short description, Early life, Professional career, 1986–1993: Breakthrough and the first major title, 1994–1997: Rise to the top, Olympic Gold and the fall, 1998–2003: Return to glory and Career Super Slam, 2004–2006: Final years, Rivalries, Agassi vs. Sampras, Agassi vs. Chang, Agassi vs. Becker, Agassi vs. Rafter, Agassi vs. Federer, Agassi vs. Lendl, Agassi vs. Edberg, Post-retirement: Exhibition appearances, Legacy, Playing style, Business ventures, Equipment and endorsements, In popular culture, Other endeavors, Politics, Philanthropy, Pickleball, Personal life, Relationships and family, Autobiography, Career statistics, Singles performance timeline, Grand Slam finals (8 titles, 7 runner-ups), Open Era records, Professional awards, Video, Video games, See also, Notes, References, Sources, External links |
Austroasiatic languages | Short description | The Austroasiatic languages ( ) are a large language family spoken throughout Mainland Southeast Asia, South Asia and East Asia. These languages are natively spoken by the majority of the population in Vietnam and Cambodia, and by minority populations scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China. Approximately 117 million people speak an Austroasiatic language, of which more than two-thirds are Vietnamese speakers. Of the Austroasiatic languages, only Vietnamese, Khmer, and Mon have lengthy, established presences in the historical record. Only two are presently considered to be the national languages of sovereign states: Vietnamese in Vietnam, and Khmer in Cambodia. The Mon language is a recognized indigenous language in Myanmar and Thailand, while the Wa language is a "recognized national language" in the de facto autonomous Wa State within Myanmar. Santali is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India. The remainder of the family's languages are spoken by minority groups and have no official status.
Ethnologue identifies 168 Austroasiatic languages. These form thirteen established families (plus perhaps Shompen, which is poorly attested, as a fourteenth), which have traditionally been grouped into two, as Mon–Khmer,Bradley (2012) notes, MK in the wider sense including the Munda languages of eastern South Asia is also known as Austroasiatic. and Munda. However, one recent classification posits three groups (Munda, Mon-Khmer, and Khasi–Khmuic),Diffloth 2005 while another has abandoned Mon–Khmer as a taxon altogether, making it synonymous with the larger family.Sidwell 2009
Scholars generally date the ancestral language to with a homeland in southern China or the Mekong River valley. Sidwell (2022) proposes that the locus of Proto-Austroasiatic was in the Red River Delta area around . Genetic and linguistic research in 2015 about ancient people in East Asia suggest an origin and homeland of Austroasiatic in today's southern China or even further north. |
Austroasiatic languages | Etymology | Etymology
The name Austroasiatic was coined by Wilhelm Schmidt () based on , the Latin word for "South" (but idiosyncratically used by Schmidt to refer to the southeast), and "Asia". Despite the literal meaning of its name, only three Austroasiatic branches are actually spoken in South Asia: Khasic, Munda, and Nicobarese. |
Austroasiatic languages | Typology | Typology
Regarding word structure, Austroasiatic languages are well known for having an iambic "sesquisyllabic" pattern, with basic nouns and verbs consisting of an initial, unstressed, reduced minor syllable followed by a stressed, full syllable. This reduction of presyllables has led to a variety of phonological shapes of the same original Proto-Austroasiatic prefixes, such as the causative prefix, ranging from CVC syllables to consonant clusters to single consonants among the modern languages. As for word formation, most Austroasiatic languages have a variety of derivational prefixes, many have infixes, but suffixes are almost completely non-existent in most branches except Munda, and a few specialized exceptions in other Austroasiatic branches.Alves 2014, 2015
The Austroasiatic languages are further characterized as having unusually large vowel inventories and employing some sort of pitch register contrast, either between modal (normal) voice and breathy (lax) voice or between modal voice and creaky voice.Diffloth, Gérard (1989). "Proto-Austroasiatic creaky voice." Languages in the Pearic branch and some in the Vietic branch can have a three- or even four-way voicing contrast.
However, some Austroasiatic languages have lost the register contrast by evolving more diphthongs or in a few cases, such as Vietnamese, tonogenesis. Vietnamese has been so heavily influenced by Chinese that its original Austroasiatic phonological quality is obscured and now resembles that of South Chinese languages, whereas Khmer, which had more influence from Sanskrit, has retained a more typically Austroasiatic structure. |
Austroasiatic languages | Proto-language | Proto-language
Much work has been done on the reconstruction of Proto-Mon–Khmer in Harry L. Shorto's Mon–Khmer Comparative Dictionary. Little work has been done on the Munda languages, which are poorly documented. Proto-Mon–Khmer becomes synonymous with the Proto-Austroasiatic language with their demotion from a primary branch. Paul Sidwell (2005) reconstructs the consonant inventory of Proto-Mon–Khmer as follows:
LabialAlveolarPalatalVelarGlottalPlosivevoiceless voiced implosive Nasal Liquid Fricative
This is identical to earlier reconstructions except for . is better preserved in the Katuic languages, which Sidwell has specialized in. |
Austroasiatic languages | Internal classification | Internal classification
Linguists traditionally recognize two primary divisions of Austroasiatic: the Mon–Khmer languages of Southeast Asia, Northeast India, and the Nicobar Islands, and the Munda languages of East and Central India and parts of Bangladesh and Nepal. However, no evidence for this classification has ever been published.
Each family written in boldface below is accepted as a valid clade. By contrast, the relationships between these families within Austroasiatic are debated. In addition to the traditional classification, two recent proposals are given, neither of which accepts traditional "Mon–Khmer" as a valid unit. However, little of the data used for competing classifications has ever been published and, therefore, cannot be evaluated by peer review.
In addition, there are suggestions that additional branches of Austroasiatic might be preserved in substrata of Acehnese in Sumatra (Diffloth), the Chamic languages of Vietnam, and the Land Dayak languages of Borneo (Adelaar 1995).Roger Blench, 2009. Are there four additional unrecognised branches of Austroasiatic? Presentation at ICAAL-4, Bangkok, 29–30 October. Summarized in Sidwell and Blench (2011). |
Austroasiatic languages | Diffloth (1974) | Diffloth (1974)
Diffloth's widely cited original classification, now abandoned by Diffloth himself, is used in Encyclopædia Britannica and—except for the breakup of Southern Mon–Khmer—in Ethnologue.
Austro‑Asiatic
Munda
North Munda
Korku
Kherwarian
South Munda
Kharia–Juang
Koraput Munda
Mon–Khmer
Eastern Mon–Khmer
Khmer (Cambodian)
Pearic
Bahnaric
Katuic
Vietic (Vietnamese, Muong)
Northern Mon–Khmer
Khasi (Meghalaya, India)
Palaungic
Khmuic
Southern Mon–Khmer
Mon
Aslian (Malaya)
Nicobarese (Nicobar Islands) |
Austroasiatic languages | Peiros (2004) | Peiros (2004)
Peiros is a lexicostatistic classification, based on percentages of shared vocabulary. This means that languages can appear to be more distantly related than they actually are due to language contact. Indeed, when Sidwell (2009) replicated Peiros's study with languages known well enough to account for loans, he did not find the internal (branching) structure below.
thumb|upright=2.27
Austro‑Asiatic
Nicobarese
Munda–Khmer
Munda
Mon–Khmer
Khasi
Nuclear Mon–Khmer
Mangic (Mang + Palyu) (perhaps in Northern MK)
Vietic (perhaps in Northern MK)
Northern Mon–Khmer
Palaungic
Khmuic
Central Mon–Khmer
Khmer dialects
Pearic
Asli-Bahnaric
Aslian
Mon–Bahnaric
Monic
Katu–Bahnaric
Katuic
Bahnaric |
Austroasiatic languages | Diffloth (2005) | Diffloth (2005)
Diffloth compares reconstructions of various clades, and attempts to classify them based on shared innovations, though like other classifications the evidence has not been published. As a schematic, we have:
Or in more detail,
Austro‑Asiatic
Munda languages (India)
Koraput: 7 languages
Core Munda languages
Kharian–Juang: 2 languages
North Munda languages
Korku
Kherwarian: 12 languages
Khasi–Khmuic languages (Northern Mon–Khmer)
Khasian: 3 languages of north eastern India and adjacent region of Bangladesh
Palaungo-Khmuic languages
Khmuic: 13 languages of Laos and Thailand
Palaungo-Pakanic languages
Pakanic or Palyu: 4 or 5 languages of southern China and Vietnam
Palaungic: 21 languages of Burma, southern China, and Thailand
Nuclear Mon–Khmer languages
Khmero-Vietic languages (Eastern Mon–Khmer)
Vieto-Katuic languages ?Sidwell (2005) casts doubt on Diffloth's Vieto-Katuic hypothesis, saying that the evidence is ambiguous, and that it is not clear where Katuic belongs in the family.
Vietic: 10 languages of Vietnam and Laos, including Muong and Vietnamese, which has the most speakers of any Austroasiatic language.
Katuic: 19 languages of Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand.
Khmero-Bahnaric languages
Bahnaric: 40 languages of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
Khmeric languages
The Khmer dialects of Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Pearic: 6 languages of Cambodia.
Nico-Monic languages (Southern Mon–Khmer)
Nicobarese: 6 languages of the Nicobar Islands, a territory of India.
Asli-Monic languages
Aslian: 19 languages of peninsular Malaysia and Thailand.
Monic: 2 languages, the Mon language of Burma and the Nyahkur language of Thailand. |
Austroasiatic languages | Sidwell (2009–2015) | Sidwell (2009–2015)
thumb|right|upright=1.81|Paul Sidwell and Roger Blench propose that the Austroasiatic phylum dispersed via the Mekong River drainage basin.
Paul Sidwell (2009), in a lexicostatistical comparison of 36 languages which are well known enough to exclude loanwords, finds little evidence for internal branching, though he did find an area of increased contact between the Bahnaric and Katuic languages, such that languages of all branches apart from the geographically distant Munda and Nicobarese show greater similarity to Bahnaric and Katuic the closer they are to those branches, without any noticeable innovations common to Bahnaric and Katuic.
He therefore takes the conservative view that the thirteen branches of Austroasiatic should be treated as equidistant on current evidence. Sidwell & Blench (2011) discuss this proposal in more detail, and note that there is good evidence for a Khasi–Palaungic node, which could also possibly be closely related to Khmuic.Sidwell, Paul, and Roger Blench. 2011. "The Austroasiatic Urheimat: the Southeastern Riverine Hypothesis ." Enfield, NJ (ed.) Dynamics of Human Diversity, 317–345. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
If this would the case, Sidwell & Blench suggest that Khasic may have been an early offshoot of Palaungic that had spread westward. Sidwell & Blench (2011) suggest Shompen as an additional branch, and believe that a Vieto-Katuic connection is worth investigating. In general, however, the family is thought to have diversified too quickly for a deeply nested structure to have developed, since Proto-Austroasiatic speakers are believed by Sidwell to have radiated out from the central Mekong river valley relatively quickly.
Subsequently, Sidwell (2015a: 179)Sidwell, Paul. 2015a. "Austroasiatic classification." In Jenny, Mathias and Paul Sidwell, eds (2015). The Handbook of Austroasiatic Languages. Leiden: Brill. proposed that Nicobarese subgroups with Aslian, just as how Khasian and Palaungic subgroup with each other.
A subsequent computational phylogenetic analysis (Sidwell 2015b)Sidwell, Paul. 2015b. A comprehensive phylogenetic analysis of the Austroasiatic languages . Presented at Diversity Linguistics: Retrospect and Prospect, 1–3 May 2015 (Leipzig, Germany), Closing conference of the Department of Linguistics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. suggests that Austroasiatic branches may have a loosely nested structure rather than a completely rake-like structure, with an east–west division (consisting of Munda, Khasic, Palaungic, and Khmuic forming a western group as opposed to all of the other branches) occurring possibly as early as 7,000 years before present. However, he still considers the subbranching dubious.
Integrating computational phylogenetic linguistics with recent archaeological findings, Paul Sidwell (2015c)Sidwell, Paul. 2015c. Phylogeny, innovations, and correlations in the prehistory of Austroasiatic. Paper presented at the workshop Integrating inferences about our past: new findings and current issues in the peopling of the Pacific and South East Asia, 22–23 June 2015, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany. further expanded his Mekong riverine hypothesis by proposing that Austroasiatic had ultimately expanded into Indochina from the Lingnan area of southern China, with the subsequent Mekong riverine dispersal taking place after the initial arrival of Neolithic farmers from southern China.
Sidwell (2015c) tentatively suggests that Austroasiatic may have begun to split up 5,000 years B.P. during the Neolithic transition era of mainland Southeast Asia, with all the major branches of Austroasiatic formed by 4,000 B.P. Austroasiatic would have had two possible dispersal routes from the western periphery of the Pearl River watershed of Lingnan, which would have been either a coastal route down the coast of Vietnam, or downstream through the Mekong River via Yunnan. Both the reconstructed lexicon of Proto-Austroasiatic and the archaeological record clearly show that early Austroasiatic speakers around 4,000 B.P. cultivated rice and millet, kept livestock such as dogs, pigs, and chickens, and thrived mostly in estuarine rather than coastal environments.
At 4,500 B.P., this "Neolithic package" suddenly arrived in Indochina from the Lingnan area without cereal grains and displaced the earlier pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherer cultures, with grain husks found in northern Indochina by 4,100 B.P. and in southern Indochina by 3,800 B.P. However, Sidwell (2015c) found that iron is not reconstructable in Proto-Austroasiatic, since each Austroasiatic branch has different terms for iron that had been borrowed relatively lately from Tai, Chinese, Tibetan, Malay, and other languages.
During the Iron Age about 2,500 B.P., relatively young Austroasiatic branches in Indochina such as Vietic, Katuic, Pearic, and Khmer were formed, while the more internally diverse Bahnaric branch (dating to about 3,000 B.P.) underwent more extensive internal diversification. By the Iron Age, all of the Austroasiatic branches were more or less in their present-day locations, with most of the diversification within Austroasiatic taking place during the Iron Age.
Paul Sidwell (2018)Sidwell, Paul. 2018. Austroasiatic deep chronology and the problem of cultural lexicon. Paper presented at the 28th Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society, held 17–19 May 2018 in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. considers the Austroasiatic language family to have rapidly diversified around 4,000 years B.P. during the arrival of rice agriculture in Indochina, but notes that the origin of Proto-Austroasiatic itself is older than that date. The lexicon of Proto-Austroasiatic can be divided into an early and late stratum. The early stratum consists of basic lexicon including body parts, animal names, natural features, and pronouns, while the names of cultural items (agriculture terms and words for cultural artifacts, which are reconstructible in Proto-Austroasiatic) form part of the later stratum.
Roger Blench (2017)Blench, Roger. 2017. Waterworld: lexical evidence for aquatic subsistence strategies in Austroasiatic . Presented at ICAAL 7, Kiel, Germany. suggests that vocabulary related to aquatic subsistence strategies (such as boats, waterways, river fauna, and fish capture techniques) can be reconstructed for Proto-Austroasiatic. Blench (2017) finds widespread Austroasiatic roots for 'river, valley', 'boat', 'fish', 'catfish sp.', 'eel', 'prawn', 'shrimp' (Central Austroasiatic), 'crab', 'tortoise', 'turtle', 'otter', 'crocodile', 'heron, fishing bird', and 'fish trap'. Archaeological evidence for the presence of agriculture in northern Indochina (northern Vietnam, Laos, and other nearby areas) dates back to only about 4,000 years ago (2,000 BC), with agriculture ultimately being introduced from further up to the north in the Yangtze valley where it has been dated to 6,000 B.P.
Sidwell (2022)Sidwell, Paul. 2021. Austroasiatic Dispersal: the AA "Water-World" Extended . SEALS 2021 . (Video) proposes that the locus of Proto-Austroasiatic was in the Red River Delta area about 4,000-4,500 years before present, instead of the Middle Mekong as he had previously proposed. Austroasiatic dispersed coastal maritime routes and also upstream through river valleys. Khmuic, Palaungic, and Khasic resulted from a westward dispersal that ultimately came from the Red River valley. Based on their current distributions, about half of all Austroasiatic branches (including Nicobaric and Munda) can be traced to coastal maritime dispersals.
