Everything about The Semitic Languages totally explained
The
Semitic languages are a
family of languages spoken by more than 300 million people across much of the
Middle East,
North Africa, and the
Horn of Africa. They constitute the northeastern subfamily of the
Afro-Asiatic languages, and the only branch of this group spoken in
Asia.
The most widely spoken Semitic
languages today are
Arabic (325 million native speakers), followed by
Amharic (27 million),
Tigrinya (about 6.7 million), and
Hebrew (about 5 million).
Semitic languages were among the earliest to attain a written form, with
Eblaite and
Akkadian writing beginning in an adapted
cuneiform script around the middle of the third millennium BC. Other scripts used for Semitic languages have included the
Ugaritic,
Phoenician,
Aramaic,
Syriac,
Arabic,
South Arabian, and
Ge'ez alphabets.
Maltese is the only Semitic language that uses the
Latin alphabet.
The term "Semitic" for these languages, after
Shem, the son of
Noah in the
Bible, is
etymologically a
misnomer in some ways (see
Semitic), but is nonetheless standard.
History
Origins
The Semitic family is a member of the larger
Afro-Asiatic family, all the other five or more branches of which are based in Africa. Largely for this reason, the ancestors of Proto-Semitic speakers are now widely believed to have first arrived in the Middle East from Africa, possibly as part of the operation of the
Saharan pump, around the late Neolithic. However, an opposing theory is that Proto-Afro-Asiatic originated in the Middle East, and Semitic was the only branch to stay put.
In any event,
Proto-Semitic itself is assumed to have reached the
Arabian Peninsula by approximately the
4th millennium BC(E), from which Semitic daughter languages continued to spread outwards. When written records began in the mid
3rd millennium BC(E), the Semitic-speaking
Akkadians and
Amorites were entering
Mesopotamia from the deserts to the west, and were probably already present in places such as
Ebla in Syria.
2nd millennium BC(E)
By the beginning of the
2nd millennium BC(E), East Semitic languages dominated in Mesopotamia, while West Semitic languages were probably spoken from Syria to
Yemen, although Old South Arabian is considered by most to be South Semitic and data are sparse.
Akkadian had become the dominant literary language of the
Fertile Crescent, using the
cuneiform script they adapted from the
Sumerians, while the sparsely attested
Eblaite disappeared with the city, and
Amorite is attested only from proper names.
For the 2nd millennium, somewhat more data are available, thanks to the spread of an invention first used to capture the sounds of Semitic languages — the
alphabet.
Proto-Canaanite texts from around 1500 BC(E) yield the first undisputed attestations of a West Semitic language (although earlier testimonies are possibly preserved in
Middle Bronze Age alphabets), followed by the much more extensive
Ugaritic tablets of northern Syria from around 1300 BC(E). Incursions of nomadic
Aramaeans from the Syrian desert begin around this time. Akkadian continued to flourish, splitting into
Babylonian and
Assyrian dialects.
1st millennium BC(E)
In the
1st millennium BC(E), the alphabet spread much further, giving us a picture not just of
Canaanite but also of
Aramaic,
Old South Arabian, and early
Ge'ez. During this period, the case system, once vigorous in
Ugaritic, seems to have started decaying in Northwest Semitic.
Phoenician colonies spread their Canaanite language throughout much of the Mediterranean, while its close relative
Hebrew became the vehicle of a religious literature, the
Torah and
Tanakh, that would have global ramifications. However, as an ironic result of the
Assyrian Empire's conquests,
Aramaic became the
lingua franca of the Fertile Crescent, gradually pushing Akkadian, Hebrew, Phoenician, and several other languages to extinction (although Hebrew remained in use as a
liturgical language), and developing a substantial literature. Meanwhile,
Ge'ez texts beginning in this era give the first direct record of
Ethiopian Semitic languages.
Common Era / A.D.
Syriac, a descendent of
Aramaic used in the northern
Levant and
Mesopotamia, rose to importance as a literary language of early
Christianity in the 3rd to 5th centuries and continued into the early
Islamic era.
With the emergence of
Islam in the
7th century, the ascent of Aramaic was dealt a fatal blow by the
Arab conquests, which made another Semitic language —
Arabic — the official language of an empire stretching from
Spain to
Central Asia.
