Semitic Languages

I

Introduction

Semitic Languages, one of the five subfamilies or branches of the Hamito-Semitic or Afro-Asiatic language family (see Afro-Asiatic Languages). Of the Semitic languages, Arabic was carried beyond its original home in the Arabian Peninsula and spread throughout the Arabian Empire and is spoken across North Africa to the Atlantic coast, and Arabic and Hebrew are used by Muslims and Jews in other parts of the world. The other Semitic languages are centered in a region bounded on the west by Ethiopia and on the north by Syria and extending southeast through Iraq and the Arab Peninsula, with some “islands” of Semitic speech farther east in Iran.

II

Linguistic Groups

Linguists divide the Semitic languages into four groups. The North Peripheral group is represented by the Assyro-Babylonian language, or Akkadian. The oldest attested Semitic language, with the oldest Semitic literature, Akkadian was spoken in Mesopotamia between about 3000 bc and 600-400 bc and used as a literary language until the 1st century ad.

The North Central group includes the ancient and modern Hebrew language; ancient tongues such as Ugaritic and Phoenician; and the Aramaic language, including Syriac, or Christian Aramaic.

The South Central group consists of literary or Standard Arabic and the modern spoken Arabic dialects (see Arabic Language). Maltese, an offshoot of Arabic, is spoken on the island of Malta and, because of its location, has been heavily influenced by Italian.

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The South Peripheral group consists of the South Arabic dialects, now spoken in parts of the southern Arabian Peninsula (and in ancient times by peoples such as the Minaeans and Sabaeans); and the languages of Ethiopia. The latter include Ge’ez, or classical Ethiopic, now surviving only as a literary and liturgical language; Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia; and regional Ethiopian languages such as Tigré, Tigrinya, and Gurage.

III

Characteristics

In Semitic languages, words are typically based on a series of three consonants; this series, called the root, carries the basic meaning. Superimposed on the root is a pattern of vowels (or vowels and consonants) that signifies variations in the basic meaning or that serves as an inflection (such as for verb tense and number). For example, in Arabic the root ktb refers to writing, and the vowel pattern -ā-i- implies “one who does something”; thus, kātib means “one who writes.” Other derivatives of the same root include kitāb,”book”; maktub,”letter”; and kataba,”he wrote.” The close relationship of the Semitic languages to one another can be seen in the persistence of the same roots from one language to another (slm, for example, means “peace” in Assyro-Babylonian, Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, and other languages). In Semitic languages, related consonants typically fall into three subtypes: voiced, unvoiced, and emphatic; an example is the series transliterated g,k, and q from Arabic and Hebrew (the q is pronounced farther back in the throat than k).

IV

Writing

Except for two undeciphered scripts used by the ancient Canaanites, and the Latin alphabet as used for Maltese, Semitic languages have historically been written in three scripts. Assyro-Babylonian was written in cuneiform signs, and Ugaritic used a cuneiform alphabet. North Semitic, the early Semitic script, was an alphabetic script; one of its earliest examples is inscribed on the Moabite stone (9th century bc, discovered in 1868 and now in the Louvre, Paris). From the Aramaic variant of North Semitic, the modern Arabic and square Hebrew alphabets developed; North Semitic also gave rise to the Greek alphabet. Like ancient North Semitic, the Hebrew and Arabic scripts are alphabets of consonants only; special marks for vowels apparently came into use in about the 8th century ad . The third script, South Semitic or South Arabic, may or may not have been another variant of early North Semitic script. Also a consonantal alphabet, it was taken to Ethiopia in the 1st millennium bc and gave rise to the syllabic scripts used for modern Ethiopian languages.

See also Alphabet.

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