Hence, this points to a relatively late riverine dispersal of Austroasiatic as compared to Sino-Tibetan, whose speakers had a distinct non-riverine culture. In addition to living an aquatic-based lifestyle, early Austroasiatic speakers would have also had access to livestock, crops, and newer types of watercraft. As early Austroasiatic speakers dispersed rapidly via waterways, they would have encountered speakers of older language families who were already settled in the area, such as Sino-Tibetan. |
Austroasiatic languages | Sidwell (2018) | Sidwell (2018)
Sidwell (2018)Sidwell, Paul. 2018. Austroasiatic deep chronology and the problem of cultural lexicon . Paper presented at the 28th Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. Kaohsiung, Taiwan. (accessed 16 December 2020). (quoted in Sidwell 2021) gives a more nested classification of Austroasiatic branches as suggested by his computational phylogenetic analysis of Austroasiatic languages using a 200-word list. Many of the tentative groupings are likely linkages. Pakanic and Shompen were not included. |
Austroasiatic languages | Possible extinct branches | Possible extinct branches
Roger Blench (2009)Blench, Roger. 2009. "Are there four additional unrecognised branches of Austroasiatic? ." also proposes that there might have been other primary branches of Austroasiatic that are now extinct, based on substrate evidence in modern-day languages.
Pre-Chamic languages (the languages of coastal Vietnam before the Chamic migrations). Chamic has various Austroasiatic loanwords that cannot be clearly traced to existing Austroasiatic branches (Sidwell 2006, 2007).Sidwell, Paul. 2006. "Dating the Separation of Acehnese and Chamic By Etymological Analysis of the Aceh-Chamic Lexicon ." In The Mon-Khmer Studies, 36: 187–206.Sidwell, Paul. 2007. "The Mon-Khmer Substrate in Chamic: Chamic, Bahnaric and Katuic Contact ." In SEALS XII Papers from the 12th Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 2002, edited by Ratree Wayland et al.. Canberra, Australia, 113-128. Pacific Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University. Larish (1999)Larish, Michael David. 1999. The Position of Moken and Moklen Within the Austronesian Language Family. Doctoral dissertation, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. also notes that Moklenic languages contain many Austroasiatic loanwords, some of which are similar to the ones found in Chamic.
Acehnese substratum (Sidwell 2006). Acehnese has many basic words that are of Austroasiatic origin, suggesting that either Austronesian speakers have absorbed earlier Austroasiatic residents in northern Sumatra, or that words might have been borrowed from Austroasiatic languages in southern Vietnam – or perhaps a combination of both. Sidwell (2006) argues that Acehnese and Chamic had often borrowed Austroasiatic words independently of each other, while some Austroasiatic words can be traced back to Proto-Aceh-Chamic. Sidwell (2006) accepts that Acehnese and Chamic are related, but that they had separated from each other before Chamic had borrowed most of its Austroasiatic lexicon.
Bornean substrate languages (Blench 2010).Blench, Roger. 2010. "Was there an Austroasiatic Presence in Island Southeast Asia prior to the Austronesian Expansion? " In Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association, Vol. 30. Blench cites Austroasiatic-origin words in modern-day Bornean branches such as Land Dayak (Bidayuh, Dayak Bakatiq, etc.), Dusunic (Central Dusun, Visayan, etc.), Kayan, and Kenyah, noting especially resemblances with Aslian. As further evidence for his proposal, Blench also cites ethnographic evidence such as musical instruments in Borneo shared in common with Austroasiatic-speaking groups in mainland Southeast Asia. Adelaar (1995)Adelaar, K.A. 1995. Borneo as a cross-roads for comparative Austronesian linguistics . In P. Bellwood, J.J. Fox and D. Tryon (eds.), The Austronesians, pp. 81-102. Canberra: Australian National University. has also noticed phonological and lexical similarities between Land Dayak and Aslian. Kaufman (2018) presents dozens of lexical comparisons showing similarities between various Bornean and Austroasiatic languages.Kaufman, Daniel. 2018. Between mainland and island Southeast Asia: Evidence for a Mon-Khmer presence in Borneo. Ronald and Janette Gatty Lecture Series. Kahin Center for Advanced Research on Southeast Asia, Cornell University. (handout / slides )
Lepcha substratum ("Rongic").Blench, Roger. 2013. Rongic: a vanished branch of Austroasiatic . m.s. Many words of Austroasiatic origin have been noticed in Lepcha, suggesting a Sino-Tibetan superstrate laid over an Austroasiatic substrate. Blench (2013) calls this branch "Rongic" based on the Lepcha autonym Róng.
Other languages with proposed Austroasiatic substrata are:
Jiamao, based on evidence from the register system of Jiamao, a Hlai language (Thurgood 1992).Thurgood, Graham. 1992. "The aberrancy of the Jiamao dialect of Hlai: speculation on its origins and history ". In Ratliff, Martha S. and Schiller, E. (eds.), Papers from the First Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society, 417–433. Arizona State University, Program for Southeast Asian Studies. Jiamao is known for its highly aberrant vocabulary in relation to other Hlai languages.
Kerinci: van Reijn (1974)van Reijn, E. O. (1974). "Some Remarks on the Dialects of North Kerintji: A link with Mon-Khmer Languages." Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 31, 2: 130–138. . notes that Kerinci, a Malayic language of central Sumatra, shares many phonological similarities with Austroasiatic languages, such as sesquisyllabic word structure and vowel inventory.
John Peterson (2017)Peterson, John (2017). "The prehistorical spread of Austro-Asiatic in South Asia ". Presented at ICAAL 7, Kiel, Germany. suggests that "pre-Munda" (early languages related to Proto-Munda) languages may have once dominated the eastern Indo-Gangetic Plain, and were then absorbed by Indo-Aryan languages at an early date as Indo-Aryan spread east. Peterson notes that eastern Indo-Aryan languages display many morphosyntactic features similar to those of Munda languages, while western Indo-Aryan languages do not. |
Austroasiatic languages | Writing systems | Writing systems
Other than Latin-based alphabets, many Austroasiatic languages are written with the Khmer, Thai, Lao, and Burmese alphabets. Vietnamese divergently had an indigenous script based on Chinese logographic writing. This has since been supplanted by the Latin alphabet in the 20th century. The following are examples of past-used alphabets or current alphabets of Austroasiatic languages.
Chữ Nôm
Khmer alphabet
Khom script (used for a short period in the early 20th century for indigenous languages in Laos)
Old Mon script
Mon script
Pahawh Hmong was once used to write Khmu, under the name "Pahawh Khmu"
Tai Le (Palaung, Blang)
Tai Tham (Blang)
Ol Chiki alphabet (Santali alphabet)
Mundari Bani (Mundari alphabet)
Warang Citi (Ho alphabet)
Ol Onal (Bhumij alphabet)
Sorang Sompeng alphabet (Sora alphabet) |
Austroasiatic languages | External relations | External relations |
Austroasiatic languages | Austric languages | Austric languages
Austroasiatic is an integral part of the controversial Austric hypothesis, which also includes the Austronesian languages, and in some proposals also the Kra–Dai languages and the Hmong–Mien languages. |
Austroasiatic languages | Hmong-Mien | Hmong-Mien
Several lexical resemblances are found between the Hmong-Mien and Austroasiatic language families (Ratliff 2010), some of which had earlier been proposed by Haudricourt (1951). This could imply a relation or early language contact along the Yangtze.Haudricourt, André-Georges. 1951. Introduction à la phonologie historique des langues miao-yao [An introduction to the historical phonology of the Miao-Yao languages]. Bulletin de l'École Française d'Extrême-Orient 44(2). 555–576.
According to Cai (et al. 2011), Hmong–Mien people are genetically related to Austroasiatic speakers, and their languages were heavily influenced by Sino-Tibetan, especially Tibeto-Burman languages. |
Austroasiatic languages | Indo-Aryan languages | Indo-Aryan languages
It is suggested that the Austroasiatic languages have some influence on Indo-Aryan languages including Sanskrit and middle Indo-Aryan languages. Indian linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterji pointed that a specific number of substantives in languages such as Hindi, Punjabi and Bengali were borrowed from Munda languages. Additionally, French linguist Jean Przyluski suggested a similarity between the tales from the Austroasiatic realm and the Indian mythological stories of Matsyagandha (Satyavati from Mahabharata) and the Nāgas. |
Austroasiatic languages | Austroasiatic migrations and archaeogenetics | Austroasiatic migrations and archaeogenetics
Mitsuru Sakitani suggests that Haplogroup O1b1, which is common in Austroasiatic people and some other ethnic groups in southern China, and haplogroup O1b2, which is common in today's Japanese and Koreans, are the carriers of early rice agriculture from southern China.崎谷満『DNA・考古・言語の学際研究が示す新・日本列島史』（勉誠出版 2009年） Another study suggests that the haplogroup O1b1 is the major Austroasiatic paternal lineage and O1b2 the "para-Austroasiatic" lineage of the Koreans and Yayoi people.
thumb|The Austroasiatic migration route began earlier than the Austronesian expansion, but later migrations of Austronesians resulted in the assimilation of the pre-Austronesian Austroasiatic populations.
thumb|Austro-asiatic dispersal
A full genomic study by Lipson et al. (2018) identified a characteristic lineage that can be associated with the spread of Austroasiatic languages in Southeast Asia and which can be traced back to remains of Neolithic farmers from Mán Bạc () in the Red River Delta in northern Vietnam, and to closely related Ban Chiang and Vat Komnou remains in Thailand and Cambodia respectively. This Austroasiatic lineage can be modeled as a sister group of the Austronesian peoples with significant admixture (ca. 30%) from a deeply diverging eastern Eurasian source (modeled by the authors as sharing some genetic drift with the Onge, a modern Andamanese hunter-gatherer group) and which is ancestral to modern Austroasiatic-speaking groups of Southeast Asia such as the Mlabri and the Nicobarese, and partially to the Austroasiatic Munda-speaking groups of South Asia (e.g. the Juang). Significant levels of Austroasiatic ancestry were also found in Austronesian-speaking groups of Sumatra, Java, and Borneo.
A 2020 study states that present Austroasiatic groups in Mainland Southeast Asia can be modeled as an admixture of Hoabinhian hunter-gatherers and ancestral East Asians associated with the Neolithic farming expansion, with the exception of Kinh and Muong who share more drift with Tai-Kadai and Hmong-Mien groups. Kinh and Muong are also more related to Dongsonian culture and are implied to have roots in southern China instead of Southeast Asia. Austroasiatic-speaking groups in southern China (such as the Wa and Blang in Yunnan) predominatly carry the same Mainland Southeast Asian Neolithic farmer ancestry, but with additional geneflow from northern and southern East Asian lineages that can be associated with the spread of Tibeto-Burman and Kra-Dai languages, respectively.
Huang et. al (2020) states that Austroasiatic ancestry most likely originated from southwest China and that the 'core Austroasiatic' population derives most of their ancestry from Mekong Neolithic (58.0%–75.2%) instead of Late Neolithic Fujian, which is more common in the 'core Austronesian' population. Austroasiatic-related ancestry is widespread in Mainland Southeast Asia. Hmong-Mien groups in southern China also show closer affinities with Austroasiatic groups but there is evidence of Kra-Dai admixture, which increases in groups that live further east. This admixture is also present in Mainland Southeast Asians. |
Austroasiatic languages | Migration into India | Migration into India
According to Chaubey et al., "Austro-Asiatic speakers in India today are derived from dispersal from Southeast Asia, followed by extensive sex-specific admixture with local Indian populations." According to Riccio et al., the Munda peoples are likely descended from Austroasiatic migrants from Southeast Asia. |
Austroasiatic languages | Notes | Notes |
Austroasiatic languages | References | References |
Austroasiatic languages | Sources | Sources
Adams, K. L. (1989). Systems of numeral classification in the Mon–Khmer, Nicobarese and Aslian subfamilies of Austroasiatic. Canberra, A.C.T., Australia: Dept. of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University.
Alves, Mark J. (2015). Morphological functions among Mon-Khmer languages: beyond the basics. In N. J. Enfield & Bernard Comrie (eds.), Languages of Mainland Southeast Asia: the state of the art. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton, 531–557.
Bradley, David (2012). "Languages and Language Families in China ", in Rint Sybesma (ed.), Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics.
Chakrabarti, Byomkes. (1994). A Comparative Study of Santali and Bengali.
Diffloth, Gérard. (2005). "The contribution of linguistic palaeontology and Austro-Asiatic". in Laurent Sagart, Roger Blench and Alicia Sanchez-Mazas, eds. The Peopling of East Asia: Putting Together Archaeology, Linguistics and Genetics. 77–80. London: Routledge Curzon.
Filbeck, D. (1978). T'in: a historical study. Pacific linguistics, no. 49. Canberra: Dept. of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University.
Hemeling, K. (1907). Die Nanking Kuanhua. (German language)
Jenny, Mathias and Paul Sidwell, eds (2015). The Handbook of Austroasiatic Languages . Leiden: Brill.
Peck, B. M., Comp. (1988). An Enumerative Bibliography of South Asian Language Dictionaries.
Peiros, Ilia. 1998. Comparative Linguistics in Southeast Asia. Pacific Linguistics Series C, No. 142. Canberra: Australian National University.
Shorto, Harry L. edited by Sidwell, Paul, Cooper, Doug and Bauer, Christian (2006). A Mon–Khmer comparative dictionary . Canberra: Australian National University. Pacific Linguistics.
Shorto, H. L. Bibliographies of Mon–Khmer and Tai Linguistics. London oriental bibliographies, v. 2. London: Oxford University Press, 1963.
van Driem, George. (2007). Austroasiatic phylogeny and the Austroasiatic homeland in light of recent population genetic studies. Mon-Khmer Studies, 37, 1–14.
Zide, Norman H., and Milton E. Barker. (1966) Studies in Comparative Austroasiatic Linguistics, The Hague: Mouton (Indo-Iranian monographs, v. 5.).
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Austroasiatic languages | Further reading | Further reading
Mann, Noel, Wendy Smith and Eva Ujlakyova. 2009. Linguistic clusters of Mainland Southeast Asia: an overview of the language families. Chiang Mai: Payap University.
Sidwell, Paul. 2016. Bibliography of Austroasiatic linguistics and related resources .
E. K. Brown (ed.) Encyclopedia of Languages and Linguistics. Oxford: Elsevier Press.
Gregory D. S. Anderson and Norman H. Zide. 2002. Issues in Proto-Munda and Proto-Austroasiatic Nominal Derivation: The Bimoraic Constraint. In Marlys A. Macken (ed.) Papers from the 10th Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University, South East Asian Studies Program, Monograph Series Press. pp. 55–74. |
Austroasiatic languages | External links | External links
Swadesh lists for Austro-Asiatic languages (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)
Mon–Khmer.com Lectures by Paul Sidwell
Mon–Khmer Languages Project at SEAlang
Munda Languages Project at SEAlang
RWAAI (Repository and Workspace for Austroasiatic Intangible Heritage)
RWAAI Digital Archive
Michel Ferlus's recordings of Mon-Khmer (Austroasiatic) languages (CNRS)
Category:Language families |
Austroasiatic languages | Table of Content | Short description, Etymology, Typology, Proto-language, Internal classification, Diffloth (1974), Peiros (2004), Diffloth (2005), Sidwell (2009–2015), Sidwell (2018), Possible extinct branches, Writing systems, External relations, Austric languages, Hmong-Mien, Indo-Aryan languages, Austroasiatic migrations and archaeogenetics, Migration into India, Notes, References, Sources, Further reading, External links |
Afroasiatic languages | short description | The Afroasiatic languages (also known as Afro-Asiatic, Afrasian, Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic) are a language family (or "phylum") of about 400 languages spoken predominantly in West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahara and Sahel. Over 500 million people are native speakers of an Afroasiatic language, constituting the fourth-largest language family after Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, and Niger–Congo. Most linguists divide the family into six branches: Berber (Amazigh), Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, Omotic, and Semitic. The vast majority of Afroasiatic languages are considered indigenous to the African continent, including all those not belonging to the Semitic branch.
