Talk:Afroasiatic languages/Archive 3

hey something is not here
where Hebrew language is? I cannot see it

if it there is so sorry

ps want a joke? how does a rabbi make his coffee? Hebrews it. 95.105.154.97 (talk) 13:03, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
 * The intro contains a link to Hebrew? Not sure what you mean. Ogress 13:06, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Hebrew is a mentioned in various places as a Semitic language, including in the current version of the final paragraph of the lead. However, with only 9 million speakers, it is not mentioned as prominently as some other AA languages, including several Semitic languages (Arabic, Amharic, Tigrinya) that have more speakers or just as many.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:06, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

Graphics?
hey! i've been contributing to this article for a second now, and i'm wondering if there are any svg graphics on the wishlists of those more well-read in the field would want. :) i can potentially do maps, charts, or anything, really. Remsense (talk) 04:00, 1 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Most likely yes, thank you! The first one I can think of is AA with six co-equal branches rather than showing any subgroupings. I will try to think of anything else.—Ermenrich (talk) 12:36, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
 * in the style of [[Media:IndoEuropeanTree.svg|this famed one]], right? 😀 Remsense (talk) 16:19, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
 * A little simpler will do ;-).--Ermenrich (talk) 16:38, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
 * of course, i just meant the broad style and layout! will update when i come up with something. when you say no subgroupings, you mean no subbranches of each of the first-order six? do you want languages listed that are considered a part of each first-order branch? Remsense (talk) 16:45, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
 * What I mean is: Wikimedia currently has various versions of e.g. Ehret's classification of Semitic, Berber, and Egyptian as forming a subbranch together of AA. What we really need is just a simple diagram with six branches coming from AA. Beyond that, whether we show the subbranches of e.g. Semitic, I leave to you. It could be interesting!--Ermenrich (talk) 16:50, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
 * hey, sorry for the long wait! the perfect really truly can be the enemy of the good for me. i mocked up a minimum viable version, and i have a few places i made choices i'm curious of your input.
 * Afroasiatic 6-Family Diagram.svg
 * First, I know the names Kemic and Amazigh are not standard for the wiki, but I felt uncomfortable using 'Berber' in a new document, as it were, though I'm not an expert on the connotations. Second, the format is a mess, but it's viable for people to edit and build upon, I was going to handwrite the SVG, but I decided to just go for Inkscape instead. They're not sorted in any respectable way, mostly because I am not qualified to do so, or make a delineation between language and language family here. hope this is helpful!! Remsense (talk) 17:10, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your hard work! Unfortunately, I can't open the file, there seems to be some sort of error.
 * I would just use "Egyptian" rather than Kemic (I'm not aware of that being used in secondary literature. Second, on Berber, I would just quote Kossmann (2012):
 * Some Berber activists object to the name ‘Berber’, which they associate with ‘Barbarian’, and prefer terms such as ‘the Amazigh language’. As most Berberologists, including some who are very active in Berber culture and politics, continue to use the term ‘Berber’ in scientific publications, this will be done here too. I would support using the term that's used by most scholars in the field.--Ermenrich (talk) 17:40, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
 * thank you for the policy w/r/t family names! i'll conform to it, as aforementioned i'm no expert.
 * I'm not sure why it doesn't show up sometimes, I presume it's some sort of temporary caching issue. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e7/Afroasiatic_6-Family_Diagram.svg/832px-Afroasiatic_6-Family_Diagram.svg.png is an automatic PNG render of the SVG. Remsense (talk) 17:57, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Excellent, I can see it now! It's good work!
 * Might I suggest:
 * adding Oromo and Somali under Cushitic
 * Numidian as extinct under Berber, and Tuareg as a living language
 * adding Wolaitta under Omotic?--Ermenrich (talk) 18:32, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I've implemented these suggestions! sorry for the wait. i've also structured the document such that changes should be a lot easier to just snap into place to other inkscape users, like fixing the text baselines and such.
 * also, i'm wondering if it's worth adding hyperlinks to each box that take one to the respective wikipedia article. Remsense (talk) 20:10, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Also, for Egyptian, it might be worth hyphenating the language as Egyptian-Coptic or something like that.--Ermenrich (talk) 18:33, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I was thinking about diagramming different stages of languages like in the IE one, but that feels like it's opening up a whole can of worms! will implement and think things over, thank you for your guidance! Remsense (talk) 18:37, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
 * not to unduly bump, but is anyone else interested in any other changes/additions/specifications before it's added to the article proper? Remsense (talk) 23:57, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi Remsense, could you provide a link to the latest version?—-Ermenrich (talk) 00:04, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
 * No problem! It's at the same link on Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Afroasiatic_6-Family_Diagram.svg Remsense (talk) 01:01, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
 * What’s the difference between dead and extinct?— Ermenrich (talk) 01:57, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
 * oh—i apologize if this is not a generally-known distinction among linguistics. I've understood the terms as related in the opening paragraph of Extinct language, that:
 * An extinct language is a language that no longer has any speakers, especially if the language has no living descendants. In contrast, a dead language is one that is no longer the native language of any community, even if it is still in use, like Latin.
 * So, I categorized Egyptian as dead but not extinct, because it is still used liturgically, though it has no native speakers, from my understanding. It has occurred to me that the distinction could potentially have some edge cases, as obviously extinct languages that have received academic study in some sense have "speakers", but it doesn't feel like too problematic of a grey area to navigate for the purposes of a diagram like this. please let me know if i'm wrong!Remsense (talk) 05:31, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I think this looks good - let's add it to the article!--Ermenrich (talk) 13:16, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
 * So, I categorized Egyptian as dead but not extinct, because it is still used liturgically, though it has no native speakers, from my understanding. It has occurred to me that the distinction could potentially have some edge cases, as obviously extinct languages that have received academic study in some sense have "speakers", but it doesn't feel like too problematic of a grey area to navigate for the purposes of a diagram like this. please let me know if i'm wrong!Remsense (talk) 05:31, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I think this looks good - let's add it to the article!--Ermenrich (talk) 13:16, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Linguistic terminology
Referring to Afroasiatic as hypothetical is preferred to give readers an accurate conceptualization of its status in relation to other attested language families.

