Map of the Afro-Asiatic Languages 3000 years ago
Author Maximilian Dorrbecker (Chumwa)
The Semitic languages are the northeastern subfamily of the Afroasiatic languages, of which they are the only family spoken in Asia. They are spoken in the Middle East and North Africa.
Among the Semitic languages are the languages spoken in ancient Mesopotamia more than 3,000 years ago. They are, therefore, the oldest documented languages, although they were not recognized as a proper linguistic family (by Guillaume Postel) until 1532. They come from Proto-Semitic.
The term Semitic for these languages is etymologically incorrect in that it refers to the mythological descent of Shem, since some tribes of this descent spoke non-Semitic languages and some Semitic languages were spoken by tribes descended from Ham, brother of Sem.
The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They include Arabic, Amharic, Aramaic, Hebrew, and numerous other ancient and modern languages.
They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Malta, and in large immigrant and expatriate communities in North America, Europe, and Australasia.
The terminology was first used in the 1780s by members of the Gottingen school of history, who derived the name from Shem, one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis.
https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/
