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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Language, Culture or Both? was Nostratic

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>
  • To: Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Language, Culture or Both? was Nostratic
  • Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 11:50:02 +0100

On 19/04/2007 09:40, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:

... A curious statement by Huehnergard:
"a language spoken by fewer than twenty individuals along the Woito
River in southwestern Ethiopia, called by themselves Ongota and by their
neighbors Birale or Birelle, has recently been described and claimed to
be the remnant of another distinct branch of Afroasiatic." ...

For more on Birale or Ongota, see http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=bxe. The population in 2000 was reported as 19. The language is listed at http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=89997 as an unclassified branch of Afro-Asiatic, alongside Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, Omotic and Semitic.

...
inally, on a historical basis is that the Medeo-Persian Empire was the
first non-Semitic empire.

There was a Persian empire, not a Medeo-Persian Empire. Also, there
was a Mitanni Empire, an Indo-Iranian empire centered in northern
Mesopotamia that flourished from about 1500 BCE to 1360 BCE. ...

And what about the "Egyptian Empire" of the New Kingdom period? Afro-Asiatic but not Semitic. And for that matter the Hittite Empire. Of course it all depends how you define "empire".

--
Peter Kirk
E-mail: peter AT qaya.org
Blog: http://www.qaya.org/blog/
Website: http://www.qaya.org/





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