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wo tennis legends play on a helipad almost 220 meters above sea level at the hotel Burj alArab. Their final duel took place in the final of the 2005 US Open. In the historic clash of generations, Federer was victorious in four sets in front of a proAgassi crowd. The match was the last appearance by Agassi in any tournament final. Agassi vs. Lendl Agassi and Ivan Lendl played eight times, and Lendl led their headtohead series 62. Agassi vs. Edberg Agassi and Stefan Edberg played nine times, and Agassi led their headtohead series 63. Earnings Agassi earned more than 30 million in prizemoney during his career, sixth only to Djokovic, Federer, Nadal, Sampras and Murray to date May 2018. He also earned more than 25 million a year through endorsements during his career, which was ranked fourth in all sports at the time. Postretirement Since retiring after the 2006 US Open, Agassi has participated in a series of charity tournaments and continues his work with his own charity. On September 5, 2007, he was a surpr

ise guest commentator for the Andy RoddickRoger Federer US Open quarterfinal. He played an exhibition match at Wimbledon, teaming with his wife, Steffi Graf, to play with Tim Henman and Kim Clijsters. He played World Team Tennis for the Philadelphia Freedoms in the summer of 2009. At the 2009 French Open, Agassi was on hand to present Roger Federer, who completed his Career Grand Slam by winning the tournament and joined Agassi as one of six men to complete the Career Grand Slam, with the trophy. Also in 2009, Agassi played at the Outback Champions Series event for the first time. He played the Cancer Treatment Centers of America Tennis Championships at Surprise, Arizona, where he reached the final before bowing to eventual champion Todd Martin. Agassi returned to the tour renamed for the PowerShares Series in 2011 and participated in a total of seven events while winning two. Agassi beat Courier in the final of the Staples Champions Cup in Boston and later defeated Sampras at the CTCA Championships at his h

ometown Las Vegas. In 2012, Agassi took part in five tournaments, winning three of those. In November, at first he won BILT Champions Showdown in San Jose, beating John McEnroe in the final. The following day, he defended his title of the CTCA Championships, while defeating Courier in the decisive match. In the series season finale, he beat Michael Chang for the Acura Champions Cup. The series and Agassi came back to action in 2014. Agassi won both tournaments he participated in. At the Camden Wealth Advisors Cup's final in Houston, Agassi beat James Blake for a rematch of their 2005 US Open quarterfinal. He defeated Blake again in Portland to win the title of the Cancer Treatment Centers of America Championships. In 2015, Agassi took part in just one event of the PowerShares Series, losing to Mark Philippoussis in the final of the Champions Shootout. The following year he took part in two events, at first losing to Blake in Chicago, and the next day defeating Mardy Fish, but losing to Roddick in Charleston.

In 2009, in Macau Agassi and Sampras met for the first time on court since the 2002 US Open final. Sampras won the exhibition in three sets. The rivalry between the former champions headlined sports media again in March 2010 after the two participated in the "Hit for Haiti" charity event organized to raise money for the victims of the earthquake. Partnered with Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, the old rivals began making jokes at each other's expense, which ended up with Sampras intentionally striking a serve at Agassi's body. After the event, Agassi admitted that he had crossed the line with his jokes and publicly apologized to Sampras. Agassi and Sampras met again one year later for an exhibition match at Madison Square Garden in New York in front of 19 000 spectators as Sampras defeated Agassi in two sets. On March 3, 2014, Agassi and Sampras squared off for an exhibition in London for the annual World Tennis Day. This time, it was Agassi who came out on top in two straight sets. He returned to the tour

in May 2017 in the position of coach to Novak Djokovic for the French Open. Agassi announced the end of the partnership on March 31, 2018, stating that there were too many disagreements in the relationship. Playing style Early in his career, Agassi would look to end points quickly by playing firststrike tennis, typically by inducing a weak return with a deep, hard shot, and then playing a winner at an extreme angle. On the rare occasion that he charged the net, Agassi liked to take the ball in the air and hit a swinging volley for a winner. His favored groundstroke was his flat, accurate twohanded backhand, hit well crosscourt but especially down the line. His forehand was nearly as strong, especially his insideout to the ad court. Agassi's strength was in dictating play from the baseline, and he was able to consistently take the ball on the rise. While he was growing up, his father and Nick Bollettieri trained him in this way. When in control of a point, Agassi would often pass up an opportunity to attempt

a winner and hit a conservative shot to minimize his errors, and to make his opponent run more. This change to more methodical, less aggressive baseline play was largely initiated by his longtime coach, Brad Gilbert, in their first year together in 1994. Gilbert encouraged Agassi to wear out opponents with his deep, flat groundstrokes and to use his fitness to win attrition wars, and noted Agassi's twohanded backhand down the line as his very best shot. A signature play later in his career was a changeup drop shot to the deuce court after deep penetrating groundstrokes. This would often be followed by a passing shot or lob if the opponent was fast enough to retrieve it. Agassi was raised on hardcourts, but found much of his early majortournament success on the red clay of Roland Garros, reaching two consecutive finals there early in his career. Despite grass being his worst surface, his first major win was at the slick grass of Wimbledon in 1992, a tournament that he professed to hating at the time. His str

ongest surface over the course of his career, was indeed hardcourt, where he won six of his eight majors. Business ventures Agassi established a limited liability company named Andre Agassi Ventures formerly named Agassi Enterprises. Agassi, along with five athlete partners including Wayne Gretzky, Joe Montana, Shaquille O'Neal, Ken Griffey, Jr., and Monica Seles opened a chain of sportsthemed restaurant named Official All Star Caf in April 1996. The restaurant closed down in 2001. In 1999, he paid 1 million for a 10 percent stake in Nevada First Bank and made a 10 million profit when it was sold to Western Alliance Bancorp in 2006. In 2002, he joined the Tennis Channel to promote the channel to consumers and cable and satellite industry, and made an equity investment in the network. After meeting chef Michael Mina at one of his restaurants in San Francisco, Agassi partnered with him in 2002 to start Mina Group Inc. and opened 18 concept restaurants in San Francisco, San Jose, Dana Point, Atlantic City and

Las Vegas. Agassi was an equity investor of a group that acquired Golden Nugget Las Vegas and Golden Nugget Laughlin from MGM Mirage for 215 million in 2004. One year later, the group sold the hotelcasino to Landry's, Inc. for 163 million in cash and 182 million in assumed debt. In 2007, he sat on the board of Meadows Bank, an independent bank in Nevada. He has invested in startup companies backed by Allen Company. Agassi and Graf formed a company called Agassi Graf Holdings. They invested in PURE, a nightclub at Caesars Palace, which opened in 2004, and sold it to Angel Management Group in 2010. In August 2006, Agassi and Graf developed a joint venture with highend furniture maker Kreiss Enterprises. They launched a furniture line called Agassi Graf Collection. In September, Agassi and Graf, through their company Agassi Graf Development LLC, along with Bayview Financial LP, finalized an agreement to develop a condominium hotel, Fairmont Tamarack, at Tamarack Resort in Donnelly, Idaho. Owing to difficult m

arket conditions and delays, they withdrew from the project in 2009. The group still owns three small chunks of land. In September, they collaborated with Steve Case's Exclusive Resorts to codevelop luxury resorts and design AgassiGraf Tennis and Fitness Centers. They also invested in online ticket reseller viagogo in 2009 and both serve as board members and advisors of the company. In October 2012, Village Roadshow and investors including Agassi and Graf announced plans to build a new water park called Wet'n'Wild Las Vegas in Las Vegas. Village Roadshow has a 51 stake in the park while Agassi, Graf, and other private investors hold the remaining 49. The park opened in May 2013. IMG managed Agassi from the time he turned pro in 1986 through January 2000 before switching to SFX Sports Group. His business manager, lawyer and agent was childhood friend Perry Rogers, but they have been estranged since 2008. In 2009, he and Graf signed with CAA. Equipment and endorsements Agassi used Prince Graphite rackets ea

rly in his career. He signed a 7 million endorsement contract with Belgian tennis racquet makers Donnay. He later switched to Head Ti Radical racket and Head's LiquidMetal Radical racket, having signed a multimilliondollar endorsement deal with Head in 1993. He renewed his contract in 1999, and in November 2003 he signed a lifetime agreement with Head. He also endorses Penn tennis balls. On July 25, 2005, Agassi left Nike after 17 years and signed an endorsement deal with Adidas. A major reason for Agassi leaving Nike was because Nike refused to donate to Agassi's charities, and Adidas was more than happy to do so. On May 13, 2013, Agassi rejoined Nike. Agassi was sponsored by DuPont, Ebel, Mountain Dew in 1993, Mazda in 1997, Kia Motors in 2002, American Express and Deutsche Bank in 2003. In 1990, he appeared in a television commercial for Canon Inc., promoting the Canon EOS Rebel camera. Between 1999 and 2000, he signed a multimilliondollar, multiyear endorsement deal with Schick and became the worldwide s

pokesman for the company. Agassi signed a multiyear contract with Twinlab and promoted the company's nutritional supplements. In mid2003, he was named the spokesman of Aramis Life, a fragrance by Aramis, and signed a fiveyear deal with the company. In March 2004, he signed a tenyear agreement worth 1.5 million a year with 24 Hour Fitness, which will open five Andre Agassi fitness centers by yearend. Prior to the 2012 Australian Open, Agassi and Australian winemaker Jacobs Creek announced a threeyear partnership and created the Open Film Series to "share personal stories about the life defining moments that shaped his character on and off the court." In 2007, watchmaker Longines named Agassi as their brand ambassador. Agassi and his mother appeared in a Got Milk? advertisement in 2002. Agassi has appeared in many advertisements and television commercials with Graf. They both endorsed Deutsche Telekom in 2002, Genworth Financial and Canon Inc. in 2004, LVMH in 2007, and Nintendo Wii and Wii Fit U and Longines

in 2013. Personal life Relationships and family In the early 1990s, after dating Wendi Stewart, Agassi dated American singer and entertainer Barbra Streisand. He wrote about the relationship in his 2009 autobiography, "We agree that we're good for each other, and so what if she's twentyeight years older? We're sympatico, and the public outcry only adds spice to our connection. It makes our friendship feel forbidden, taboo another piece of my overall rebellion. Dating Barbra Streisand is like wearing Hot Lava." He was married to Brooke Shields from 1997 to 1999. He married Steffi Graf on October 22, 2001, at their Las Vegas home; the only witnesses were their mothers. They have two children son Jaden Gil born 2001 and daughter Jaz Elle born 2003. Agassi has said that he and Graf are not pushing their children toward becoming tennis players. The GrafAgassi family resides in Summerlin, a community in the Las Vegas Valley. Graf's mother and brother, Michael, with his four children, also live there. Longtim

