The Hamitic subfamily is generally considered to include ancient Egyptian (see Egyptian language) and its descendant, Coptic; the Berber languages; and the Cushitic languages. Ancient Egyptian and Coptic are extinct. Some linguists also place the Chad languages within the Hamitic subfamily. Those Hamitic tongues are or were spoken in N Africa, much of the Sahara, the Horn of E Africa, and parts of central and W Africa. They were named after Ham, the second son of the biblical Noah, whose descendants supposedly were the original speakers of the Hamitic languages.
The Berber languages are the mother tongues of more than 10 million persons in N Africa. The oldest known Berber inscriptions are from the 4th cent. B.C., but Berber-speaking peoples have lived in N Africa since c.3000 B.C., and Berber names appear in ancient Egyptian inscriptions from the Old Kingdom. The Berber tongues have survived Phoenician, Roman, and Arab conquests. Today they are spoken in Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Mauritania, Chad, and Niger. Many Berbers are bilingual, speaking also Arabic. The modern Berber variants include Tamazight, Tachelhit, Kabyle, Chaouia, Tamachek, Rif, Siwi, Zenaga, and others. Grammatically, gender and number are indicated by prefixes and suffixes. The vocabulary has been enriched by borrowings from Latin, Arabic, French, and Spanish. The Arabic alphabet is employed, except in the case of the Tamazight and Tamachek dialects, which continues to use an ancient Berber alphabet known as Tifinagh.
The name Cushitic is derived from Cush, a son of Ham. The two principal Cushitic languages are Oromo, the tongue of 20 million people in Ethiopia and Kenya, and Somali, spoken by 9 million people in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Djibouti. Among the many other Cushitic languages are Saho-Afar, Agau, Beja, Burji, Geleba, Gimira, Janjero, Konso, Kaffa, Maji, and Sidamo. Oromo is written in the Ethiopic script (see discussion of writing below); Somali, in the Roman alphabet.
The Chad group of languages are spoken near Lake Chad in central Africa. Its most important tongue is Hausa, native to 25 million people, of whom about 19 million live in N Nigeria, 5 million in Niger, and 1 million in Cameroon, Togo, and Benin. In addition, Hausa is widely used as a lingua franca in W Africa. Written Hausa has long employed an alphabet based on that of Arabic, but today it is turning increasingly to a system based on Roman characters. The written literature in Hausa includes both poetry and prose. Among the many other Chad languages are Angas, Bolewa, Gwandara, Hiji, Kuseri, Kotoko, Mandara, Ron, Shirawa, and Sokoro.
