Semitic language - Semitic language The term Semitic languages is the traditional way of refering to those languages which constitute the Northeastern subfamily of the Afro-Asiatic languages. In linguistics, it has gradually come to be realized that "Semetic" is a term of some heated cultural objection and is thus no longer considered perfectly politically correct. The most common Semitic languages spoken today are Arabic, Amharic, Hebrew, and Tigrinya. Table of contents showTocToggle("show","hide") 1 The Eastern Semitic Languages 2 The Central Semitic languages 2.1 North & West Central Semitic languages 2.2 South Central (Arabic) languages 3 The South Semitic languages 3.3 Western (within South Semitic) 3.4 Eastern (within South Semitic) 4 Common characteristics The Eastern Semitic Languages Akkadian language -- extinct Eblaite language -- extinct The Central Semitic languages North.
Hebrew language - Hebrew language Hebrew (I'vrit, עברית) belongs to the North-Eastern branch of Afroasiatic languages which was formerly known as Semitic. For two-and-a-half-thousand years Hebrew was used mostly for study of the Bible and Mishnah, ceremony, and prayer, but it was reborn as a spoken language during the 20th century, replacing Arabic, Ladino, Yiddish and other languages of the Jewish diaspora as the spoken language of the majority of the Jewish people living in Israel. Hebrew reads from right to left. Hebrew is one of the two official languages of the state of Israel, alongside Arabic. Modern Hebrew is referred to in Hebrew, as "I'vrit". Table of contents showTocToggle("show","hide") 1 Subjects 2 Writing conventions 3.
History of the Hebrew language - History of the Hebrew language Introduction The Hebrew language belongs to Canaanite branch of the so-called Semitic family of Afroasiatic languages. It strongly resembles Aramaic and to a lesser extent the South-Central Arabic, sharing many linguistic features with them. Hebrew is currently spoken by a community of about 10 million people, of whom about 5 million live in the State of Israel, and the rest in the various countries of the Jewish diaspora. Hebrew is one of the three official languages of Israel, alongside English and Arabic. Early history At the end of the 3rd Millenium BCE the ancestral languages of Aramaic, Ugaritic and other various Canaanite languages swirled around in the Levant alongside the influential dialects of Ebla and Akkad. As the Hebrew founders from northern Haran.
Ubykh language - Ubykh language Ubykh is a language of the Northwestern Caucasian group, which was spoken by the people of the same name up until the early 1990s. It is characterised, like most other Northwest Caucasian languages, by the following features: Ubykh is an ergative language, making no distinction between the subject of an intransitive sentence and the direct object of a transitive sentence. It is highly agglutinative, using mainly monosyllabic or bisyllabic roots, but with single morphological words sometimes reaching eight or nine syllables in length. Affixes rarely fuse in any way. It has a simple nominal system, contrasting just four noun cases, and not marking grammatical number in the direct or locative cases. Its system of verbal agreement is frighteningly complex. English verbs must agree only with.
Ugaritic language - Ugaritic language The Ugaritic language is known to us only in the form of writings found in the lost city of Ugarit since its discovery by French archaeologists in 1928. It has been extremely important for scholars of the Old Testament in clarifying Hebrew texts and has revealed more of how Judaism used common phrases, literary idioms, and expressions employed by surrounding pagan cultures. Ancient Near Eastern scholar Cyrus Gordon(The Ancient Near East, p. 99) assesses Ugaritic as "the greatest literary discover from antiquity since the deciphering of the Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mesopotamian cuneiform." Texts discovered at Ugarit include the "Legend of Keret", the "Aghat Epic" (or "Legend of Danel"), the "Myth of Baal-Aliyan", and the "Death of Baal", all revealing a Canaanite mythology. Ugaritic is a.
Early Semitic alphabet - Early Semitic alphabet The first partly alphabetic spellings can be found in the Middle Kingdom (Sass 26). According to Bauer (Coulmas 1998: 141) the Semites borrowed the principle of consonantal alphabetic orthography (Skoyles) from the Egyptians. Gardiner (1916, in Coulmas 1989: 140) and Praetorius (1916, ibid.) saw the origin of the Semitic alphabets in the Cretan syllabaries (Linear A and B) and Cypriote syllabic writing. Sayce (1910, ebd.) was convinced that the Hittite script was the predecessor of Semitic writing. The most probable case, however, is an extensive Egyptian influence and a at least graphic influence from other sources. In the beginning, the Semitic alphabets did not contain vowel graphemes. That is why some scholars see these alphabets as syllabaries (Gelb 147 ff., Powell 238 ff.). However,.
