Semitic languages

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Semitic
Geographic
distribution		Middle East and East Africa
Linguistic classificationAfro-Asiatic
  • Semitic
Subdivisions
14th century BC diplomatic letter in Akkadian, found in Tell Amarna.

The Semitic languages are a family of languages spoken by more than 370 million people across much of the Middle East, where they probably originated, and North and East 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 language today is Arabic (206 million speakers), followed by Amharic (26 million speakers), Tigrinya (6.75 million speakers), and Hebrew (6 million speakers). Semitic languages were among the earliest to attain a written form, with Akkadian writing beginning in the middle of the third millennium BC. The term "Semitic" for these languages, after Shem son of Noah, is etymologically a misnomer in some ways (see Semitic), but is nonetheless standard.

History

Origins

12th century Hebrew Bible script

Since Semitic is a member of Afro-Asiatic, a principally African family, the first speakers of Proto-Semitic are generally believed to have arrived in the Middle East from Africa, in the 4th millennium BC, although this question is still much debated. Within recorded history, the spread of Semitic languages has consisted largely of a series of migrations from Arabia, overwhelming the populations of more fertile areas. When records begin in the mid 3rd millennium BC, 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

By the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC, East Semitic languages dominated in Mesopotamia, while West Semitic languages were probably spoken from Syria to Yemen, although data is 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 is 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 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. 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

9th century Syriac manuscript

In the 1st millennium BC, the alphabet spread much further, giving us a picture not just of Canaanite but also of Aramaic, and Old South Arabian. During this period, the case system, still 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

Page of a 12th century Qur'an

Syriac rose to importance as a literary language of early Christianity in the 3rd to 5th centuries.

With the emergence of Islam, 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 Morocco to Pakistan. 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 natives abandoned their tongues for Arabic and as Bedouin tribes settled in conquered areas, it became the language of not only central Arabia, but also Yemen, the Fertile Crescent, and Egypt. Most of the Maghreb 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. The spread of Arabic continues even today in Sudan and Chad, both by peaceful sociolinguistic processes, and by wars such as the Darfur conflict.

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 Solomonid 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 Kemant 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 is widely studied in much of the 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 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, was revived at the end of the 19th century by the Jewish linguist Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, owing to the ideology of Zionism, and has become the main language of Israel, while remaining the liturgical language of Jews worldwide. Several small ethnic groups, especially the Assyrians, continue to speak Aramaic in the mountains of northern Iraq, eastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, and Syria, while an older descendant of Aramaic, Syriac, is used liturgically by many Iraqi Christians. In Yemen and Oman, a few tribes continue to speak "Modern South Arabian" languages such as Soqotri, very different both from Arabic and from the languages of the Old South Arabian inscriptions.

Ethiopia and Eritrea contain a substantial number of Semitic languages, of which Amharic in Ethiopia, and Tigrigna in Ethiopia and Eritrea, are the most widely spoken. Both are official languages of their respective countries, while Ge'ez remains the liturgical language for Christians there. A number of Gurage languages are to be found in the mountainous center of Ethiopia, while Harari is restricted to the city of Harar; Tigre, spoken in the Eritrean highlands, has over a million speakers.

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. (Muhammad saw Farid.) However, VSO has given way in most modern Semitic languages to typologically more common orders (e.g. SVO); in many modern Arabic dialects, for example, the classical order VSO has given way to SVO. Modern Ethiopian Semitic languages are SOV, possessor — possessed, and adjective — noun, probably due to Cushitic influence; however, the oldest attested Ethiopian Semitic language, Geez, was VSO, possessed — possessor, and noun — adjective[1].

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 (somewhat artificially) 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 Hebrew (šana means "one year", šnatayim means "two years", and šanim means "years") and contemporary dialects of Arabic, as in the name for the nation of Bahrain (baħr "sea" + -ayn "two"). The curious phenomenon of broken plurals - e.g. in Arabic, sadd "one dam" vs. sudūd "dams" - found most profusely in the languages of Arabia and Ethiopia, 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 of "triliteral" or consonantal roots (normally consisting of three consonants), from which nouns, adjectives, and verbs are formed by inserting vowels with, potentially, prefixes, suffixes, or infixes (consonants inserted within the original root).

For instance, the root K-T-B, "write", yields in Arabic:

kataba means "he wrote"
kutiba means "it was written"
kitāb means "book"
kutub means "books"
kitāba means "writing"
kātib means "writer"
kuttāb means "writers"
maktab means "desk"
maktaba means "library"
maktūb means "written"

and in Hebrew (where it appears as K-T-V):

katav means "he wrote"
katvu means "they wrote"
katava means "article"
miktav means "postal letter"
ktav means "writing"
ktovet means "address"
miktava means "writing desk"
kotev means "he writes"
katuv means "written"

This root survives in Amharic only in the noun kitab, meaning "amulet", and the verb "to vaccinate". Ethiopic-derived languages use a completely different root (T'-H-F) for the verb "to write".

Some such roots are found throughout most Semitic languages, while others are more restricted in their distribution.

Verbs in other Afro-Asiatic languages show similar radical patterns, but more usually with biconsonantal roots; e.g. Kabyle afeg means "fly!", while affug means "flight", and yufeg means "he flew".

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:

Akkadian Aramaic Arabic Hebrew English translation
zikaru dikrā ḏakar zåḵår Male
maliku malkā malik mĕlĕḵ King
imêru ḥamarā ḥimār ḥămōr Donkey
erṣetu ʔarʿā ʔarḍ ʔĕrĕṣ Land

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", 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; the original meaning in both languages was most probably "food". The word medina has the meaning of "city" in Arabic, and "metropolis" in Amharic, but in Hebrew it means "state".

Of course, there is 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 Amharic by the root `-w-q.

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 Semitists still argue for the traditional view of Arabic as part of South Semitic, and a few (e.g. Alexander Militarev) 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 is 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. It is widely recognised in Ethiopia that Amharic inherited its basic vocabulary directly from Giiz, in which case it belongs in Ethiopic rather than North Ethiopic.

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 had not been discovered yet.

East Semitic languages

West Semitic Languages

Central Semitic languages

Northwest Semitic languages
Arabic languages

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.

South Semitic languages

Eastern South Semitic

These languages are spoken mainly by tiny minority populations on the Arabian peninsula in Yemen and Oman.

Western South Semitic


Template:Totallydisputed

Living Semitic languages by number of speakers

  1. Arabic — 206,000,000
  2. Amharic — 26,000,000
  3. Tigrinya — 6,750,000
  4. Hebrew — 6,000,000
  5. Tigre — 800,000
  6. Neo-Aramaic — 605,000
  7. Maltese — 410,000
  8. Syriac — 400,000
  9. South Arabian languages — 360,000
  10. Soddo — 250,000

See also

Bibliography

  • Hetzron (ed.) 1997. The Semitic Languages. Routledge: London. ISBN 0-415-05767-1. (For family tree, see p. 7).

External links

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