Languages of the World
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Language family

Afro-Asiatic

Languages of North Africa, the Horn of Africa and the Middle East, grouped into Semitic (Arabic, Hebrew, Amharic, Tigrinya, Maltese), Berber, Cushitic (Somali, Oromo), Chadic (Hausa) and the extinct Egyptian branch, whose last stage – Coptic – survives as a liturgical language.

27 languages on this site · c. 817 million speakers in total (sum of estimates, bilingual people counted more than once) · the main official language in 27 countries.

Highlighted countries: the main official language belongs to this family.

Semitic 14

  1. Arabic 379 million
  2. Egyptian Arabic 71 million
  3. Levantine Arabic 44 million
  4. Amharic 39 million
  5. Algerian Arabic 39 million
  6. Moroccan Arabic 33 million
  7. Sudanese Arabic 31 million
  8. Tigrinya 11 million
  9. Tunisian Arabic 11 million
  10. Hebrew 9.4 million
  11. Hassaniyya 9.3 million
  12. Tigre 1.1 million
  13. Najdi Arabic 1.1 million
  14. Maltese 470 thousand

Cushitic 5

  1. Oromo 38 million
  2. Somali 19 million
  3. Sidamo 4.1 million
  4. Beja 2.7 million
  5. Afar 2.3 million

Chadic 1

  1. Hausa 43 million

Berber 6

  1. Standard Moroccan Tamazight 8.2 million
  2. Kabyle 3.7 million
  3. Central Atlas Tamazight 3.7 million
  4. Tachelhit 3.3 million
  5. Riffian 2.0 million
  6. Tamashek 2.0 million

Egyptian 1

  1. Coptic 6.7 million

Classification: Glottolog (CC BY 4.0). Branches are selected nodes of the Glottolog tree.