With the patronage of the
caliphs and the prestige of its
liturgical status, it rapidly became one of the world's main literary languages. Its spread among the masses took much longer; however, as native populations outside the
Arabian Peninsula gradually abandoned their mother tongues for Arabic and as
Bedouin tribes settled in conquered areas, it became the main language of not only central Arabia, but also Yemen, the Fertile Crescent, and Egypt. Most of the
Maghreb (Northwest Africa) followed, particularly in the wake of the
Banu Hilal's incursion in the 11th century, and Arabic became the native language even of many inhabitants of
Spain. After the collapse of the
Nubian kingdom of
Dongola in the 14th century, Arabic began to spread south of Egypt; soon after, the
Beni Hassan brought
Arabization to
Mauritania.
Meanwhile, Semitic languages were diversifying in
Ethiopia and
Eritrea, where, under heavy
Cushitic influence, they split into a number of languages, including
Amharic and
Tigrinya. With the expansion of
Ethiopia under the
Solomonic dynasty, Amharic, previously a minor local language, spread throughout much of the country, replacing languages both Semitic (such as
Gafat) and non-Semitic (such as
Weyto), and replacing
Ge'ez as the principal literary language (though Ge'ez remains the liturgical language for Christians in the region); this spread continues to this day, with
Qemant set to disappear in another generation.
Present situation
Arabic is spoken natively by majorities from
Mauritania to
Oman, and from
Iraq to the
Sudan. As the language of the
Qur'an and as a
lingua franca, it's widely studied in much of the non-Arabic-speaking
Muslim world as well. Its spoken form is divided into a number of
dialects, some not mutually comprehensible, united by a single written form.
Maltese, genetically a descendant of the North African dialect of Arabic, is the principal exception, having adopted a Latin orthography in accordance with its cultural situation.
Despite the ascendancy of Arabic in the Middle East, other Semitic languages are still to be found there. Hebrew, long extinct as a colloquial language and in use only in Jewish literary, intellectual, and liturgical activity, was revived at the end of the
19th century by the
Jewish
linguist Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, and has become the main language of
Israel, while remaining the language of liturgy and religious scholarship of Jews worldwide.
Several small ethnic groups, especially the
Assyrians, continue to speak
Aramaic dialects (especially
Neo-Aramaic, descended from
Syriac) in the mountains of northern
Iraq, eastern
Turkey, northwestern
Iran, and northeast
Syria, while
Syriac itself, a descendant of Old Aramaic, is used liturgically by Syrian and Iraqi Christians.
In Arabic-dominated
Yemen and
Oman, on the southern rim of the
Arabian Peninsula, a few tribes continue to speak
Modern South Arabian languages such as
Mahri and
Soqotri, very different both from the surrounding Arabic and from the (presumably related) languages of the
Old South Arabian inscriptions.
Historically linked to the peninsular homeland of the
South Arabian languages,
Ethiopia and
Eritrea contain a substantial number of Semitic languages, of which
Amharic and
Tigrinya in Ethiopia, and
Tigre and
Tigrinya in Eritrea, are the most widely spoken. Both
Amharic and
Tigrinya are official languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea, respectively, while
Tigre, spoken in the northern Eritrean and central lowlands, as well as parts of eastern Sudan, has over one million speakers. A number of
Gurage languages are to be found in the mountainous center-south of Ethiopia, while
Harari is restricted to the city of
Harar.
Ge'ez remains the
liturgical language for Christians in Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Grammar
The Semitic languages share a number of grammatical features, although variation has naturally occurred - even within the same language as it evolved through time, such as Arabic from the 6th century AD to the present.
Word order
The reconstructed default word order in Proto-Semitic is
Verb Subject Object (VSO), possessed–possessor (NG), and noun–adjective (NA). In Classical and Modern Standard Arabic, this is still the dominant order:
ra'ā muħammadun farīdan. (lit. saw Muhammad Farid,
Muhammad saw Farid). However, VSO has given way in most modern Semitic languages to typologically more common orders (for example SVO); in many modern Arabic dialects, for example, the classical order VSO has given way to SVO, and the same happened in Hebrew and Maltese (due to
Europeanisation). Modern Ethiopian Semitic languages are SOV, possessor–possessed, and adjective–noun, probably due to Cushitic influence; however, the oldest attested Ethiopian Semitic language,
Ge'ez, was VSO, possessed–possessor, and noun–adjective
(External Link
).
Cases in nouns and adjectives
The proto-Semitic three-case system (
nominative,
accusative and
genitive) with differing vowel endings (-u, -a -i), fully preserved in Qur'anic Arabic (see
i`rab), Akkadian, and Ugaritic, has disappeared everywhere in the many colloquial forms of Semitic languages, although Modern Standard Arabic maintains such case endings in literary and broadcasting contexts. An accusative ending -n is preserved in Ethiopian Semitic. Additionally, Semitic nouns and adjectives had a category of state, the indefinite state being expressed by
nunation.
