Talk:Semitic languages

Sources for new language listings:

• Caplice, Richard: Introduction to Akkadian
• Ungnad, Arthur: Akkadian Grammar

Ben Brumfield

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Huehnergard's A Grammar of Akkadian also has an interesting chart that further subdivides the Semitic family:

1. East Semitic
   1. Akkadian and Eblaite
2. West Semitic
   1. Central Semitic
      1. Northwest Semitic
         1. Ugaritic
         2. Canaanite (including Hebrew)
         3. Aramaic
      2. North Arabian
         1. Arabic Dialects
   2. South Semitic
      1. South Arabian
         1. Old South Arabian Languages
      2. Ethiopian
         1. Ge'ez
         2. Amharic

I'd be willing to reorganize the article along these lines, but not until this is paraphrased (ideally by the addition of more language names).

Ben Brumfield

Thankyou for that Ben, including the above there are now four different classifications I know of. In one of them Punic comes under West Semetic somewhere between North & South Arabian and Ugaritic under Canaanite which is also called NorthCentral. A user called user:Wetman on the Phoenician page proposed "Phoenician was one of the northwestern Semitic languages, those languages that include Amorite and Ugaritic, in addition to the Canaanite languages that include Phoenician, Hebrew and Aramaic." As you can see he seperates Amorite from Canaanite and replaces it with Punic. These may be very minor differences in opinion but I wonter how the arguments go for the different classifications?

Also it was brought to my mind by that user that Arabic & Ethiopic speakers often object to being called Semetic speakers. Thus I am putting a comment about the PC-ness of the term in the article.

Zestauferov 03:40, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)

As an Arab, I strongly disagree - Semitic is, in fact, the Arabic term (saamiyya سامية) for the Semitic languages, and is founded in myths shared as much by the Arab world as by the West. If nothing else, recall that Arabs do object - sometimes quite strongly - to the appropriation of the term "anti-Semitism" to refer exclusively to anti-Judaism.

Also, the Tamashek example was ill-chosen, being an Arabic loanword (خلق); I have replaced it with one taken from Kabyle.

- Mustafa, 17 March 2004

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Added a comparing table of four words in four Semitic languages. Jeru 11:58, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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I don't think "El Amarna" is in fact a language - rather, it is Akkadian as written by scribes who spoke early Canaanite better than Akkadian, and often slipped into Canaanisms. It would be like calling Indian English a separate language... I've deleted it; if someone has a good argument for restoring it, then by all means do so! Btw, what does "maliku" mean in Akkadian? I know it's not the normal word for king... - Mustafa, April 5 2004.

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Please check The Curse of Ham (http://www.brow.on.ca/Articles/CurseHam.html). Whether one agrees or not with the theology, he quite strongly makes the point that Hebrew, Arab and Akkadian are actually Hamitic languages. This seems like a controversial point, but I guess it would warrant mention at least.

They are hamitic languages which is why the term Hamitic dropped out of use in favour of Afroasiatic. It has been suggested (e.g. Salvini, Speiser, etc.) that the original language of the Hebrews was Hurrian, and that they adopted an early form of Canaanite from the Amorite herders amongst whom they interacted which became the Hebrew language. Zestauferov 16:09, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

Zestauferov, I'm afraid that your linked article looks pretty silly from any number of angles, which I'm not sure this is the proper forum to discuss (your talk page, maybe?). First and least controversial of these, however, is that both it and your quoting of it fall for the etymological fallacy -- the notion that a word means what it used to mean. "Semitic" is the name for this language family because that's the name early linguists gave it, that's the name still used for it, and that's the name we English speakers are all stuck with for the forseeable future. The name has no relation anymore to genetic or genealogical relationships between the various speakers of the languages, whatever those may be. As G.K Chesterton once pointed out, "chivalrous" is not the French for "horsy". Ben 16:17, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

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Invitation for Hebrew linguistics project participation