Afro Asiatic is a working hypothesis because its predialectical ancestor Proto Afrasian has not been accurately reconstructed. In this sense Afro Asiatic is at the same level as Niger Congo and Nilo Saharan in historical linguistics.

It is not at the same level as Indo European. This is why the article should say 'hypothetical language family' or something referencing its current nature as a working hypothesis. Scholar editor 477 (talk) 19:32, 14 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I think there is a big difference between the status of a language family and the status of its protolanguage. The existence of a language family can be quite uncontroversial based on linguistic evidence, such as common vocabulary and shared morphology. At the same time, the shape of the protolanguage may be still under discussion. In this sense the protolanguage is hypothetical, because we don't know exactly how it looked like; we just assume that it must have existed at some stage. But the language family coming from that protolanguage is not hypothetical at all, but manifest through a lot of evidence. This is the case with Afro-Asiatic and other language families you mention. No linguist seriously questions Afro-Asiatic as a unit, although some subfamilies and groups of languages are under discussion. Therefore applying the qualifier "hypothetic" would call up wrong assumptions with non-expert readers, to the effect that the family is still very much in doubt. It isn't. BTW, Proto-Indoeuropean is also still not entirely settled, its shape not agreed upon by all historical linguists. LandLing 20:12, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

The article should also list the linguists who have challenged the variety of Afrasian reconstructions. This will give viewers a more balanced scientific understanding of this language grouping. Scholar editor 477 (talk) 19:35, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

The suggestion that no linguist questions the validity of Afro Asiatic as an attested language family is inaccurate. There is a long tradition of scholars who have suggested that Afroasiatic is an allogenetic family and a "sprachbund" ie an area of linguistic convergence and areal diffusion as opposed to languages that are genetically related. One prominent scholar who has affirmed this is G. W. Tsereteli in his analysis of ancient Egyptian.

Dr. Steven Peter has presented evidence that all language families constructed via multi lateral comparative analysis are invalid due to their inability to detect onomatopeic vocabulary, nursery language and chancr correspondences. He is following in the tradition of linguist Isvan Fodor who has stated that all of the synchronic language classifications of Africa conducted by Greenberg will eventually be replaced.

Robert Ratcliffe is an example of a scholar who believes that Afroasiatic will eventually be confirmed while severely criticizing most conventional reconstructions.

Aren Wilson Wright stated that it is impossible to prove the genetic relationship between Semitic and Egyptian using the conventional methodology.

