Afroasiatic languagesThe Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic, sometimes Afrasian), also known as 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, Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, Semitic, and Omotic.
NubiaNubia (ˈnjuːbiə) (Nobiin: Nobīn, النُوبَة) is a region along the Nile river encompassing the area between the first cataract of the Nile (just south of Aswan in southern Egypt) and the confluence of the Blue and White Niles (in Khartoum in central Sudan), or more strictly, Al Dabbah. It was the seat of one of the earliest civilizations of ancient Africa, the Kerma culture, which lasted from around 2500 BC until its conquest by the New Kingdom of Egypt under Pharaoh Thutmose I around 1500 BC, whose heirs ruled most of Nubia for the next 400 years.
Grammatical genderIn linguistics, a grammatical gender system is a specific form of a noun class system, where nouns are assigned to gender categories that are often not related to the real-world qualities of the entities denoted by those nouns. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns inherently carry one value of the called gender; the values present in a given language (of which there are usually two or three) are called the genders of that language.
Egyptian languageThe Egyptian language or Ancient Egyptian (r n km.t) is an extinct Afro-Asiatic language that was spoken in ancient Egypt. It is known today from a large corpus of surviving texts which were made accessible to the modern world following the decipherment of the ancient Egyptian scripts in the early 19th century. Egyptian is one of the earliest written languages, first being recorded in the hieroglyphic script in the late 4th millennium BC. It is also the longest-attested human language, with a written record spanning over 4,000 years.
SomalilandSomaliland, officially the Republic of Somaliland, is an unrecognised state in the Horn of Africa, recognised internationally as a de jure autonomous region of Somalia. Its located on the southern coast of the Gulf of Aden. It is bordered by Djibouti to the northwest, Ethiopia to the south and west, and Somalia to the east. Its claimed territory has an area of , with approximately 5.7 million residents as of 2021. The capital and largest city is Hargeisa.
Pharyngeal consonantA pharyngeal consonant is a consonant that is articulated primarily in the pharynx. Some phoneticians distinguish upper pharyngeal consonants, or "high" pharyngeals, pronounced by retracting the root of the tongue in the mid to upper pharynx, from (ary)epiglottal consonants, or "low" pharyngeals, which are articulated with the aryepiglottic folds against the epiglottis at the entrance of the larynx, as well as from epiglotto-pharyngeal consonants, with both movements being combined.
Nobiin languageNobiin, also known as Halfawi, Mahas, is a Northern Nubian language of the Nilo-Saharan language family. "Nobiin" is the genitive form of Nòòbíí ("Nubian") and literally means "(language) of the Nubians". Another term used is Noban tamen, meaning "the Nubian language". At least 2500 years ago, the first Nubian speakers migrated into the Nile valley from the southwest. Old Nubian is thought to be ancestral to Nobiin. Nobiin is a tonal language with contrastive vowel and consonant length.
Bilen peopleThe Bilen (also variously transcribed as Blin, and also formerly known as the Bogo, Bogos or North Agaw) are a Cushitic ethnic group in Eritrea. They are primarily concentrated in central Eritrea, in and around the city of Keren and further south toward Asmara, the nation's capital. They are split into three sub-tribes; Bet Tarqe, Bet Tawqe and Bab Jengeren which are split into further clans known as Hissat. The Tawke has six whereas the Tarke has five which each are divided into smaller kinship groups.
Saho peopleThe Saho are a Cushitic ethnic group from Eritrea, and they also inhabit some parts of northern Ethiopia. They speak Saho as a mother tongue. According to Abdulkader Saleh Mohammad, most of the Saho (like the Afar and the Somali) have a primordial view of their own ethnicity, and claim to be descended from Arabian immigrants; this in turn allows for an identification with the family of Muhammad, and for an association of their history with that of the Near East.