Number in nouns
Semitic languages originally had three
grammatical numbers: singular,
dual, and
plural. The dual continues to be used in contemporary dialects of Arabic, as in the name for the nation of Bahrain (
baħr "sea" +
-ayn "two"), and sporadically in Hebrew (
šana means "one year",
šnatayim means "two years", and
šanim means "years"), and in
Maltese (
sena means "one year",
sentejn means "two years", and
snin means "years"). The curious phenomenon of
broken plurals - for example in Arabic,
sadd "one dam" vs.
sudūd "dams" - found most profusely in the languages of Arabia and Ethiopia, and still common in
Maltese, may be partly of proto-Semitic origin, and partly elaborated from simpler origins.
Verb aspect and tense
The aspect systems of West and East Semitic differ substantially; Akkadian preserves a number of features generally attributed to Afro-Asiatic, such as gemination indicating the imperfect, while a stative form, still maintained in Akkadian, became a new perfect in West Semitic. Proto-West Semitic maintained two main verb aspects:
perfect for completed action (with pronominal suffixes) and
imperfect for uncompleted action (with pronominal prefixes and suffixes). In the extreme case of Neo-Aramaic, however, even the verb conjugations have been entirely reworked under Iranian influence.
Morphology: triliteral roots
All Semitic languages exhibit a unique pattern of stems consisting typically of "triliteral", or 3-consonant
consonantal roots (2- and 4-consonant roots also exist), from which nouns, adjectives, and verbs are formed in various ways: for example by inserting vowels, doubling consonants, and/or adding prefixes, suffixes, or
infixes.
For instance, the root k-t-b, (dealing with "writing" generally) yields in Arabic:
» ka
ta
ba كتب "he wrote" (masculine)
ku
ti
ba كتب "it was written" (masculine)
» ku
ti
bat كتبت "it was written" (feminine)
ki
tā
b- كتاب "book" (dash - here shows end of stem before various case endings)
» ku
tu
b- كتب "books" (plural)
ku
tayyi
b- كتيب "booklet" (diminutive)
» ki
tā
bat- كتابة "writing"
kā
ti
b- كاتب "writer" (masculine)
» kā
ti
bat- كاتبة "writer" (feminine)
ku
ttā
b- كتاب "writers"
» ka
ta
bat- كتبة "writers"
maktab- مكتب "desk" or "office"
» maktabat- مكتبة "library" or "bookshop"
maktūb- مكتوب "written" (participle) or "postal letter" (noun)
and the same root in Hebrew (where it appears as k-t-ḇ):
» ka
ta
ḇti כתבתי "I wrote"
ka
ta
ḇta כתבת "you (
m) wrote"
» ka
ta
ḇ כתב "he wrote" or "reporter" (
m)
ka
tte
ḇet כתבת "reporter" (
f)
» ka
tta
ḇa כתבה "article" (plural
katavot כתבות)
miḵtaḇ מכתב "postal letter" (plural
miḵtaḇim מכתבים)
» miḵtaḇa מכתבה "writing desk" (plural
miḵtaḇot מכתבות)
kto
ḇet כתובת "address" (plural
kto
ḇot כתובות)
» kta
ḇ כתב "handwriting"
ka
tu
ḇ כתוב "written" (
f ktu
ḇa כתובה)
» hiḵtiḇ הכתיב "he dictated" (
f hiḵtiḇa הכתיבה)
hitkatteḇ התכתב "he corresponded (
f hitkatḇa התכתבה)
» niḵtaḇ נכתב "it was written" (
m)
niḵteḇa נכתבה "it was written" (f) » kt
iḇ'
כתיב "spelling" (m
)
taḵtiḇ תכתיב "prescript" (
m)
» meḵuttaḇ מכותב "a person on one's mailing list" (
meḵutteḇet מכותבת
f)
ktu
bba כתובה "ketubah (a Jewish marriage contract)" (
f) (note: b here, not ḇ)
In Maltese, the consonantal roots are referred as the
mamma of each word, which can be determined by reference to the masculine past tense of the applicable verb. In the case of the verb "to write", the masculine past tense would be
kiteb (
k-
t-
b), so that the following nouns and verbs can be formed, using the same
mamma always in the same order, but inserting different vowels and, occasionally additional consonants:
» jiena ktibt "I wrote"
inti ktibt "you wrote" (
m or
f)
» huwa kiteb "he wrote"
hija kitbet "she wrote"
» aħna ktibna "we wrote"
intkom ktibtu "you (
pl) wrote
» huma kitbu "they wrote"
huwa miktub "it is written"
» ki
ttie
b "writer"
ki
ttie
ba "writers"
» ktie
b "book"
ko
tba "books"
In Tigrinya and Amharic, this root survives only in the noun
kitab, meaning "amulet", and the verb "to vaccinate". Ethiopic-derived languages use a completely different root (ṣ-ḥ-f) for the verb "to write" (this root exists in Arabic and is used to form words with close meaning to "writing", such as ṣaḥāfa "journalism", and ṣaḥīfa "newspaper" or "parchment").
