Editing Afroasiatic languages (section)

===Berber===
{{main|Berber languages}}
The Berber (or Libyco-Berber) languages are spoken today by perhaps 16 million people.{{sfn|Gragg|2019|pp=23–24}} They are often considered to constitute a single language with multiple dialects.{{sfn|Meyer|Wolff|2019|p=252-253}} Other scholars, however, argue that they are a group of around twelve languages, about as different from each other as the Romance or Germanic languages.{{sfn|Güldemann|2018|p=324}} In the past, Berber languages were spoken throughout North Africa except in Egypt;{{sfn|Lipiński|2001|p=34}} since the 7th century CE, however, they have been heavily affected by Arabic and have been replaced by it in many places.{{sfn|Meyer|Wolff|2019|p=253}}{{sfn|Gragg|2019|p=24}}

There are two extinct languages potentially related to modern Berber.{{sfn|Güldemann|2018|p=325}} The first is the [[Numidian language]], represented by over a thousand short inscriptions in the [[Libyco-Berber alphabet]], found throughout North Africa and dating from the 2nd century BCE onward.{{sfn|Gragg|2019|p=24}} The second is the [[Guanche language]], which was formerly spoken on the [[Canary Islands]] and went extinct in the 17th century CE.{{sfn|Güldemann|2018|p=325}} The first longer written examples of modern Berber varieties only date from the 16th or 17th centuries CE.{{sfn|Lipiński|2001|p=37}}