Afroasiatic, Afroasiatic language, Afrasian, Afrasian language, Hamito-Semitic

a large family of related languages spoken both in Asia and Africa

• Chad, Chadic, Chadic language — a family of Afroasiatic tonal languages (mostly two tones) spoken in the regions west and south of Lake Chad in north central Africa
• Semitic — a major branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family
• Hamitic, Hamitic language — a group of North African languages related to Semitic
• Egyptian — the ancient and now extinct language of Pharaonic Egypt; written records date back to 3000 BC
• Berber — a cluster of related dialects that were once the major language of North Africa west of Egypt; now spoken mostly in Morocco
• Cushitic — a group of languages spoken in Ethiopia and Somalia and northwestern Kenya and adjacent regions
• Omotic — a group of related languages spoken in a valley of southern Ethiopia; closely related to Cushitic languages

• natural language, tongue — a human written or spoken language used by a community; opposed to e.g. a computer language