Arabic is by far the most widely spoken within the family, with around 300 million native speakers concentrated primarily in the Middle East and North Africa. Other major Afroasiatic languages include the Cushitic Oromo language with 45 million native speakers, the Chadic Hausa language with over 34 million, the Semitic Amharic language with 25 million, and the Cushitic Somali language with 15 million. Other Afroasiatic languages with millions of native speakers include the Semitic Tigrinya language and Modern Hebrew, the Cushitic Sidama language, and the Omotic Wolaitta language, though most languages within the family are much smaller in size. There are many well-attested Afroasiatic languages from antiquity that have since died or gone extinct, including Egyptian and the Semitic languages Akkadian, Biblical Hebrew, Phoenician, Amorite, and Ugaritic. There is no consensus among historical linguists as to precisely where or when the common ancestor of all Afroasiatic languages, known as Proto-Afroasiatic, was originally spoken. However, most agree that the Afroasiatic homeland was located somewhere in northeastern Africa, with specific proposals including the Horn of Africa, Egypt, and the eastern Sahara. A significant minority of scholars argues for an origin in the Levant. Even the latest plausible dating for its proto-language makes Afroasiatic the oldest language family accepted by contemporary linguists. Reconstructed timelines of when Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken vary extensively, with dates ranging from 18,000 BC to 8,000 BC.
Comparative study of Afroasiatic is hindered by the massive disparities in textual attestation between its branches: while the Semitic and Egyptian branches are attested in writing as early as the fourth millennium BC, Berber, Cushitic, and Omotic languages were often not recorded until the 19th or 20th centuries. While systematic sound laws have not yet been established to explain the relationships between the various branches of Afroasiatic, the languages share a number of common features. One of the most important for establishing membership in the branch is a common set of pronouns. Other widely shared features include a prefix m- which creates nouns from verbs, evidence for alternations between the vowel "a" and a high vowel in the forms of the verb, similar methods of marking gender and plurality, and some details of phonology such as the presence of pharyngeal fricatives. Other features found in multiple branches include a specialized verb conjugation using suffixes (Egyptian, Semitic, Berber), a specialized verb conjugation using prefixes (Semitic, Berber, Cushitic), verbal prefixes deriving middle (t-), causative (s-), and passive (m-) verb forms (Semitic, Berber, Egyptian, Cushitic), and a suffix used to derive adjectives (Egyptian, Semitic). |
Afroasiatic languages | Name | Name
In current scholarship, the most common names for the family are Afroasiatic (or Afro-Asiatic), Hamito-Semitic, and Semito-Hamitic. Other proposed names that have yet to find widespread acceptance include Erythraic/Erythraean, Lisramic, Noahitic, and Lamekhite.
Friedrich Müller introduced the name Hamito-Semitic to describe the family in his (1876). The variant Semito-Hamitic is mostly used in older Russian sources. The elements of the name were derived from the names of two sons of Noah as attested in the Book of Genesis's Table of Nations passage: "Semitic" from the first-born Shem, and "Hamitic" from the second-born Ham (Genesis 5:32). Within the Table of Nations, each of Noah's sons is presented as the common progenitor of various people groups deemed to be closely related: among others Shem was the father of the Jews, Assyrians, and Arameans, while Ham was the father of the Egyptians and Cushites. This genealogy does not reflect the actual origins of these peoples' languages: for example, the Canaanites are descendants of Ham according to the Table, even though Hebrew is now classified as a Canaanite language, while the Elamites are ascribed to Shem despite their language being totally unrelated to Hebrew. The term Semitic for the Semitic languages had already been coined in 1781 by August Ludwig von Schlözer, following an earlier suggestion by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in 1710. Hamitic was first used by Ernest Renan in 1855 to refer to languages that appeared similar to the Semitic languages, but were not themselves provably a part of the family. The belief in a connection between Africans and the Biblical Ham, which had existed at least as far back as Isidore of Seville in the 6th century AD, led scholars in the early 19th century to speak vaguely of "Hamian" or "Hamitish" languages.
The term Hamito-Semitic has largely fallen out of favor among linguists writing in English, but is still frequently used in the scholarship of various other languages, such as German. Several issues with the label Hamito-Semitic have led many scholars to abandon the term and criticize its continued use. One common objection is that the Hamitic component inaccurately suggests that a monophyletic "Hamitic" branch exists alongside Semitic. In addition, Joseph Greenberg has argued that Hamitic possesses racial connotations, and that "Hamito-Semitic" overstates the centrality of the Semitic languages within the family. By contrast, Victor Porkhomovsky suggests that the label is simply an inherited convention, and does not imply a duality of Semitic and "Hamitic" any more than Indo-European implies a duality of Indic and "European". Because of its use by several important scholars and in the titles of significant works of scholarship, the total replacement of Hamito-Semitic is difficult.
While Greenberg ultimately popularized the name "Afroasiatic" in 1960, it appears to have been coined originally by Maurice Delafosse, as French , in 1914. The name refers to the fact that it is the only major language family with large populations in both Africa and Asia. Due to concerns that "Afroasiatic" could imply the inclusion of all languages spoken across Africa and Asia, the name "Afrasian" () was proposed by Igor Diakonoff in 1980. At present it predominantly sees use among Russian scholars.
The names Lisramic—based on the Afroasiastic root *lis- ("tongue") and the Egyptian word rmṯ ("person")—and Erythraean—referring to the core area around which the languages are spoken, the Red Sea—have also been proposed. |
Afroasiatic languages | Distribution and branches | Distribution and branches
thumb|A diagram of the six widely recognized branches of the Afroasiatic family, including some of the larger or more culturally significant languages in each branch.
Scholars generally consider Afroasiatic to have between five and eight branches. The five that are universally agreed upon are Berber (also called "Libyco-Berber"), Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, and Semitic. Most specialists consider the Omotic languages to constitute a sixth branch. Due to the presumed distance of relationship between the various branches, many scholars prefer to refer to Afroasiatic as a "linguistic phylum" rather than a "language family".
M. Victoria Almansa-Villatoro and Silvia Štubňová Nigrelli write that there are about 400 languages in Afroasiatic; Ethnologue lists 375 languages. Many scholars estimate fewer languages; exact numbers vary depending on the definitions of "language" and "dialect". |
Afroasiatic languages | Berber | Berber
The Berber (or Libyco-Berber) languages are spoken today by perhaps 16 million people. They are often considered to constitute a single language with multiple dialects. Other scholars, however, argue that they are a group of around twelve languages, about as different from each other as the Romance or Germanic languages. In the past, Berber languages were spoken throughout North Africa except in Egypt; since the 7th century CE, however, they have been heavily affected by Arabic and have been replaced by it in many places.
There are two extinct languages potentially related to modern Berber. The first is the Numidian language, represented by over a thousand short inscriptions in the Libyco-Berber alphabet, found throughout North Africa and dating from the 2nd century BCE onward. The second is the Guanche language, which was formerly spoken on the Canary Islands and went extinct in the 17th century CE. The first longer written examples of modern Berber varieties only date from the 16th or 17th centuries CE. |
Afroasiatic languages | Chadic | Chadic
Chadic languages number between 150 and 190, making Chadic the largest family in Afroasiatic by number of extant languages. The Chadic languages are typically divided into three major branches, East Chadic, Central Chadic, and West Chadic. Most Chadic languages are located in the Chad Basin, with the exception of Hausa. Hausa is the largest Chadic language by native speakers, and is spoken by a large number of people as a lingua franca in Northern Nigeria. It may have as many as 80 to 100 million first and second language speakers. Eight other Chadic languages have around 100,000 speakers; other Chadic languages often have few speakers and may be in danger of going extinct. Only about 40 Chadic languages have been fully described by linguists. |
Afroasiatic languages | Cushitic | Cushitic
There are about 30 Cushitic languages, more if Omotic is included, spoken around the Horn of Africa and in Sudan and Tanzania. The Cushitic family is traditionally split into four branches: the single language of Beja (c. 3 million speakers), the Agaw languages, Eastern Cushitic, and Southern Cushitic. Only one Cushitic language, Oromo, has more than 25 million speakers; other languages with more than a million speakers include Somali, Afar, Hadiyya, and Sidaama. Many Cushitic languages have relatively few speakers. Cushitic does not appear to be related to the written ancient languages known from its area, Meroitic or Old Nubian. The oldest text in a Cushitic language probably dates from around 1770; written orthographies were only developed for a select number of Cushitic languages in the early 20th century. |
Afroasiatic languages | Egyptian | Egyptian
thumb|right|Seal impression from the tomb of Seth-Peribsen (c. 2690 BCE), containing the first complete sentence in Ancient Egyptian.
The Egyptian branch consists of a single language, Egyptian (often called "Ancient Egyptian"), which was historically spoken in the lower Nile Valley. Egyptian is first attested in writing around 3000 BCE and finally went extinct around 1300 CE, making it the language with the longest written history in the world. Egyptian is usually divided into two major periods, Earlier Egyptian (c. 3000–1300 BCE), which is further subdivided into Old Egyptian and Middle Egyptian, and Later Egyptian (1300 BCE-1300 CE), which is further subdivided into Late Egyptian, Demotic, and Coptic. Coptic is the only stage written alphabetically to show vowels, whereas Egyptian was previously written in Egyptian hieroglyphs, which only represent consonants. In the Coptic period, there is evidence for six major dialects, which presumably existed previously but are obscured by pre-Coptic writing; additionally, Middle Egyptian appears to be based on a different dialect than Old Egyptian, which in turn shows dialectal similarities to Late Egyptian. Egyptian was replaced by Arabic as the spoken language of Egypt, but Coptic continues to be the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church. |
Afroasiatic languages | Omotic | Omotic
The c. 30 Omotic languages are still mostly undescribed by linguists. They are all spoken in southwest Ethiopia except for the Ganza language, spoken in Sudan. Omotic is typically split into North Omotic (or Aroid) and South Omotic, with the latter more influenced by the Nilotic languages; it is unclear whether the Dizoid group of Omotic languages belongs to the Northern or Southern group. The two Omotic languages with the most speakers are Wolaitta and Gamo-Gofa-Dawro, with about 1.2 million speakers each.
A majority of specialists consider Omotic to constitute a sixth branch of Afroasiatic. Omotic was formerly considered part of the Cushitic branch; some scholars continue to consider it part of Cushitic. Other scholars have questioned whether it is Afroasiatic at all, due its lack of several typical aspects of Afroasiatic morphology. |
Afroasiatic languages | Semitic | Semitic
There are between 40 and 80 languages in the Semitic family. Today, Semitic languages are spoken across North Africa, West Asia, and the Horn of Africa, as well as on the island of Malta, making them the sole Afroasiatic branch with members originating outside Africa. Arabic, spoken in both Asia and Africa, is by far the most widely spoken Afroasiatic language today, with around 300 million native speakers, while the Ethiopian Amharic language has around 25 million; collectively, Semitic is the largest branch of Afroasiatic by number of current speakers.
Most authorities divide Semitic into two branches: East Semitic, which includes the extinct Akkadian language, and West Semitic, which includes Arabic, Aramaic, the Canaanite languages (including Hebrew), as well as the Ethiopian Semitic languages such as Geʽez and Amharic. The classification within West Semitic remains contested. The only group with an African origin is Ethiopian Semitic. The oldest written attestations of Semitic languages come from Mesopotamia, Northern Syria, and Egypt and date as early as c. 3000 BCE. |
Afroasiatic languages | Other proposed branches | Other proposed branches
There are also other proposed branches, but none has so far convinced a majority of scholars:
Linguist H. Fleming proposed that the near-extinct Ongota language is a separate branch of Afroasiatic; however, this is only one of several competing theories. About half of current scholarly hypotheses on Ongota's origins align it with Afroasiatic in some way.
Robert Hetzron proposed that Beja is not part of Cushitic, but a separate branch. The prevailing opinion, however, is that Beja is a branch of Cushitic.
The extinct Meroitic language has been proposed to represent a branch of Afroasiatic. Although an Afroasiatic connection is sometimes viewed as refuted, it continues to be defended by scholars such as Edward Lipiński.
The Kujarge language is usually considered part of the Chadic languages; however, Roger Blench has proposed that it may be a separate branch of Afroasiatic. |
Afroasiatic languages | Further subdivisions | Further subdivisions
+ Some proposed Afroasiatic subdivisions Omotic
Afroasiatic
Semitic
Old East Africa Cushitic
Erythraic
Cushitic
Beja
Egyptian
Berber-Chadic
Berber
Chadic Omotic
Erythraean
Cushitic
North Erythrean
Chadic
Boreafrasian
Egyptian
Berber
Semitic Omotic
Chadic
Central Afroasiatic
Egyptian
Macro-Cushtic
Berber
Cushitic
Semitic East–West Afrasian
Semitic
Cushitic
Berber (Berbero-Libyan)
North-South Afrasian
Egyptian
Chadic
Omotic Cushomotic
Cushitic
Omotic
North Afrasian
Semitic
African North Afrasian
Egyptian
Chado-Berber
Chadic
Berber
There is no agreement on the relationships between and subgrouping of the different Afroasiatic branches. Whereas Marcel Cohen (1947) claimed he saw no evidence for internal subgroupings, numerous other scholars have made proposals, with Carsten Peust counting 27 as of 2012.
Common trends in proposals as of 2019 include using common or lacking grammatical features to argue that Omotic was the first language to branch off, often followed by Chadic. In contrast to scholars who argue for an early split of Chadic from Afroasiatic, scholars of the Russian school tend to argue that Chadic and Egyptian are closely related, and scholars who rely on percentage of shared lexicon often group Chadic with Berber. Three scholars who agree on an early split between Omotic and the other subbranches, but little else, are Harold Fleming (1983), Christopher Ehret (1995), and Lionel Bender (1997). In contrast, scholars relying on shared lexicon often produce a Cushitic-Omotic group. Additionally, the minority of scholars who favor an Asian origin of Afroasiatic tend to place Semitic as the first branch to split off. Disagreement on which features are innovative and which are inherited from Proto-Afroasiatic produces radically different trees, as can be seen by comparing the trees produced by Ehret and Igor Diakonoff.
Responding to the above, Tom Güldemann criticizes attempts at finding subgroupings based on common or lacking morphology by arguing that the presence or absence of morphological features is not a useful way of discerning subgroupings in Afroasiatic, because it can not be excluded that families currently lacking certain features did not have them in the past; this also means that the presence of morphological features cannot be taken as defining a subgroup. Peust notes that other factors that can obscure genetic relationships between languages include the poor state of present documentation and understanding of particular language families (historically with Egyptian, presently with Omotic). Gene Gragg likewise argues that more needs to be known about Omotic still, and that Afroasiatic linguists have still not found convincing isoglosses on which to base genetic distinctions.