Wikipedia:WikiProject Judaism is trying to decide all Hebrew linguistics issues for Wikipedia by themselves. But Hebrew is not purely the realm of Judaism; it is also the realm of Samaritans, Christians and Abrahamic religion as a whole, and also secular Canaanite languages studies. I'm trying to challenge mono-cultural mono-sectarian dominance over a linguistic field that we all should be sharing together. I invite you to participate in trying to pluralize Hebrew language conventions for Wikipedia. In particular, not only is Tiberian Hebrew transliteration challenged, but also Standard Hebrew transliteration, as some people want to use only Israeli Hebrew colloquial transliteration or Ashkenazi Hebrew liturgical transliteration. I think these are perfectly valid and worthy of participation, but not at the total expense of every other Hebrew linguistics study concern. Please support a multi-religious multi-cultural scientific NPOV mandate for studying Hebrew linguistics on Wikipedia. - Gilgamesh 02:54, 18 July 2004 (UTC)

Milk (l-b-n), etc.

Note: I was an Arabic TA at Georgetown University and taught Arabic for a while with a para-govt. language center in Maryland. Here are a few suggestions from my instructional experience:

1) Quote: "The root l-b-n means "milk" in Arabic, but the color "white" in Hebrew."

COMMENT: In Modern Standard Arabic (i.e. "fus'ha"), the normal word for "milk" is *Haliib*; *laban* is a secondary synonym for it and in some parts of the Arab World (Levant) means "coagulated sour milk" (a spread); thus, the root isn't unambiguously (or ubiquitously) "milk". It would be safe, however, to say that the ROOT (L-B-N) refers to "milk products" (e.g. *?albaan* "dairy products").

Suggested change: "The root l-b-n is related to milk and milk products in Arabic, but means "white" in Hebrew."

2) Quote: "The most common Semitic languages spoken today are Arabic, Amharic, Hebrew, and Tigrinya."

COMMENT: I think it would be helpful to readers to list estimated number of speakers in parentheses after each of these (data from the Ethnologue):

e.g. "... Arabic (various dialects, 209 million speakers), Amharic (17.4 m), Hebrew (5.2 m), and Tigrinya/Tigrigna (5.1 m)

3) Transliteration of 'ayn " ...in Arabic by the roots ?-r-f and ?-l-m"

COMMENT: This problem could be just a result of the character font used on my computer (if so, apologies), but using a question mark [?] for 'ayn is very misleading because it is a common transliteration for a glottal stop (also phonemically distinctive in Arabic). 'ayn is also transliterated using a number 3 or 9 (similar in shape to the Arabic letter).

4) Quote: "These languages all exhibit a pattern of words consisting of triconsonantal roots"

COMMENT: How about putting "3-consonant" in parentheses after the word "triconsonantal"? (since I assume not all users of Wikipedia are linguists - or college grads)

e.g. "These languages all exhibit a pattern of words consisting of triconsonantal (3-consonant) roots"

5) S-p-r as an example of a root

COMMENT: Since one example of a "Semitic language" (Hebrew: g-d-l) has already been used, why not broaden the pool of examples by including one from Arabic rather than giving a second example (s-p-r) from the same Semitic language? Another from Amharic would be helpful, too.

Suggestion: replace s-p-r with k-t-b (since it is mentioned below) - and to make the 3 consonants more salient, why not capitalize them?

KaTaB-at "she wrote"

KutiB-at "it (fem.) was written"

ta-KTuBu "she writes"

KaaTiB "writer"

ma-KTuuB "written, a letter"

KiTaaB "book"

KuTuB "books"

KuTayyiB "booklet"

ma-KTaB-ah "library"

etc.

6) overall OUTLINE of entry

There seems to be a visually intimidating amount of space dedicated to a classification of all the Semitic languages before the reader ever gets to "Common Characteristics" (if the reader even ventures that far). I would move the "Common Characteristics" section closer to the top before the "Eastern Semitic Languages", since it is more general information, then let the long list of categories come last. - anon

These are some great suggestions - why not put them in yourself and thus get the credit for them? - Mustafaa 02:00, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Classification of Semitic languages

I've been trying to compare different classification systems to see what they're all about. It seems that ever book I pick up has a different scheme. There seems to be some difficulty combining classification schemes for living languages with those used for extinct ones. As you may have guessed, I've worked out how to do tables, and I thought fellow wikipedians might want to edit this table so that we might reach a consensus on classification terminology.

