Bit of a posting spree this week, but I’m looking for feedback on something that’s been bothering me for several years now.

The terms Ethiosemitic, Ethio-Semitic and so forth have a big downside: they tend to (understandably!) trigger Eritreans, who make up a considerable share of the people speaking these languages. Hence, it would be nice if we could settle on an alternative. Afro-Semitic sounds kind of cool, but could be misinterpreted as including North African, Egyptian, and Sudanese Arabic, maybe even Punic. Something deriving from the Horn of Africa would be more precise, but I don’t see any elegant way to turn that into a single adjective. So my leading candidate is Abyssinian.

Pros:

• based on an endonym, Habesha
• used both in Antiquity and in the present
• unquestionably refers to speakers of the three biggest/most studied languages in this group: Ge’ez, Amharic, Tigrinya
• covers languages from both Ethiopia and Eritrea and from both main linguistic groups (South and North/non-South if North isn’t a valid category by itself)
• already an existing English word
• some history of linguistic usage
• not literally the same word as Habesha so there’s some liberty to use it differently

Cons:

• sounds kind of old-fashioned and colonial to me (maybe unrightfully so)
• often limited to predominantly Christian groups (Amharic and Tigrinya speakers), may exclude predominantly Muslim groups (Tigre, Harari speakers); isolated (mostly Christian) Gurage speakers seem like an edge case from what I can find online
• may be a loaded term given recent ethnic tensions in Ethiopia

So, what do you think? Is it worth going back to an outdated term in an attempt to make some people feel included and stop them from getting mad, with the risk of excluding another group of people and making them mad?1 I would especially love to hear from anyone with a relevant ethnic background—Habesha, Ethiosemitic speakers, what have you—but all input is very welcome.

https://bnuyaminim.wordpress.com/2024/08/08/ethiosemitic-or-abyssinian/

#Amharic #GeEz #Gurage #linguistics #Tigre #Tigrinya

Following Turkey's approval of its integration into #NATO, #Sweden ends the #Kurdish broadcast of its public radio. #Russian and #Tigrinya broadcasts will also be canceled. Another example of the criminalization of #Kurds in #Europe and their further exclusion in order to appease the Turkish government.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/world/01022024

#reggae #tigrinya 🎵🎶🎸🎼🔥 #np
Saba Tewelde - Semarulay Daqey
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hh841PRIEDo

#mastoradio

Earlier this year, I had two fun conversations with the team of the then newly-founded Kedem YouTube channel, which popularizes scholarship on the Ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible. The first video was published yesterday. We talk about the concept of a language family, what languages constitute the Semitic language family, where Semitic comes from geographically and linguistically, how we can reconstruct earlier ancestors of the attested languages, and a few things this kind of reconstruction tells us about Proto-Semitic.

Stay posted for my second video with this channel, to be released sometime next year, on the different modern and—especially—ancient pronunciations of Biblical Hebrew.

https://bnuyaminim.wordpress.com/2023/12/30/video-intro-to-the-semitic-language-family/

#Afroasiatic #Akkadian #Amharic #AncientSouthArabian #Arabic #Aramaic #Beja #Berber #Chadic #Cushitic #Egyptian #GeEz #Hebrew #linguistics #Moabite #ModernSouthArabian #news #Omotic #Phoenician #ProtoSemitic #Tigrinya #Ugaritic