One way of avoiding the problem of determining which features are original and which are inherited is to use a computational methodology such as lexicostatistics, with one of the earliest attempts being Fleming 1983. This is also the method used by Alexander Militarev and Sergei Starostin to create a family tree. Fleming (2006) was a more recent attempt by Fleming, with a different result from Militarev and Starostin. Hezekiah Bacovcin and David Wilson argue that this methodology is invalid for discerning linguistic sub-relationship. They note the method's inability to detect various strong commonalities even between well-studied branches of AA. |
Afroasiatic languages | Classification history | Classification history
A relationship between Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic and the Berber languages was perceived as early as the 9th century CE by the Hebrew grammarian and physician Judah ibn Quraysh, who is regarded as a forerunner of Afroasiatic studies. The French orientalist Guillaume Postel had also pointed out similarities between Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic in 1538, and Hiob Ludolf noted similarities also to Geʽez and Amharic in 1701. This family was formally described and named "Semitic" by August Ludwig von Schlözer in 1781. In 1844, Theodor Benfey first described the relationship between Semitic and the Egyptian language and connected both to the Berber and the Cushitic languages (which he called "Ethiopic"). In the same year T.N. Newman suggested a relationship between Semitic and the Hausa language, an idea that was taken up by early scholars of Afroasiatic. In 1855, Ernst Renan named these languages, related to Semitic but not Semitic, "Hamitic," in 1860 Carl Lottner proposed that they belonged to a single language family, and in 1876 Friedrich Müller first described them as a "Hamito-Semitic" language family. Müller assumed that there existed a distinct "Hamitic" branch of the family that consisted of Egyptian, Berber, and Cushitic. He did not include the Chadic languages, though contemporary Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius argued for the relation of Hausa to the Berber languages. Some scholars would continue to regard Hausa as related to the other Afroasiatic languages, but the idea was controversial: many scholars refused to admit that the largely unwritten, "Negroid" Chadic languages were in the same family as the "Caucasian" ancient civilizations of the Egyptians and Semites.
thumb|upright=1.3|Distribution of ethnic groups in Africa (Afroasiatic/Hamito-Semitic-speaking in yellow)
An important development in the history of Afroasiatic scholarship – and the history of African linguistics – was the creation of the "Hamitic theory" or "Hamitic hypothesis" by Lepsius, fellow Egyptologist Christian Bunsen, and linguist Christian Bleek. This theory connected the "Hamites", the originators of Hamitic languages, with (supposedly culturally superior) "Caucasians", who were assumed to have migrated into Africa and intermixed with indigenous "Negroid" Africans in ancient times. The "Hamitic theory" would serve as the basis for Carl Meinhof's highly influential classification of African languages in his 1912 book . On one hand, the "Hamitic" classification was justified partially based on linguistic features: for example, Meinhof split the presently-understood Chadic family into "Hamito-Chadic", and an unrelated non-Hamitic "Chadic" based on which languages possessed grammatical gender. On the other hand, the classification also relied on non-linguistic anthropological and culturally contingent features, such as skin color, hair type, and lifestyle. Ultimately, Meinhof's classification of Hamitic proved to include languages from every presently-recognized language family within Africa.
The first scholar to question the existence of "Hamitic languages" was Marcel Cohen in 1924, with skepticism also expressed by A. Klingenheben and Dietrich Westermann during the 1920s and '30s. However, Meinhof's "Hamitic" classification remained prevalent throughout the early 20th century until it was definitively disproven by Joseph Greenberg in the 1940s, based on racial and anthropological data. Instead, Greenberg proposed an Afroasiatic family consisting of five branches: Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, and Semitic. Reluctance among some scholars to recognize Chadic as a branch of Afroasiatic persisted as late as the 1980s. In 1969, Harold Fleming proposed that a group of languages classified by Greenberg as Cushitic were in fact their own independent "Omotic" branch—a proposal that has been widely, if not universally, accepted. These six branches now constitute an academic consensus on the genetic structure of the family.
Greenberg relied on his own method of mass comparison of vocabulary items rather than the comparative method of demonstrating regular sound correspondences to establish the family. An alternative classification, based on the pronominal and conjugation systems, was proposed by A.N. Tucker in 1967. As of 2023, widely accepted sound correspondences between the different branches have not yet been firmly established. Nevertheless, morphological traits attributable to the proto-language and the establishment of cognates throughout the family have confirmed its genetic validity. |
Afroasiatic languages | Origin | Origin |
Afroasiatic languages | Timeline | Timeline
There is no consensus as to when Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken. The absolute latest date for when Proto-Afroasiatic could have been extant is , after which Egyptian and the Semitic languages are firmly attested. However, in all likelihood these languages began to diverge well before this hard boundary. The estimations offered by scholars as to when Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken vary widely, ranging from 18,000BCE to 8,000BCE. An estimate at the youngest end of this range still makes Afroasiatic the oldest proven language family. Contrasting proposals of an early emergence, Tom Güldemann has argued that less time may have been required for the divergence than is usually assumed, as it is possible for a language to rapidly restructure due to areal contact, with the evolution of Chadic (and likely also Omotic) serving as pertinent examples. |
Afroasiatic languages | Location | Location
Likewise, no consensus exists as to where proto-Afroasiatic originated. Scholars have proposed locations for the Afroasiatic homeland across Africa and West Asia. Roger Blench writes that the debate possesses "a strong ideological flavor", with associations between an Asian origin and "high civilization". An additional complicating factor is the lack of agreement on the subgroupings of Afroasiatic (see Further subdivisions) – this makes associating archaeological evidence with the spread of Afroasiatic particularly difficult. Nevertheless, there is a long-accepted link between the speakers of Proto-Southern Cushitic languages and the East African Savanna Pastoral Neolithic (5,000 years ago), and archaeological evidence associates the Proto-Cushitic speakers with economic transformations in the Sahara dating c. 8,500 years ago, as well as the speakers of the Proto-Zenati variety of the Berber languages with an expansion across the Maghreb in the 5th century CE.
An origin somewhere on the African continent has broad scholarly support, and is seen as being well-supported by the linguistic data. Most scholars more narrowly place the homeland near the geographic center of its present distribution, "in the southeastern Sahara or adjacent Horn of Africa". The Afroasiatic languages spoken in Africa are not more closely related to each other than they are to Semitic, as one would expect if only Semitic had remained in a West Asian homeland while all other branches had spread from there. Likewise, all Semitic languages are fairly similar to each other, whereas the African branches of Afroasiatic are very diverse; this suggests the rapid spread of Semitic out of Africa. Proponents of an origin of Afroasiatic within Africa assume the proto-language to have been spoken by pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherers, arguing that there is no evidence of words in Proto-Afroasiatic related to agriculture or animal husbandry. Christopher Ehret, S.O. Y. Keita, and Paul Newman also argue that archaeology does not support a spread of migrating farmers into Africa, but rather a gradual incorporation of animal husbandry into indigenous foraging cultures. Ehret, in a separate publication, argued that the two principles in linguistic approaches for determining the origin of languages which are the principles of fewest moves and greatest diversity had put “beyond reasonable doubt” that the language family “had originated in the Horn of Africa”.
A significant minority of scholars supports an Asian origin of Afroasiatic, most of whom are specialists in Semitic or Egyptian studies. The main proponent of an Asian origin is the linguist Alexander Militarev, who argues that Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken by early agriculturalists in the Levant and subsequently spread to Africa. Militarev associates the speakers of Proto-Afroasiatic with the Levantine Post-Natufian Culture, arguing that the reconstructed lexicon of flora and fauna, as well as farming and pastoralist vocabulary indicates that Proto-AA must have been spoken in this area. Scholar Jared Diamond and archaeologist Peter Bellwood have taken up Militarev's arguments as part of their general argument that the spread of linguistic macrofamilies (such as Indo-European, Bantu, and Austro-Asiatic) can be associated with the development of agriculture; they argue that there is clear archaeological support for farming spreading from the Levant into Africa via the Nile valley. |
Afroasiatic languages | Phonological characteristics | Phonological characteristics
thumb|right|upright=0.8|Speech sample in Shilha (Berber branch)
thumb|right|upright=0.8|Speech sample in the Semitic Neo-Aramaic language, a descendant of Old Aramaic
thumb|right|upright=0.8|Speech sample in Somali (Cushitic branch)
thumb|right|upright=0.8|Speech sample in Classical Arabic (Semitic branch)
Afroasiatic languages share a number of phonetic and phonological features. |
Afroasiatic languages | Syllable structure | Syllable structure
Egyptian, Cushitic, Berber, Omotic, and most languages in the Semitic branch require every syllable to begin with a consonant (with the exception of some grammatical prefixes). Igor Diakonoff argues that this constraint goes back to Proto-Afroasiatic. Some Chadic languages allow a syllable to begin with a vowel; however, in many Chadic languages verbs must begin with a consonant. In Cushitic and Chadic languages, a glottal stop or glottal fricative may be inserted to prevent a word from beginning with a vowel. Typically, syllables begin with only a single consonant. Diakonoff argues that proto-Afroasiatic did not have consonant clusters within a syllable.
With the exception of some Chadic languages, all Afroasiatic languages allow both open syllables (ending in a vowel) and closed syllables (ending in a consonant); many Chadic languages do not allow a syllable to end in a consonant. Most words end in a vowel in Omotic and Cushitic, making syllable-final consonant clusters rare.
Syllable weight plays an important role in Afroasiatic, especially in Chadic; it can affect the form of affixes attached to a word. |
Afroasiatic languages | Consonant systems | Consonant systems
Several Afroasiatic languages have large consonant inventories, and it is likely that this is inherited from proto-Afroasiatic. All Afroasiatic languages contain stops and fricatives; some branches have additional types of consonants such as affricates and lateral consonants. Afroasiatic languages tend to have pharyngeal fricative consonants, with Egyptian, Semitic, Berber, and Cushitic sharing ħ and ʕ. In all Afroasiatic languages, consonants can be bilabial, alveolar, velar, and glottal, with additional places of articulation found in some branches or languages. Additionally, the glottal stop () usually exists as a phoneme, and there tends to be no phonemic contrast between [p] and [f] or [b] and [v]. In Cushitic, the Ethiopian Semitic language Tigrinya, and some Chadic languages, there is no underlying phoneme [p] at all.
Most, if not all branches of Afroasiatic distinguish between voiceless, voiced, and "emphatic" consonants. The emphatic consonants are typically formed deeper in the throat than the others; they can be realized variously as glottalized, pharyngealized, uvularized, ejective, and/or implosive consonants in the different branches. This distinction between three manners of articulation is not generally reconstructed for continuant obstruents (such as fricatives), which are generally reconstructed as being only voiceless in Proto-Afroasiatic.
A form of long-distance consonant assimilation known as consonant harmony is attested in Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, and Semitic: it usually affects features such as pharyngealization, palatalization, and labialization. Several Omotic languages have "sibilant harmony", meaning that all sibilants (s, sh, z, ts, etc.) in a word must match. |
Afroasiatic languages | Consonant incompatibility | Consonant incompatibility
+ Examples of root consonant incompatibilities from Egyptian, after consonant cannot occur with p b, f, m, h r ꜣ, b ḫ h, ḥ, ẖ, q, k, g, ṯ, ḏ s ḥ, z t ꜥ, z, q, g, d, ḏ
Restrictions against the co-occurrence of certain, usually similar, consonants in verbal roots can be found in all Afroasiatic branches, though they are only weakly attested in Chadic and Omotic. The most widespread constraint is against two different labial consonants (other than w) occurring together in a root, a constraint which can be found in all branches but Omotic. Another widespread constraint is against two non-identical lateral obstruents, which can be found in Egyptian, Chadic, Semitic, and probably Cushitic. Such rules do not always apply for nouns, numerals, or denominal verbs, and do not affect prefixes or suffixes added to the root. Roots that may have contained sequences that were possible in Proto-Afroasiatic but are disallowed in the daughter languages are assumed to have undergone consonant dissimilation or assimilation.
A set of constraints, developed originally by Joseph Greenberg on the basis of Arabic, has been claimed to be typical for Afroasiatic languages. Greenberg divided Semitic consonants into four types: "back consonants" (glottal, pharyngeal, uvular, laryngeal, and velar consonants), "front consonants" (dental or alveolar consonants), liquid consonants, and labial consonants. He showed that, generally, any consonant from one of these groups could combine with consonants from any other group, but could not be used together with consonants from the same group. Additionally, he showed that Proto-Semitic restricted a sequence of two identical consonants in the first and second position of the triliteral root. These rules also have a number of exceptions:
velar consonants can occur with pharyngeals or laryngeals;
dental consonants can co-occur with sibilants; However, there are no Proto-Semitic verbal roots with ḍ and a sibilant, and roots with d and a sibilant are uncommon. In all attested cases of a dental and a sibilant, the sibilant occurs in first position and the dental in second.
Similar exceptions can be demonstrated for the other Afroasiatic branches that have these restrictions to their root formation. James P. Allen has demonstrated that slightly different rules apply to Egyptian: for instance, Egyptian allows two identical consonants in some roots, and disallows velars from occurring with pharyngeals. |
Afroasiatic languages | Vowel systems | Vowel systems
There is a large variety of vocalic systems in Afroasiatic, and attempts to reconstruct the vocalic system of Proto-Afroasiatic vary considerably.
All branches of Afroasiatic have a limited number of underlying vowels (between two and seven), but the number of phonetic vowels can be much larger. The quality of the underlying vowels varies considerably by language; the most common vowel throughout Afroasiatic is schwa. In the different languages, central vowels are often inserted to break up consonant clusters (a form of epenthesis). Various Semitic, Cushitic, Berber, and Chadic languages, including Arabic, Amharic, Berber, Somali, and East Dangla, also exhibit various types of vowel harmony. |
Afroasiatic languages | Tones | Tones
The majority of Afroasiatic languages are tonal languages: phonemic tonality is found in Omotic, Chadic, and Cushitic languages, but absent in Berber and Semitic. There is no information on whether Egyptian had tones. In contemporary Omotic, Chadic, and Cushitic languages, tone is primarily a grammatical feature: it encodes various grammatical functions, only differentiating lexical roots in a few cases. In some Chadic and some Omotic languages every syllable has to have a tone, whereas in most Cushitic languages this is not the case. Some scholars postulate that Proto-Afroasiatic may have had tone, while others believe it arose later from a pitch accent.
+ Examples of tones marking lexical and morphological changes in some Afroasiatic languages, after Language Examples Somali (Cushitic) díbi bull, absolutive case dibi bull, nominative case dibí bull, genitive case ínan, boy inán girl Bench (Omotic) k'áyts' work! do it! (active imperative) k'àyts' be done! (passive imperative) Hausa (Chadic) màatáa woman, wife máatáa women, wives dáfàa to cook (infinitive) dàfáa cook! (imperative) |
Afroasiatic languages | Similarities in grammar, syntax, and morphology | Similarities in grammar, syntax, and morphology
At present, there is no generally accepted reconstruction of Proto-Afroasiatic grammar, syntax, or morphology, nor one for any of the sub-branches besides Egyptian. This means that it is difficult to know which features in Afroasiatic languages are retentions, and which are innovations. Moreover, all Afroasiatic languages have long been in contact with other language families and with each other, leading to the possibility of widespread borrowing both within Afroasiatic and from unrelated languages. There are nevertheless a number of commonly observed features in Afroasiatic morphology and derivation, including the use of suffixes, infixes, vowel lengthening and shortening as a morphological change, as well as the use of tone changes to indicate morphology. Further commonalities and differences are explored in more detail below. |
Afroasiatic languages | General features | General features |
Afroasiatic languages | Consonantal root structures | Consonantal root structures
A widely attested feature in AA languages is a consonantal structure into which various vocalic "templates" are placed. This structure is particularly visible in the verbs, and is particularly noticeable in Semitic. Besides for Semitic, vocalic templates are well attested for Cushitic and Berber, where, along with Chadic, it is less productive; it is absent in Omotic. For Egyptian, evidence for the root-and-template structure exists from Coptic. In Semitic, Egyptian, Berber, verbs have no inherent vowels at all; the vowels found in a given stem are dependent on the vocalic template. In Chadic, verb stems can include an inherent vowel as well.
Most Semitic verbs are triliteral (have three consonants), whereas most Chadic, Omotic, and Cushitic verbs are biliteral (having two consonants). The degree to which the Proto-AA verbal root was triliteral is debated. It may have originally been mostly biconsonantal, to which various affixes (such as verbal extensions) were then added and lexicalized. Although any root could theoretically be used to create a noun or a verb, there is evidence for the existence of distinct noun and verb roots, which behave in different ways.
