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The Language Families

How these connect

Afroasiatic and what it relates to. Every line is an evidence-backed relation, and the arrangement is fixed — this address draws this picture, today and next year.

evidence_for — Two of its branches are documented for roughly five thousand years - Egyptian from about the start of the third millennium BCE, Akkadian not long after - so the family is where reconstruction can be checked against a written record rather than only against its own output.assesses — Languages of Africa (1963) replaced a tangled colonial-era literature with a four-family classification of the continent; its Afroasiatic and Niger-Congo components are broadly retained, while the mass-comparison method behind them is not accepted for deeper claims.AfroasiaticAfroasiaticThe comparative methodThe comparative methodJoseph GreenbergJoseph Greenberg
3 drawn · 8 reachable and not drawn · positions derived from object ids, never from a simulation
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Every relation drawn, in words2
  1. Afroasiatic · evidence_for · The comparative method

    Two of its branches are documented for roughly five thousand years - Egyptian from about the start of the third millennium BCE, Akkadian not long after - so the family is where reconstruction can be checked against a written record rather than only against its own output.

  2. Joseph Greenberg · assesses · Afroasiatic

    Languages of Africa (1963) replaced a tangled colonial-era literature with a four-family classification of the continent; its Afroasiatic and Niger-Congo components are broadly retained, while the mass-comparison method behind them is not accepted for deeper claims.