Egyptian language - Egyptian language Ebers Papyrus Records of the Ancient Egyptian language have been dated to 2600 BC. It is part of the Afro-Asiatic group of languages and is related to Hamitic (North African languages) and Semitic (languages such as Arabic and Hebrew). The language survived until about 2 AD; its lifespan of some 2800 years makes it the oldest recorded language known to modern man. The official language of modern day Egypt is Arabic, which gradually replaced Egyptian and its descendant, the Coptic language as the language of daily life in the centuries after Egypt was colonized by Arab Muslims. Coptic is still used as a liturgical language in the Coptic Church. Table of contents showTocToggle("show","hide") 1 Development of the Language 2 Egyptian Writing 2.1 Overview 2.2 The.
Afro-Asiatic languages - languages The Afro-Asiatic languages are a language family of about 240 languages and 250 million people widespread throughout North Africa and Southwest Asia. The following language subfamilies are included: Berber languages Chadic languages Egyptian languages Semitic languages Cushitic languages Beja languages Omotic languages Older literature used the term Hamito-Semitic instead of Afro-Asiatic. All languages except the Semitic ones were lumped together as Hamitic. This does not reflect modern understanding of the group: probably the greatest diversity is among the Cushitic and Omotic groups, suggesting that what is now Ethiopia is the original homeland, and the other groups spread out from there many thousands of years ago. The Semitic group was the only one to spread as far as Asia. In historical or near-historical times some Semitic speakers crossed from South Arabia.
African language - African language The African languages are currently divided into the following four language families Afro-Asiatic languages (Semitic, etc.) Niger-Congo languages (Bantu, etc.) Nilo-Saharan languages Khoisan languages see also: Polyglotta Africana, Joseph H. Greenberg The above are families indigenous to Africa. Two African languages belong to non-African families: Malagasy is an Austronesian language, and Afrikaans is Indo-European. More on African languages and language families : http://www.ethnologue.com/country_index.asp?place=Africa Studying African Languages In Europe there is a project going on building up a common curriculum in African Languages and Linguistics called EEQUALL (European Equivalences In African Languages And Linguistics). It will allow students to get credit points from different universities. http://www.eequall.info (currently a bit outdated).
Akkadian language - Akkadian language Akkadian was a language of the Semitic family spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. It used the cuneiform writing system. Akkadian is divided into dialects based on geography and time. 2500 - 1950 Old Akkadian 1950 - 1530 Old Babylonian/Old Assyrian 1530 - 1000 Middle Babylonian/Middle Assyrian 1000 - 600 Neo-Babylonian/Neo-Assyrian 600 B.C. - 100 A.D. Late Babylonian Table of contents showTocToggle("show","hide") 1 Akkadian Cuneiform 2 Akkadian Grammar 3 Akkadian Syntax Akkadian Cuneiform Akkadian scribes wrote cuneiform using signs that represented Sumerian logograms, Sumerian syllables, Akkadian syllables, and phonetic complements. Cuneiform was in many ways unsuited to Akkadian: among its flaws were its inability to represent glottal stops, pharyngial stops, and emphatic consonants, as well as a syllabic construction completely inappropriate for languages demonstrating the triconsonantal root..
Amharic language - Amharic language Amharic (አማርኛ) is a Semitic language spoken in Ethiopia, where it is the official language. It is written using an writing system called fidel or abugida adapted from the one used for the now-extinct Ge'ez language. Table of contents showTocToggle("show","hide") 1 Amharic Phonology 2 Amharic Abugida Symbols ("Fidels" ፊደል) 3.
Arabic language - Arabic language The expressions Arabic and Classical Arabic usually refer to ?al luGat ul?\\arabi:yat ulfus'X\\a: ( Literally: the pure Arabic language - اللغة العربية؛الفصحى ) which is, according to Arabic speakers, both the language of present-day media across North Africa and the Middle East (from Morocco to Iraq) and the language of the Qur'an. The expression media includes not only television, radio, newspapers and magazines, but also all written matter, including all books, documents of every kind, and reading primers for small children. The word "Arabic", in a wide sense, can also refer to one of the many national or regional so-called "dialects", spoken daily across North Africa and the Middle East, which can sometimes differ enough to be mutually incomprehensible. These dialects are not frequently written..
Aramaic language - Aramaic language Aramaic () is a language spoken in Israel, Syria, and Mesopotamia from perhaps 500 BC until now. Today it is spoken in two Lebanese villages (Ma'aloula) and in Kurdistan and even in the USA by immigrants from this area. It is a member of the Semitic languages group. Aramaic is used in many Jewish holy texts. Some of the later parts of the Hebrew Bible, most of the Gemara section of the Talmud, and the Zohar are written in Aramaic. Aramaic is divided into two groups: Western and Eastern. Western - this group is almost extinct and included Nabatean (extinct, spoken in parts of Arabia), Palmyran (extinct, spoken in Palmyra and adjoining regions), and Palestinian-Christian and Judeo-Aramean. A Western Aramaic dialect was the spoken language.