e trainer Gil Reyes has been called one of Agassi's closest friends; some have described him as being a "father figure" to Agassi. In 2012, Agassi and Reyes introduced their own line of fitness equipment, BILT By Agassi and Reyes. In December 2008, Agassi's childhood friend and former business manager, Perry Rogers, sued Graf for 50,000 in management fees he claimed that she owed him. Autobiography Agassi's autobiography, Open An Autobiography, written with assistance from J. R. Moehringer, was published in November 2009. In it, Agassi talks about his childhood and his unconventional Armenian father, who came to the United States from Iran where he was a professional boxer. Overly demanding and emotionally abusive to the whole family, his father groomed young Agassi for tennis greatness by building a tennis court in their backyard and sending Agassi to tennis boarding school under the supervision of Nick Bollettieri, who later coached and managed part of Agassi's professional career. There is also mention

in the book of using and testing positive for methamphetamine in 1997. In response to this revelation, Roger Federer declared himself shocked and disappointed, while Marat Safin argued that Agassi should return his prize money and be stripped of his titles. In an interview with CBS, Agassi justified himself and asked for understanding, saying that "It was a period in my life where I needed help." Agassi said that he had always hated tennis during his career because of the constant pressure it exerted on him. He also said he wore a hairpiece earlier in his career and thought Pete Sampras was "robotic". The book reached No. 1 on the New York Times Best Seller list and received favorable reviews. It won the Autobiography category of the 2010 British Sports Book Awards. In 2018, the book was listed on Esquire as one of "The 30 Best Sports Books Ever Written", and was also recommended by selfhelp author Tim Ferriss who described it as "very candid, very amusing, and very instructional". In media In 2017, Agassi

appeared in the documentary film Love Means Zero, which highlighted the troubled relationship between his coach Nick Bollettieri and him. Politics Agassi has donated more than 100,000 to Democratic candidates, and 2,000 to Republicans. On September 1, 2010, when he appeared on daily WNYC public radio program The Brian Lehrer Show, he stated that he is registered as Independent. Philanthropy Agassi founded the Andre Agassi Charitable Association in 1994, which assists Las Vegas' young people. He was awarded the ATP Arthur Ashe Humanitarian award in 1995 for his efforts to help disadvantaged youth. He has been cited as the most charitable and socially involved player in professional tennis. It has also been claimed that he may be the most charitable athlete of his generation. Agassi's charities help in assisting children reach their athletic potential. His Boys Girls Club sees 2,000 children throughout the year and boasts a worldclass junior tennis team. It also has a basketball program the Agassi Stars an

d a rigorous system that encourages a mix of academics and athletics. In 2001, Agassi opened the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy in Las Vegas, a tuitionfree charter school for atrisk children in the area. He personally donated 35 million to the school. In 2009, the graduating class had a 100 percent graduation rate and expected a 100 percent college acceptance rate. Among other childrelated programs that Agassi supports through his Andre Agassi Charitable Foundation is Clark County's only residential facility for abused and neglected children, Child Haven. In 1997, Agassi donated funding to Child Haven for a sixroom classroom building now named the Agassi Center for Education. His foundation also provided 720,000 to assist in the building of the Andre Agassi Cottage for Medically Fragile Children. This 20bed facility opened in December 2001, and accommodates developmentally delayed or handicapped children and children quarantined for infectious diseases. In 2007, along with several other athletes,

Agassi founded the charity Athletes for Hope, which helps professional athletes get involved in charitable causes and aims to inspire all people to volunteer and support their communities. He created the CanyonAgassi Charter School Facilities Fund, now known as the TurnerAgassi Charter School Facilities Fund. The Fund is an investment initiative for social change, focusing on the "nationwide effort to move charters from stopgap buildings into permanent campuses." In September 2013, the Andre Agassi Foundation for Education formed a partnership with V20 Foods to launch Box Budd!es, a line of kids' healthy snacks. All proceeds go to the Foundation. In February 2014, Agassi remodeled the vacant University of Phoenix building in Las Vegas as a new school, called the Doral Academy West through the CanyonAgassi Charter School Facilities Fund. Doral Academy opened in August 2014. The Fund purchased a 4.6acre plot in Henderson, Nevada to house the Somerset Academy of Las Vegas, which will relocate from its campus i

nside a church. Career statistics Singles performance timeline Grand Slam finals 8 titles, 7 runnersup By winning the 1999 French Open, Agassi completed a men's singles Career Grand Slam. He is the 5th of 8 male players in history after Budge, Perry, Laver and Emerson, and before Federer, Nadal and Djokovic to achieve this. Open Era records These records were attained in the Open Era of tennis and in ATP World Tour Masters 1000 series since 1990. Records in bold indicate peerless achievements. Legacy Considered by numerous sources to be one of the greatest tennis players of all time, Agassi has also been called one of the greatest service returners ever to play the game, and was described by the BBC upon his retirement as "perhaps the biggest worldwide star in the sport's history". As a result, he is credited for helping to revive the popularity of tennis during the 1990s. Professional awards ITF World Champion 1999. ATP Player of the Year 1999. ATP Most Improved Player 1988, 1998 Recognition In

1992, Agassi was named the BBC Overseas Sports Personality of the Year. In 2010, Sports Illustrated named Agassi the 7th greatest male player of all time. On July 9, 2011, Agassi was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame at a ceremony in Newport, Rhode Island. Video Wimbledon 2000 Semifinal Agassi vs. Rafter 2003 Starring Andre Agassi, Patrick Rafter; Standing Room Only, DVD Release Date August 16, 2005, Run Time 213 minutes, . Charlie Rose with Andre Agassi May 7, 2001 Charlie Rose, Inc., DVD Release Date August 15, 2006, Run Time 57 minutes. Wimbledon The Record Breakers 2005 Starring Andre Agassi, Boris Becker; Standing Room Only, DVD Release Date August 16, 2005, Run Time 52 minutes, . Video games Andre Agassi Tennis for the SNES, Sega Genesis, Sega Game Gear, Master System, and Mobile phone Agassi Tennis Generation for PS2 and GBA Agassi Tennis Generation 2002 for Windows Smash Court Pro Tournament for PS2 Top Spin 4 On cover of game for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii See a

lso AgassiSampras rivalry Alltime tennis records men's singles List of Grand Slam Men's Singles champions Tennis male players statistics Tennis records of the Open Era men's singles Explanatory notes References Further reading External links Andre Agassi Ventures Farewell to Tennis Speech at the U.S. Open Agassi's Tennis Hall of Fame Induction for Steffi Graf 1970 births Living people 20thcentury American businesspeople 21stcentury American businesspeople American autobiographers American investors American male tennis players American people of Iranian descent American people of IranianAssyrian descent American sportspeople of Armenian descent American real estate businesspeople American sportspeople in doping cases ArmenianAmerican tennis players Assyrian sportspeople Australian Open tennis champions Doping cases in tennis Ethnic Armenian sportspeople French Open champions Grand Slam tennis champions in men's singles International Tennis Hall of Fame inductees Iranian Assyrian p

eople Iranian people of Armenian descent Medalists at the 1996 Summer Olympics Nevada Democrats Novak Djokovic coaches Olympic gold medalists for the United States in tennis Philanthropists from Nevada Sportspeople from Las Vegas Sportspeople of Iranian descent Steffi Graf Tennis people from Nevada Tennis players at the 1996 Summer Olympics US Open tennis champions Wimbledon champions World No. 1 tennis players Writers from Las Vegas

The Austroasiatic languages , also known as MonKhmer , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China. There are around 117 million speakers of Austroasiatic languages. Of these languages, only Vietnamese, Khmer, and Mon have a longestablished recorded history. Only two have official status as modern national languages Vietnamese in Vietnam and Khmer in Cambodia. The Mon language is a recognized indigenous language in Myanmar and Thailand. In Myanmar, the Wa language is the de facto official language of Wa State. Santali is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India. The rest of the languages are spoken by minority groups and have no official status. Ethnologue identifies 168 Austroasiatic languages. These form thirteen established families plus perhaps Shompen, which is poorly attested, as a fourteenth, which have traditionally been grouped into two, as MonKhmer, and Munda. Howe

ver, one recent classification posits three groups Munda, Nuclear MonKhmer, and KhasiKhmuic, while another has abandoned MonKhmer as a taxon altogether, making it synonymous with the larger family. Austroasiatic languages have a disjunct distribution across Southeast Asia and parts of India, Bangladesh, Nepal and East Asia, separated by regions where other languages are spoken. They appear to be the extant original languages of Mainland Southeast Asia excluding the Andaman Islands, with the neighboring, and sometimes surrounding, KraDai, HmongMien, Austronesian, and SinoTibetan languages being the result of later migrations. Etymology The name Austroasiatic comes from a combination of the Latin words for "South" and "Asia", hence "South Asia". Typology Regarding word structure, Austroasiatic languages are well known for having an iambic "sesquisyllabic" pattern, with basic nouns and verbs consisting of an initial, unstressed, reduced minor syllable followed by a stressed, full syllable. This reduction of p

resyllables has led to a variety among modern languages of phonological shapes of the same original ProtoAustroasiatic prefixes, such as the causative prefix, ranging from CVC syllables to consonant clusters to single consonants. As for word formation, most Austroasiatic languages have a variety of derivational prefixes, many have infixes, but suffixes are almost completely nonexistent in most branches except Munda, and a few specialized exceptions in other Austroasiatic branches. The Austroasiatic languages are further characterized as having unusually large vowel inventories and employing some sort of register contrast, either between modal normal voice and breathy lax voice or between modal voice and creaky voice. Languages in the Pearic branch and some in the Vietic branch can have a three or even fourway voicing contrast. However, some Austroasiatic languages have lost the register contrast by evolving more diphthongs or in a few cases, such as Vietnamese, tonogenesis. Vietnamese has been so heavily in

fluenced by Chinese that its original Austroasiatic phonological quality is obscured and now resembles that of South Chinese languages, whereas Khmer, which had more influence from Sanskrit, has retained a more typically Austroasiatic structure. Protolanguage Much work has been done on the reconstruction of ProtoMonKhmer in Harry L. Shorto's MonKhmer Comparative Dictionary. Little work has been done on the Munda languages, which are not well documented. With their demotion from a primary branch, ProtoMonKhmer becomes synonymous with ProtoAustroasiatic. Paul Sidwell 2005 reconstructs the consonant inventory of ProtoMonKhmer as follows This is identical to earlier reconstructions except for . is better preserved in the Katuic languages, which Sidwell has specialized in. Internal classification Linguists traditionally recognize two primary divisions of Austroasiatic the MonKhmer languages of Southeast Asia, Northeast India and the Nicobar Islands, and the Munda languages of East and Central India and parts

of Bangladesh, parts of Nepal. However, no evidence for this classification has ever been published. Each of the families that is written in boldface type below is accepted as a valid clade. By contrast, the relationships between these families within Austroasiatic are debated. In addition to the traditional classification, two recent proposals are given, neither of which accepts traditional "MonKhmer" as a valid unit. However, little of the data used for competing classifications has ever been published, and therefore cannot be evaluated by peer review. In addition, there are suggestions that additional branches of Austroasiatic might be preserved in substrata of Acehnese in Sumatra Diffloth, the Chamic languages of Vietnam, and the Land Dayak languages of Borneo Adelaar 1995. Diffloth 1974 Diffloth's widely cited original classification, now abandoned by Diffloth himself, is used in Encyclopdia Britannica andexcept for the breakup of Southern MonKhmerin Ethnologue. Munda North Munda Korku Kherwaria