+ Examples of verbal templates in AA languages, after Language Akkadian (Semitic) Berber Beja (Cushitic) Ron/Daffo (Chadic) Coptic (Egyptian) Root p-r-s to divide k-n-f to roast d-b-l to gather m-(w)-t to die k-t to build Templates iprus- (preterite) ǎknəf (aorist) -dbil- (past) mot (perfective) kôt (infintive) iparras- (present) əknǎf (perfective) -i:-dbil- (aorist) mwaát (imperfective) kêt (qualitative) iptaras (perfect) əkǎnnǎf (imperfective) i:-dbil- (modal) əknəf (neg. perfective) da:n-bi:l (present sg) əkənnəf (neg. imperfective) -e:-dbil- (present pl) -dabi:l- (negative)
As part of these templates, the alternation (apophony) between high vowels (e.g. i, u) and a low vowel (a) in verbal forms is usually described as one of the main characteristics of AA languages: this change codes a variety of different functions. It is unclear whether this system is a common AA trait; the Chadic examples, for instance, show signs of originally deriving from affixes, which could explain the origins of the alterations in other languages as well. |
Afroasiatic languages | Word order | Word order
It remains unclear what word order Proto-Afroasiatic had. Berber, Egyptian, and most Semitic languages are verb-initial languages, whereas Cushitic, Omotic and some Semitic subgroups are verb-final languages. Proto-Chadic is reconstructed as having verb-initial word order, but most Chadic languages have subject-verb-object word order. |
Afroasiatic languages | Reduplication and gemination | Reduplication and gemination
Afroasiatic Languages use the processes of reduplication and gemination (which often overlap in meaning) to derive nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs throughout the AA language family. Gemination in particular is one of the typical features of AA. Full or partial reduplication of the verb is often used to derive forms showing repeated action (pluractionality), though it is unclear if this is an inherited feature or has been widely borrowed. |
Afroasiatic languages | Nouns | Nouns |
Afroasiatic languages | Grammatical gender and number | Grammatical gender and number
The assignment of nouns and pronouns to either masculine or feminine gender is present in all branches – but not all languages – of the Afroasiatic family. This sex-based gender system is widely agreed to derive from Proto-Afroasiatic. In most branches, gender is an inherent property of nouns. Additionally, even when nouns are not cognates, they tend to have the same gender throughout Afroasiatic ("gender stability"). In Egyptian, Semitic, and Berber, a feminine suffix -t is attested to mark feminine nouns; in some Cushitic and Chadic languages, a feminine -t suffix or prefix (lexicalized from a demonstrative) is used to mark definiteness. In addition to these uses, -t also functions as a diminutive, pejorative, and/or singulative marker in some languages.
+ Use of T on feminine nouns, using data from Kabyle (Berber) Hausa (Chadic) Beja (Cushitic) Egyptian Arabic (Semitic) wəl-t 'daughter' yārinyà-r̃ 'the girl' (r̃ < final -t) ʔo:(r)-t 'a daughter' t-ʔo:r 'the daughter' zꜣ-t 'daughter' bin-t 'daughter'
Afroasiatic languages have a variety of ways of marking plurals; in some branches, nouns change gender from singular to plural (gender polarity), while in others, plural forms are ungendered. In addition to marking plurals via a number of affixes (with the suffixes -*uu/-*w and -*n(a) widely attested), several AA languages make use of internal vowel change (apophony) and/or insertion (epenthesis). These so-called "internal-a" or "broken" plurals are securely attested in Semitic, Berber, Cushitic, and Chadic, although it is unclear if the Chadic examples are an independent development. Another common method of forming plurals is reduplication.
+ Some examples of internal plurals in AA, using data from and Language Meaning Singular Plural Geʽez (Semitic) king nɨgus nägäs-t Teshelhiyt (Berber) country ta-mazir-t ti-mizar Afar (Cushitic) body galab galo:b-a Hausa (Chadic) stream gulbi gulà:be: Mubi (Chadic) eye irin aràn |
Afroasiatic languages | Noun cases and states | Noun cases and states
Nouns cases are found in the Semitic, Berber, Cushitic, and Omotic branches. They are not found in Chadic languages, and there is no evidence for cases in Egyptian. A common pattern in AA languages with case is for the nominative to be marked by -u or -i, and the accusative to be marked by -a. However, the number and types of cases varies across AA and also within the individual branches. Some languages in AA have a marked nominative alignment, a feature which may date back to Proto-Afroasiatic. Zygmont Frajzyngier states that a general characteristic of case marking in AA languages is that it tends to mark roles such as genitive, dative, locative, etc. rather than the subject and object.
+ Subject-Object case marking in some AA branches, using data in , and Case Oromo (Cushitic) Berber Akkadian (Semitic) Wolaitta (Omotic) Masculine Feminine Masculine Feminine Masculine Feminine Masculine FeminineNominative/bound nam-(n)i boy intal-t-i girl u-frux boy t-frux-t girl šarr-u-m king šarr-at-u-m queen keett-i house macci-yo woman Accusative/absolutive/unbound nam-a intal-a a-frux t-a-frux-t šarr-a-m šarr-at-a-m keett-a macci-ya
A second category, which partially overlaps with case, is the AA linguistic category of "state". Linguists use the term "state" to refer to different things in different languages. In Cushitic and Semitic, nouns exist in the "free state" or the "construct state". The construct state is a special, usually reduced form of a noun, which is used when the noun is possessed by another noun (Semitic) or is modified by an adjective or relative clause (Cushitic). Edward Lipiński refers to Semitic nouns as having four states: absolute (free/indeterminate), construct, determinate, and predicate. Coptic and Egyptian grammar also refers to nouns having a "free" (absolute) state, a "construct state", and a "pronominal state". The construct state is used when a noun becomes unstressed as the first element of a compound, whereas the pronominal state is used when the noun has a suffixed possessive pronoun. Berber instead contrasts between the "free state" and the "annexed state", the latter of which is used for a variety of purposes, including for subjects placed after a verb and after certain prepositions.
+ Noun states in different AA branches, using data from , , , and Language Free/absolute state Construct State Additional state Aramaic (Semitic) malkā(h) queen malkat Emphatic: malkətā Coptic (Egyptian) jôj head jaj- Pronominal: jô- Iraqw (Cushitic) afee mouths afé-r – Riffian (Berber) a-ryaz man – Annexed: wə-ryaz |
Afroasiatic languages | Modifiers and agreement | Modifiers and agreement
There is no strict distinction between adjectives, nouns, and adverbs in Afroasiatic. All branches of Afroasiatic have a lexical category of adjectives except for Chadic; some Chadic languages do have adjectives, however. In Berber languages, adjectives are rare and are mostly replaced by nouns of quality and stative verbs. In different languages, adjectives (and other modifiers) must either precede or follow the noun. In most AA languages, numerals precede the noun.
In those languages that have adjectives, they can take gender and number markings, which, in some cases, agree with the gender and number of the noun they are modifying. However, in Omotic, adjectives do not agree with nouns: sometimes, they only take gender and number marking when they are used as nouns, in other cases, they take gender and number marking only when they follow the noun (the noun then receives no marking).
A widespread pattern of gender and number marking in Afroasiatic, found on demonstratives, articles, adjectives, and relative markers, is a consonant N for masculine, T for feminine, and N for plural. This can be found in Semitic, Egyptian, Beja, Berber, and Chadic. A system K (masculine), T (feminine), and H (plural) can be found in Cushitic, Chadic, with masculine K also appearing in Omotic. The feminine marker T is one of the most consistent aspects across the different branches of AA.
+ Masculine, Feminine, Plural agreement patterns in N T N, using data from Language meaning Masculine Feminine Plural Old South Arabian (Semitic) this ð-n ð-t ʔl-n Egyptian this (p-n) t-n n-n Beja (Cushitic) this be-n be-t bal-īn Tuareg (Berber) relative verb form ilkəm-ən təlkəm-ət ilkəm-ən-in Hausa (Chadic) possessive base na- ta- na- |
Afroasiatic languages | Verb forms | Verb forms |
Afroasiatic languages | Tenses, aspects, and moods (TAMs) | Tenses, aspects, and moods (TAMs)
There is no agreement about which tenses, aspects, or moods (TAMs) Proto-Afroasiatic might have had. Most grammars of AA posit a distinction between perfective and imperfective verbal aspects, which can be found in Cushitic, Berber, Semitic, most Chadic languages, and some Omotic languages. The Egyptian verbal system diverges greatly from that found in the other branches. Additionally, it is common in Afroasiatic languages for the present/imperfective form to be a derived (marked) form of the verb, whereas in most other languages and language families the present tense is the default form of the verb. Another common trait across the family is the use of a suppletive imperative for verbs of motion. |
Afroasiatic languages | "Prefix conjugation" | "Prefix conjugation"
Conjugation of verbs using prefixes that mark person, number, and gender can be found
in Semitic, Berber, and in Cushitic, where it is only found on a small set of frequent verbs. These prefixes are clearly cognate across the branches, although their use within the verbal systems of the individual languages varies. There is a general pattern in which n- is used for the first person plural, whereas t- is used for all forms of the second person regardless of plurality or gender, as well as feminine singular. Prefixes of ʔ- (glottal stop) for the first person singular and y- for the third person masculine can also be reconstructed. As there is no evidence for the "prefix conjugation" in Omotic, Chadic, or Egyptian, it is unclear whether this was a Proto-Afroasiatic feature that has been lost in those branches or is a shared innovation among Semitic, Berber, and Cushitic.
+ The "prefix conjugation" in Afroasiatic, following Number Person Gender Akkadian (Semitic) Berber Beja (Cushitic) Preterite Present Aorist Imperfective "Old Past" "Old Present" "New Present" Singular 1 a-prus a-parras ăknəf-ăʕ əkănnăf-ăʕ ʔ-i:-dbíl ʔ-a-dbíl ʔ-a-danbí:l 2 m ta-prus ta-parras t-ăknəf-ət t-əkănnăf-ət t-i:-dbíl-a t-i-dbíl-a danbí:l-a f ta-prus-i: ta-parras-i t-i:-dbíl-i t-i-dbíl-i danbí:l-i 3 m i-prus i-parras y-ăknəf y-əkănnăf ʔ-i:-dbíl ʔ-i-dbíl danbí:l f ta-prus ta-parras t-ăknəf t-əkănnăf t-i:-dbíl t-i-dbíl Plural 1 ni-prus ni-parras n-ăknəf n-əkănnăf n-i:-dbíl n-i-dbíl n-e:-dbíl 2 m ta-prus-a: a-parras t-ăknəf-ăm t-əkănnăf-ăm t-i:-dbíl-na t-i-dbíl-na t-e:-dbíl-na f ta-parras t-ăknəf-măt t-əkănnăf-măt 3 m i-prus-u: ta-parras-i: ăknəf-ăn əkănnăf-ăn ʔ-i:-dbíl ʔ-i-dbíl ʔ-e:-dbíl-na f i-prus-a: i-parras ăknəf-năt əkănnăf-năt |
Afroasiatic languages | "Suffix conjugation" | "Suffix conjugation"
Some AA branches have what is called a "suffix conjugation", formed by adding pronominal suffixes to indicate person, gender, and number to a verbal adjective. In Akkadian, Egyptian, Berber, and Cushitic this forms a "stative conjugation", used to express the state or result of an action; the same endings as in Akkadian and Egyptian are also present in the West Semitic perfective verb form. In Akkadian and Egyptian, the suffixes appear to be reduced forms of the independent pronouns (see Pronouns); the obvious correspondence between the endings in the two branches has been argued to show that Egyptian and Semitic are closely related. While some scholars posit an AA origin for this form, it is possible that the Berber and Cushitic forms are independent developments, as they show significant differences from the Egyptian and Semitic forms. The Cushitic forms in particular may be derived from morphology found in subordinate clauses.
+ The "suffix conjugation" in Afroasiatic, following Number Person Gender Akkadian (Semitic) Egyptian Berber Afar (Cushitic) Singular 1 pars-a:ku sḏm-kw măttit-ăʕ miʕ-iyo-h 2 m pars-a:ta sḏm-tj măttit-ət miʕ-ito-h f pars-a:ti 3 m paris sḏm-w măttit meʕ-e-h f pars-at sḏm-tj măttit-ăt Plural 1 pars-a:nu sḏm-wjn măttit-it miʕ-ino-h 2 m pars-a:tunu sḏm-tjwnj miʕ-ito:nu-h f pars-a:tina 3 m pars-u: sḏm-wj moʕ-o:nu-h f pars-a: |
Afroasiatic languages | Common derivational affixes | Common derivational affixes |
Afroasiatic languages | M-prefix noun derivation | M-prefix noun derivation
A prefix in m- is the most widely attested affix in AA that is used to derive nouns, and is one of the features Joseph Greenberg used to diagnose membership in the family. It forms agent nouns, place nouns, and instrument nouns. In some branches, it can also derive abstract nouns and participles. Omotic, meanwhile, shows evidence for a non-productive prefix mV- associated with the feminine gender. Christopher Ehret has argued that this prefix is a later development that was not present in Proto-Afro-Asiatic, but rather derived from a PAA indefinite pronoun *m-. Such an etymology is rejected by A. Zaborski and Gábor Takács, the latter of whom argues for a PAA *ma- that unites all or some of the meanings in the modern languages.
+ Examples of m-prefix noun derivations, using data from , , and Language Root Agent/Instrument Place/AbstractEgyptian swr to drink m-swr drinking bowl – Arabic (Semitic) k-t-b to write mu-katib-un writer ma-ktab-un school Hausa (Chadic) hayf- to give birth má-hàif-íi father má-háif-áa birthplace Beja (Cushitic) firi to give birth – mi-frey birth Tuareg (Berber) äks to eat em-äks eater – |
Afroasiatic languages | Verbal extensions | Verbal extensions
Many AA languages use prefixes or suffixes (verbal extensions) to encode various pieces of information about the verb. Three derivational prefixes can be reconstructed for Proto-Afroasiatic: *s- 'causative', *t- 'middle voice' or 'reflexive', and *n- 'passive'; the prefixes appear with various related meanings in the individual daughter languages and branches. Christopher Ehret has proposed that Proto-Afroasiatic originally had as many as thirty-seven separate verbal extensions, many of which then became fossilized as third consonants. This theory has been criticized by some, such as Andrzej Zaborski and Alan Kaye, as being too many extensions to be realistic, though Zygmont Frajzyngier and Erin Shay note that some Chadic languages have as many as twelve extensions.
+ Common verbal extensions in Afroasiatic, using data from , , and Language Causative *s- Reflexive/middle *t- Passive *n- Akkadian (Semitic) u-š-apris 'make cut' mi-t-gurum 'agree (with one another)' i-p-paris (> *i-n-paris) 'be cut' Figuig (Berber) ssu-fəɣ 'let out' i-ttə-ska 'it has been built' mmu-bḍa 'divide oneself' Beja (Cushitic) s-dabil 'make gather' t-dabil 'be gathered' m-dabaal 'gather each other' Egyptian s-ꜥnḫ 'make live' pr-tj 'is sent forth' n-hp 'escape' |
Afroasiatic languages | <span class="anchor" id="nisba"></span>"Nisba" derivation | "Nisba" derivation
The so-called "Nisba" is a suffix used to derive adjectives from nouns and, in Egyptian, also from prepositions. It is found in Egyptian, Semitic, and possibly, in some relic forms, Berber. The suffix has the same basic form in Egyptian and Semitic, taking the form -i(y) in Semitic and being written -j in Egyptian. The Semitic and Cushitic genitive case in -i/-ii may be related to "nisba" adjective derivation.
+"Nisba" derivation in Semitic and Egyptian, using data from and Language Noun/preposition Derived adjective Hebrew (Semitic) yārēaḥ moon yərēḥī lunar Egyptian nṯr god nṯr.j divine ḥr upon ḥr.j upper, which is upon
Due to its presence in the oldest attested and best-known AA branches, nisba derivation is often thought of as a "quintessentially Afroasiatic feature". Christopher Ehret argues for its presence in Proto-Afroasiatic and for its attestation in some form in all branches, with a shape -*ay in addition to -*iy in some cases. |
Afroasiatic languages | Vocabulary comparison | Vocabulary comparison |
Afroasiatic languages | Pronouns | Pronouns
The forms of the pronouns are very stable throughout Afroasiatic (excluding Omotic), and they have been used as one of the chief tools for determining whether a language belongs to the family. However, there is no consensus on what the reconstructed set of Afroasiatic pronouns might have looked like. A common characteristic of AA languages is the existence of a special set of "independent" pronouns, which are distinct from subject pronouns. They can occur together with subject pronouns but cannot fulfill an object function. Also common are dependent/affix pronouns (used for direct objects and to mark possession). For most branches, the first person pronouns contain a nasal consonant (n, m), whereas the third person displays a sibilant consonant (s, sh). Other commonalities are masculine and feminine forms used in both the second and third persons, except in Cushitic and Omotic. These pronouns tend to show a masculine "u" and a feminine "i". The Omotic forms of the personal pronouns differ from the others, with only the plural forms in North Omotic appearing potentially to be cognate.
