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Semitic languages

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Semitic
Geographic distribution:	Middle East, North Africa, Northeast Africa and Malta
Genetic classification:	Afro-Asiatic Semitic
Subdivisions:	East Semitic West Semitic South Semitic
ISO 639-2	sem

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 (270 million total speakers), followed by Amharic (27 million first language speakers), Tigrinya (about 6.7 million total speakers) and Hebrew (5 million first language speakers). Semitic languages were among the earliest to attain a written form, with Akkadian writing beginning in the middle of the third millennium BC. 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.

History

Origins

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 ; however, an opposing theory is that Proto-Afro-Asiatic originated in the Middle East, and Semitic was the only branch to stay put.

In any event, Proto-Semitic itself is assumed to have reached the Arabian Peninsula by approximately the 4th millennium BC, from which Semitic daughter languages continued to spread outwards. When written records began 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 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 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

In the 1st millennium BC, 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.

Common Era

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Classical Arabic is one of the Semitic languages, and therefore has many similarities in conjugation and pronunciation to Hebrew, Akkadian, Aramaic, and Amharic. It possesses similar conjugation to biblical Hebrew in its use of vowels to modify a base group of consonants

For instance, the root k-t-b, "write", yields in Arabic:

Kataba ﻜﺗﺏ means "he wrote"

kutiba ﻜﺘﺏ means "it was written" masculine

kutibat ﻜﺗﺑﺕmeans "it was written" feminine

Kitābun ﺏ ﻜﺗﺎ means "book"

kutubun ﻜﺗﺏ means "books"

Kutayyibun ﮐﺗﻴﺐ means "booklet" dimunitive

kitābatun ﺑﺔ ﻜﺗﺎ 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"

Classical Arabic

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Arabic
Spoken in:	Historically in the Middle East, now used as a liturgical language of Islam
Total speakers:	— 270 million
Language family:	Afro-Asiatic Semitic West Semitic Central Semitic Arabic
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	ar
ISO 639-2:	ara

Classical Arabic, also known as Koranic (or Qur'anic) Arabic, is the form of the Arabic language used in the Qur'an as well as in numerous literary texts from Umayyad and Abbasid times (7th to 9th centuries). Modern Standard Arabic is a modern version used in writing and in formal speaking (for example, prepared speeches and radio broadcasts). It differs minimally in morphology but has significant differences in syntax and lexicon, reflecting the influence of the modern spoken dialects.

Classical Arabic is often believed to be the parent language of all the spoken varieties of Arabic, but recent scholarship, such as Clive Holes (2004), questions this view, showing that other dialects were extant at the time and may be the origin of current spoken varieties.

History

Classical Arabic spread with the spread of Islam, becoming a language of scholarship and religious devotion as the language of the Qur'an. Its relation to modern dialects is somewhat analogous to the relationship of Latin and the Romance Languages or Middle Chinese and the modern Chinese languages.

Sacred Language

Arabic also has a dimension of being a sacred language, as it is the only language from which the Quran is believed to be fully understood — all translations will reduce the quality of the revelations of God.

Arabic grammar is fairly simple compared to Western languages, but the language has a richness in its used vocabulary that exceeds most languages in the Western world

NOTA :

Penerangan ringkas di atas hanyalah sekadar memberi latarbelakang sejarah dan perkembangan Bahasa Arab. Fokus kami : "Bahasa Arab adalah dari kumpulan Bahasa Semitic" yang mempunyai ciri-ciri berikut:-

- berpunca dari 3 huruf

- perkataan berkembang secara "pattern" @ "bentuk" @ "acuan" - mudah dikenalpasti

- akhir sekali ia adalah dari kumpulan bahasa yang tidak mudah pupus dan dapat
disesuaikan pada zaman-zaman yang berlainan. Kami meyakini atas sebab inilah
antara lain, Allah s.w.t telah menurunkan Al-Quran di dalam Bahasa Arab. Dan hakikat
bahawa Bahasa Arab adalah Bahasa Syurga... perlu direnungkan sedalam-dalamnya.



Sekian, ,Wassalaam dan Salam sejahtera.
ZMS