n South Munda KhariaJuang Koraput Munda MonKhmer Eastern MonKhmer Khmer Cambodian Pearic Bahnaric Katuic Vietic Vietnamese, Muong Northern MonKhmer Khasi Meghalaya, India Palaungic Khmuic Southern MonKhmer Mon Aslian Malaya Nicobarese Nicobar Islands Peiros 2004 Peiros is a lexicostatistic classification, based on percentages of shared vocabulary. This means that languages can appear to be more distantly related than they actually are due to language contact. Indeed, when Sidwell 2009 replicated Peiros's study with languages known well enough to account for loans, he did not find the internal branching structure below. Nicobarese MundaKhmer Munda MonKhmer Khasi Nuclear MonKhmer Mangic Mang Palyu perhaps in Northern MK Vietic perhaps in Northern MK Northern MonKhmer Palaungic Khmuic Central MonKhmer Khmer dialects Pearic AsliBahnaric Aslian MonBahnaric Monic KatuBahnaric Katuic Bahnaric Diffloth 2005 Diffloth compares reconstructions of various clades, and attempts

to classify them based on shared innovations, though like other classifications the evidence has not been published. As a schematic, we have Or in more detail, Munda languages India Koraput 7 languages Core Munda languages KharianJuang 2 languages North Munda languages Korku Kherwarian 12 languages KhasiKhmuic languages Northern MonKhmer Khasian 3 languages of north eastern India and adjacent region of Bangladesh PalaungoKhmuic languages Khmuic 13 languages of Laos and Thailand PalaungoPakanic languages Pakanic or Palyu 4 or 5 languages of southern China and Vietnam Palaungic 21 languages of Burma, southern China, and Thailand Nuclear MonKhmer languages KhmeroVietic languages Eastern MonKhmer VietoKatuic languages ? Vietic 10 languages of Vietnam and Laos, including the Vietnamese language, which has the most speakers of any Austroasiatic language. Katuic 19 languages of Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand. KhmeroBahnaric languages Bahnaric 40 languages of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Khmeric

languages The Khmer dialects of Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam. Pearic 6 languages of Cambodia. NicoMonic languages Southern MonKhmer Nicobarese 6 languages of the Nicobar Islands, a territory of India. AsliMonic languages Aslian 19 languages of peninsular Malaysia and Thailand. Monic 2 languages, the Mon language of Burma and the Nyahkur language of Thailand. Sidwell 20092015 Paul Sidwell 2009, in a lexicostatistical comparison of 36 languages which are well known enough to exclude loanwords, finds little evidence for internal branching, though he did find an area of increased contact between the Bahnaric and Katuic languages, such that languages of all branches apart from the geographically distant Munda and Nicobarese show greater similarity to Bahnaric and Katuic the closer they are to those branches, without any noticeable innovations common to Bahnaric and Katuic. He therefore takes the conservative view that the thirteen branches of Austroasiatic should be treated as equidistant on curren

t evidence. Sidwell Blench 2011 discuss this proposal in more detail, and note that there is good evidence for a KhasiPalaungic node, which could also possibly be closely related to Khmuic. If this would the case, Sidwell Blench suggest that Khasic may have been an early offshoot of Palaungic that had spread westward. Sidwell Blench 2011 suggest Shompen as an additional branch, and believe that a VietoKatuic connection is worth investigating. In general, however, the family is thought to have diversified too quickly for a deeply nested structure to have developed, since ProtoAustroasiatic speakers are believed by Sidwell to have radiated out from the central Mekong river valley relatively quickly. Subsequently, Sidwell 2015a 179 proposed that Nicobarese subgroups with Aslian, just as how Khasian and Palaungic subgroup with each other. A subsequent computational phylogenetic analysis Sidwell 2015b suggests that Austroasiatic branches may have a loosely nested structure rather than a completely rakelike s

tructure, with an eastwest division consisting of Munda, Khasic, Palaungic, and Khmuic forming a western group as opposed to all of the other branches occurring possibly as early as 7,000 years before present. However, he still considers the subbranching dubious. Integrating computational phylogenetic linguistics with recent archaeological findings, Paul Sidwell 2015c further expanded his Mekong riverine hypothesis by proposing that Austroasiatic had ultimately expanded into Indochina from the Lingnan area of southern China, with the subsequent Mekong riverine dispersal taking place after the initial arrival of Neolithic farmers from southern China. Sidwell 2015c tentatively suggests that Austroasiatic may have begun to split up 5,000 years B.P. during the Neolithic transition era of mainland Southeast Asia, with all the major branches of Austroasiatic formed by 4,000 B.P. Austroasiatic would have had two possible dispersal routes from the western periphery of the Pearl River watershed of Lingnan, which wou

ld have been either a coastal route down the coast of Vietnam, or downstream through the Mekong River via Yunnan. Both the reconstructed lexicon of ProtoAustroasiatic and the archaeological record clearly show that early Austroasiatic speakers around 4,000 B.P. cultivated rice and millet, kept livestock such as dogs, pigs, and chickens, and thrived mostly in estuarine rather than coastal environments. At 4,500 B.P., this "Neolithic package" suddenly arrived in Indochina from the Lingnan area without cereal grains and displaced the earlier preNeolithic huntergatherer cultures, with grain husks found in northern Indochina by 4,100 B.P. and in southern Indochina by 3,800 B.P. However, Sidwell 2015c found that iron is not reconstructable in ProtoAustroasiatic, since each Austroasiatic branch has different terms for iron that had been borrowed relatively lately from Tai, Chinese, Tibetan, Malay, and other languages. During the Iron Age about 2,500 B.P., relatively young Austroasiatic branches in Indochina such a

s Vietic, Katuic, Pearic, and Khmer were formed, while the more internally diverse Bahnaric branch dating to about 3,000 B.P. underwent more extensive internal diversification. By the Iron Age, all of the Austroasiatic branches were more or less in their presentday locations, with most of the diversification within Austroasiatic taking place during the Iron Age. Paul Sidwell 2018 considers the Austroasiatic language family to have rapidly diversified around 4,000 years B.P. during the arrival of rice agriculture in Indochina, but notes that the origin of ProtoAustroasiatic itself is older than that date. The lexicon of ProtoAustroasiatic can be divided into an early and late stratum. The early stratum consists of basic lexicon including body parts, animal names, natural features, and pronouns, while the names of cultural items agriculture terms and words for cultural artifacts, which are reconstructible in ProtoAustroasiatic form part of the later stratum. Roger Blench 2017 suggests that vocabulary related

to aquatic subsistence strategies such as boats, waterways, river fauna, and fish capture techniques can be reconstructed for ProtoAustroasiatic. Blench 2017 finds widespread Austroasiatic roots for 'river, valley', 'boat', 'fish', 'catfish sp.', 'eel', 'prawn', 'shrimp' Central Austroasiatic, 'crab', 'tortoise', 'turtle', 'otter', 'crocodile', 'heron, fishing bird', and 'fish trap'. Archaeological evidence for the presence of agriculture in northern Indochina northern Vietnam, Laos, and other nearby areas dates back to only about 4,000 years ago 2,000 BC, with agriculture ultimately being introduced from further up to the north in the Yangtze valley where it has been dated to 6,000 B.P. Sidwell 2022 proposes that the locus of ProtoAustroasiatic was in the Red River Delta area about 4,0004,500 years before present, instead of the Middle Mekong as he had previously proposed. Austroasiatic dispersed coastal maritime routes and also upstream through river valleys. Khmuic, Palaungic, and Khasic resulted from a w

estward dispersal that ultimately came from the Red Valley valley. Based on their current distributions, about half of all Austroasiatic branches including Nicobaric and Munda can be traced to coastal maritime dispersals. Hence, this points to a relatively late riverine dispersal of Austroasiatic as compared to SinoTibetan, whose speakers had a distinct nonriverine culture. In addition to living an aquaticbased lifestyle, early Austroasiatic speakers would have also had access to livestock, crops, and newer types of watercraft. As early Austroasiatic speakers dispersed rapidly via waterways, they would have encountered speakers of older language families who were already settled in the area, such as SinoTibetan. Sidwell 2018 Sidwell 2018 quoted in Sidwell 2021 gives a more nested classification of Austroasiatic branches as suggested by his computational phylogenetic analysis of Austroasiatic languages using a 200word list. Many of the tentative groupings are likely linkages. Pakanic and Shompen were not inc

luded. Possible extinct branches Roger Blench 2009 also proposes that there might have been other primary branches of Austroasiatic that are now extinct, based on substrate evidence in modernday languages. PreChamic languages the languages of coastal Vietnam before the Chamic migrations. Chamic has various Austroasiatic loanwords that cannot be clearly traced to existing Austroasiatic branches Sidwell 2006, 2007. Larish 1999 also notes that Moklenic languages contain many Austroasiatic loanwords, some of which are similar to the ones found in Chamic. Acehnese substratum Sidwell 2006. Acehnese has many basic words that are of Austroasiatic origin, suggesting that either Austronesian speakers have absorbed earlier Austroasiatic residents in northern Sumatra, or that words might have been borrowed from Austroasiatic languages in southern Vietnam or perhaps a combination of both. Sidwell 2006 argues that Acehnese and Chamic had often borrowed Austroasiatic words independently of each other, while some Austro

asiatic words can be traced back to ProtoAcehChamic. Sidwell 2006 accepts that Acehnese and Chamic are related, but that they had separated from each other before Chamic had borrowed most of its Austroasiatic lexicon. Bornean substrate languages Blench 2010. Blench cites Austroasiaticorigin words in modernday Bornean branches such as Land Dayak Bidayuh, Dayak Bakatiq, etc., Dusunic Central Dusun, Visayan, etc., Kayan, and Kenyah, noting especially resemblances with Aslian. As further evidence for his proposal, Blench also cites ethnographic evidence such as musical instruments in Borneo shared in common with Austroasiaticspeaking groups in mainland Southeast Asia. Adelaar 1995 has also noticed phonological and lexical similarities between Land Dayak and Aslian. Lepcha substratum "Rongic". Many words of Austroasiatic origin have been noticed in Lepcha, suggesting a SinoTibetan superstrate laid over an Austroasiatic substrate. Blench 2013 calls this branch "Rongic" based on the Lepcha autonym Rng. Other lang

uages with proposed Austroasiatic substrata are Jiamao, based on evidence from the register system of Jiamao, a Hlai language Thurgood 1992. Jiamao is known for its highly aberrant vocabulary in relation to other Hlai languages. Kerinci van Reijn 1974 notes that Kerinci, a Malayic language of central Sumatra, shares many phonological similarities with Austroasiatic languages, such as sesquisyllabic word structure and vowel inventory. John Peterson 2017 suggests that "preMunda" "proto" in regular terminology languages may have once dominated the eastern IndoGangetic Plain, and were then absorbed by IndoAryan languages at an early date as IndoAryan spread east. Peterson notes that eastern IndoAryan languages display many morphosyntactic features similar to those of Munda languages, while western IndoAryan languages do not. Writing systems Other than Latinbased alphabets, many Austroasiatic languages are written with the Khmer, Thai, Lao, and Burmese alphabets. Vietnamese divergently had an indigenous scrip

t based on Chinese logographic writing. This has since been supplanted by the Latin alphabet in the 20th century. The following are examples of pastused alphabets or current alphabets of Austroasiatic languages. Ch Nm Khmer alphabet Khom script used for a short period in the early 20th century for indigenous languages in Laos Old Mon script Mon script Pahawh Hmong was once used to write Khmu, under the name "Pahawh Khmu" Tai Le Palaung, Blang Tai Tham Blang Ol Chiki alphabet Santali alphabet Mundari Bani Mundari alphabet Warang Citi Ho alphabet Sorang Sompeng alphabet Sora alphabet External relations Austric languages Austroasiatic is an integral part of the controversial Austric hypothesis, which also includes the Austronesian languages, and in some proposals also the KraDai languages and the HmongMien languages. HmongMien Several lexical resemblances are found between the HmongMien and Austroasiatic language families Ratliff 2010, some of which had earlier been proposed by Haudricourt 1951

