Semitic Languages Branch of the Afro-Asiatic Language Family

Introduction

Ancient Mesopotamia

Babylon

Semitic languages constitute the most populous branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family, the only branch of this family spoken in the Middle East. The term "Semitic" is thought to have come from Shem, one of the three sons of Noah (Gen. x:21-30), who is regarded in biblical literature as the ancestor of the Semites. Scholars believe that the first prehistoric speakers of the ancestral *Proto-Semitic language came from Africa. In historic times, the Semitic languages spread throughout the region via migrations from Arabia that displaced and subjugated the local populations.

Today, the Semitic branch includes 77 languages that are spoken by more than 250 million people across the Middle East, and North and East Africa. The most widely spoken Semitic language today is Arabic, followed by Amharic, Hebrew, and Tigrinya. The table below lists the most populous Semitic languages.

East Semitic
Akkadian	extinct	ancient Mesopotamia (in present-day Iraq)
West Semitic
Central
Assyrian Neo-Aramaic	210,231	Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Syria
Chaldean New-Aramaic	206,000
South-Central
Arabic
Arabic (35 varieties)	206 million	Middle East, North and East Africa.
Caananite
Hebrew	5 million	Israel
South
Ethiopian
Amharic	17.5 million	Ethiopia
Tigrinya (Tigrigna)	4.5 million	Ethiopia
Silt'e	828,000	Ethiopia
Tigré (Xasa)	800,000	Eritrea

Arab Man

Israeli

Ethiopian Man

Eritrean Man

Status

Arabic
Arabic is spoken as a first or second language by an estimated 206 million people throughout North and East Africa and the Middle East. As the language of the Qur'an and as a lingua franca of the region, it is widely studied in the Moslem world. Spoken Arabic has as many as 35 regional varieties with varying degrees of mutual comprehensibility (Ethnologue). However, they are united by a linguistic similarities and a single written form, except for Maltese which has adopted a Latin-based orthography, and are, therefore, considered to be one language.

Arabic is the official or co-official language of many countries, including Algeria, Bahrain, Chad, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestinian West Bank and Gaza, Qatar, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.

Hebrew
Hebrew, which had been extinct as a spoken language for many centuries, was revived as a spoken language at the end of the 19th century. It is the official language of the state of Israel and the liturgical language of Jews around the world. It is spoken as a first language by some 5 million people.

Aramaic
Aramaic, once used as a lingua franca throughout the Mediterranean, is now spoken by slightly over 400,00 people scattered throughout northern Iraq, eastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, and Syria. Syriac, an older descendant of Aramaic, is used as a liturgical language by Iraqi Christians.

Amharic
Amharic is the official language of Ethiopia with 17.5 million speakers, about half of whom are Coptic Christians who speak it as their first language.

Tigrinya
Tigrinya (Tigrigna) is one of the main working languages of Eritrea, which does not have an official language, and one of the official languages of the Tigray Region of Ethiopia. There are 4.5 million speakers of Tigrinya worldwide. It is not to be confused with Tigré (Xasa) which is also spoken in Ethiopia.

Ge'ez
The now extinct Ge'ez, attested between the 4th-9th centuries AD, is still used as the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Coptic Church.

AkkadianKing

Canaanite

Phoenician

Important extinct Semitic languages
In addition to the 77 living Semitic languages, there are some important extinct tongues, some of which are listed below:

Akkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in Mesopotamia from the 3rd to the 1st millennium BC. Last written records of Akkadian date to 1st century AD. Akkadian was forgotten but rediscovered in the 19th century and its cuneiform script was deciphered.
Canaanite languages that include Hebrew, Phoenician, and Punic, were spoken in Palestine, Syria, and in scattered communities around the Mediterranean. All these languages are extinct, except Hebrew, which was revived as a spoken language only in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Phoenician is an ancient Semitic language that was originally spoken in today's Lebanon. It is attested through inscriptions from the 12th century BC to the 2nd century AD. Phoenician traders established settlements all over the Mediterranean. The Phoenician consonantal script, written from right to left and consisting of 22 letters, is almost identical with the Old Hebrew script. It is the ancestor of the Greek and Latin alphabets.
Punic, a later stage of Phoenician, was the language of Carthage and the Carthaginian empire. It was influenced by the surrounding Berber languages. Punic became extinct by the 6th century AD.
Syriac was a Christian literary and liturgical language from the 3rd through the 7th century AD. It was based on an East Aramaic dialect. Today, it is still used as a liturgical language by Iraqi Christians.

