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65-504: The word wadi ( وادي ) means valley in Arabic. "Barada" is thought to be derived from the word barid ( بارد ), which means "cold" in Semitic languages . The ancient Greek name ( Greek : Χρυσορρόας , translit. Chrysorrhoas ), means "streaming with gold". The river has also suffered from severe drought in the last decades, mainly due to the lower rainfall rates and the large increase in

130-604: A branch of the Northwest Semitic languages included Edomite , Hebrew , Ammonite , Moabite , Phoenician ( Punic / Carthaginian ), Samaritan Hebrew , and Ekronite . They were spoken in what is today Israel and the Palestinian territories , Syria , Lebanon , Jordan , the northern Sinai Peninsula , some northern and eastern parts of the Arabian Peninsula , southwest fringes of Turkey , and in

195-521: A category of state, the indefinite state being expressed by nunation . Ugaritic alphabet The Ugaritic writing system is a cuneiform abjad (consonantal alphabet) with syllabic elements used from around either 1400 BCE or 1300 BCE for Ugaritic , an extinct Northwest Semitic language . It was discovered in Ugarit , modern Ras Al Shamra, Syria , in 1928. It has 30 letters. Other languages, particularly Hurrian , were occasionally written in

260-568: A great cultural or imperial centre, was located at the geographic centre of the literate world, among Egypt , Anatolia , Cyprus , Crete , and Mesopotamia . Ugaritic combined the system of the Semitic abjad with cuneiform writing methods (pressing a stylus into clay). Scholars have searched in vain for graphic prototypes of the Ugaritic letters in Mesopotamian cuneiform. Recently, some have suggested that Ugaritic represents some form of

325-437: A literary language of early Christianity in the third to fifth centuries and continued into the early Islamic era. The Arabic language, although originating in the Arabian Peninsula , first emerged in written form in the 1st to 4th centuries CE in the southern regions of The Levant . With the advent of the early Arab conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries, Classical Arabic eventually replaced many (but not all) of

390-726: A main water source. The water of Ein Fajja in the Barada valley is a major source of the capital, providing drinking water to more than six million people in Damascus and its countryside. The following villages and towns make up Wadi Barada. The population numbers are according to the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) for 2004. Syrian rebels captured the village of Ain al-Fijah in February 2012. Engineers and technicians who worked at

455-466: 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 both Semitic (such as Gafat ) and non-Semitic (such as Weyto ) languages, and replacing Ge'ez as the principal literary language (though Ge'ez remains the liturgical language for Christians in

520-462: A phonological perspective, however, was more like Arabic" (82, 89, 614). The script was written from left to right. Although cuneiform and pressed into clay, its symbols were unrelated to those of Akkadian cuneiform . The Ugaritic writing system was an augmented abjad . In most syllables only consonants were written, including the /w/ and /j/ of diphthongs . Ugaritic was unusual among early abjads because it also indicated vowels occurring after

585-422: A question of transcription; the exact pronunciation is not recorded. Most of the attested languages have merged a number of the reconstructed original fricatives, though South Arabian retains all fourteen (and has added a fifteenth from *p > f). In Aramaic and Hebrew, all non-emphatic stops occurring singly after a vowel were softened to fricatives, leading to an alternation that was often later phonemicized as

650-652: A result of the loss of gemination. In languages exhibiting pharyngealization of emphatics, the original velar emphatic has rather developed to a uvular stop [q] . Note: the fricatives *s, *z, *ṣ, *ś, *ṣ́, and *ṱ may also be interpreted as affricates (/t͡s/, /d͡z/, /t͡sʼ/, /t͡ɬ/, /t͡ɬʼ/, and /t͡θʼ/). Notes: The following table shows the development of the various fricatives in Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic and Maltese through cognate words: – żmien xahar sliem tnejn – */d/ d daħaq – ħolm għarb sebgħa Proto-Semitic vowels are, in general, harder to deduce due to

715-673: A script adapted from Sumerian cuneiform ) appearing from c.  2600 BCE in Mesopotamia and the northeastern Levant respectively. The only earlier attested languages are Sumerian and Elamite (2800 BCE to 550 BCE), both language isolates , and Egyptian ( c.  3000 BCE ), a sister branch within the Afroasiatic family, related to the Semitic languages but not part of them. Amorite appeared in Mesopotamia and