. This could imply a relation or early language contact along the Yangtze. According to Cai et al. 2011, HmongMien is at least partially related to Austroasiatic but was heavily influenced by SinoTibetan, especially TibetoBurman languages. IndoAryan languages It is suggested that the Austroasiatic languages have some influence on IndoAryan languages including Sanskrit and middle IndoAryan languages. Indian linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterji pointed that a specific number of substantives in languages such as Hindi, Punjabi and Bengali were borrowed from Munda languages. Additionally, French linguist Jean Przyluski suggested a similarity between the tales from the Austroasiatic realm and the Indian mythological stories of Matsyagandha from Mahabharata and the Ngas. Austroasiatic migrations and archaeogenetics Mitsuru Sakitani suggests that Haplogroup O1b1, which is common in Austroasiatic people and some other ethnic groups in southern China, and haplogroup O1b2, which is common in today Japanese, Koreans and s

ome Manchu, are the carriers of early riceagriculturalists from Indochina. Another study suggests that the haplogroup O1b1 is the major Austroasiatic paternal lineage and O1b2 the "paraAustroasiatic" lineage of the Mandchurian, Korean and Yayoi people. A 2021 study by Tagore et al. found that the protoAustroasiaticspeakers split from an BasalEast Asian source population, native to Mainland Southeast Asia and Northeast India, which also gave rise to other East Asianrelated populations, including Northeast Asians and Indigenous peoples of the Americas. The protoAustroasiaticspeakers can be linked to the Hoabinhian material culture. From Mainland Southeast Asia, the Austroasiaticspeakers expanded into the Indiansubcontinent and Maritime Southeast Asia. There is evidence that later back migration from more northerly East Asian groups such as KraDaispeakers merged with indigenous Southeast Asians, contributing to the fragmentation observed among modern day Austroasiaticspeakers. In the Indian subcontinent, Austro

asiaticspeakers, specifically Mundari, intermixed with the local population. Furthermore they concluded that their results do not support a genetic relationship between Ancient Southeast Asian huntergatherers Hoabinhians with Papuanrelated groups, as previously suggested by McColl et al. 2018, but that these Ancient Southeast Asians are characterized by BasalEast Asian ancestry. The authors finally concluded that genetics do not necessarily correspond with linguistic identity, pointing to the fragmentation of modern Austroasiaticspeakers. Larena et al. 2021 could reproduce the genetic evidence for the origin of BasalEast Asians in Mainland Southeast Asia, which are estimated to have formed about 50kya years ago, and expanded through multiple migration waves southwards and northwards. Early Austroasiaticspeakers are estimated to have originated from an lineage, which split from Ancestral East Asians between 25,000 to 15,000 years ago, and were among the first wave to replace distinct Australasianrelated group

s in Insular Southeast Asia. Early Austroasiatic people were found to be best represented by the Mlabri people in modern day Thailand. Proposals for Austroasiatic substratum among later Austronesian languages in Western Indonesia, noteworthy among the Dayak languages, is strengthened by genetic data, suggesting Austroasiaticspeakers were assimilated by Austronesianspeakers. A study in November 2021 Guo et al. found that modern EastEurasians can be modeled from four ancestry components, which descended from a common ancestor in Mainland Southeast Asia, one being the "Ancestral Austroasiatic" component AAA, which is more prevalent among modern Southeast Asians, and making up the exclusive ancestry among Austroasiaticspeaking Lua and Mlabri people. The early Austroasiaticspeakers are suggested to have been huntergatherers but became riceagriculturalists quite early, spreading from Mainland Southeast Asia northwards to the Yangtze river, westwards into the Indian subcontinent, and southwards into Insular Southea

st Asia. Evidence for these migrations are Austroasiatic loanwords related to riceagriculture found among nonAustroasiatic languages, and the presence of Austroasiatic genetic ancestry. According to a recent genetic study, Sundanese, Javanese, and Balinese, has almost an equal ratio of genetic marker shared between Austronesian and Austroasiatic heritages. Migration into India According to Chaubey et al., "AustroAsiatic speakers in India today are derived from dispersal from Southeast Asia, followed by extensive sexspecific admixture with local Indian populations." According to Riccio et al., the Munda people are likely descended from Austroasiatic migrants from Southeast Asia. According to Zhang et al., Austroasiatic migrations from Southeast Asia into India took place after the last Glacial maximum, circa 10,000 years ago. Arunkumar et al, suggest Austroasiatic migrations from Southeast Asia occurred into Northeast India 5.2  0.6 kya and into East India 4.3  0.2 kya. Notes References Sources Adam

s, K. L. 1989. Systems of numeral classification in the MonKhmer, Nicobarese and Aslian subfamilies of Austroasiatic. Canberra, A.C.T., Australia Dept. of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University. Alves, Mark J. 2015. Morphological functions among MonKhmer languages beyond the basics. In N. J. Enfield Bernard Comrie eds., Languages of Mainland Southeast Asia the state of the art. Berlin de Gruyter Mouton, 531557. Bradley, David 2012. "Languages and Language Families in China", in Rint Sybesma ed., Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics. Chakrabarti, Byomkes. 1994. A Comparative Study of Santali and Bengali. Diffloth, Grard. 2005. "The contribution of linguistic palaeontology and AustroAsiatic". in Laurent Sagart, Roger Blench and Alicia SanchezMazas, eds. The Peopling of East Asia Putting Together Archaeology, Linguistics and Genetics. 7780. London Routledge Curzon. Filbeck, D. 1978. T'in a historical study. Pacific linguistics, no. 49. Canberra Dep

t. of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University. Hemeling, K. 1907. Die Nanking Kuanhua. German language Jenny, Mathias and Paul Sidwell, eds 2015. The Handbook of Austroasiatic Languages. Leiden Brill. Peck, B. M., Comp. 1988. An Enumerative Bibliography of South Asian Language Dictionaries. Peiros, Ilia. 1998. Comparative Linguistics in Southeast Asia. Pacific Linguistics Series C, No. 142. Canberra Australian National University. Shorto, Harry L. edited by Sidwell, Paul, Cooper, Doug and Bauer, Christian 2006. A MonKhmer comparative dictionary. Canberra Australian National University. Pacific Linguistics. Shorto, H. L. Bibliographies of MonKhmer and Tai Linguistics. London oriental bibliographies, v. 2. London Oxford University Press, 1963. van Driem, George. 2007. Austroasiatic phylogeny and the Austroasiatic homeland in light of recent population genetic studies. MonKhmer Studies, 37, 114. Zide, Norman H., and Milton E. Barker. 1966 Studies in Compara

tive Austroasiatic Linguistics, The Hague Mouton IndoIranian monographs, v. 5.. Further reading Mann, Noel, Wendy Smith and Eva Ujlakyova. 2009. Linguistic clusters of Mainland Southeast Asia an overview of the language families. Chiang Mai Payap University. Sidwell, Paul. 2016. Bibliography of Austroasiatic linguistics and related resources. E. K. Brown ed. Encyclopedia of Languages and Linguistics. Oxford Elsevier Press. Gregory D. S. Anderson and Norman H. Zide. 2002. Issues in ProtoMunda and ProtoAustroasiatic Nominal Derivation The Bimoraic Constraint. In Marlys A. Macken ed. Papers from the 10th Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. Tempe, AZ Arizona State University, South East Asian Studies Program, Monograph Series Press. pp. 5574. External links Swadesh lists for AustroAsiatic languages from Wiktionary's Swadeshlist appendix AustroAsiatic at the Linguist List MultiTree Project not functional as of 2014 Genealogical trees attributed to Sebeok 1942, Pinnow 1959, D

iffloth 2005, and Matisoff 2006 MonKhmer.com Lectures by Paul Sidwell MonKhmer Languages Project at SEAlang Munda Languages Project at SEAlang RWAAI Repository and Workspace for Austroasiatic Intangible Heritage httphdl.handle.net100500000000000000366A42view RWAAI Digital Archive Michel Ferlus's recordings of MonKhmer Austroasiatic languages CNRS Agglutinative languages Language families SinoAustronesian languages

Afroasiatic AfroAsiatic, also known as Afrasian or HamitoSemitic, SemitoHamitic, or Erythraean, is a large language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in Western Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa and parts of the Sahel. With the exception of Semitic, all branches of the Afrosiatic family are spoken exclusively on the African continent. Afroasiatic languages have over 500 million native speakers, which is the fourth largest number of native speakers of any language family after IndoEuropean, SinoTibetan and NigerCongo. The phylum has six branches Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, Semitic, and Omotic; however, the inclusion of Omotic remains controversial, and several linguists see it as independent language family that stood in longterm contact with Afroasiatic languages. By far the most widely spoken Afroasiatic language or dialect continuum is Arabic, a de facto group of distinct language varieties within the Semitic branch. The languages that evolved from ProtoArabic have ar

ound 313 million native speakers, concentrated primarily in the Middle East and North Africa. In addition to languages spoken today, Afroasiatic includes several important ancient languages, such as Ancient Egyptian, which forms a distinct branch of the family, and within the Semitic family, Akkadian, Biblical Hebrew and Old Aramaic. There is no consensus among historical linguists concerning the original homeland of the Afroasiatic family, or the period when the parent language i.e. ProtoAfroasiatic was spoken. Proposed locations include the Horn of Africa, North Africa, the Eastern Sahara and the Levant. Etymology In the early 19th century, linguists grouped the Berber, Cushitic and Egyptian languages within a "Hamitic" phylum, in acknowledgement of these languages' genetic relation with each other and with those in the Semitic phylum. The terms "Hamitic" and "Semitic" were etymologically derived from the Book of Genesis, which describes various Biblical tribes descended from Ham and Shem, two sons of Noa

