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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 language today is Arabic[1] (270 million total speakers), followed by Amharic (27 million first language speakers),[2][3] Tigrinya (about 6.7 million total speakers[4]) and Hebrew (5 million first language speakers[5]). Semitic languages were among the earliest to attain a written form, with Akkadian writing beginning in the middle of the third millennium BCE. Maltese is the only Semitic Language written in Roman script. 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.
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 [3][4], although other linguists argue that, instead, Proto-Afro-Asiatic originated in the Middle East, and Semitic was the only branch to stay put[5].
In any event, Proto-Semitic itself is assumed to have reached the Arabian Peninsula by approximately the 4th millennium BCE, from which Semitic daughter languages continued to spread outwards. When written records began in the mid 3rd millennium BCE, 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.
By the beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE, 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 BCE 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 BCE. Incursions of nomadic Aramaeans from the Syrian desert begin around this time. Akkadian continued to flourish, splitting into Babylonian and Assyrian dialects.
In the 1st millennium BCE, 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, 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.
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 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 natives abandoned their tongues for Arabic and as Bedouin tribes settled in conquered areas, it became the main language of not only central Arabia, but also Yemen,[6] 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. 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 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.
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 outside of Jewish liturgical purposes, 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 a descendant of Old 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 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.
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.
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 (e.g. 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[6].
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.[7] Additionally, Semitic nouns and adjectives had a category of state, the indefinite state being expressed by nunation.
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 - e.g. 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.
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.
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.
For instance, the root k-t-b, "write", yields in Arabic:
kataba كتب means "he wrote" kutiba كتب means "it was written" masculine kutibat كتبت means "it was written" feminine kitābun كتاب means "book" kutubun كتب means "books" kutayyibun كتيب means "booklet" dimunitive kitābatun كتابة means "writing" kātibun كاتب means "writer" masculine kātibatun كاتبة means "writer" feminine kuttābun كتاب means "writers" katabatun كتبة means "writers" maktabun مكتب means "desk" maktabatun مكتبة means "library" maktūbun مكتوب means "written" or "postal letter"
and in Hebrew (where it appears as k-t-):
katati כתבתי means "I wrote" katata כתבת means "you (m) wrote" katat כתבת means "you (f) wrote" kata כתב means "he wrote" or "reporter" (m) kata כתבה means "she wrote" katanu כתבנו means "we wrote" katatem (modern informal)/ktatem (traditional) כתבתם means "you (plural m) wrote" kataten (modern informal)/ktaten כתבתן means "you (plural f) wrote" katu כתבו means "they wrote" katteet כתבת means "reporter" (f) kattaa כתבה means "article" (plural katavot כתבות) mita מכתב means "postal letter" (plural mitavim מכתבים) mitaa מכתבה means "writing desk" (plural mitavot מכתבות) ktoet כתובת means "address" (plural ktoot כתובות) kta כתב means "handwriting" katu כתוב means "written" (f ktua כתובה) hiti הכתיב means "he dictated" (f hitia הכתיבה) hitkatte התכתב means "he corresponded (f hitkata התכתבה) nita נכתב means "it was written" (m) nitea נכתבה means "it was written" (f) kti כתיב means "spelling" (m) tati תכתיב means "prescript" (m) meutta מכותב means "a person on one's mailing list" (meutteet מכותבת f) ktubba (note: b, not ) כתובה means "ketubah (a Jewish marriage contract)" (f)
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:
jien ktibt means "I wrote" inti ktibt means "you wrote" (m or f) huwa kiteb means "he wrote" hi kitbet means "she wrote" aħna ktibna means "we wrote" intkom ktibtu means "you (pl) wrote huma kitbu means "they wrote" huwa miktub means "it is written" kittieb means "writer" kittieba means "writers" ktieb means "book" kotba means "books"
This root survives in Tigrinya and Amharic only in the noun kitab, meaning "amulet", and the verb "to vaccinate". Ethiopic-derived languages use a completely different root (--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").
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" (compare with Hebrew uf, te'ufah and af).
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 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 means "milk" in Arabic, but the color "white" in Hebrew. The root means "meat" in Arabic and the word laħam means "meat" in Maltese, but "bread" in Hebrew and "cow" in Ethiosemitic languages; the original meaning 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 but in Arabic by the roots and and in Ethiosemitic by the root and .
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 (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.
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.
These languages are spoken mainly by tiny minority populations on the Arabian peninsula in Yemen and Oman.
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