In conventional histotical linguistics the time depth of the comparative method is 6,000 to 10,000 years. Most Afroasiatic linguists believe that more than 20,000 years is needed to completely reconstruct Proto AA. This would be akin to a macrophylum as opposed to a language family since the number of linguists who believe in the accuracy of long range comparison is small and essentially limited to the Moscow school.

Without mentioning all of these facts, readers of the article have no way of knowing the limitations within Afroasiatic studies. Scholar editor 477 (talk) 20:31, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The acceptance of the three Greenbergian constructs Afroasiatic, Niger–Congo (or Niger–Kordofanian) and Nilo-Saharan differs greatly, which is also due to the fact that the former two were not just the product of multilateral comparative analysis, but largely had been developed before Greenberg (albeit not in the full scope as proposed by Greenberg). So it's a bit misleadsing to put these three on par.
 * Also, the characterization of Afroasiatic as a long-range comparative concept is not how major historical linguists specialized on African languages (Dimmendaal, Güldemann etc.) see it. Yes, some Nostraticists are also active in the reconstruction of Afroasiatic, but not all historical linguists involved in Afroasiatic studies are long rangers. The time depth that is assumed for Proto-Afroasiatic might be greater than for many other established language families, but is not generally considered to be beyond the reach of the comparative method.
 * In any case, it would be interesting to see the full citations for the opinions that you mention above, so we can assess them for potential inclusion here with due weight. –Austronesier (talk) 21:17, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * (PS:) Oh, and just curious, are you worried about the status of Afrasiatic in toto (also about the link e.g. between Semitic, Berber and Cushitic), or more specifically about the fact that Ancient Egyptian could belong to a language familiy that straddles two continents, a notion that has been an ideological σκάνδαλον for certain circles for almost a century? –Austronesier (talk) 21:47, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Agree we should see the citations - but if this were the case, it would be mentioned in any work discussing AA. Let's see what some of them say:
 * Frayzingier/Shay The Afroasiatic Languages 2012 Cambridge UP, p. 3: The larger etymological studies have been criticized for the choice of items taken for comparison and often for the validity of postulated cognates. The cumulative effect of these studies, that of reconfirming the genetic unity of the phylum, is not in doubt. Also, regarding Nostratic (p. 4): The Nostratic hypothesis is highly controversial and has very few supporters among specialists in Afroasiatic languages.
 * Takacs, Etymological Volume of Ancient Egyptian, vol. 1, Brill 1999, p. 35:the classification of Egyptian within Afroasiatic may be regarded as solid
 * Wilson, A Concatenative Analysis of Diachronic Afro-Asiatic Morphology, Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2020, p. 1: Afro-Asiatic is one of the major language families spoken on the planet. Coming in behind the goliaths of Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan, as well as its African neighbor Niger-Congo, Afro-Asiatic is the fourth-most widely spoken family, whose approximately 499 million speakers constitute roughly 6.4% of the world’s population.
 * Bender, A Comparative Morphology of the Omotic Languages, Lincom Europa 2000, p. 1As to Omotic being Afrasian, doubts have been expressed, sometimes about one branch or another, sometimes about the entirety. This refers simply to whether Omotic (or North or South Omotic) is AA, not the existence of AA itself, which is taken as proven.
 * None of these works suggest that AA is viewed as only a "hypothetical" language group. That some such scholars exist I believe, but they are a distinct minority, or else they would be mentioned. I'm certain such statements would be confirmed if we looked at other works on the family.--Ermenrich (talk) 21:45, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Adding the "splitter" Güldemann (in The Languages and Linguistics of Africa, De Gruyter Mouton, 2018, p. 347): A set of diagnostic morphological traits has been established to define a concrete Afroasiatic proto-language that allows one to evaluate whether modern languages and lineages can be derived from it. On this basis one can identify the following robust member lineages: Semitic, Egyptian, Berber, Cushitic, and Chadic. With the caveat that a more extensive and systematic analysis is still outstanding, the two Omotic lineages Ta-Ne and Maji can be added to this list. –Austronesier (talk) 22:02, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Although Egyptologists and Semitists alike agree that Egyptian and Semitic are genetically related based on morphological evidence, they have yet to establish systematic sound correspondences between the two language families. The lack of sound correspondences, in turn, raises doubts about the relationship between Egyptian and Semitic and necessitates a renewed analysis of their shared features. In this talk, I will review the morphological, lexical, and phonological evidence for a genetic relationship between Semitic and Egyptian by comparing Proto-Semitic and internally reconstructed Egyptian forms, a standard historical linguistic procedure that has helped established numerous language families, ranging from Indo-European to Uto-Aztecan. Based on this comparison, I argue that there is insufficient evidence to support a genetic relationship between Egyptian and Semitic. This is not to say that the two language families are not genetically related, only that it is impossible to detect a genetic relationship between them using current methodology.