h. By the 1860s, the main constituent elements within the broader Afroasiatic family had been worked out. Friedrich Mller introduced the name "HamitoSemitic" for the entire language family in his Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft 1876. Maurice Delafosse 1914 later coined the term "Afroasiatic" often now spelled "AfroAsiatic". However, it did not come into general use until Joseph Greenberg 1950 formally proposed its adoption. In doing so, Greenberg sought to emphasize the fact that 'Hamitic' was not a valid group and that language cladistics did not reflect race. Individual scholars have also called the family "Erythraean" Tucker 1966 and "Lisramic" Hodge 1972. In lieu of "HamitoSemitic", the Russian linguist Igor Diakonoff later suggested the term "Afrasian", meaning "half African, half Asiatic", in reference to the geographic distribution of the family's constituent languages. Distribution and branches Scholars generally treat the Afroasiatic language family as including the following five branches, wher

eas Omotic is disputed Berber Chadic Cushitic Egyptian Semitic Although there is general agreement on these six families, linguists who study Afroasiatic raise some points of disagreement, in particular The Omotic language branch is the most controversial member of Afroasiatic because the grammatical formatives to which most linguists have given the greatest weight in classifying languages in the family "are either absent or distinctly wobbly" Hayward 1995. Greenberg 1963 and others considered it a subgroup of Cushitic, whereas others have raised doubts about its being part of Afroasiatic at all e.g. Theil 2006. The Afroasiatic identity of Ongota is also broadly questioned, as is its position within Afroasiatic among those who accept it, due to the "mixed" appearance of the language and a paucity of research and data. Harold Fleming 2006 proposes that Ongota constitutes a separate branch of Afroasiatic. Bonny Sands 2009 finds the proposal by Sav and Tosco 2003 the most convincing namely that Ongota i

s an East Cushitic language with a NiloSaharan substratum. In other words, it would appear that the Ongota people once spoke a NiloSaharan language but then shifted to speaking a Cushitic language but retained some characteristics of their earlier NiloSaharan language. Beja, sometimes listed as a separate branch of Afroasiatic, is more often included in the Cushitic branch, which has a substantial degree of internal diversity. There is no consensus on the interrelationships of the five nonOmotic branches of Afroasiatic see Subgrouping below. This situation is not unusual, even among longestablished language families scholars also frequently disagree on the internal classification of the IndoEuropean languages, for instance. The extinct Meroitic language has been proposed Bruce Trigger, 1964, 1977 as an unclassified Afroasiatic language, because it shares the phonotactics characteristic of the family, but there is not enough evidence to secure a classification Fritz Hintze, 1974, The classification of Kuj

arg within Afroasiatic is not agreed upon. Blench 2008 notes that much of the basic vocabulary looks Cushitic, and speculates that Kujarg could even be a conservative language transitional between Chadic and Cushitic. Demographics In descending order of the number of speakers, widelyspoken Afroasiatic languages include Arabic Semitic, the most widely spoken Afroasiatic language, has over 300 million native speakers. Hausa Chadic, the dominant language of northern Nigeria and southern Niger, spoken as a first language by over 40 million people and used as a lingua franca by another 20 million across West Africa and the Sahel. Oromo Cushitic, spoken in Ethiopia and Kenya by around 34 million people. Amharic Semitic, spoken in Ethiopia, with over 25 million native speakers in addition to millions of other Ethiopians speaking it as a second language. Somali Cushitic, spoken by 21.8 million people in Somalia, Somaliland, Djibouti, eastern Ethiopia and northeastern Kenya. Tigrinya Semitic, spoken by aroun

d 9.73 million people in Eritrea and Tigray Region of Ethiopia. Afar Cushitic, spoken by around 7.5 million people in Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Eritrea. Shilha Berber, spoken by around 7 million people in Morocco. Kabyle Berber, spoken by around 5.6 million people in Algeria. Hebrew Semitic, spoken by around 5 million native speakers, and additionally by 4 million secondlanguage speakers in Israel and the Jewish diaspora; premodern Hebrew is the liturgical language of Judaism and of the Samaritan people. Central Atlas Tamazight Berber, spoken by around 4.6 million people in Morocco. Riffian Berber, spoken by around 4.2 million people in Morocco. Gurage languages Semitic, a group of languages spoken by more than 2 million people in Ethiopia. Tigre Semitic, spoken by around 2 million people in Eritrea. Wolaitta Omotic, spoken by around 1.6 million people in Ethiopia. Maltese Semitic, spoken by around half a million people in Malta and the Maltese diaspora. It descended from SiculoArabic independently from modern

Arabic dialects, features Romance superstrates and has been written in the Latin script since at least the 14th century. Assyrian NeoAramaic Semitic, a variety of modern Aramaic, spoken by more than 500,000 people in the Assyrian diaspora. Classification history In the 9th century the Hebrew grammarian Judah ibn Quraysh of Tiaret in Algeria became the first to link two branches of Afroasiatic together; he perceived a relationship between Berber and Semitic. He knew of Semitic through his study of Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic. In the course of the 19th century, Europeans also began suggesting such relationships. In 1844, Theodor Benfey proposed a language family consisting of Semitic, Berber, and Cushitic he called the latter "Ethiopic". In the same year T.N. Newman suggested a relationship between Semitic and Hausa, but this would long remain a topic of dispute and uncertainty. Friedrich Mller named the traditional HamitoSemitic family in 1876 in his Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft "Outline of Linguistic

s", and defined it as consisting of a Semitic group plus a "Hamitic" group containing Egyptian, Berber, and Cushitic; he excluded the Chadic group. It was the Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius 18101884 who restricted Hamitic to the nonSemitic languages in Africa, which are characterized by a grammatical gender system. This "Hamitic language group" was proposed to unite various, mainly NorthAfrican, languages, including the Ancient Egyptian language, the Berber languages, the Cushitic languages, the Beja language, and the Chadic languages. Unlike Mller, Lepsius saw Hausa and Nama as part of the Hamitic group. These classifications relied in part on nonlinguistic anthropological and racial arguments. Both authors used the skincolor, mode of subsistence, and other characteristics of native speakers as part of their arguments for grouping particular languages together. In 1912, Carl Meinhof published Die Sprachen der Hamiten "The Languages of the Hamites", in which he expanded Lepsius's model, adding the Fula,

Maasai, Bari, Nandi, Sandawe and Hadza languages to the Hamitic group. Meinhof's model was widely supported in the 1940s. Meinhof's system of classification of the Hamitic languages was based on a belief that "speakers of Hamitic became largely coterminous with cattle herding peoples with essentially Caucasian origins, intrinsically different from and superior to the 'Negroes of Africa'." However, in the case of the socalled NiloHamitic languages a concept he introduced, it was based on the typological feature of gender and a "fallacious theory of language mixture". Meinhof did this although earlier work by scholars such as Lepsius and Johnston had substantiated that the languages which he would later dub "NiloHamitic" were in fact Nilotic languages, with numerous similarities in vocabulary to other Nilotic languages. Leo Reinisch 1909 had already proposed linking Cushitic and Chadic while urging their more distant affinity with Egyptian and Semitic. However, his suggestion found little acceptance. Marcel

Cohen 1924 rejected the idea of a distinct "Hamitic" subgroup and included Hausa a Chadic language in his comparative HamitoSemitic vocabulary. Finally, Joseph Greenberg's 1950 work led to the widespread rejection of "Hamitic" as a language category by linguists. Greenberg refuted Meinhof's linguistic theories and rejected the use of racial and social evidence. In dismissing the notion of a separate "NiloHamitic" language category, in particular, Greenberg was "returning to a view widely held a halfcentury earlier". He consequently rejoined Meinhof's socalled NiloHamitic languages with their appropriate Nilotic siblings. He also added and subclassified the Chadic languages, and proposed a new name, "Afroasiatic", for the family. Almost all scholars have accepted this classification as the new and continued consensus. Greenberg developed his model fully in his book The Languages of Africa 1963, in which he reassigned most of Meinhof's additions to Hamitic to other language families, notably NiloSaharan. Follo

wing Isaac Schapera and rejecting Meinhof, he classified the Khoekhoe language as a member of the Khoisan languages, a grouping that has since proven inaccurate and excessively motivated on the presence of click sounds. To Khoisan he also added the Tanzanian Hadza and Sandawe, though this view has been discredited as linguists working on these languages regard them as linguistic isolates. Despite this, Greenberg's classification remains a starting point for modern work on many languages spoken in Africa, and the Hamitic category and its extension to NiloHamitic has no part in this. Since the three traditional branches of the Hamitic languages Berber, Cushitic and Egyptian have not been shown to form an exclusive monophyletic phylogenetic unit of their own, separate from other Afroasiatic languages, linguists no longer use the term in this sense. Each of these branches is instead now regarded as an independent subgroup of the larger Afroasiatic family. In 1969, Harold Fleming proposed that what had previous

ly been known as Western Cushitic is an independent branch of Afroasiatic, suggesting for it the new name "Omotic". This proposal and name have met with widespread acceptance. Based on typological differences with the other Cushitic languages, Robert Hetzron proposed that Beja has to be removed from Cushitic, thus forming an independent branch of Afroasiatic. Most scholars, however, reject this proposal, and continue to group Beja as the sole member of a Northern branch within Cushitic. Glottolog does not accept that the inclusion or even unity of Omotic has been established, nor that of Ongota or the unclassified Kujarge. It therefore splits off the following groups as small families South Omotic, Mao, Dizoid, GongaGimojan North Omotic apart from the preceding, Ongota, and Kujarge. Subgrouping Little agreement exists on the subgrouping of the five or six branches of Afroasiatic Semitic, Egyptian, Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, and Omotic. However, Christopher Ehret 1979, Harold Fleming 1981, and Joseph Gre

enberg 1981 all agree that the Omotic branch split from the rest first. Otherwise Paul Newman 1980 groups Berber with Chadic and Egyptian with Semitic, while questioning the inclusion of Omotic in Afroasiatic. Rolf Theil 2006 concurs with the exclusion of Omotic but does not otherwise address the structure of the family. Harold Fleming 1981 divides nonOmotic Afroasiatic, or "Erythraean", into three groups, Cushitic, Semitic, and ChadicBerberEgyptian. He later added Semitic and Beja to ChadicBerberEgyptian and tentatively proposed Ongota as a new third branch of Erythraean. He thus divided Afroasiatic into two major branches, Omotic and Erythraean, with Erythraean consisting of three subbranches, Cushitic, ChadicBerberEgyptianSemiticBeja, and Ongota. Like Harold Fleming, Christopher Ehret 1995 490 divides Afroasiatic into two branches, Omotic and Erythrean. He divides Omotic into two branches, North Omotic and South Omotic. He divides Erythrean into Cushitic, comprising Beja, Agaw, and EastSouth Cushitic,

