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The Afroasiatic languages, also known as Hamito-Semitic or Semito-Hamitic, are a language family of about 400 languages spoken predominantly in West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahara and Sahel. Over 500 million people are native speakers of an Afroasiatic language, constituting the fourth-largest language family after Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, and Niger–Congo. Most linguists divide the family into six branches: Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, Semitic, and Omotic. The vast majority of Afroasiatic languages are considered indigenous to the African continent, including all those not belonging to the Semitic branch.
The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They include Arabic, Amharic, Aramaic, Hebrew, and numerous other ancient and modern languages. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Malta, and in large immigrant and expatriate communities in North America, Europe, and Australasia. The terminology was first used in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen school of history, who derived the name from Shem, one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis.
Akkadian is an extinct East Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia from the third millennium BC until its gradual replacement in common use by Old Aramaic among Assyrians and Babylonians from the 8th century BC.
Amharic is an Ethiopian Semitic language, which is a subgrouping within the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages. It is spoken as a first language by the Amharas, and also serves as a lingua franca for all other populations residing in major cities and towns in Ethiopia.
Ugaritic is an extinct Northwest Semitic language, classified by some as a dialect of the Amorite language. It is known through the Ugaritic texts discovered by French archaeologists in 1928 at Ugarit, including several major literary texts, notably the Baal cycle.
The Ugaritic writing system is a cuneiform abjad with syllabic elements used from around either 1400 BCE or 1300 BCE for Ugaritic, an extinct Northwest Semitic language. It was discovered in Ugarit, modern Ras Al Shamra, Syria, in 1928. It has 30 letters. Other languages, particularly Hurrian, were occasionally written in the Ugaritic script in the area around Ugarit, although not elsewhere.
The Canaanite languages, sometimes referred to as Canaanite dialects, are one of three subgroups of the Northwest Semitic languages, the others being Aramaic and Amorite. These closely related languages originate in the Levant and Mesopotamia, and were spoken by the ancient Semitic-speaking peoples of an area encompassing what is today, Israel, Jordan, the Sinai Peninsula, Lebanon, Syria, as well as some areas of southwestern Turkey (Anatolia), western and southern Iraq (Mesopotamia) and the northwestern corner of Saudi Arabia.
Old South Arabian (also known as Ancient South Arabian (ASA), Epigraphic South Arabian, Ṣayhadic, or Yemenite) is a group of four closely related extinct languages (Sabaean/Sabaic, Qatabanic, Hadramitic, Minaic) spoken in the far southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula. The earliest preserved records belonging to the group are dated to the beginning of the 1st millennium BCE. They were written in the Ancient South Arabian script.
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Eblaite, or Palaeosyrian, is an extinct East Semitic language used during the 3rd millennium BC in Northern Syria. It was named after the ancient city of Ebla, in modern western Syria. Variants of the language were also spoken in Mari and Nagar. According to Cyrus H. Gordon, although scribes might have spoken it sometimes, Eblaite was probably not spoken much, being rather a written lingua franca with East and West Semitic features.
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Fritz Hommel was a German Orientalist.
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Muher (Muxar) is an Ethiopian Semitic language belonging to the Gurage group. It is spoken in the mountains north of Cheha and Ezhana Wolene in Ethiopia. The language has two dialects, which are named after the first-person singular pronoun "I" they use: Ana uses əni/anä, Adi uses adi/ädi. The language is sometimes written in a modified Arabic (Ajam) or Amharic script. It has approximately 90,000 speakers.
Samalian was a Semitic language spoken and first attested in Samʼal.
John Huehnergard is a Canadian-American specialist in Semitic languages, notable for his work on categorization, etymology, and historical linguistics.
Yāfiʿī Arabic is a group of closely related Arabic dialects spoken in the Yāfiʿ district of the Lahij governate in Yemen, in the historical territories of the sheikhdoms of Upper (al-ʿUlyā) and Lower (al-Suflā) Yāfiʿ. Unlike most neighboring dialects the varieties of Yāfiʿ belong to the so-called "k-dialect" grouping, meaning that the second person perfect suffixes retain the /-k/ found in the Sayhadic, Afrosemitic, and Modern South Arabian languages as opposed to the /-t/ found in most Arabic dialects. Before the 1990's the dialects of historical Upper and Lower Yāfiʿ had not been described and thus a number if their features that are seen as distinct from neighboring varieties had been overlooked by previous surveys.
References
- ↑ The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook, Chapter V, page 425
- ↑ Aaron D. Rubin (2008). "The subgrouping of the Semitic languages". Language and Linguistics Compass. 2 (1). Blackwell Publishing Ltd: 61–84. doi:10.1111/j.1749-818x.2007.00044.x.
P. Haupt (1878) first recognized that the qatala past tense found in West Semitic was an innovation, and that the Akkadian prefixed past tense must be archaic. It was F. Hommel, however, who recognized the implications of this for the subgrouping of Semitic; cf. Hommel(1883: 63, 442; 1892: 92–97; 1926: 75–82).
- ↑ Fritz Hommel, Die semitischen Volker und Sprachen als erster Versuch einer Encyclopadie der semitischen Sprach- und Alterthums-Wissenschaft, (1883)
- ↑ Hoftijzer, Jacob; Kooij, Gerrit Van der (January 1991). The Balaam Text from Deir ʻAlla Re-evaluated: Proceedings of the International Symposium Held at Leiden, 21–24 August 1989. BRILL. ISBN 9004093176.
- 1 2 3 4 Huehnergard, John; Pat-El, Na’ama (2013-10-08). The Semitic Languages. Routledge. p. 6. ISBN 978-1-136-11580-6.
- ↑ Weninger, Stefan (2011-12-23). The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook. Walter de Gruyter. p. 2. ISBN 978-3-11-025158-6.
- ↑ Huehnergard, John; Pat-El, Na’ama (2013-10-08). The Semitic Languages. Routledge. p. 5. ISBN 978-1-136-11580-6.
