Together with other Semitic languages, Arabic belongs to the greater language family (or ‘phylum’, as some linguists prefer) called Afro-Asiatic (some scholars prefer the spelling Afroasiatic, since Semitic languages are spoken both in Africa and in Asia; ‘Afro-Asiatic’ was contracted by Diakonoff to ‘Afrasian’). This name has largely, although not completely, supplanted the older Hamito-Semitic (with variants Hamitosemitic and Semitohamitic/Semito-Hamitic), which has been criticized for its ina…