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780-527: A so-called triliteral root ). Words are composed from roots not so much by adding prefixes or suffixes, but rather by filling in the vowels between the root consonants, although prefixes and suffixes are often added as well. For example, in Arabic, the root meaning "write" has the form k-t-b . From this root, words are formed by filling in the vowels and sometimes adding consonants, e.g. كِتاب k i t ā b "book", كُتُب k u t u b "books", كاتِب k ā t i b "writer", كُتّاب k u tt ā b "writers", كَتَب k

845-553: A t a b a "he wrote", يكتُب ya kt u b u "he writes", etc.. The similarity of the Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic languages has been accepted by all scholars since medieval times. The languages were familiar to Western European scholars due to historical contact with neighbouring Near Eastern countries and through Biblical studies , and a comparative analysis of Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic was published in Latin in 1538 by Guillaume Postel . Almost two centuries later, Hiob Ludolf described

910-569: A variety of Maghrebi Arabic formerly spoken in Sicily . The modern Maltese alphabet is based on the Latin script with the addition of some letters with diacritic marks and digraphs . Maltese is the only Semitic official language within the European Union . Successful as second languages far beyond their numbers of contemporary first-language speakers, a few Semitic languages today are

975-583: Is verb–subject–object (VSO), possessed–possessor (NG), and noun–adjective (NA). This was still the case in Classical Arabic and Biblical Hebrew , e.g. Classical Arabic رأى محمد فريدا ra'ā muħammadun farīdan . (literally "saw Muhammad Farid", Muhammad saw Farid ). In the modern Arabic vernaculars , however, as well as sometimes in Modern Standard Arabic (the modern literary language based on Classical Arabic) and Modern Hebrew ,

1040-547: Is a working language in Eritrea. Tigre is spoken by over one million people in the northern and central Eritrean lowlands and parts of eastern Sudan. A number of Gurage languages are spoken by populations in the semi-mountainous region of central Ethiopia, while Harari is restricted to the city of Harar . Ge'ez remains the liturgical language for certain groups of Christians in Ethiopia and in Eritrea . The phonologies of

1105-660: Is also used liturgically by the primarily Arabic-speaking followers of the Maronite Church , Syriac Catholic Church , and was originally the liturgical language of the Melkites in Antioch , and ancient Syria . Koine Greek and Classical Arabic are the main liturgical languages of Oriental Orthodox Christians in the Middle East, who compose the patriarchates of Antioch , Jerusalem , and Alexandria . Mandaic

1170-612: Is both spoken and used as a liturgical language by the Mandaeans . Although the majority of Neo-Aramaic dialects spoken today are descended from Eastern varieties, Western Neo-Aramaic is still spoken in two villages in Syria. Despite the ascendancy of Arabic in the Middle East, other Semitic languages still exist. Biblical Hebrew, long extinct as a colloquial language and in use only in Jewish literary, intellectual, and liturgical activity,

1235-534: Is more similar to the one found in the South Arabian , and the Geʽez scripts . The Ugaritic ( U ) letters are given in cuneiform and transliteration . North Semitic South Semitic Arabian Two shorter variants of the Ugaritic alphabet existed with findspots primarily not in the area of Ugarit. Findspots have included Tel Beit Shemesh , Sarepta , and Tiryns . It is generally found on inscribed objects vs

1300-444: Is natural for the consonants , as sound correspondences among the consonants of the Semitic languages are very straightforward for a family of its time depth. Sound shifts affecting the vowels are more numerous and, at times, less regular. Each Proto-Semitic phoneme was reconstructed to explain a certain regular sound correspondence between various Semitic languages. Note that Latin letter values ( italicized ) for extinct languages are

1365-405: Is now only spoken by a few thousand Christian and Muslim Arameans (Syriacs) in western Syria . The Arabs spread their Central Semitic language to North Africa ( Egypt , Libya , Tunisia , Algeria , Morocco , and northern Sudan and Mauritania ), where it gradually replaced Egyptian Coptic and many Berber languages (although Berber is still largely extant in many areas), and for a time to

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1430-440: Is often thought to be a late addition to the alphabet representing a foreign sound that could be approximated by native /s/; Huehnergard and Pardee make it the affricate /ts/. Segert instead theorizes that it may have been syllabic /su/, and for this reason grouped with the other syllabic signs /ʔi/ and /ʔu/. Probably the last three letters of the alphabet were originally developed for transcribing non-Ugaritic languages (texts in