-Aren Wilson Wright Scholar editor 477 (talk) 07:38, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

How well-established is the classification of African language families like Af- roasiatic or Niger-Congo in fact? And, how solid is our current knowledge about the subclassification of these families? As the following brief survey should make clear, it is extremely difficult to arrive at convincing subgroupings for deeper time levels on the basis of the comparative method, and there is also controversy about the genetic affiliation of specific language groups. Several lower-level units on the other hand have come to be accepted as valid genetic groupings.

-G Dimmendaal Scholar editor 477 (talk) 07:44, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

For my own part I am convinced the proposal of an Afroasiatic family remains the most plausible ex- planation for the detailed similarities found in the languages of the (proposed) family in morphology, including detailed paradigmatic resemblances and shared anomalies in both the verb and pronouns (Castellino 1962, Diakonof 1965) and the noun (Greenberg 1955, Ratclife 1992), as well as many similarities in basic vocabulary. But whether the Proto-Afroasiatic lexicon and phonology can ever be reconstructed with the same conidence as for Proto-Indo-European remains entirely in doubt. here may simply not be enough remaining shared lexicon to allow for reconstruction of the full Proto-Afroasiatic phoneme inventory.

-Robert Ratcliffe Scholar editor 477 (talk) 07:48, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

“In view of the present state of research, a comparative grammar of the Hamito-Semitic languages goes beyond what is scientifically attainable, even in the sense of an algebraic reconstruction. Our comparisons will therefore have to renounce the traditional “historical” model of diachronic linguistics, and instead will extend the “typological” approach. Here the overlappings need not necessarily go back to a posited common Afro-Asiatic, but will rather represent Afro-Asiatic as a realized construct. Thus Afroasiatic will never be a “reconstructible” language”, but only the “reconstructed sum” of historically attested points of [linguistic] juncture independent of their origin, and carried out for the sake of a particular investigation; this sum may be interpreted in terms of “genetic relationship”, “Sprachbund”, “areal linguistics”, or “allogenetic relationship”. […] The results of “allogenetic contacts” between the Afro-Asiatic languages will also have to be considered as [belonging to the] structure of “Afro Asiatic”; just as much as are the results of genetic relationship: Afro-Asiatic can only be considered an abstract construct of linguistic features and not a unified system of linguistic realities.” -Antonio Loprieno Scholar editor 477 (talk) 07:54, 15 February 2023 (UTC)


 * You need to provide where these people said this and who they are- as I said, scholars who doubt the proposal undoubtedly exist, but as they are not mentioned in most materials on the language family, they are obviously a small minority. Furthermore, one of your cited scholars actually supports the existence of AA.—Ermenrich (talk) 13:09, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Actually, two: Ratcliffe and Dimmendaal. They mention the undebiable problems in reconstructing the deeper levels of the family, without ever doubting the resulting family as a unit.
 * Wright and Loprieno appear to be somewhat stronger in their hesitance, so it may indeed be helpful to know where they come from, and particularly, when they have written their pieces. And it would be good to know how their position was received by others in the field. LandLing 13:32, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I have tracked the statement by Loprieno to here, where it is quoted and said to come from 1986. Given that it's that old, and quoted in a book from 1998 by Lutz Edzard that apparently agrees with the theory, I think it's safe to say that Lutz and Loprieno's objections have been without any major impact in the field.
 * Wilson-Wright is apparently quoted from here, a summary of a lecture. Wilson-Wright is a Semitic linguist (a postdoc according to Academia.edu). I can't find any evidence that his skepticism has been taken up elsewhere.--Ermenrich (talk) 17:05, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * As for the talk by Wilson-Wright, we shouldn't cite an abstract when the presentation is not available, nor cited in secondary sources. Wilson-Wright is among the contributors of the upcoming volume Ancient Egyptian and Afroasiatic: Rethinking the Origins that we have talked about before (see a few sections above), so soon we will have something citeable. Note however that Wilson-Wright only discusses the binary relation between Egyptian and Semitic. To cite him as evidence that Afroasiatic in its entirety is contested is a hyperbole. –Austronesier (talk) 19:11, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Wilson Wright stated in that abstract that it is impossible to prove a genetic relationship between Egyptian and Semitic using the conventional historical linguistic methodology.