+ Pronouns in the Afroasiatic family, following Meaning North Omotic (Yemsa) Beja Cushitic (Baniamer) East Cushitic (Somali) West Chadic (Hausa) East Chadic (Mubi) Egyptian East Semitic (Akkadian) West Semitic (Arabic) Berber (Tashelhiyt) 'I' (ind.) tá aní aní-ga ni: ndé jnk ana:ku ʔana nkki 'me, my' (dep.) -ná- -tá- -u: -ʔe na ní -j wj -i: -ya -i: -ni: -i 'we' (ind.) ìnno hinín anná-ga inná-ga mu: ána éné jnn ni:nu: naħnu nkkwni 'you' (masc. sing. ind.) né barú:k adí-ga kai kám nt-k at-ta ʔan-ta kiji 'you' (fem. sing. ind.) batú:k ke: kín nt-ṯ at-ti ʔan-ti kmmi (f) 'you' (masc. sing., dep.) -né- -ú:k(a) ku ka ká -k -ka -ka -k 'you' (fem. sing., dep.) -ú:k(i) ku ki kí -ṯ -ki -ki -m 'you' (plural, dep.) -nitì- -ú:kna idin ku ká(n) -ṯn -kunu (m) -kina (f) -kum (m) -kunna (f) -un (m) -un-t (f) 'he' (ind.) bár barú:s isá-ga ši: ár nt-f šu huwa ntta (m) 'she' (ind.) batú:s ijá-ga ita tír nt-s ši hiya ntta-t 'he' (dep.) -bá- -ūs – ši à -f sw -šu -hu -s 'she' (dep.) ta dì -s sy -ša -ha: |
Afroasiatic languages | Numerals | Numerals
Unlike in the Indo-European or Austronesian language families, numerals in AA languages cannot be traced to a proto-system. The Cushitic and Chadic numeral systems appear to have originally been base 5. The system in Berber, Egyptian, and Semitic, however, has independent words for the numbers 6–9. Thus, it is possible that the numerals in Egyptian, Berber, and Semitic are more closely related, whereas the Cushitic and Chadic numerals are more closely related to each other. Modern Chadic numeral systems are sometimes decimal, having separate names for the numbers 1–10, and sometimes base-5, deriving the numbers 6–9 from the numbers 1–5 in some way. Some families show more than one word for a numeral: Chadic, Semitic, and Berber each have two words for two, and Semitic has four words for one. Andrzej Zaborski further notes that the numbers "one", "two", and "five" are particularly susceptible to replacement by new words, with "five" often based on a word meaning "hand".
Another factor making comparisons of AA numeral systems difficult is the possibility of borrowing. Only some Berber languages maintain the native Berber numeral system, with many using Arabic loans for higher numbers and some from any numeral beyond two. In some Berber languages, the roots for one and two are also borrowed from Arabic. Some South Cushitic numerals are borrowed from Nilotic languages, other Cushitic numerals have been borrowed from Ethiopian Semitic languages.
+ Numerals from throughout Afroasiatic, using data from , , , and Meaning Egyptian Tuareg (Berber) Akkadian (East Semitic) Arabic (West Semitic) Beja (North Cushitic) West Central Oromo (Cushitic) Lele (East Chadic) Gidar (Central Chadic) Bench (North Omotic) One m. wꜥ yiwən, yan, iğ ištēn wāḥid gáal tokko pínà tákà mat' f. wꜥ.t yiwət, išt ištiāt wāḥida gáatTwo m. sn.wj sin, sən šinā ʔiṯnāni máloob lama sò súlà nam f. sn.tj snat, sənt šittā ʔiṯnatāni máloot Three m. ḫmt.w ḵraḍ, šaṛḍ šalāšat ṯalāṯa mháy sadii súbù hókù kaz f. ḫmt.t ḵraṭt, šaṛṭ šalāš ṯalāṯ mháyt Four m. (j)fd.w kkuẓ erbet(t) ʔarbaʕa faḍíg afur pórìn póɗó od f. (j)fd.t kkuẓt erba ʔarbaʕ faḍígt Five m. dj.w səmmus, afus ḫamšat ḫamsa áy šani bày ɬé ut͡ʃ f. dj.t səmmust ḫamiš ḫams áyt Six m sjs.w sḍis šiššet sitta aságwir jaha ménéŋ ɬré sapm f. sjs.t sḍist šiš(š) sitt asagwitt Seven m sfḫ.w sa sebet(t) sabʕa asarámaab tolba mátàlíŋ bùhúl napm f. sfḫ.t sat seba sabʕ asarámaat Eight m. ḫmn.w tam samānat ṯamāniya asúmhay saddet jurgù dòdòpórò nyartn f. ḫmn.t tamt samānē ṯamānin asúmhayt Nine m. psḏ.w tẓa tišīt tisʕa aššaḍíg sagal célà váyták irstn f. psḏ.t tẓat tiše tisʕ aššaḍígt Ten m. mḏ.w mraw ešeret ʕašara támin kuḍan gòrò kláù tam f. mḏ.t mrawt ešer ʕašr támint |
Afroasiatic languages | Cognates | Cognates
Afroasiatic languages share a vocabulary of Proto-Afroasiatic origin to varying extents. Writing in 2004, John Huehnergard notes the great difficulty in establishing cognate sets across the family. Identifying cognates is difficult because the languages in question are often separated by thousands of years of development and many languages within the family have long been in contact with each other, raising the possibility of loanwords. Work is also hampered because of the poor state of documentation of many languages.
There are two etymological dictionaries of Afroasiatic, one by Christopher Ehret, and one by Vladimir Orel and Olga Stolbova, both from 1995. Both works provide highly divergent reconstructions and have been heavily criticized by other scholars. Andrzej Zaborski refers to Orel and Stolbova's reconstructions as "controversial", and Ehret's as "not acceptable to many scholars". Tom Güldemann argues that much comparative work in Afroasiatic suffers from not attempting first to reconstruct smaller units within the individual branches, but instead comparing words in the individual languages. Nevertheless, both dictionaries agree on some items and some proposed cognates are uncontroversial. Such cognates tend to rely on relatively simple sound correspondences.
{| class="wikitable" style="font-size:smaller;"
|-
|+ Some widely recognized cognates in Afroasiatic, following , , and
|-
! rowspan="2" | Meaning !! colspan="2" | Proto-Afroasiatic !! rowspan="2" | Omotic !! rowspan="2" | Cushitic !!rowspan="2" | Chadic !! rowspan="2" |Egyptian !! rowspan="2" |Semitic !! rowspan="2" | Berber
|-
! !!
|-
| to strike, to squeeze || – || *bak- || Gamo bak- 'strike' || Afar bak || Wandala bak 'to strike, beat';
(possibly) Hausa bùgaː 'to hit, strike
| bk 'kill (with a sword)' || Arabic bkk 'to squeeze, tear' || Tuareg bakkat 'to strike, pound'
|-
| blood || *dîm- *dâm- || *dam- || Kaffa damo 'blood'; Aari zomʔi 'to blood' || (cf. Oromo di:ma 'red') || Bolewa dom || (cf. jdmj 'red linen') || Akkadian damu 'blood' || Ghadames dəmmm-ən 'blood'
|-
| food || – || *kamaʔ- / *kamay- || – || Afar okm- 'to eat' || Hausa ka:ma:ma: 'snack'; Tumak ka:m 'mush' || kmj 'food' || – || –
|-
| to be old, elder || *gâd-/gûd- || *gad- || – || Oromo gada 'age group, generation'; Burji gad-uwa 'old man'|| Ngizim gad'e 'old' || – || Arabic gadd- 'grandfather, ancestor' || –
|-
| to say || *geh- || *gay- || Sheko ge 'to say'; Aari gai- 'to say' || – || Hausa gaya 'to say' || ḏwj 'to call, say' || (cf. Hebrew gʕy 'to shout') || –
|-
| tongue || *lis'- 'to lick' || *les- 'tongue' || Kaffa mi-laso 'tongue' || – || Mwaghavul liis tongue, Gisiga eles 'tongue
Hausa halshe(háɽ.ʃè) 'tongue'; lashe 'to lick'
| ns 'tongue' || Akkadian liša:nu 'tongue' || Kabyle iləs 'tongue'
|-
| to die || *maaw- || *mawut- || – || Rendille amut 'to die, to be ill' || Hausa mutu 'to die', Mubi ma:t 'to die' || mwt 'to die' || Hebrew mwt, 'to die' Geʽez mo:ta 'to die' || Kabyle ammat 'to die'
|-
| to fly, to soar || *pîr- || *pir- || (cf. Yemsa fill- 'to jump'; Dime far 'to jump') || Beja fir 'to fly' || Hausa fi:ra 'to soar'; Mafa parr, perr 'bird's flight' || pꜣ 'to fly'; prj 'to soar, rise' || Ugaritic pr 'to flee'; Arabic frr 'to flee' || Ahogar fərə-t 'to fly'
|-
| name || *sǔm / *sǐm- || *süm- || – || – || Hausa su:na: 'name'; Sura sun 'name'; Ga'anda ɬim 'name' || – || Akkadian šumu 'name' || –
|-
| to sour || *s'ăm- || – || Mocha č'àm- 'to be bitter' || PEC *cam- 'to rot' || *s'am 'sour'; Hausa (t)sʼáː.mí 'sour'
| smj 'curds'
| Arabic sumūț 'to begin to turn sour' || –
|-
| to spit || *tuf- || *tuf- || – || Beja tuf 'to spit'; Kemant təff y- 'to spit'; Somali tuf 'to spit' || Hausa tu:fa 'to spit'''|| tf 'to spit' || Aramaic tpp 'to spit'; Arabic tff 'to spit' || –
|-
| to rend, tear || *zaaʕ- || – || Gamo zaʔ 'to rend, split' || Dahalo ḏaaʕ- 'to rend, to tear (of an animal tearing its prey)' Kw'adza daʔ- 'to bite' || Ngizim dáar- 'to cut into long strips' || || Arabic zaʕy- 'to snatch violently from, tear out' || –
|}Abbreviations:'' PEC='Proto-Eastern Cushtic'. |
Afroasiatic languages | See also | See also
Afroasiatic phonetic notation
Borean languages
Languages of Africa
Languages of Asia
Nostratic languages |
Afroasiatic languages | Notes | Notes |
Afroasiatic languages | Citations | Citations |
Afroasiatic languages | Works cited | Works cited
|
Afroasiatic languages | External links | External links
Afro-Asiatic at the Linguist List MultiTree Project: Genealogical trees attributed to Delafosse 1914, Greenberg 1950–1955, Greenberg 1963, Fleming 1976, Hodge 1976, Orel & Stolbova 1995, Diakonoff 1996–1998, Ehret 1995–2000, Hayward 2000, Militarev 2005, Blench 2006, and Fleming 2006
Afro-Asiatic and Semitic genealogical trees, presented by Alexander Militarev at his talk "Genealogical classification of Afro-Asiatic languages according to the latest data" at the conference on the 70th anniversary of V.M. Illich-Svitych, Moscow, 2004; short annotations of the talks given there
Root Extension And Root Formation In Semitic And Afrasian, by Alexander Militarev in "Proceedings of the Barcelona Symposium on comparative Semitic", 19-20/11/2004. Aula Orientalis 23/1-2, 2005, pp. 83–129.
Akkadian-Egyptian lexical matches, by Alexander Militarev in "Papers on Semitic and Afroasiatic Linguistics in Honor of Gene B. Gragg." Ed. by Cynthia L. Miller. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 60. Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 2007, p. 139–145.
A comparison of Orel-Stolbova's and Ehret's Afro-Asiatic reconstructions
"Is Omotic Afro-Asiatic?" by Rolf Theil (2006)
Afro-Asiatic webpage of Roger Blench (with family tree).
*
Category:Language families
Category:Ethnic groups in Africa
Category:Ethnic groups in Asia
Category:Ethnic groups in Europe |
Afroasiatic languages | Table of Content | short description, Name, Distribution and branches, Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, Omotic, Semitic, Other proposed branches, Further subdivisions, Classification history, Origin, Timeline, Location, Phonological characteristics, Syllable structure, Consonant systems, Consonant incompatibility, Vowel systems, Tones, Similarities in grammar, syntax, and morphology, General features, Consonantal root structures, Word order, Reduplication and gemination, Nouns, Grammatical gender and number, Noun cases and states, Modifiers and agreement, Verb forms, Tenses, aspects, and moods (TAMs), "Prefix conjugation", "Suffix conjugation", Common derivational affixes, M-prefix noun derivation, Verbal extensions, <span class="anchor" id="nisba"></span>"Nisba" derivation, Vocabulary comparison, Pronouns, Numerals, Cognates, See also, Notes, Citations, Works cited, External links |
Andorra | short description | Andorra, officially the Principality of Andorra, is a sovereign landlocked country on the Iberian Peninsula, in the eastern Pyrenees in Southwestern Europe, bordered by France to the north and Spain to the south. Believed to have been created by Charlemagne, Andorra was ruled by the count of Urgell until 988, when it was transferred to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Urgell. The present principality was formed by a charter in 1278. It is currently headed by two co-princes: the Bishop of Urgell in Catalonia, Spain, and the president of France. Its capital and largest city is Andorra la Vella.
Andorra is the sixth-smallest state in Europe, with an area of and a population of approximately 87,486. The Andorran people are a Romance ethnic group closely related to Catalans. Andorra is the world's 16th-smallest country by land and 11th-smallest by population. Its capital, Andorra la Vella, is the highest capital city in Europe, at an elevation of above sea level. The official language is Catalan, but Spanish, Portuguese, and French are also commonly spoken.
Tourism in Andorra brings approximately 8 million visitors to the country annually. Andorra is not a member state of the European Union. It has been a member of the Council of Europe and of the United Nations since 1993. |
Andorra | Etymology | Etymology
The origin of the word Andorra is unknown, although several hypotheses have been proposed. The oldest is one put forward by the Greek historian Polybius (Histories III, 35, 1), who describes the Andosins, an Iberian Pre-Roman tribe, as historically located in the valleys of Andorra and facing the Carthaginian army in its passage through the Pyrenees during the Punic Wars. The word Andosini or Andosins () may derive from the Basque , meaning "big" or "giant".Diccionari d'Història de Catalunya; ed. 62; Barcelona; 1998; ; p. 42; entrada "Andorra" The Andorran toponymy shows evidence of Basque language in the area. Another theory suggests that the word Andorra may derive from the old word Anorra that contains the Basque word ("water").
Another theory suggests that Andorra may derive from Arabic (), indicating a vast land which is located among mountains or a thickly wooded place (with being the definite article). When the Moors conquered the Iberian Peninsula, the valleys of the High Pyrenees were covered by large tracts of forest. These regions were not administered by Muslims, because of the geographic difficulty of direct rule.
Other theories suggest that the term derives from the Navarro-Aragonese "andurrial", which means "land covered with bushes" or "scrubland".
The folk etymology holds that Charlemagne had named the region as a reference to the Biblical Canaanite valley of Endor or Andor (where the Midianites had been defeated), a name bestowed by his heir and son Louis the Pious after defeating the Moors in the "wild valleys of Hell". |
Andorra | History | History |
Andorra | Prehistory | Prehistory
left|thumb|Roc de les Bruixes prehistorical sanctuary in Canillo (detail)
La Balma de la Margineda, found by archaeologists at Sant Julià de Lòria, was settled in 9,500 BCE as a passing place between the two sides of the Pyrenees. The seasonal camp was perfectly located for hunting and fishing by the groups of hunter-gatherers from Ariege and Segre.