1495-472: The Akkadian language and Hurrian language have been found written in the Ugaritic alphabet) and were then applied to write the Ugaritic language. The three letters denoting glottal stop plus vowel combinations were used as simple vowel letters when writing other languages. The only punctuation is a word divider . At the time the Ugaritic script was in use (c. 1300–1190 BCE), Ugarit, although not

1560-526: The Assyrians and Mandaeans of northern and southern Iraq , northwestern Iran , northeastern Syria and southeastern Turkey , with up to a million fluent speakers. Syriac is a recognized language in Iraq, furthermore, Mesopotamian Arabic is one of the most Syriac influenced dialects of Arabic, due to Syriac, the dialect of Edessa specifically, having originated in Mesopotamia. Meanwhile Western Aramaic

1625-591: The Beni Ḥassān brought Arabization to Mauritania . A number of Modern South Arabian languages distinct from Arabic still survive, such as Soqotri , Mehri and Shehri which are mainly spoken in Socotra , Yemen, and Oman. Meanwhile, the Semitic languages that had arrived from southern Arabia in the 8th century BC were diversifying in Ethiopia and Eritrea , where, under heavy Cushitic influence, they split into

1690-521: The Horn of Africa to a much earlier date. According to another hypothesis, Semitic originated from an offshoot of a still earlier language in North Africa and desertification made its inhabitants to migrate in the fourth millennium BC into what is now Ethiopia , others northwest out of Africa into West Asia. The various extremely closely related and mutually intelligible Canaanite languages ,

1755-744: The Horn of Africa , Malta , and in large immigrant and expatriate communities in North America , Europe , and Australasia . The terminology was first used in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen school of history , who derived the name from Shem , one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis . Semitic languages occur in written form from a very early historical date in West Asia , with East Semitic Akkadian (also known as Assyrian and Babylonian ) and Eblaite texts (written in

1820-557: The Iberian Peninsula (modern Spain , Portugal , and Gibraltar ) and Malta . With the patronage of the caliphs and the prestige of its liturgical status, Arabic rapidly became one of the world's main literary languages. Its spread among the masses took much longer, however, as many (although not all) of the native populations outside the Arabian Peninsula only gradually abandoned their languages in favour of Arabic. As Bedouin tribes settled in conquered areas, it became

1885-554: The Levant , Ethiopia , the Eastern Mediterranean region, the Arabian Peninsula , and North Africa . According to a 2009 study, the Semitic languages originated in the Levant c.  3750 BC , and were introduced to the Horn of Africa c. 800 BC from the southern Arabian Peninsula, and to North Africa via Phoenician colonists at approximately the same time. Others assign the arrival of Semitic speakers in

1950-616: The Middle East and Asia Minor during the Bronze Age and Iron Age , the earliest attested being the East Semitic Akkadian of Mesopotamia ( Akkad , Assyria , Isin , Larsa , and Babylonia ) from the third millennium BC . The origin of Semitic-speaking peoples is still under discussion. Several locations were proposed as possible sites of a prehistoric origin of Semitic-speaking peoples : Mesopotamia ,

2015-476: The Proto-Sinaitic script , the letter forms distorted as an adaptation to writing on clay with a stylus. There may also have been a degree of influence from the poorly understood Byblos syllabary . It has been proposed in this regard that the two basic shapes in cuneiform, a linear wedge, as in 𐎂 , and a corner wedge, as in 𐎓 , may correspond to lines and circles in the linear Semitic alphabets:

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2080-730: The Qur'an and Jews speak and study Biblical Hebrew , the language of the Torah , Midrash , and other Jewish scriptures. The followers of the Assyrian Church of the East , Chaldean Catholic Church , Ancient Church of the East , Assyrian Pentecostal Church , Assyrian Evangelical Church , and the Syriac Orthodox Church speak Eastern Aramaic languages and use Classical Syriac as their liturgical language . Classical Syriac

2145-575: The Table of Nations : In the Mosaic Table of Nations , those names which are listed as Semites are purely names of tribes who speak the so-called Oriental languages and live in Southwest Asia. As far as we can trace the history of these very languages back in time, they have always been written with syllabograms or with alphabetic script (never with hieroglyphs or pictograms ); and