In science just because you have a discussion about a plausible linguistic classification doesn't mean that it has been affirmed beyond all reasonable doubt.

If Afroasiatic had been affirmed beyond all reasonable doubt we would be able to prove recurrent non accidental sound correspondences between thousands of vocabulary words in Egyptian and Semitic. To this day no linguist has ever been able to prove this with succinct morphological and phonological analysis.

Calling Afroasiatic a hypothetical language family is not denigrating its status. It is simply stating a fact with the comparative data that we have available. Scholar editor 477 (talk) 07:37, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

I find the antiquity fallacy used in objection to Loprieno's affirmation that Afroasiatic represents an area of linguistic diffusion interesting.

Just because a linguist made some analysis in the past doesn't mean that the analysis done today is automatically better. Some may assume that this is the case because of more data, but that still doesn't prove Loprieno Tsereteli et al's analysis of Afroasiatic as a sprachbund false.

What you would have to do to prove them wrong is show sound laws among thousands of basic vocabulary words of the major nodes including but not limited to Egyptian and Semitic.

Saying that something is old and therefore wrong is fallacious and very bad reasoning. Scholar editor 477 (talk) 07:45, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

While it may be the case that the majority of linguists in the Western academy believe in the plausibility of Afroasiatic, it is wholly in accurate to say that the majority of them believe that every major internal and external reconstruction issue within Afroasiatic studies has been resolved.

Issues like the time depth needed and accuracy of long range comparison are not something to ignore. The incompatible correspondence sets that exist among the major hypothetical reconstructions of Proto Afro Asiatic are also a very big deal.

Up until this point I see no reason to leave out the major limitations of Afro Asiatic linguistics from this article. Not being balanced in this regard is scholastic malpractice. Scholar editor 477 (talk) 07:49, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

My final suggestion would be to either list Afro Asiatic as a hypothetical language family or continue to list it as a language family and then provide a section with the many linguists who have raised issues about its classification.

Many of these linguists believe that Afroasiatic will eventually be established but they affirm at the same time that this hasn't happened yet(Ratcliffe &, Dimmendaal etc.); hence the necessary adjective 'hypothetical'. Scholar editor 477 (talk) 07:54, 16 February 2023 (UTC)


 * As none of the sources you provided call Afroasiatic a hypothetical language family, using that adjective in a prominent place (say, in the info-box or in the lead) would be original research, even if we could agree on its appropriateness, which we don't. You want to apply it to the language family because its protolanguage remains hypothetical in a technical sense, but equating one with the other is not current best practice in comparative linguistics. There is not sufficient data to fully reconstruct the proto-Afroasiatic language, and to finally sort out the higher-level branches of the phylum, but there is way too much evidence to allow for any reasonable doubt regarding the claim that Egyptian, Semitic, Cushitic, Chadic and Berber belong to the same language family. And this is entirely reflected in the literature that enjoys any kind of reception so far.
 * Balance is already attained in the article by stating in much detail all the many twists and turns in the classification history, based on all the problems that ensued - struggles with the shared vocabulary section, as testified in the discussion he started below, is a good example of that. Once something quotable comes out of the work of Wilson-Wright, then of course we need to include it with proper weight. LandLing 08:36, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

If there are major issues with reconstruction and the establishment of genetic unity among members of a language family that reach the extent of professional linguists using terms like "sprachbund" and "allogenetic" logic dictates that a failure to address these critiques would not make Afroasiatic attested beyond reasonable doubt.

If a language family that does not contain the full set of reconstructed sound correspondences at the phonological and morphological level among the entire corpus of its intermediate nodes is not considered a working hypothesis, it appears that some of the editors of this particular article want to change the defining parameters of historical comparative linguistics.