and North Erythrean, comprising Chadic and "Boreafrasian." According to his classification, Boreafrasian consists of Egyptian, Berber, and Semitic. Vladimir Orel and Olga Stolbova 1995 group Berber with Semitic and Chadic with Egyptian. They split up Cushitic into five or more independent branches of Afroasiatic, viewing Cushitic as a Sprachbund rather than a language family. Igor M. Diakonoff 1996 subdivides Afroasiatic in two, grouping Berber, Cushitic, and Semitic together as EastWest Afrasian ESA, and Chadic with Egyptian as NorthSouth Afrasian NSA. He excludes Omotic from Afroasiatic. Lionel Bender 1997 groups Berber, Cushitic, and Semitic together as "MacroCushitic". He regards Chadic and Omotic as the branches of Afroasiatic most remote from the others. Alexander Militarev 2000, on the basis of lexicostatistics, groups Berber with Chadic and both more distantly with Semitic, as against Cushitic and Omotic. He places Ongota in South Omotic. Position among the world's languages Afroasiatic is one of

the four major language families spoken in Africa identified by Joseph Greenberg in his book The Languages of Africa 1963. It is one of the few whose speech area is transcontinental, with languages from Afroasiatic's Semitic branch also spoken in the Middle East and Europe. There are no generally accepted relations between Afroasiatic and any other language family. However, several proposals grouping Afroasiatic with one or more other language families have been made. The bestknown of these are the following Hermann Mller 1906 argued for a relation between Semitic and the IndoEuropean languages. This proposal was accepted by a few linguists e.g. Holger Pedersen and Louis Hjelmslev. For a fuller account, see IndoSemitic languages. However, the theory has little currency today, although most linguists do not deny the existence of grammatical similarities between both families such as grammatical gender, nounadjective agreement, threeway number distinction, and vowel alternation as a means of derivation. App

arently influenced by Mller a colleague of his at the University of Copenhagen, Holger Pedersen included HamitoSemitic the term replaced by Afroasiatic in his proposed Nostratic macrofamily cf. Pedersen 1931336338, also included the IndoEuropean, Uralic, Altaic, Yukaghir languages, and Dravidian languages. This inclusion was retained by subsequent Nostraticists, starting with Vladislav IllichSvitych and Aharon Dolgopolsky. Joseph Greenberg 20002002 did not reject a relationship of Afroasiatic to these other languages, but he considered it more distantly related to them than they were to each other, grouping instead these other languages in a separate macrofamily, which he called Eurasiatic, and to which he added Chukotian, Gilyak, Korean, JapaneseRyukyuan, EskimoAleut, and Ainu. Most recently, Sergei Starostin's school has accepted Eurasiatic as a subgroup of Nostratic, with Afroasiatic, Dravidian, and Kartvelian in Nostratic outside of Eurasiatic. The even larger Borean superfamily contains Nostratic as we

ll as DenCaucasian and Austric. Date of Afroasiatic The earliest written evidence of an Afroasiatic language is an Ancient Egyptian inscription dated to c. 3400 BC 5,400 years ago. Symbols on Gerzean Naqada II pottery resembling Egyptian hieroglyphs date back to c. 4000 BC, suggesting an earlier possible dating. This gives us a minimum date for the age of Afroasiatic. However, Ancient Egyptian is highly divergent from ProtoAfroasiatic, and considerable time must have elapsed in between them. Estimates of the date at which the ProtoAfroasiatic language was spoken vary widely. They fall within a range between approximately 7,500 BC 9,500 years ago, and approximately 16,000 BC 18,000 years ago. According to Igor M. Diakonoff 1988 33n, ProtoAfroasiatic was spoken c. 10,000 BC. Christopher Ehret 2002 3536 asserts that ProtoAfroasiatic was spoken c. 11,000 BC at the latest, and possibly as early as c. 16,000 BC. These dates are older than those associated with other protolanguages. Afroasiatic Urheimat The Afro

asiatic urheimat, the hypothetical place where ProtoAfroasiatic language speakers lived in a single linguistic community, or complex of communities, before this original language dispersed geographically and divided into distinct languages, is unknown. Afroasiatic languages are today primarily spoken in West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahel. Their distribution seems to have been influenced by the Sahara pump operating over the last 10,000 years. While there is no definitive agreement on when or where the original homeland of this language family existed, many link the first speakers to the first farmers in the Levant who would later spread to North and East Africa. Others argue the first speakers were preagricultural and based in North East Africa. Similarities in grammar and syntax Widespread though not universal features of the Afroasiatic languages include A set of emphatic consonants, variously realized as glottalized, pharyngealized, or implosive. VSO typology with SVO

tendencies. A twogender system in the singular, with the feminine marked by the sound t. All Afroasiatic subfamilies show evidence of a causative affix s. Semitic, Berber, Cushitic including Beja, and Chadic support possessive suffixes. Nisba derivation in j earlier Egyptian or Semitic Morphology in which words inflect by changes within the root vowel changes or gemination as well as with prefixes and suffixes. One of the most remarkable shared features among the Afroasiatic languages is the prefixing verb conjugation see the table at the start of this section, with a distinctive pattern of prefixes beginning with t n y, and in particular a pattern whereby thirdsingular masculine y is opposed to thirdsingular feminine and secondsingular t. According to Ehret 1996, tonal languages appear in the Omotic and Chadic branches of Afroasiatic, as well as in certain Cushitic languages. The Semitic, Berber and Egyptian branches generally do not use tones phonemically. The Berber and Semitic branches share ce

rtain grammatical features e.g. alternative feminine endings ayy; corresponding vowel templates for verbal conjugations which can be reconstructed for a higherorder protolanguage provisionally called "ProtoBerberoSemitic" by Kossmann Suchard 2018 and Putten 2018. Whether this protolanguage is ancestral to Berber and Semitic only, or also to other branches of Afroasiatic, still remains to be established. Shared vocabulary The following are some examples of Afroasiatic cognates, including ten pronouns, three nouns, and three verbs. Source Christopher Ehret, Reconstructing ProtoAfroasiatic Berkeley University of California Press, 1995. Note Ehret does not make use of Berber in his etymologies, stating 1995 12 "the kind of extensive reconstruction of protoBerber lexicon that might help in sorting through alternative possible etymologies is not yet available." The Berber cognates here are taken from the previous version of the table in this article and need to be completed and referenced. Abbreviations NOm

'North Omotic', SOm 'South Omotic'. MSA 'Modern South Arabian', PSC 'ProtoSouthern Cushitic', PSomII 'ProtoSomali, stage 2'. masc. 'masculine', fem. 'feminine', sing. 'singular', pl. 'plural'. 1s. 'first person singular', 2s. 'second person singular'. Symbols Following Ehret 1995 70, a caron over a vowel indicates rising tone, and a circumflex over a vowel indicates falling tone. V indicates a vowel of unknown quality. indicates a glottal stop. indicates reconstructed forms based on comparison of related languages. There are two etymological dictionaries of Afroasiatic, one by Christopher Ehret, and one by Vladimir Orel and Olga Stolbova. The two dictionaries disagree on almost everything. The following table contains the thirty roots or so out of thousands that represent a fragile consensus of present research Etymological bibliography Some of the main sources for Afroasiatic etymologies include Cohen, Marcel. 1947. Essai comparatif sur le vocabulaire et la phontique du chamitosmitique. Pa

ris Champion. Diakonoff, Igor M. et al. 19931997. "Historicalcomparative vocabulary of Afrasian," St. Petersburg Journal of African Studies 26. Ehret, Christopher. 1995. Reconstructing ProtoAfroasiatic ProtoAfrasian Vowels, Tone, Consonants, and Vocabulary University of California Publications in Linguistics 126. Berkeley and Los Angeles University of California Press. Orel, Vladimir E. and Olga V. Stolbova. 1995. HamitoSemitic Etymological Dictionary Materials for a Reconstruction. Leiden Brill. . See also Afroasiatic phonetic notation Borean languages IndoEuropean languages IndoSemitic languages Languages of Africa Languages of Asia Languages of Europe Nostratic languages ProtoAfroasiatic language References Citations Works cited General references Anthony, David. 2007. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language How BronzeAge Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World. Princeton Princeton University Press. Bender, Lionel et al. 2003. Selected ComparativeHistorical AfroAsiatic Stud

ies in Memory of Igor M. Diakonoff. LINCOM. Bomhard, Alan R. 1996. IndoEuropean and the Nostratic Hypothesis. Signum. Diakonoff, Igor M. 1988. Afrasian Languages. Moscow Nauka. Diakonoff, Igor M. 1996. "Some reflections on the Afrasian linguistic macrofamily." Journal of Near Eastern Studies 55, 293. Diakonoff, Igor M. 1998. "The earliest Semitic society Linguistic data." Journal of Semitic Studies 43, 209. Dimmendaal, Gerrit, and Erhard Voeltz. 2007. "Africa". In Christopher Moseley, ed., Encyclopedia of the world's endangered languages. Ehret, Christopher. 1995. Reconstructing ProtoAfroasiatic ProtoAfrasian Vowels, Tone, Consonants, and Vocabulary. Berkeley and Los Angeles University of California Press. Ehret, Christopher. 1997. Abstract of "The lessons of deeptime historicalcomparative reconstruction in Afroasiatic reflections on Reconstructing ProtoAfroasiatic Vowels, Tone, Consonants, and Vocabulary U.C. Press, 1995", paper delivered at the Twentyfifth Annual Meeting of the North American Conference on

AfroAsiatic Linguistics, held in Miami, Florida, on 2123 March 1997. Finnegan, Ruth H. 1970. "AfroAsiatic languages West Africa". Oral Literature in Africa, pg 558. Fleming, Harold C. 2006. Ongota A Decisive Language in African Prehistory. Wiesbaden Otto Harrassowitz. Greenberg, Joseph H. 1950. "Studies in African linguistic classification IV. HamitoSemitic." Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 6, 4763. Greenberg, Joseph H. 1955. Studies in African Linguistic Classification. New Haven Compass Publishing Company. Photooffset reprint of the SJA articles with minor corrections. Greenberg, Joseph H. 1963. The Languages of Africa. Bloomington Indiana University. Heavily revised version of Greenberg 1955. Greenberg, Joseph H. 1966. The Languages of Africa 2nd ed. with additions and corrections. Bloomington Indiana University. Greenberg, Joseph H. 1981. "African linguistic classification." General History of Africa, Volume 1 Methodology and African Prehistory, edited by Joseph KiZerbo, 292308. Berkeley and Los Ange

les University of California Press. Greenberg, Joseph H. 20002002. IndoEuropean and Its Closest Relatives The Eurasiatic Language Family, Volume 1 Grammar, Volume 2 Lexicon. Stanford Stanford University Press. Hayward, R. J. 1995. "The challenge of Omotic an inaugural lecture delivered on 17 February 1994". London School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Heine, Bernd and Derek Nurse. 2000. African Languages, Chapter 4. Cambridge University Press. Hodge, Carleton T. editor. 1971. Afroasiatic A Survey. The Hague Paris Mouton. Hodge, Carleton T. 1991. "IndoEuropean and AfroAsiatic." In Sydney M. Lamb and E. Douglas Mitchell editors, Sprung from Some Common Source Investigations into the Prehistory of Languages, Stanford, California Stanford University Press, 141165. Huehnergard, John. 2004. "AfroAsiatic." In R.D. Woodard editor, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Worlds Ancient Languages, Cambridge New York, 2004, 138159. Militarev, Alexander. "Towards the genetic affiliation of Ongota, a n

