RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Semitic Languages
shape; but of this primitive race we can say no more than that it goes back to a remote antiquity, since of one of its daughters, the Baby- 2. The Orig- Ionian people, there are traces in the inal Home, fourth millennium B.c.t'The attempt has been made to determine the habitat of the Semites, before they broke up into separate nations, from their traditions, and from the vocabulary of the primitive tongue made out by a comparison of the existing dialects; but no trustworthy result has been reached. The oldest accounts say nothing definite. Gen. xi. 2, for example, contains the statement that the whole body of the descendants of Noah journeyed " eastward " (so mikkedhem is to be rendered), that is, toward the Tigris-Euphrates region; but the starting-point is not given, nor is there here anything of a separate Semitic people. Again, in the same chapter, the assembled human race is said to have been scattered from the city Babel, without, however, any indication of the points to which the descendants of Noah's three sons severally went. At most, a dim feeling may be discerned here that the Semites had once lived together in the Tigris-Euphrates valley; but this might be referred to the fact that the Hebrews believed that they themselves had come from that region to Canaan. No other Semitic people has, so far as is known, any ancient tradition on this point. The evidence from the primitive Semitic vocabulary is equally vague. Its terms for land, mountains, rivers, seas, metals, grains, fruits, and animals, do not fix any particular spot in western Asia as the locality where such terms must have originated. Certain similarities between the Egyptian and Semitic languages have suggested the theory that the Semitic-Hamitic community, out of which came later the Semitic and Egyptian peoples, once dwelt in Africa near the Mediterranean shore, and split into sections, one remaining in Africa, the other passing into Asia; but the arguments for this view are not convincing (some scholars, it may be added, place the home of the primitive Semitic-Hamitic people in Arabia, q.v.). It is necessary, therefore, to regard as not established the hypotheses which make the mountains of Armenia, or the lower Tigris- Euphrates valley, or the Arabian Desert, or Africa the cradle of the Semitic race, and to leave the question at present unsolved. The choice is between Arabia and Africa, the preponderance of present opinion being doubtful.
The Semitic territory was enclosed by that of Indo-Europeans on the east and the west, and Egypt on the south. In ancient times, however, the language was little affected by foreign in- 3. Foreign fluence, except at one point. Accord- Influence, ing to the view now held by most Assyriologists, the Babylonian-Assyrians, conquering the non-Semitic Sumerians, who preceded them as occupants of the Tigris-Euphrates valley, in adopting the civilization of the conquered, adopted a number of their words. Hebrew made a few loans in early times from the Egyptian, and at a later period, possibly from the Indian, and then from the Persian, Greek, and Latin; and the ecclesiastical Aramaic was naturally greatly affected by Greek and Latin.
The loanwords are easily recognized, except those which come from the Sumerian.
All the Semitic nationalities, except the Arabian and the Geez (Ethiopia), died out before the second century of the Christian era. The Babylonians and Assyrians disappeared as a political force in the sixth century B.C., and their language survived only a few centuries. The Phenicians fingered in Asia till the time of the Antonines, and their 4. Disap- language in Africa (Carthage) till pearance toward the fifth century of the Chrisof Semitic tian era (mentioned by Augustine and Languages. Jerome). The Syrian Arameans lost their independence in the eighth century B.C., but continued to exist, and their dialect revived in the second century a.d. as a Christian language; and the Jewish Aramaic continued for some centuries (up to the eleventh century a.d.) to be the spoken and literary tongue of the Palestinian and Babylonian Jews. The Jewish people, broken up by the Romans in the first and second centuries a.d., and scattered over the world, have carried Hebrew with them as a learned, artificial tongue. The South Arabians (Minffians, Sabsans, and perhaps others), once a flourishing community, lingered till the Mohammedan conquest in the seventh century of the Christian era, and were then absorbed in the general Arabian mass. The North Arabians did not appear as a nation till the seventh century a.d., and their language is now widely spoken. Geez proper died out about the sixth century a.d., remaining, however, as the ecclesiastical and learned language; and the nationality is still in existence.
III. Divisions: The various Semitic dialects closely resemble one another, there being, for example, between no two of them such dissimilarity as exists between Greek and Latin; but the family is divided into two well-defined groups and several sub-groups, the difference between the two main groups, in vocabulary and forms, being considerably greater than that between any two 1. Grouping, members of the same group or subgroup. The relations of the dialects may be seen from the following table, which is designed to include all Semitic forms of speech that can lay claim to linguistic individuality, except a few modern jargons mentioned below.
North Semitic.
1. Eastern. a. Babylonian. 6. Assyrian.
2. Northern. Aramaic.
a. East Aramaic. a. Syriac (Dialect of
Edessa). j3. Mandean. y. Nabatsean.
b. West Aramaic. a. Samaritan. /3. Jewish Aramaic
(Daniel, Ezra, Targums, Talmud). y. Palmyrene. S. Egyptian Aramaic.
3. Western.
a Phenician.
Old Phenician.
Late Phenician (Punic). 6. Hebrew.
c. Moabitish and other Canaanitish dialects.
II. South Semitic.
1. Northern. Arabic.
2. Southern. a. Sabsean, or Himya-
ritic; Minaean. Mahri.
Hakili (Ehkili). 6. Geez, or Ethiopia a. Old Geez. 0. Tigre. y. Tigrifia. $. Amharic. e. Harari.
Semitic Languages