Image via WikipediaI pinched this from brother King @ KINGMIX on Vodpod
Great interview of Baba Asa Hilliard by Baba Listervelt Middleton (sadly, I only heard of Middleton when I moved to the East Coast). Baba Asa also clears up a misconception about Afroasiatic. There is a notion out there that Afroasiatic is not an African linguistic family. This is false. Afroasiatic is 100% African as Baba Asa clearly states. Unfortunately, this misunderstanding has been spread most recently by Théophile Obenga (and before him Cheikh Anta Diop). Baba Obenga's knowledge of African history is vast, but even Obenga is bound to make a mistake occasionally.
You can't quite make out the first few seconds of the segment, but Baba Asa states that Arabic is the only Afroasiatic language not anchored in continental Africa (his exact wording is non-African, but I would say Arabic is an African language). Actually there are at least two more Afroasiatic languages located beyond the African continent--Hebrew and Aramaic. Aramaic (or a derivative thereof) is still spoken in some parts of Lebanon. My take is that in ancient times the Levant was politically and culturally a part of North East Africa later usurped by Hebrew and Islamic culture.GI
tags: ayi kwei armah, asa hilliard, egypt, theo, Théophile Obenga, Afroasiatic, che, Cheikh Anta Diop, Aramaic
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