Languages	Beyer	Huehnergard	Ethnologue	source unknown	Hetzron
Akkadian	East Semitic	East Semitic	not classified	North Peripheral	Eastern Semitic
Kish/Mari/Ebla-ite	North Semitic
Ugaritic (mostly)	West Semitic	West Semitic/Central Semitic/Northwest Semitic		North Central	Central Semitic/Northwest Semitic
Aramaic			Central/Aramaic
Canaanite			Central/South
Arabic	South Semitic	West Semitic/Central Semitic/North Arabian		South Central	Central Semitic/South Central (Arabic)
Ancient North Arabic			not classified
South Arabian		West Semitic/South Semitic	South/South Arabian	South Peripheral	South Semitic
Ethiopic			South/Ethiopian

The column marked 'source unknown' was scribbled down on a piece of paper, but it seems the simplest of classifications. It seems to fit in with some of the more verbose schemes too. Any thoughts?

Gareth Hughes 00:49, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It does get confusing! I think the Ethnologue's is suspiciously Biblical, and uncited. Hetzron as modified by Huehnergard seems to be the most fashionable nowadays, though personally I agree with Ratcliffe that the broken plural is strong evidence in favor of the older Semitic classification. Certainly East Semitic seems to be a primary branch. - Mustafaa 00:58, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

But one point I would emphasise is that it's not enough to establish divisions alone; to the extent that it's possible, we should use hierarchical trees. - Mustafaa 00:59, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I agree. I think I needed to tabulate it to see what was what. I've been using Ethnologue's scheme in infoboxes so far. I had noticed a few references to Ethnologue on other language pages and had assumed that it was semi-official around here. The more I looked at it, the more I disliked it. Would it be possible to reach consensus on Huehnergard, with the provision that South Semitic can either be thought of as a first or second division? It would make sense if all the Semitic articles agreed at headline level, and disagreements were noted in the body of the text.

Gareth Hughes 12:28, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'd be happy to use Huehnergard as the standard; I think the main disagreements are already noted towards the beginning of this article, but I may well have missed a few, so feel free to improve it. - Mustafaa 10:55, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Here's me playing with tables again! I've taken the current text of the article and put it in this table. I'm not sure whether we need to mention every Semitic language in this article, but just give an overview of the different branches. This table could be ajusted for Huehnergard, and could have more languages included, but I would suggest fewer individual languages and more emphasis on the branches and groupings of Semitic languages.

Eastern Semitic	Akkadian — extinct
	Eblaite — controversial, either East Semitic or Northwest Semitic — extinct
Central Semitic	Northwest Semitic	Ugaritic — extinct
		Canaanite languages	Ammonite — extinct
			Moabite — extinct
			Edomite — extinct
			Hebrew — renewed
			Phoenician (incl. Punic) — extinct
		Aramaic languages	Syriac
			Mandaic
		Amorite — extinct (attested only in proper names transcribed in Akkadian; perhaps parent lang. of NW or Cent. Semitic)
	South-Central Semitic (Arabic)	Arabic
		Maltese
South Semitic	Southwest Semitic	Ethiopic	North Ethiopic	Tigrinya
				Tigre
				Ge'ez
			South Ethiopic	Transverse	Amharic
					Argobba
					Harari
					East Gurage languages	Selti
						Wolane
						Zway
						Ulbare
						Inneqor
				Outer	Soddo
					Goggot
					Muher
					West Gurage languages	Masqan
						Ezha
						Gura
						Gyeto
						Ennemor
						Endegen
		Old South Arabian	Sabaean — extinct
			Minaean — extinct
			Qatabanian — extinct
			Hadhramautic languages — extinct
	Southeast Semitic	Soqotri
		Mehri
		Jibbali
		Harsusi
		Bathari
		Hobyot

Gareth Hughes 11:10, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

That's a cool idea; and I do agree that linking to subgroups rather than individual languages makes it more readable in some cases. My one objection is a minor point: it seems a little too colorful to me, to the point that it distracts a bit from the text. - Mustafaa 11:35, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Is someone who studies Semitic languages a Semitist, as the article says, or a Semiticist, as I would usually say? I'm just not quite sure myself. --Gareth Hughes 10:54, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Neither am I... Google doesn't offer much help either! - Mustafaa 23:03, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think it's Semiticist. Semitist sounds more like a religious affiliation than a linguistics practice. - Gilgamesh 00:45, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)