During the Neolithic, a group of people moved to the Valley of Madriu (the present-day Natural Park located in Escaldes-Engordany declared UNESCO World Heritage Site) as a permanent camp in 6640 BCE. The population of the valley grew cereals, raised domestic livestock, and developed commercial trade with people from Ségre and Occitania.
Other archaeological deposits include the Tombs of Segudet (Ordino) and Feixa del Moro (Sant Julià de Lòria), both dated in 4900–4300 BCE as an example of the Urn culture in Andorra. The model of small settlements began to evolve to complex urbanism during the Bronze Age. Metallurgical items of iron, ancient coins, and reliquaries can be found in the ancient sanctuaries scattered around the country.
The sanctuary of Roc de les Bruixes (Stone of the Witches) is perhaps the most important archeological complex of this age in Andorra, located in the parish of Canillo, about the rituals of funerals, ancient scripture and engraved stone murals. |
Andorra | Iberian and Roman Andorra | Iberian and Roman Andorra
left|thumb|Hannibal's route (red) during the Second Punic War. The Iberian tribes (green) fought against the Carthaginian army in the Pyrenees
The inhabitants of the valleys were traditionally associated with the Iberians and historically located in Andorra as the Iberian tribe Andosins or Andosini () during the 7th and 2nd centuries BC. Influenced by the Celtic, Aquitanian, Basque and Iberian languages, the locals developed some current toponyms. Early writings and documents relating to this group of people goes back to the second century BC by the Greek writer Polybius in his Histories during the Punic Wars.
Some of the most significant remains of this era are the Castle of the Roc d'Enclar (part of the early Marca Hispanica), l'Anxiu in Les Escaldes and Roc de L'Oral in Encamp.
The presence of Roman influence is recorded from the 2nd century BCE to the 5th century CE. The places with the most Roman presence are in Camp Vermell (Red Field) in Sant Julià de Lòria, and in some places in Encamp and in the Roc d'Enclar. People continued trading, mainly with wine and cereals, with the Roman cities of Urgellet (the present-day La Seu d'Urgell) and across Segre through the via romana Strata Ceretana (also known as Strata Confluetana). |
Andorra | Visigoths and Carolingians: the legend of Charlemagne | Visigoths and Carolingians: the legend of Charlemagne
right|thumb|Charlemagne instructing his son, Louis the Pious
After the fall of the Roman Empire, Andorra came under the influence of the Visigoths, the Kingdom of Toledo, and the Diocese of Urgell. The Visigoths remained in the valleys for 200 years, during which time Christianity spread. When the Muslim Empire of Al-Andalus replaced the ruling Visigoths in most of the Iberian Peninsula, Andorra was sheltered from these Arab invaders by the Franks.
Tradition holds that Charles the Great (Charlemagne) granted a charter to the Andorran people for a contingent of 5,000 soldiers under the command of Marc Almugaver, in return for fighting against the Moors near Porté-Puymorens (Cerdanya).
right|thumb|The six old parishes, each named for their patron saint, as depicted in the Acta de Consagració i Dotació de la Catedral de la Seu d'Urgell (839)
Andorra remained part of the Frankish Marca Hispanica, the buffer zone between the Frankish Empire and the Muslim territories, Andorra being part of the territory ruled by the Count of Urgell and eventually the bishop of the Diocese of Urgell. Tradition also holds that it was guaranteed by the son of Charlemagne, Louis the Pious, writing the Carta de Poblament or a local municipal charter .
In 988, Count Borrell II of Urgell gave the Andorran valleys to the Diocese of Urgell in exchange for land in Cerdanya. Since then, the bishop of Urgell, based in Seu d'Urgell, has been co-prince of Andorra.
The first document that mentions Andorra as a territory is the Acta de Consagració i Dotació de la Catedral de la Seu d'Urgell (Deed of Consecration and Endowment of the Cathedral of La Seu d'Urgell). The document, dated 839, depicts the six old parishes of the Andorran valleys that made up the country's administrative division. |
Andorra | Middle Ages: The Paréages and the founding of the Co-Principality | Middle Ages: The Paréages and the founding of the Co-Principality
left|thumb|Sant Joan de Caselles church, dating from the 11th century, part of the Andorran Romanesque heritage
Before 1095, Andorra had no military protection, and the bishop of Urgell, who knew that the count of Urgell wanted to reclaim the Andorran valleys, asked the Lord of Caboet for help and protection. In 1095, the lord of Caboet and the bishop of Urgell signed under oath a declaration of their co-sovereignty over Andorra. Arnalda de Caboet, daughter of Arnau of Caboet, married the viscount of Castellbò. Their daughter, Ermessenda de Castellbò, married the count of Foix, Roger-Bernard II. Roger-Bernard II and Ermessenda shared rule over Andorra with the bishop of Urgell.
In the 13th century, a military dispute arose between the bishop of Urgell and the count of Foix as aftermath of the Cathar Crusade. The conflict was resolved in 1278 with the mediation of the king of Aragon, Peter III, between the bishop and the count, by the signing of the first paréage, which provided that Andorra's sovereignty be shared between the count of Foix (whose title would ultimately transfer to the French head of state) and the bishop of Urgell, in Catalonia. This gave the principality its territory and political form.
A second paréage was signed in 1288 after a dispute when the count of Foix ordered the construction of a castle in Roc d'Enclar. The document was ratified by the noble notary Jaume Orig of Puigcerdà, and construction of military structures in the country was prohibited.
In 1364, the political organisation of the country named the figure of the syndic (now spokesman and president of the parliament) as representative of the Andorrans to their co-princes, making possible the creation of local departments (comuns, quarts and veïnats). After being ratified by Bishop Francesc Tovia and Count John I, the Consell de la Terra or Consell General de les Valls (General Council of the Valleys) was founded in 1419, the second oldest parliament in Europe. The syndic Andreu d'Alàs and the General Council organised the creation of the Justice Courts (La Cort de Justicia) in 1433 with the co-princes and the collection of taxes like foc i lloc (literally "fire and site", a national tax active since then).
right|thumb|Apse fresco of Sant Miquel d'Engolasters church, painted by Mestre de Santa Coloma during the 12th century
Although there are remains of ecclesiastical works dating before the 9th century (Sant Vicenç d'Enclar or Església de Santa Coloma), Andorra developed exquisite Romanesque Art during the 9th through 14th centuries, particularly in the construction of churches, bridges, religious murals and statues of the Virgin and Child (Our Lady of Meritxell being the most important). Nowadays, the Romanesque buildings that form part of Andorra's cultural heritage stand out in a remarkable way, with an emphasis on Església de Sant Esteve, Sant Joan de Caselles, Església de Sant Miquel d'Engolasters, Sant Martí de la Cortinada and the medieval bridges of Margineda and Escalls among many others.
The Catalan Pyrenees were embryonic of the Catalan language at the end of the 11th century. Andorra was influenced by this language, which was adopted locally decades before it expanded to the rest of the Crown of Aragon.
The local economy during the Middle Ages was based on livestock, agriculture, furs and weavers. Later, at the end of the 11th century, the first iron foundries began to appear in Northern Parishes like Ordino, much appreciated by the master artisans who developed the art of the forges, an important economic activity in the country from the 15th century. |
Andorra | 16th to 18th centuries | 16th to 18th centuries
right|thumb|Main hall of Tribunal de Corts (High Court of Justice) inside Casa de la Vall, the central Judiciary Court of Andorra
In 1601 the Tribunal de Corts (High Court of Justice) was created as a result of Huguenot rebellions in France, Inquisition courts coming from Spain and witchcraft-related beliefs native to the area, in the context of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation.
With the passage of time, the co-title to Andorra passed to the kings of Navarre. After Henry III of Navarre became king of France, he issued an edict in 1607 that established the head of the French state and the bishop of Urgell as Co-Princes of Andorra, a political arrangement that still holds.
During 1617, communal councils form the sometent (popular militia or army) to deal with the rise of bandolerisme (brigandage) and the Consell de la Terra was defined and structured in terms of its composition, organisation and competences current today.
Andorra continued with the same economic system that it had during the 12th–14th centuries with a large production of metallurgy (fargues, a system similar to Farga Catalana) and with the introduction of tobacco circa 1692 and import trade. In 1371 and 1448, the co-princes ratified the fair of Andorra la Vella, the most important annual national festival commercially ever since.
right|thumb|Manor house of the Rossell family in Ordino, Casa Rossell, built in 1611. The family also owned the largest ironwork forges in Andorra as Farga Rossell and Farga del Serrat
The country had a unique and experienced guild of weavers, Confraria de Paraires i Teixidors, in Escaldes-Engordany. Founded in 1604, it took advantage of the local thermal waters. By this time, the country was characterised by the social system of prohoms (wealthy society) and casalers (rest of the population with smaller economic acquisition), deriving from the tradition of pubilla and hereu.
Three centuries after its foundation, the Consell de la Terra located its headquarters and the Tribunal de Corts in Casa de la Vall in 1702. The manor house built in 1580 served as a noble fortress of the Busquets family. Inside the parliament was placed the Closet of the six keys (Armari de les sis claus), representative of each Andorran parish, where the Andorran constitution and other documents and laws were later kept.
In both the Reapers' War and the War of the Spanish Succession, the Andorran people (while professing to be a neutral country) supported the Catalans who saw their rights reduced in 1716. The reaction was the promotion of Catalan writings in Andorra, with cultural works such as the Book of Privileges (Llibre de Privilegis de 1674), Manual Digest (1748) by Antoni Fiter i Rossell or the Polità andorrà (1763) by Antoni Puig. |
Andorra | 19th century: the New Reform and the Andorran Question <span class="anchor" id="New Reform of Andorra"></span> | 19th century: the New Reform and the Andorran Question
thumb|upright|left|Guillem d'Areny-Plandolit led the New Reform of 1866
After the French Revolution, Napoleon I reestablished the Co-Principate in 1809 and removed the French medieval title. In 1812–1813, the First French Empire annexed Catalonia during the Peninsular War () and divided the region into four départements, with Andorra as a part of the district of Puigcerdà. In 1814, an imperial decree reestablished the independence and economy of Andorra.
During this period, Andorra's late medieval institutions and rural culture remained largely unchanged. In 1866, the syndic Guillem d'Areny-Plandolit led the reformist group in a Council General of 24 members elected by suffrage limited to heads of families. The Council General replaced the aristocratic oligarchy that previously ruled the state.Page 966, Volume 1, Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, 1910–1911
The New Reform () began after ratification by both Co-Princes and established the basis of the constitution and symbolssuch as the tricolour flagof Andorra. A new service economy arose as a demand of the valley inhabitants and began to build infrastructure such as hotels, spa resorts, roads and telegraph lines.
thumb|upright=0.85|Canillo scenery during the Revolution of 1881
The authorities of the Co-Princes banned casinos and betting houses throughout the country. The ban resulted in an economic conflict and the Revolution of 1881, which began when revolutionaries assaulted the house of the syndic on 8 December 1880, and established the Provisional Revolutionary Council led by Joan Pla i Calvo and Pere Baró i Mas. The Provisional Revolutionary Council allowed for the construction of casinos and spas by foreign companies. From 7 to 9 June 1881, the loyalists of Canillo and Encamp reconquered the parishes of Ordino and La Massana by establishing contact with the revolutionary forces in Escaldes-Engordany. After a day of combat the Treaty of the Bridge of Escalls was signed on 10 June. The council was replaced and new elections were held. The economic situation worsened, as the populace was divided over the – the "Andorran Question" in relation to the Eastern Question. The struggles continued between pro-bishops, pro-French, and nationalists based on the troubles of Canillo in 1882 and 1885.
Andorra participated in the cultural movement of the Catalan Renaixença. Between 1882 and 1887, the first academic schools were formed where trilingualism coexisted with the official language, Catalan. Romantic authors from France and Spain reported the awakening of the national consciousness of the country. Jacint Verdaguer lived in Ordino during the 1880s where he wrote and shared works related to the Renaixença with writer and photographer Joaquim de Riba.
In 1848, Fromental Halévy had premiered the opera Le val d'Andorre to great success in Europe, where the national consciousness of the valleys was exposed in the romantic work during the Peninsular War. |
Andorra | 20th and 21st century: Modernisation of the country and constitutional Andorra | 20th and 21st century: Modernisation of the country and constitutional Andorra
thumb|right|upright=0.8|Boris Skossyreff, briefly self-proclaimed King of Andorra in 1934
In 1933 France occupied Andorra following social unrest which occurred before elections due to the Revolution of 1933 and the FHASA strikes (Vagues de FHASA); the revolt led by Joves Andorrans (a labour union group related to the Spanish CNT and FAI) called for political reforms, the universal suffrage vote of all Andorrans and acted in defence of the rights of local and foreign workers during the construction of FHASA's hydroelectric power station in Encamp. On 5 April 1933 Joves Andorrans seized the Andorran Parliament. These actions were preceded by the arrival of Colonel René-Jules Baulard with 50 gendarmes and the mobilisation of 200 local militias or sometent led by the Síndic Francesc Cairat.
On 6 July 1934, adventurer and nobleman Boris Skossyreff, with his promise of freedoms and modernisation of the country and wealth through the establishment of a tax haven and foreign investments, received the support of the members of the General Council to proclaim himself the sovereign of Andorra. On 8 July 1934 Boris issued a proclamation in Urgell, declaring himself Boris I, King of Andorra, simultaneously declaring war on the Bishop of Urgell and approving the King's constitution on 10 July. He was arrested by the Co-Prince and Bishop Justí Guitart i Vilardebó and their authorities on 20 July and ultimately expelled from Spain. From 1936 until 1940, a French military detachment of Garde Mobile led by well-known Colonel René-Jules Baulard was garrisoned in Andorra to secure the principality against disruption from the Spanish Civil War and Francoist Spain and also face the rise of Republicanism in the aftermath of the 1933 Revolution. During the Spanish Civil War, the inhabitants of Andorra welcomed refugees from both sides, and many of them settled permanently in the country thus contributing to the subsequent economic boom and the entry into the capitalist era of Andorra. Francoist troops reached the Andorran border in the later stages of the war.
thumb|Enthronement as Co-Prince in 1942 of Bishop Ramón Iglesias (centre). The local comite was led by Francesc Cairat (left), the First General Syndic with the longest regencie, from 1936 to 1960
During World War II, Andorra remained neutral and was an important smuggling route between Vichy France and Francoist Spain. Many Andorrans criticised the passivity of the General Council for impeding both the entry and expulsion of foreigners and refugees, committing economic crimes, reducing the rights of citizens and sympathy with Francoism. General Council members justified the council's political and diplomatic actions as necessary for Andorra's survival and the protection of its sovereignty. Andorra was relatively unscathed by the two world wars and the Spanish Civil War. Certain groups formed to help victims of oppression in Nazi-occupied countries, while participating in smuggling to help Andorra survive. Among the most prominent was the Hostal Palanques Evasion Network Command, which, in contact with the British MI6, helped almost 400 fugitives, among whom were Allied military personnel. The Command remained active between 1941 and 1944, although there were struggles with pro-Axis informers and Gestapo agents in Andorra.
thumb|Co-Prince Charles de Gaulle in the streets of Sant Julià de Lòria in Andorra, October 1967
In the capital city there was a smuggling black market of propaganda, culture and cinematic art not favourable to totalitarian regimes, promulgated in such places as the Hotel Mirador or the Casino Hotel, as a meeting place for Free French forces and a route for escorting crashed Allied pilots out of Europe. The network was maintained after the war, when film societies were formed, where movies, music and books censored in Franco's Spain were imported, becoming an anti-censorship attraction for the Catalan or foreign public even within Andorra. Andorran Group (Agrupament Andorrà), an anti-fascist organisation linked to the Occitanie's French Resistance, accused the French representative (veguer) of collaboration with Nazism.