Click here to see a comparative chart of Proto-Canaanite, Phoenician, and Greek alphabets.

Structure

Sound System

The sound systems of modern Semitic languages share certain features, not all of which are present in all Semitic languages. Among these features are the following:

three vowels /i/, /a/, /u/;
opposition between short vowels /i/, /a/, /u/ and long vowels ;
opposition between voiced, voiceless and emphatic consonants [1] at the same point of articulation, e.g., /d/ - /t/ -/;
opposition between single and geminated (double) consonants;
wealth of velar, uvular, pharyngeal and laryngeal consonants;
mobile stress;

[1] In Arabic, the emphatic consonants vary from dialect to dialect, but are typically pronounced as pharyngealized consonants. Pharyngealization is a secondary articulation of consonants or vowels by which the pharynx is constricted during the articulation of the sound. In Ethiopian languages, emphatic consonants are realized as ejective consonants. Ejectives are voiceless consonants that are pronounced with simultaneous closure of the glottis, raising air pressure in the mouth, so when the the consonant is released, there is a noticeable burst of air.

Grammar

Arab Man

Ethiopian Women

The grammars of Semitic languages share many common features.

Morphology is based on tri-consonant roots, from which nouns, adjectives, and verbs are formed by vowel insertion along with prefixation and suffixation, e.g.,

Arabic (K-T-B)		Hebrew (K-T-V)
kitb	book	katav	he wrote
kutub	books	ktav	writing
kitaba	writing	katuv	written
ktib	writer	katav	writer
maktab	desk	miktava	desk

Nouns have two genders: masculine and feminine. Masculine nouns have no special markers.
There are usually three cases: nominative, accusative, and genitive.
There are three numbers: singular, dual, plural.
There is a definite, but not always an indefinite article.
There are two types of finite verbs: perfect is used for completed action and has a set of endings to indicate person, gender, and number of the subject. In the other type, the subject is indicated by prefixes (and sometimes endings), and the verbal root has a different pattern of vowels from the perfect.
The most common word order is Subject-Verb-Object.

Vocabulary

Due to their common ancestry, Semitic languages share a great deal of their vocabulary. In addition, they have also borrowed words from neighboring languages as well as languages with which they had signifcant contacts, such as Persian, and the languages of the former colonial powers, such as French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. The most recent source of borrowing is English.

Writing

Ancient Mesopotamia

Afro Asiatic

Semitic languages are written in several scripts. These scripts share their basic structure in that each symbol represents a consonant + vowel combination. The inherent vowel can be changed or suppressed by placing diacritics above or below the consonant symbol.

Language	Script	Details
Arabic	Arabic
Hebrew	Hebrew
Amharic	Ethiopic (Ge'ez)
Tigrinya	Ethiopic (Ge'ez)
Aramaic	Aramaic
Syriac	Syriac
Ge'ez	Ethiopic (Ge'ez)

Camel

Giraffe

Semitic words in English
English has directly or indirectly borrowed many words from Semitic languages, mostly from Hebrew and Arabic. In some cases, the Arabic and Hebrew words themselves came from other languages.

English word	origin
amen	Hebrew 'truth'
behemoth	Hebrew b'hemoth, plural of b'hemah 'beast.' The Hebrew word is most likely a folk etymology of Egyptian pehemau, literally 'water-ox,' the name for the hippopotamus.
camel	Hebrew or Phoenician 'gamal'
camphor	Arabic kafur, from Malay kapur, 'camphor tree'
cipher	Arabic sifr, 'zero'
giraffe	Arabic zarafa, probably from an African language
jubilee	Hebrew yobhel, 'jubilee'
mattress	Arabic al-matrah, 'the cushion'
schwa	Hebrew shewa, 'a neutral vowel quality,' literally, 'emptiness'

Resources

Online resources for the study of Semitic languages and cultures
Proto-Semitic Language and Culture
Wikipedia article on Semitic languages
Ethnologue report on Semitic languages
Middle East Studies Association
National Middle East Language Resource Center

Click on the name of the Semitic language to learn more about it on this website

Amharic
Arabic overview
Modern Standard Arabic
Egyptian Arabic
Moroccan Arabic
Levantine Arabic
Aramaic
Hebrew
Tigrinya (coming soon)