earlyextinct language of Ethiopia," 60 pp. In Orientalia et Classica Papers of the Institute of Oriental and Classical Studies, Issue 5. Moscow. Forthcoming. Newman, Paul. 1980. The Classification of Chadic within Afroasiatic. Leiden Universitaire Pers Leiden. Theil, R. 2006. Is Omotic AfroAsiatic? Proceedings from the David Dwyer retirement symposium, Michigan State University, East Lansing, 21 October 2006. Zuckermann, Ghil'ad 2020. Revivalistics From the Genesis of Israeli to Language Reclamation in Australia and Beyond, Oxford University Press. External links AfroAsiatic at the Linguist List MultiTree Project not functional as of 2014 Genealogical trees attributed to Delafosse 1914, Greenberg 19501955, Greenberg 1963, Fleming 1976, Hodge 1976, Orel Stolbova 1995, Diakonoff 19961998, Ehret 19952000, Hayward 2000, Militarev 2005, Blench 2006, and Fleming 2006 AfroAsiatic and Semitic genealogical trees, presented by Alexander Militarev at his talk "Genealogical classification of AfroAsiatic languages

according to the latest data" at the conference on the 70th anniversary of V.M. IllichSvitych, Moscow, 2004; short annotations of the talks given there The prehistory of a dispersal the ProtoAfrasian Afroasiatic farming lexicon, by Alexander Militarev in "Examining the FarmingLanguage Dispersal Hypothesis", eds. P. Bellwood C. Renfrew. McDonald Institute Monographs. Cambridge McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2002, p. 13550. Once More About Glottochronology And The Comparative Method The OmoticAfrasian case, by Alexander Militarev in "Aspects of Comparative Linguistics", v. 1. Moscow RSUH Publishers, 2005, pp. 339408. Root Extension And Root Formation In Semitic And Afrasian, by Alexander Militarev in "Proceedings of the Barcelona Symposium on comparative Semitic", 1920112004. Aula Orientalis 2312, 2005, pp. 83129. AkkadianEgyptian lexical matches, by Alexander Militarev in "Papers on Semitic and Afroasiatic Linguistics in Honor of Gene B. Gragg." Ed. by Cynthia L. Miller. Studies in Ancie

nt Oriental Civilization 60. Chicago The Oriental Institute, 2007, p. 139145. A comparison of OrelStolbova's and Ehret's AfroAsiatic reconstructions "Is Omotic AfroAsiatic?" by Rolf Theil 2006 NACAL The North American Conference on Afroasiatic Linguistics, now in its 35th year AfroAsiatic webpage of Roger Blench with family tree. Language families Ethnic groups in Africa Ethnic groups in Asia Ethnic groups in Europe

Andorra, officially the Principality of Andorra, is a sovereign landlocked microstate on the Iberian Peninsula, in the eastern Pyrenees, bordered by France to the north and Spain to the south. Believed to have been created by Charlemagne, Andorra was ruled by the count of Urgell until 988, when it was transferred to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Urgell. The present principality was formed by a charter in 1278. It is headed by two coprinces the Bishop of Urgell in Catalonia, Spain and the President of France. Its capital and largest city is Andorra la Vella. Andorra is the sixthsmallest state in Europe, with an area of and a population of approximately . The Andorran people are a Romance ethnic group of originally Catalan descent. Andorra is the world's 16thsmallest country by land and 11thsmallest by population. Its capital, Andorra la Vella, is the highest capital city in Europe, at an elevation of above sea level. The official language is Catalan, but Spanish, Portuguese, and French are also commonly spo

ken. Tourism in Andorra sees an estimated 10.2 million visitors annually. Andorra is not a member state of the European Union, but the euro is its official currency. It has been a member of the United Nations since 1993. In 2013, Andorra had the highest life expectancy in the world at 81 years, according to the Global Burden of Disease Study; in 2019, it had the 23rdhighest at 81.9 years, according to the United Nations Development Programme. Etymology The origin of the word Andorra is unknown, although several hypotheses have been formulated. The oldest derivation is from the Greek historian Polybius The Histories III, 35, 1, who describes the Andosins, an Iberian PreRoman tribe, as historically located in the valleys of Andorra and facing the Carthaginian army in its passage through the Pyrenees during the Punic Wars. The word Andosini or Andosins may derive from the Basque , meaning "big" or "giant". The Andorran toponymy shows evidence of Basque language in the area. Another theory suggests that the wo

rd Andorra may derive from the old word Anorra that contains the Basque word water. Another theory suggests that Andorra may derive from , meaning "the thickly wooded place". When the Arabs and Moors conquered the Iberian Peninsula, the valleys of the High Pyrenees were covered by large tracts of forest. These regions were not administered by Muslims, because of the geographic difficulty of direct rule. Other theories suggest that the term derives from the NavarroAragonese "andurrial", which means "land covered with bushes" or "scrubland". The folk etymology holds that Charlemagne had named the region as a reference to the Biblical Canaanite valley of Endor or Andor where the Midianites had been defeated, a name bestowed by his heir and son Louis the Pious after defeating the Moors in the "wild valleys of Hell". History Prehistory La Balma de la Margineda, found by archaeologists at Sant Juli de Lria, was settled in 9,500 BC as a passing place between the two sides of the Pyrenees. The seasonal camp w

as perfectly located for hunting and fishing by the groups of huntergatherers from Ariege and Segre. During the Neolithic Age, a group of people moved to the Valley of Madriu the presentday Natural Parc located in EscaldesEngordany declared UNESCO World Heritage Site as a permanent camp in 6640 BC. The population of the valley grew cereals, raised domestic livestock, and developed a commercial trade with people from the Segre and Occitania. Other archaeological deposits include the Tombs of Segudet Ordino and Feixa del Moro Sant Juli de Lria, both dated in 49004300 BC as an example of the Urn culture in Andorra. The model of small settlements began to evolve to a complex urbanism during the Bronze Age. Metallurgical items of iron, ancient coins, and relicaries can be found in the ancient sanctuaries scattered around the country. The sanctuary of Roc de les Bruixes Stone of the Witches is perhaps the most important archeological complex of this age in Andorra, located in the parish of Canillo, about the rit

uals of funerals, ancient scripture and engraved stone murals. Iberian and Roman Andorra The inhabitants of the valleys were traditionally associated with the Iberians and historically located in Andorra as the Iberian tribe Andosins or Andosini during the 7th and 2nd centuries BC. Influenced by the Aquitanian, Basque and Iberian languages, the locals developed some current toponyms. Early writings and documents relating to this group of people goes back to the second century BC by the Greek writer Polybius in his Histories during the Punic Wars. Some of the most significant remains of this era are the Castle of the Roc d'Enclar part of the early Marca Hispanica, l'Anxiu in Les Escaldes and Roc de L'Oral in Encamp. The presence of Roman influence is recorded from the 2nd century BC to the 5th century AD. The places with the most Roman presence are in Camp Vermell Red Field in Sant Juli de Lria, and in some places in Encamp, as well as in the Roc d'Enclar. People continued trading, mainly with wine and ce

reals, with the Roman cities of Urgellet the presentday La Seu d'Urgell and all across Segre through the via romana Strata Ceretana also known as Strata Confluetana. Visigoths and Carolingians the legend of Charlemagne After the fall of the Roman Empire, Andorra came under the influence of the Visigoths, the Kingdom of Toledo, and the Diocese of Urgell. The Visigoths remained in the valleys for 200 years, during which time Christianity spread. When the Muslim Empire of AlAndalus replaced the ruling Visigoths in most of the Iberian Peninsula, Andorra was sheltered from these invaders by the Franks. Tradition holds that Charles the Great Charlemagne granted a charter to the Andorran people for a contingent of 5,000 soldiers under the command of Marc Almugaver, in return for fighting against the Moors near PortPuymorens Cerdanya. Andorra remained part of the Frankish Marca Hispanica, the buffer zone between the Frankish Empire and the Muslim territories, Andorra being part of the territory ruled by the Count

of Urgell and eventually the bishop of the Diocese of Urgell. Tradition also holds that it was guaranteed by the son of Charlemagne, Louis the Pious, writing the Carta de Poblament or a local municipal charter circa 805. In 988, Borrell II, Count of Urgell, gave the Andorran valleys to the Diocese of Urgell in exchange for land in Cerdanya. Since then, the Bishop of Urgell, based in Seu d'Urgell, has been coprince of Andorra. The first document that mentions Andorra as a territory is the Acta de Consagraci i Dotaci de la Catedral de la Seu d'Urgell Deed of Consecration and Endowment of the Cathedral of La Seu d'Urgell. The document, dated 839, depicts the six old parishes of the Andorran valleys that made up the country's administrative division. Medieval Age The Parages and the founding of the CoPrincipality Before 1095, Andorra had no military protection, and the Bishop of Urgell, who knew that the count of Urgell wanted to reclaim the Andorran valleys, asked the lord of Caboet for help and protection.

In 1095, the Lord of Caboet and the bishop of Urgell signed under oath a declaration of their cosovereignty over Andorra. Arnalda, daughter of Arnau of Caboet, married the viscount of Castellb. Their daughter, Ermessenda, married the count of Foix, RogerBernard II. RogerBernard II and Ermessenda shared rule over Andorra with the bishop of Urgell. In the 13th century, a military dispute arose between the bishop of Urgell and the count of Foix as aftermath of the Cathar Crusade. The conflict was resolved in 1278 with the mediation of the king of Aragon, Peter III, between the bishop and the count, by the signing of the first parage, which provided that Andorra's sovereignty be shared between the count of Foix whose title would ultimately transfer to the French head of state and the bishop of Urgell, in Catalonia. This gave the principality its territory and political form. A second parage was signed in 1288 after a dispute when the count of Foix ordered the construction of a castle in Roc d'Enclar. The docum

ent was ratified by the noble notary Jaume Orig of Puigcerd, and construction of military structures in the country was prohibited. In 1364, the political organization of the country named the figure of the syndic now spokesman and president of the parliament as representative of the Andorrans to their coprinces, making possible the creation of local departments comuns, quarts and venats. After being ratified by Bishop Francesc Tovia and Count John I, the Consell de la Terra or Consell General de les Valls General Council of the Valleys was founded in 1419, the second oldest parliament in Europe. The syndic Andreu d'Als and the General Council organized the creation of the Justice Courts La Cort de Justicia in 1433 with the coprinces and the collection of taxes like foc i lloc literally "fire and site", a national tax active since then. Although there are remains of ecclesiastical works dating before the 9th century Sant Vicen d'Enclar or Esglsia de Santa Coloma, Andorra developed exquisite Romanesque Art d

uring the 9th through 14th centuries, particularly in the construction of churches, bridges, religious murals and statues of the Virgin and Child Our Lady of Meritxell being the most important. Nowadays, the Romanesque buildings that form part of Andorra's cultural heritage stand out in a remarkable way, with an emphasis on Esglsia de Sant Esteve, Sant Joan de Caselles, Esglsia de Sant Miquel d'Engolasters, Sant Mart de la Cortinada and the medieval bridges of Margineda and Escalls among many others. The Catalan Pyrenees were embryonic of the Catalan language at the end of the 11th century. Andorra was influenced by this language, which was adopted locally decades before it expanded to the rest of the Crown of Aragon. The local economy during the Middle Ages was based on livestock, agriculture, furs and weavers. Later, at the end of the 11th century, the first iron foundries began to appear in Northern Parishes like Ordino, much appreciated by the master artisans who developed the art of the forges, an impo