Professionals in the field and scientists in general who come across this page and read the discussion here certainly would not approve. Something that has not been confirmed yet is by definition hypothetical. Even if we have reason to believe that it will be confirmed, that doesn't change its hypothetical status. Scholar editor 477 (talk) 21:26, 20 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Yes, well unless we can cite these scholars and experts who might theoretically come here and not approve and show they are a majority in the field (which we have already shown they are not), we don’t need to worry about them.—Ermenrich (talk) 22:10, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I can only see one editor trying to redefine the defining parameters of historical comparative linguistics and scholarly consensus about the validity of the Afroasiatic family. (See the history of Bamileke people and its talk page to see what's actually behind it. It's all about Egyptian, not Afroasiatic.) –Austronesier (talk) 22:11, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

I finally got my hands on the book containing Aren M. Wilson-Wright's chapter. While he does indeed argue that AA is unproven, no one else in the volume does (though another contributor does sort of cavalierly dismiss Chadic being part of the family, without citing any reasons. At the same time he mathematically proves the relationship of Egyptian and Semitic). Unfortunately, no one reacts to Wilson-Wright arguments. It's too soon to tell if his arguments will have any impact, in my opinion, so we should not cite him on this (at least not in this article). I'll also note that Wilson-Wright is currently listed as an independent scholar in the contributor's section. While the academic job market (particularly in a niche like Egyptian) is pretty unforgiving and I wouldn't want to make any conclusions about his work based on his lack of a position, in practice this does mean that his arguments are likely to be taken less seriously by other scholars.--Ermenrich (talk) 12:46, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

"African"
, can you explain the reasoning for changing the adjectives "African" and "Asian" to "within Africa" and "within Asia". This is wordier and does not improve on the sense of the passages you've changed. Furthermore, you changed The African languages of Afroasiatic are not more closely related to each other than they are to Semitic, as one would expect if only Semitic had remained in an Asian AA homeland while all other branches had spread from there. to The Afroasiatic languages spoken today 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 an Western Asian homeland while all other branches had spread from there. This falsifies the sense of the sentence. One of the African AA languages being discussed is Egyptian, which is not "spoken today in Africa." (You've also introduced a grammatical mistake with "an Western Asian homeland"). Further, why removal "African" from pre-Neolithic African hunter-gatherers - this is the important point of the argument.--Ermenrich (talk) 12:25, 1 June 2023 (UTC)


 * As said before, (and see below), it is not supported by the reference. It does not make sense to write "an origin within Africa among pre-neolithic African hunter-gatherers"... this is not what is written in the source. The source specifically says hunter-gatherers in Africa. Furthermore, what does "African" mean? What is the definition? What does it tell us? The encyclopedic correct form simply is among pre-neolithic hunter-gatherers in Africa.Krause96 (talk) 12:47, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
 * African obviously means "originating on the African continent". We are not quoting the source, we are paraphrasing it, and the use of "African" here is obviously supported by a reference that argues that Afroasiatic originated among hunter-gatherers who lived in Africa. The point is that these people came from Africa (in this origin theory), so I can't really see why you object to the wording, nor can I see how it's "unencyclopedic".
 * Will you respond to my first point about the sentence I quoted?--Ermenrich (talk) 12:51, 1 June 2023 (UTC)


 * Thats not what these studies imply. They are linguistic studies about the place of origin of the proto-language, not about the origin and genetic roots of its speakers, let alone we know that these regions harbored elevated (West) Eurasian admixture since at least 15,000 years, as shown in the Taforalt/Iberomaurusian genomes. There is no people which are strictly "African" or stricty "Asian". The whole papers talk about the place of origin of the language. Indo-European originated in the European Steppe, yet we do not say Hindi originated in Europe, as its place of origin was not Europe. Neither were the Hindi speakers European. We do not know where the people ultimately come from, neither does the references say so. They say that proto-afroasiatic originated among hunter-gatherers in Africa. There is no argument about the root of these hunter-gatherers at all. Modern Northern Africans live in Africa too, they are African, or do you agree with certain "NAZI-like" people who call them invaders, thiefs, hordes, etc.? The population of Northern Africa can be traced back to the Paleolithic period, long before the origin of Proto-Afroasiatic. As Pagani and Crevecoeur (2019) concluded, where does "African" start and where does it end? The change to "within Africa" and "within Asia" is just to follow logic and encyclopedic wording. We do not refer to Indo-European as "European language family", but a language family to have originated in Europe. To the second point, that was a mistake, the "modern" can be removed.Krause96 (talk) 13:01, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Please don't Strawman me. You appear to be reading things into my reply which I have not said.
 * That is exactly what the sources supporting an African origin of AA say. They even use the words "African origin". I can quote not only the study I quoted below but several others, if you wish.--Ermenrich (talk) 11:46, 2 June 2023 (UTC)