SHEMITIC LANGUAGES 655 SIIEMITIC LANGUAGES
E. Deutsch, seems to have known iNI. Kenan's work and those of others holdiiiy; the same view; for he says that these authors " had to hedge it in witli many and varie- gated restrictions." But any one reading the remarks of M. Renan will hardly understand the unnecessary zeal exhibited by the writer in Kitto when lie says, " But we further protest all the more strongly against it, as it might easily lead to the belief that the one idiom gradually merged into the other."
Out of the three principal branches, in the course of time, others developed themselves. The following ta- ble, taken from Prof. M. Miiller's Science <>/ Ldiiffuut/e, i, 303 (Amer. ed.), exhibits them in a genealogical way: TAinwj Lmirfuages. Dead Langtiagcs.
Dialects of Arabic. .Ethiopic
Aniharic HiniyeiMtir inscriptions
Not the less do we find in the whole grammatical construction, as well as in particular instances of gratn- matical formation and structure, the greatest and most surprising agreement between the various Shemitic lan- guages or dialects; thus we have but two genders, and these are also distinguished in the second and tliird per- sons of the verb. In the inflection of verbs they have only two moods (commoidy considered to be tenses) ; but these are strongly contrasted by the position of the marks of the persons at the end or at the beginning: the so-called perfect for the completed or actual, and the imperfect for the incomplete or hypothetical, without decidedly giving expression to the tenses by peculiar forms. Nouns are not declined by means of case-end-
V Shemiilc Family.
Classes. j- Arabic, or Scnithern. . .
! Biblical Ilebiew. )
The Jews -^Siimuritun I'eiitateuch Wiebraic, or Middle...
((';u-tliaL;ini:iii— Phoenician inscriptions )
(Clialdce, Masora, Talmud, Targum, Biblical Chaldee.] Neo-Syriac -^Syriac (I'eshito, 2d century A.D.) ^ Aramaic, or Northern. |
(Cuueifonn inscriptions of Babylon and Nineveh ) J
A somewhat more intuitive table is the following, taken from Bcittcher, Ausf. Lehrbuch dtr hebr, Sjirache, p. 4
(ed. MUhlau) :
PRIMITIVE SHEMITIC.
Northern Sheynitic. (Aeamaio.)
1. Assyrian of the cuneiform writ- ings, B.C. l'JOO-600
Middle Shemitic. (Canaanitio.)
Southern Shemitic. (Akabio.)
3. Phoenician, B.C. 1200 sq.
2. Hebreiv, B.C. 1500 sq.
Northern Arabic. Southern Arabic.
8. Siiriac, A.D. ISO sq.
12. Sabinn, A.U. ^?)
4. Chaldee,
B.C. 420 sq.
6. Samaritan,
B.C.200sq. (?)
f 7. Sinaitic inscript. (ofthe Nal)ath8eaiis, ( B.C. 150-A.D. 150
11. Written Arabic, A.D. 500 sq.
5. Himyeritic iu-
sci-ii)lions, B.C. (?).
10. Etiiiopic, A.D. 350 sq.
9. Mishua, A.D. 190 sq.
Gemara, A.D. SOOsq,
III. Chnracleristics of the Shemitic Lanrpiarjes. — Not only are all these languages (with the exception of the P>thiopic and Amharic) written from right to left, but they are related to each other in much the same man- ner as those of the Germanic family (Gothic, Old Northern, Danish, Swedish; High and Low German, in the earlier and later dialects), or as those of the Slavic tongues (Lithuanian, Lettish; Old Slavic, Servian, Rus- sian , Polish, Bohemian), bearing in mnul, however, that the relationship in the former case is more thorough and complete than in the latter.
In the first place, the whole of the Shemitic dialects agree substantiall}- with regard to the root-words and their meaning; the only ditference being that one lan- guage, the Arabic, is comparatively far richer than the other dialects. Thus, e. g., the Arabic possesses nearly 6000 roots and about (30,000 words, while in Hebrew only about 2000 roots and 6000 words are known to us. Or, again, the Arabic philologists quote 1000 different terms for a sword, 500 for a lion, 200 for a serpent, 400 for misfortune. But we must take this into consideration, that in the other dialects only a small number of literary records, comparatively speaking, have been preserved; and that the Arabic, as a living language, is known to us in a far later development than the Hebrew. But by far the larger part of the root-words which are found in Hebrew appear also in the other dialects, and in essen- tially the same or only a slightly modified signification. Besides, in the present form of the language in all these dialects, nearly all the stem-words are composed of three consonants. In all the Shemitic dialects the consonants are seen to be far more essential than the vowels. The former almost alone deternnne the essential meaning of the word, while the differences of the vowels do no more than give the different references and modifications of this meaninijr.
(Neo- Arabic Dialects.) 13. Rnhhinic, 14. Amharic,
A.D. 100(1 sq. A.D. 1300 eq.
(Neo-Hebiew.)
ings, but the genitive is expressed by closely combin- ing two words, and other cases by nsing prepositions, while the pronouns have mere suffixes for the obliipie cases. Finally, they are characterized by poverty m the particles, and consequently they have their clauses formed with extreme simplicity; and they are defective in the structure of sentences, at least if they are judged by the standard of the Latin and the German languages. Considering all these facts, they plainly show " that one original language lies at the foundation of them all; that in early times — anterior, however, to all our his- torical knowledge of them — these nations certainly all spoke one language, which has in later periods, as they separated one from the other, developed into these vari- ous dialects" (Bleek).