Asian languages - well as Asian Russia: Indo-Iranian languages: Persian, Urdu, Hindi, Kurdish Slavic languages: Russian Semitic languages Turkic languages Tai-Kadai languages Austroasiatic languages The Altaic languages are a somewhat disputed grouping. Sometimes included are Korean and Japanese See also: East Asian language.
Common phrases in different languages - of common phrases in different languages. It is possible for tourists in a country whose language they do not understand to get along with a surprisingly short list of phrases, combined with pointing, miming, and writing down numbers on paper. You are invited to add more languages to the list. Please use the minimum number of words that would be understandable and put the pronunciation in slashes according to SAMPA transcription if possible. If desired, also add a pseudo-English pronunciation guide for those not familiar with SAMPA or IPA. However, actual pronunciations of the pseudo-English spellings will vary wildly from speaker to speaker. Enclose the "spelling guide" in parentheses, separate syllables with dashes, use English words that sound like the syllables if possible, and render the stressed syllable in ALL CAPS..
Tigrignan language - Tigrignan language Tigrigna (or Tigrinya) is a Semitic language spoken in Eritrea, where it is the official language, and in parts of Ethiopia and Israel. It is written in ethiopic script. Jewish speakers in Israel write their liturgy using a syllabary adapted from the one used for the now-extinct Ge'ez language. External Link Ethnologue on Tigrigna.
Sardinian language - Sardinian language Sardinian (Sardu) is the main language spoken in the island of Sardinia, Italy, and it is considered the most conservative of all Romance languages. The particular history of the island, practically isolated from the Continent for thousands of years, and only in recent times allowed to easily communicate with the mainland, made it possible to preserve with a certain vividness the distinct traces of the linguistic invasions or influences. These presumably met the original language of Nuragici people and interacted with it to build the essential structure of Sardinian. These cultural contacts are commonly identified in: (very concisely, and just for a rough scheme) Mediterranean influences Etruscan Phoenician and Euro-African Protohiberian and Hispano-Caucasican Ligurian Latin Catalan Spanish Italian The basic origins of Sardinian language (by.
Semitic - Semitic Semitic is a, not un-controvercial, adjective that describes things originating from the Asian Middle East covering a geographical area from the Sinai to Iraq, and from Syria to Yemen. Once it was perhaps most commonly used to refer to speakers of Northeast Afroasiatic languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, or Amharic. The term Semitic used literally means pertaining to the descendants of Shem Noah's son who in Genesis 10:21 is called father of all Hebrews. However, with a few exceptions (most notably Hebrew), it is the people who are described in the Bible as the descendants of Ham's sons (Canaan & Put) who are considered linguistically Semitic. Thus the area of so-called Semitic languages is actually much larger than the area most people associate with the.
Sumerian language - Sumerian language The Sumerian language of ancient Sumer (or, more accurately, Shumer) became extinct and was forgotten until the 19th century. It does not have any known affinities to other languages (though many theories, linking it to Hungarian, Basque, Etruscan and many other languages exist). This distinguishes it from other languages of the area such as Hebrew, Akkadian, which also comprises Babylonian and Assyrian, and Aramaic, which are Semitic languages. Sumerian was the first known written language. The script, called cuneiform, meaning "wedge-shaped", was later also used for Akkadian. It was even adapted to Indo-European languages like Hittite (which also had a hieroglyphic script, as did the Egyptians) and Old Persian, though the latter merely used the same instruments, and the letter shapes were unrelated. The language.
Syriac language - Syriac language A review of the sites on the web indicates that there is some confusion as to what exactly is meant by the word Syriac. The safest course is to select an authority like the [Ethnologue] and be guided by its decisions. The relationship among the Semitic languages and Syriac can be seen in the following tree of Semitic languages. Table of contents showTocToggle("show","hide") 1 Semitic Family Tree with Special Reference to Syriac 2 History 3 Linguistics 4 Literature Semitic Family Tree with Special Reference to Syriac Semitic Central Aramaic Eastern Central Mandaic Syriac (Turkey (Asia)) Western Western Neo-Aramaic (Syria) Samaritan Aramaic (Palestinian West Bank and Gaza) South Arabic Canaanite Hebrew, Ancient Hebrew (Israel) Samaritan (Palestinian West Bank and Gaza) South Ethiopian North South South Arabian.