Verbs in other non-Semitic
Afro-Asiatic languages show similar radical patterns, but more usually with biconsonantal roots; for example
Kabyle afeg means "fly!", while
affug means "flight", and
yufeg means "he flew" (compare with Hebrew
uf,
te'ufah and
af).
Common vocabulary
» Main article: List of Proto-Semitic stems.
Due to the Semitic languages' common origin, they share many words and roots in common. For example:
Sometimes certain roots differ in meaning from one Semitic language to another. For example, the root
b-y-ḍ in Arabic has the meaning of "white" as well as "egg", just as in Maltese
bajda means "white" (
f. sing.) and also "egg", whereas in Hebrew it only means "egg". The root
l-b-n means "milk" in Arabic, but the color "white" in Hebrew. The root
l-ḥ-m means "meat" in Arabic, but "bread" in Hebrew and "cow" in
Ethiosemitic languages; the original meaning was most probably "food". The word
medina (root: m-d-n) has the meaning of "
city" in Arabic, and "
metropolis" in Amharic, but in Modern Hebrew it means "
state".
Of course, there's sometimes no relation between the roots. For example, "knowledge" is represented in Hebrew by the root
y-d-ʿ but in Arabic by the roots
ʿ-r-f and
ʿ-l-m and in Ethiosemitic by the root
ʿ-w-q and
f-l-ṭ.
Classification
The classification given below, based on shared innovations - established by
Robert Hetzron in 1976 with later emendations by John Huehnergard and Rodgers as summarized in Hetzron 1997 - is the most widely accepted today, but is still disputed. In particular, several Semiticists still argue for the traditional view of Arabic as part of South Semitic, and a few (for example
Alexander Militarev or the German-Egyptian professor
Arafa Hussein Mustafa ) see the South Arabian languages as a third branch of Semitic alongside East and West Semitic, rather than as a subgroup of South Semitic. At a lower level, there's still no general agreement on where to draw the line between "languages" and "dialects" - an issue particularly relevant in Arabic, Aramaic, and Gurage below - and the strong mutual influences between Arabic dialects render a genetic subclassification of them particularly difficult.
The traditional grouping of the Semitic languages (prior to the 1970s), based partly on non-linguistic data, differs in several respects; in particular, Arabic was put in South Semitic, and Eblaite hadn't been discovered yet.
Amorite — extinct
Ugaritic — extinct
Canaanite languages
Old North Arabian — extinct
Arabic
- Fusha — (اللغة العربية الفصحى literally "eloquent"), the written language, divided by specialists into:
- Classical Arabic — the language of the Qur'an and early Islamic Arabic literature,
- Middle Arabic — a generic term for premodern post-classical efforts to write Classical Arabic, characterized by frequent hypercorrections and occasional lapses into more colloquial usage. Not a spoken language.
- Modern Standard Arabic — modern literary (non-native) language used in formal media and written communication throughout the Arab World, differing from Classical Arabic mainly in numerous neologisms for concepts not found in medieval times, as well as in occasional calques on idioms from Western languages.
- Numerous Modern Arabic spoken dialects — roughly divided by the Ethnologue into:
Several Jewish dialects, typically with a number of Hebrew loanwords, are grouped together with classical Arabic written in Hebrew script under the imprecise term Judeo-Arabic.
Old South Arabian languages — extinct, formerly believed to be the linguistic ancestors of modern South Arabian and Ethiopian Semitic languages (for which see below)
Ethiopic languages (Ethio-Semitic, Ethiopian Semitic):
Living Semitic languages by number of speakers
| lang |
speakers |
| Arabic |
325,000,000 |
| Amharic |
27,000,000 |
| Tigrinya |
6,700,000 |
| Hebrew |
5,000,000 |
| Syriac |
1,500,000 |
| Silt'e |
830,000 |
| Tigre |
800,000 |
| Neo-Aramaic |
605,000 |
| Sebat Bet Gurage |
440,000 |
| Maltese |
410,000 |
| South Arabian languages |
360,000 |
| Inor |
280,000 |
| Soddo |
250,000 |
| Harari |
21,283 |
Further Information
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