The Andorran opening to the capitalist economy resulted in two axes: mass tourism and the country's tax exemption. The first steps towards the capitalist boom date from the 1930s, with the construction of FHASA and the creation of professional banking with Banc Agrícol (1930) and Crèdit Andorrà (1949), later with Banca Mora (1952), Banca Cassany (1958) and SOBANCA (1960). Shortly after, activities such as skiing and shopping become a tourist attraction, with the inauguration of ski resorts and cultural entities in the late 1930s. All in all, a renovated hotel industry has developed. In April 1968 a social health insurance system was created (CASS).
thumb|Streets of the city centre of Andorra la Vella in 1986. From the same year until 1989 Andorra normalised the economic treaties with the EEC|alt=
thumb|right|Foreign Minister of Andorra Gilbert Saboya meeting Austrian foreign minister Sebastian Kurz at the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in 2014
The Andorran government necessarily involved planning, projection and forecasts for the future: with the official visit of the French co-prince Charles de Gaulle in 1967 and 1969, it was given approval for the economic boom and national demands within the framework of human rights and international openness.
Andorra experienced an era commonly known as the "Andorran dream" (similar to the American Dream) along with the Trente Glorieuses: the mass culture rooted the country experiencing radical changes in the economy and culture. Proof of this was Ràdio Andorra, the top musical radio station in Europe in this period, with guests and speakers of great importance promoting musical hits of chanson française, swing, rhythm & blues, jazz, rock and roll and American country music. During this period Andorra achieved a GDP per capita and a life expectancy higher than the most standard countries of the current economy.
Given its relative isolation, Andorra has existed outside the mainstream of European history, with few ties to countries other than France, Spain and Portugal. But in recent times its thriving tourist industry, along with developments in transport and communications, have removed the country from its isolation. Since 1976 the country has seen the need to reform Andorran institutions due to anachronisms in sovereignty, human rights and the balance of powers as well as the need to adapt legislation to modern demands. In 1982 a first separation of powers took place when instituting the Govern d'Andorra, under the name of the executive board (Consell Executiu), chaired by the first prime minister Òscar Ribas Reig with the co-princes' approval. In 1989 the Principality signed an agreement with the European Economic Community to regularise trade relations.
Its political system was modernised in 1993 after the Andorran constitutional referendum, when the constitution was drafted by the co-princes and the General Council and approved on 14 MarchNohlen, D. & Stöver, P. (2010) Elections in Europe: A data handbook, p. 160 by 74.2% of voters, with a 76% turnout.Nohlen & Stöver, p. 162 The first elections under the new constitution were held later in the year. The same year, Andorra became a member of the United Nations and the Council of Europe.
Andorra formalised diplomatic relations with the United States in 1996, participating in the 51st UN General Assembly. First General Syndic Marc Forné took part in a speech in Catalan in the General Assembly to defend the reform of the organisation, and after three days he took part in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to defend Andorra's linguistic rights and economy. In 2006 a monetary agreement with the European Union was formalised that allows Andorra to use the euro officially, as well as minting its own euro coins. |
Andorra | Politics | Politics
Andorra is a parliamentary co-principality with the bishop of Urgell and the president of France as co-princes. This peculiarity makes the president of France, in his capacity as prince of Andorra, an elected monarch, although he is not elected by a popular vote of the Andorran people. The politics of Andorra take place in a framework of a parliamentary representative democracy with a unicameral legislature, and of a pluriform multi-party system. The prime minister is the chief executive.
The current prime minister is Xavier Espot Zamora of the Democrats for Andorra (DA). Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both government and parliament.
The Parliament of Andorra is known as the General Council. The General Council consists of between 28 and 42 councillors. The councillors serve for four-year terms, and elections are held between the 30th and 40th days following the dissolution of the previous Council.
Half are elected in equal numbers by each of the seven administrative parishes, and the other half of the councillors are elected in a single national constituency. Voters vote for parties, not candidates; a voter votes for a party for the parish councillors and a party for the at-large councilors, and the winners come from party lists. Fifteen days after the election, the councillors hold their inauguration. During this session, the General Syndic, who is the head of the General Council, and the Subsyndic General, his assistant, are elected. Eight days later, the Council convenes once more. During this session, the prime minister is chosen from among the councillors.
thumb|Casa de la Vall, the historical and ceremonial Andorran Parliament
Candidates can be proposed by a minimum of one-fifth of the councillors. The Council then elects the candidate with the absolute majority of votes to be prime minister. The Syndic General then notifies the co-princes, who in turn appoint the elected candidate as the prime minister of Andorra. The General Council is also responsible for proposing and passing laws. Bills may be presented to the council as Private Members' Bills by three of the local Parish Councils jointly or by at least one tenth of the citizens of Andorra.
thumb|left|The New Parliament of Andorra, headquarters of the General Council since 2011, next to Casa de la Vall
The council also approves the annual budget of the principality. The government must submit the proposed budget for parliamentary approval at least two months before the previous budget expires. If the budget is not approved by the first day of the next year, the previous budget is extended until a new one is approved. Once any bill is approved, the Syndic General is responsible for presenting it to the co-princes so that they may sign and enact it.
thumb|The centre of government in Andorra la Vella
If the prime minister is not satisfied with the council, he may request that the co-princes dissolve the council and order new elections. In turn, the councillors have the power to remove the prime minister from office. After a motion of censure is approved by at least one-fifth of the councillors, the council will vote and if it receives the absolute majority of votes, the prime minister is removed. |
Andorra | Law and criminal justice | Law and criminal justice
The judiciary is composed of the Magistrates Court, the Criminal Law Court, the High Court of Andorra, and the Constitutional Court. The High Court of Justice is composed of five judges: one appointed by the prime minister, one each by the co-princes, one by the Syndic General, and one by the judges and magistrates. It is presided over by the member appointed by the Syndic General and the judges hold office for six-year terms.
The magistrates and judges are appointed by the High Court, as is the president of the Criminal Law Court. The High Court also appoints members of the Office of the Attorney General. The Constitutional Court is responsible for interpreting the Constitution and reviewing all appeals of unconstitutionality against laws and treaties. It is composed of four judges, one appointed by each of the co-princes and two by the General Council. They serve eight-year terms. The Court is presided over by one of the judges on a two-year rotation so that each judge at one point will preside over the Court. |
Andorra | Foreign relations, defence and security | Foreign relations, defence and security
thumb|The embassy of Andorra in Brussels
Andorra does not have its own armed forces, although there is a small ceremonial army. Responsibility for defending the nation rests primarily with France and Spain. However, in case of emergencies or natural disasters, the Sometent (an alarm) is called and all able-bodied men between 21 and 60 of Andorran nationality must serve. This is why all Andorrans, and especially the head of each house (usually the eldest able-bodied man of a house) should, by law, keep a rifle, even though the law also states that the police will offer a firearm in case of need. Andorra is a full member of the United Nations (UN), the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and has a special agreement with the European Union (EU). After the constitution was ratified, Andorra would later establish diplomatic relations with their major allies aside from neighbours France and Spain such as the United Kingdom in 1994 and the United States in 1995. It also has observer status at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). On 16 October 2020, Andorra became the 190th member of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), during the COVID-19 pandemic. |
Andorra | Military | Military
Andorra has a small army, which has historically been raised or reconstituted at various dates, but has never in modern times amounted to a standing army. The basic principle of Andorran defence is that all able-bodied men are available to fight if called upon by the summoning of the Sometent (a civil defence organisation of Andorra, made up of the heads of households). The Sometent was used sparingly against French "Lutheran" raids during the late 16th century. Being a landlocked country, Andorra has no navy.
Before World War I, Andorra maintained an armed militia force of about 600 part-time militiamen under the supervision of a Captain (Capità or Cap de Sometent) and a Lieutenant (Desener or Lloctinent del Capità). This body was not liable for service outside the principality and was commanded by two officials (veguers) appointed by France and the Bishop of Urgell.
In the modern era, the army has consisted of a very small body of volunteers willing to undertake ceremonial duties. Uniforms and weaponry were handed down from generation to generation within families and communities.
The army's role in internal security was largely taken over by the formation of the Police Corps of Andorra in 1931. Brief civil disorder associated with the elections of 1933 led to assistance being sought from the French National Gendarmerie, with a detachment resident in Andorra for two months under the command of René-Jules Baulard. The Andorran Police was reformed in the following year, with eleven soldiers appointed to supervisory roles. The force consisted of six corporals, one for each parish (although there are currently seven parishes, there were only six until 1978), plus four junior staff officers to co-ordinate action, and a commander with the rank of major. It was the responsibility of the six corporals, each in his own parish, to be able to raise a fighting force from among the able-bodied men of the parish.
The only permanent section of the present-day Sometent is a twelve-man ceremonial unit. However, all able-bodied men are technically available for military service, with a requirement for each family to have access to a firearm. An area weapon, such as a shotgun per household, is unregulated; however, ranged weapons, such as pistols and rifles, require a licence. The army has not fought for more than 700 years, and its main responsibility is to present the flag of Andorra at official ceremonial functions. According to Marc Forné Molné, Andorra's military budget is strictly from voluntary donations, and the availability of full-time volunteers.
The only more recent general emergency call to the Sometent was given during the floods of 1982 in the Catalan Pyrenees (when 12 Andorran citizens perished), to help the population and establish a public order along with the local police units. |
Andorra | Andorra in the Council of Europe | Andorra in the Council of Europe
Andorra is one of the 46 member states of the Council of Europe, having joined on 10 November 1994. Through its membership in the Council of Europe, Andorra is or has been involved in the following areas:
Prevention of torture: Inspections by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture in detention facilities such as juvenile centres, immigration detention sites, police stations, and psychiatric hospitals.
Fight against racism: Monitoring and advice provided by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance.
Protection of social rights: Oversight by the European Committee of Social Rights under the European Social Charter, which guarantees social and economic human rights.
Protection of minorities: Although the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities sets up a monitoring system, Andorra has not signed this convention.
Anti-corruption: Evaluations by the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) to improve national capacities against corruption.
Countering money laundering and terrorism financing: Reviews by the MONEYVAL Committee and monitoring by COP198.
Democracy through law: Advisory support from the Venice Commission, which assists in aligning constitutional frameworks with European democratic standards.
Combating human trafficking: Monitoring by the Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA) through regular evaluation reports.
Enhancing the justice system: Assessments by the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) and the Consultative Council of European Prosecutors (CCPE) to improve judicial efficiency.
Cultural contributions: In 1994, Andorra donated "Incles Valley, Andorra" (oil on canvas by Francesc Galobardes) as part of the council's art collection, symbolising its commitment to human rights and cultural heritage.
Andorra's representation in the Council includes:
Committee of Ministers: Represented by Imma Tor Faus (Minister for Foreign Affairs) and Andreu Jordi (Ambassador and Permanent Representative).
Parliamentary Assembly: A delegation of 2 representatives and 2 substitutes.
Congress of Local and Regional Authorities: A delegation of 2 representatives and 2 substitutes.
European Court of Human Rights: Represented by Judge Pere Pastor Vilanova, with 14 applications allocated to a decision body in 2024.
Commissioner for Human Rights: Conducts visits to monitor the human rights situation and engage in dialogue with national authorities and civil society.
Council of Europe Treaties: Andorra has ratified and signed several treaties that reinforce its commitment to the council's principles.
For 2025, the Council of Europe's budget is €655.7 million, with Andorra contributing €368,842. |
Andorra | Police Corps | Police Corps
thumb|National Police patrolling the central area of the capital city
Andorra maintains a small but modern and well-equipped internal police force, with around 240 police officers supported by civilian assistants. The principal services supplied by the corps are uniformed community policing, criminal detection, border control, and traffic policing. There are also small specialist units including police dogs, mountain rescue, and a bomb disposal team. |
Andorra | GIPA | GIPA
The ' (GIPA) is a small special forces squad trained in counter-terrorism, and hostage recovery tasks. Although it is the closest in style to an active military force, it is part of the Police Corps, and not the army. As terrorist and hostage situations are a rare threat to the country, the GIPA is commonly assigned to prisoner escort duties, and at other times to routine policing. |
Andorra | Fire brigade | Fire brigade
The Andorran Fire Brigade, with headquarters at Santa Coloma, operates from four modern fire stations, and has a staff of around 120 firefighters. The service is equipped with 16 heavy appliances (fire tenders, turntable ladders, and specialist four-wheel drive vehicles), four light support vehicles (cars and vans) and four ambulances.
Historically, the families of the six ancient parishes of Andorra maintained local arrangements to assist each other in fighting fires. The first fire pump purchased by the government was acquired in 1943. Serious fires which lasted for two days in December 1959 led to calls for a permanent fire service, and the Andorran Fire Brigade was formed on 21 April 1961.
The fire service maintains full-time cover with five fire crews on duty at any time: two at the brigade's headquarters in Santa Coloma, and one crew at each of the other three fire stations. |
Andorra | Geography | Geography
thumb|right|Map of Andorra with its seven parishes labelled
thumb|Topographic map of Andorra |
Andorra | Parishes | Parishes
Andorra consists of seven parishes:
30px| Andorra la Vella
30px| Canillo
30px| Encamp
35px| Escaldes-Engordany
35px| La Massana
35px| Ordino
35px| Sant Julià de Lòria |
Andorra | Physical geography | Physical geography
Due to its location in the eastern Pyrenees mountain range, Andorra consists predominantly of rugged mountains, the highest being the Coma Pedrosa at , and the average elevation of Andorra is .Atlas of Andorra (1991), Andorran Government. . These are dissected by three narrow valleys in a Y shape that combine into one as the main stream, the Gran Valira river, leaves the country for Spain (at Andorra's lowest point of ). Andorra's land area is . |
Andorra | Environment | Environment
Phytogeographically, Andorra belongs to the Atlantic European province of the Circumboreal Region within the Boreal Kingdom. According to the WWF, the territory of Andorra belongs to the ecoregion of Pyrenees conifer and mixed forests. Andorra had a 2018 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 4.45/10, ranking it 127th globally out of 172 countries. In Andorra forest cover is around 34% of the total land area, equivalent to 16,000 hectares (ha) of forest in 2020, which was unchanged from 1990. In 2020, naturally regenerating forest covered 16,000 hectares (ha) and planted forest covered 0 hectares (ha). Of the naturally regenerating forest 0% was reported to be primary forest (consisting of native tree species with no clearly visible indications of human activity) and around 0% of the forest area was found within protected areas. |
Andorra | Important Bird Area | Important Bird Area
The whole country has been recognised as a single Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International, because it is important for forest and mountain birds and supports populations of red-billed choughs, citril finches and rock buntings. |
Andorra | Climate | Climate
Andorra has alpine, continental and oceanic climates, depending on altitude. Its higher elevation means there is, on average, more snow in winter and it is slightly cooler in summer. The diversity of landmarks, the different orientation of the valleys and the irregularity relief typical of the Mediterranean climates make the country have a great diversity of microclimates that hinder the general dominance of the high mountain climate. The great differences of altitude in the minimum and maximum points, together with the influence of a Mediterranean climate, develop the climate of the Andorran Pyrenees.
When in precipitation, a global model characterised by convective and abundant rains can be defined during spring and summer, which can last until autumn (May, June and August are usually the rainiest months). In winter, however, it is less rainy, except in the highlands, subject to the influence of fronts from the Atlantic, which explains the great amount of snowfall in the Andorran mountains. The temperature regime is characterised, broadly, by a temperate summer and a long and cold winter, in accordance with the mountainous condition of the Principality.
As a small mountainous country, Andorra is highly vulnerable to climate change. Temperatures in its high-altitude regions have risen by about 0.17 °C per decade, while annual rainfall has decreased by 49 mm. These shifts are impacting water resources and snow cover, which are key elements for Andorra's tourism-driven economy. The number of days with enough snow for skiing is declining, and the snow line is retreating to higher altitudes.
Although its national greenhouse gas emissions are one of the lowest in the world (534 thousand tonnes emitted in 2023), Andorra has a strong climate change mitigation strategy, with a focus on renewable energy and energy efficiency. In its Nationally Determined Contribution, Andorra has committed to reducing its emissions by 55% by 2030, and to carbon neutrality by 2050. However, the adaptation part of the strategy is still in early stages and may be difficult and costly to implement. Given the country's reliance on tourism, speeding up adaptation is essential for building a more resilient economy. |
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