rtant economic activity in the country from the 15th century. 16th to 18th centuries In 1601, the Tribunal de Corts High Court of Justice was created as a result of Huguenot rebellions in France, Inquisition courts coming from Spain and witchcraftrelated beliefs native to the area, in the context of the Reformation and CounterReformation. With the passage of time, the cotitle to Andorra passed to the kings of Navarre. After Henry III of Navarre became king of France, he issued an edict in 1607 that established the head of the French state and the bishop of Urgell as coprinces of Andorra, a political arrangement that still holds. During 1617, communal councils form the sometent popular militia or army to deal with the rise of bandolerisme brigandage and the Consell de la Terra was defined and structured in terms of its composition, organization and competences current today. Andorra continued with the same economic system that it had during the 12th14th centuries with a large production of metallurgy farg

ues, a system similar to Farga Catalana and with the introduction of tobacco circa 1692 and import trade. In 1371, and 1448, the coprinces ratified the fair of Andorra la Vella, the most important annual national festival commercially ever since. The country had a unique and experienced guild of weavers, Confraria de Paraires i Teixidors, in EscaldesEngordany. Founded in 1604, it took advantage of the local thermal waters. By this time, the country was characterized by the social system of prohoms wealthy society and casalers rest of the population with smaller economic acquisition, deriving from the tradition of pubilla and hereu. Three centuries after its foundation, the Consell de la Terra located its headquarters and the Tribunal de Corts in Casa de la Vall in 1702. The manor house built in 1580 served as a noble fortress of the Busquets family. Inside the parliament was placed the Closet of the six keys Armari de les sis claus, representative of each Andorran parish, where the Andorran constitution and

other documents and laws were later kept. In both the Reapers' War and the War of the Spanish Succession, the Andorran people while professing to be a neutral country supported the Catalans who saw their rights reduced in 1716. The reaction was the promotion of Catalan writings in Andorra, with cultural works such as the Book of Privileges Llibre de Privilegis de 1674, Manual Digest 1748 by Antoni Fiter i Rossell or the Polit andorr 1763 by Antoni Puig. 19th century the New Reform and the Andorran Question After the French Revolution, Napoleon I reestablished the CoPrincipate in 1809 and removed the French medieval title. In 18121813, the First French Empire annexed Catalonia during the Peninsular War and divided the region into four dpartements, with Andorra as a part of the district of Puigcerd. In 1814, an imperial decree reestablished the independence and economy of Andorra. During this period, Andorra's late medieval institutions and rural culture remained largely unchanged. In 1866, the syndic Gui

llem d'ArenyPlandolit led the reformist group in a Council General of 24 members elected by suffrage limited to heads of families. The Council General replaced the aristocratic oligarchy that previously ruled the state. The New Reform began after ratification by both CoPrinces and established the basis of the constitution and symbolssuch as the tricolour flagof Andorra. A new service economy arose as a demand of the valley inhabitants and began to build infrastructure such as hotels, spa resorts, roads and telegraph lines. The authorities of the CoPrinces banned casinos and betting houses throughout the country. The ban resulted in an economic conflict and the Revolution of 1881, which began when revolutionaries assaulted the house of the syndic on 8 December 1880, and established the Provisional Revolutionary Council led by Joan Pla i Calvo and Pere Bar i Mas. The Provisional Revolutionary Council allowed for the construction of casinos and spas by foreign companies. From 7 to 9 June 1881, the loyalists o

f Canillo and Encamp reconquered the parishes of Ordino and La Massana by establishing contact with the revolutionary forces in EscaldesEngordany. After a day of combat the Treaty of the Bridge of Escalls was signed on 10 June. The council was replaced and new elections were held. The economic situation worsened, as the populace was divided over the   the "Andorran Question" in relation to the Eastern Question. The struggles continued between probishops, proFrench, and nationalists based on the troubles of Canillo in 1882 and 1885. Andorra participated in the cultural movement of the Catalan Renaixena. Between 1882 and 1887, the first academic schools were formed where trilingualism coexisted with the official language, Catalan. Romantic authors from France and Spain reported the awakening of the national consciousness of the country. Jacint Verdaguer lived in Ordino during the 1880s where he wrote and shared works related to the Renaixena with writer and photographer, Joaquim de Riba. In 1848, Fromental Ha

lvy had premiered the opera Le Val d'Andorre to great success in Europe, where the national consciousness of the valleys was exposed in the romantic work during the Peninsular War. 20th and 21st century Modernisation of the country and the Constitutional Andorra In 1933, France occupied Andorra following social unrest which occurred before elections due to the Revolution of 1933 and the FHASA strikes Vagues de FHASA; the revolt led by Joves Andorrans a labour union group related to the Spanish CNT and FAI called for political reforms, the universal suffrage vote of all Andorrans and acted in defense of the rights of local and foreign workers during the construction of FHASA's hydroelectric power station in Encamp. On 5 April 1933 Joves Andorrans seized the Andorran Parliament. These actions were preceded by the arrival of Colonel RenJules Baulard with 50 gendarmes and the mobilization of 200 local militias or sometent led by the Sndic Francesc Cairat. On 6 July 1934, adventurer and nobleman Boris Skossyref

f, with his promise of freedoms and modernization of the country and wealth through the establishment of a tax haven and foreign investments, received the support of the members of the General Council to proclaim himself the sovereign of Andorra. On 8 July 1934 Boris issued a proclamation in Urgell, declaring himself Boris I, King of Andorra, simultaneously declaring war on the Bishop of Urgell and approving the King's constitution on 10 July. He was arrested by the CoPrince and Bishop Just Guitart i Vilardeb and their authorities on 20 July and ultimately expelled from Spain. From 1936 until 1940, a French military detachment of Garde Mobile led by wellknown Colonel RenJules Baulard was garrisoned in Andorra to secure the principality against disruption from the Spanish Civil War and Francoist Spain and also face the rise of Republicanism in the aftermath of the 1933 Revolution. During the Spanish Civil War, the inhabitants of Andorra welcomed refugees from both sides, and many of them settled permanently in

the country thus contributing to the subsequent economic boom and the entry into the capitalist era of Andorra. Francoist troops reached the Andorran border in the later stages of the war. During World War II, Andorra remained neutral and was an important smuggling route between Vichy France and Francoist Spain, two fascist states. Many Andorrans criticized the passivity of the General Council for impeding both the entry and expulsion of foreigners and refugees, committing economic crimes, reducing the rights of citizens and sympathy with Francoism. General Council members justified the council's political and diplomatic actions as necessary for Andorra's survival and the protection of its sovereignty. Andorra was relatively unscathed by the two world wars and the Spanish Civil War. Certain groups formed to help victims of oppression in Nazioccupied countries, while participating in smuggling to help Andorra survive. Among the most prominent was the Hostal Palanques Evasion Network Command, which, in contac

t with the British Mi6, helped almost 400 fugitives, among whom were Allied military personnel. The Command remained active between 1941 and 1944, although there were struggles with proAxis informers and Gestapo agents in Andorra. In the capital city there was a smuggling black market of propaganda, culture and cinematic art not favorable to totalitarian regimes, promulgated in such places as the Hotel Mirador or the Casino Hotel, as a meeting place for people of ideologies close to Andorran and Spanish Republicanism and Free France. The network was maintained after the war, when film societies were formed, where movies, music and books censored in Franco's Spain were imported, becoming an anticensorship attraction for the Catalan or foreign public even within Andorra. Andorran Group Agrupament Andorr, an antifascist organization linked to the Occitanie's French Resistance, accused the French representative veguer of collaboration with Nazism. The Andorran opening to the capitalist economy resulted in two a

xes mass tourism and the country's tax exemption. The first steps toward the capitalist boom date from the 1930s, with the construction of FHASA and the creation of professional banking with Banc Agrcol 1930 and Crdit Andorr 1949, later with Banca Mora 1952, Banca Cassany 1958 and SOBANCA 1960. Shortly after activities such as skiing and shopping become a tourist attraction, with the inauguration of ski resorts and cultural entities in the late 1930s. All in all, a renovated hotel industry has developed. In April 1968 a social health insurance system was created CASS. The Andorran government necessarily involved planning, projection and forecasts for the future with the official visit of the French coprince Charles de Gaulle in 1967 and 1969, it was given approval for the economic boom and national demands within the framework of human rights and international openness. Andorra lived an era commonly known as "Andorran dream" in relation to the American dream along with the Trente Glorieuses the mass culture

rooted the country experiencing radical changes in the economy and culture. Proof of this was Rdio Andorra, the top musical radio station in Europe in this period, with guests and speakers of great importance promoting musical hits of chanson franaise, swing, rhythm blues, jazz, rock and roll and American country music. During this period Andorra achieved a GDP per capita and a life expectancy higher than the most standard countries of the current economy. Given its relative isolation, Andorra has existed outside the mainstream of European history, with few ties to countries other than France, Spain and Portugal. But in recent times its thriving tourist industry along with developments in transport and communications have removed the country from its isolation. Since 1976 the country has seen the need to reform Andorran institutions due to anachronisms in sovereignty, human rights and the balance of powers as well as the need to adapt legislation to modern demands. In 1982, a first separation of powers too

k place when instituting the Govern d'Andorra, under the name of Executive Board Consell Executiu, chaired by the first prime minister scar Ribas Reig with the coprinces' approval. In 1989, the Principality signed an agreement with the European Economic Community to regularize trade relations. Its political system was modernized in 1993 after the Andorran constitutional referendum, when the constitution was drafted by the coprinces and the General Council and approved on 14 March by 74.2 of voters, with a 76 turnout. The first elections under the new constitution were held later in the year. The same year, Andorra became a member of the United Nations and the Council of Europe. Andorra formalized diplomatic relations with the United States in 1996, participating in the 51st UN General Assembly. First General Syndic Marc Forn took part on a speech in Catalan in the General Assembly to defend the reform of the organization, and after three days he took part in the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Euro

pe to defend Andorra's linguistic rights and economy. In 2006, a monetary agreement with the European Union was formalized that allows Andorra to use the euro in an official way, as well as coin its own euro currency. Politics Andorra is a parliamentary coprincipality with the president of France and the Catholic bishop of Urgell Catalonia, Spain as coprinces. This peculiarity makes the president of France, in his capacity as prince of Andorra, an elected monarch, although he is not elected by a popular vote of the Andorran people. The politics of Andorra take place in a framework of a parliamentary representative democracy with a unicameral legislature, and of a pluriform multiparty system. The head of government is the prime minister. The current head of government is Xavier Espot Zamora of the Democrats for Andorra DA. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both government and parliament. The Parliament of Andorra is known as the General Council. The General Coun