2210-432: The glottal stop . It is thought that the letter for the syllable /ʔa/ originally represented the consonant /ʔ/ , as aleph does in other Semitic abjads, and that it was later restricted to /ʔa/ with the addition, at the end of the alphabet, of /ʔi/ and /ʔu/ . The final consonantal letter of the alphabet, s 2 , has a disputed origin along with both "appended" glottals, but "The patent similarity of form between

2275-522: The nonconcatenative morphology of Semitic languages. The history of vowel changes in the languages makes drawing up a complete table of correspondences impossible, so only the most common reflexes can be given: The Semitic languages share a number of grammatical features, although variation — both between separate languages, and within the languages themselves — has naturally occurred over time. The reconstructed default word order in Proto-Semitic

2340-524: The Near East, particularly after being adopted as the lingua franca of the vast Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC) by Tiglath-Pileser III during the 8th century BC, and being retained by the succeeding Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid Empires . The Chaldean language (not to be confused with Aramaic or its Biblical variant , sometimes referred to as Chaldean ) was a Northwest Semitic language, possibly closely related to Aramaic, but no examples of

2405-708: The Palestinian territories, Jordan, Lebanon) during the 14th century BC, incorporating elements of the Mesopotamian East Semitic Akkadian language of Assyria and Babylonia with the West Semitic Canaanite languages. Aramaic , a still living ancient Northwest Semitic language, first attested in the 12th century BC in the northern Levant , gradually replaced the East Semitic and Canaanite languages across much of

2470-547: The Ugaritic script in the area around Ugarit, although not elsewhere. Clay tablets written in Ugaritic provide the earliest evidence of both the North Semitic and South Semitic orders of the alphabet, which gave rise to the alphabetic orders of the reduced Phoenician writing system and its descendants, including the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet , Hebrew , Syriac , Greek and Latin , and of the Geʽez script , which

2535-468: The Ugaritic symbol transliterated [s 2 ], and the s-character of the later Northwest Semitic script makes a common origin likely, but the reason for the addition of this sign to the Ugaritic alphabet is unclear (compare Segert 1983: 201–218, Dietrich and Loretz 1988). In function , [s 2 ] is like Ugaritic s, but only in certain words – other s-words are never written with [s 2 ]." The words that show s 2 are predominantly borrowings, and thus it

2600-493: The alphabet used, the name "Semitic languages" is completely appropriate. Previously these languages had been commonly known as the " Oriental languages " in European literature. In the 19th century, "Semitic" became the conventional name; however, an alternative name, " Syro-Arabian languages ", was later introduced by James Cowles Prichard and used by some writers. Semitic languages were spoken and written across much of

2665-431: The attested Semitic languages are presented here from a comparative point of view (see Proto-Semitic language#Phonology for details on the phonological reconstruction of Proto-Semitic used in this article). The reconstruction of Proto-Semitic (PS) was originally based primarily on Arabic , whose phonology and morphology (particularly in Classical Arabic ) is very conservative, and which preserves as contrastive 28 out of

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2730-403: The base of the sacred literature of some of the world's major religions, including Islam (Arabic), Judaism (Hebrew and Aramaic ( Biblical and Talmudic )), churches of Syriac Christianity (Classical Syriac) and Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Christianity (Ge'ez). Millions learn these as a second language (or an archaic version of their modern tongues): many Muslims learn to read and recite

2795-574: The case of Phoenician, coastal regions of Tunisia ( Carthage ), Libya , Algeria , and parts of Morocco , Spain , and possibly in Malta and other Mediterranean islands. Ugaritic , a Northwest Semitic language closely related to but distinct from the Canaanite group was spoken in the kingdom of Ugarit in north western Syria. A hybrid Canaano-Akkadian language also emerged in Canaan (Israel and

2860-588: The classical VSO order has given way to SVO. Modern Ethiopian Semitic languages follow a different word order: SOV, possessor–possessed, and adjective–noun; however, the oldest attested Ethiopian Semitic language, Ge'ez, was VSO, possessed–possessor, and noun–adjective. Akkadian was also predominantly SOV. The proto-Semitic three-case system ( nominative , accusative and genitive ) with differing vowel endings (-u, -a -i), fully preserved in Qur'anic Arabic (see ʾIʿrab ), Akkadian and Ugaritic , has disappeared everywhere in

2925-491: The consonants at all times, in contrast with other Semitic languages which indicate vowels based on need or for introductory purposes. Maltese is the only Semitic language written in the Latin script and the only Semitic language to be an official language of the European Union . The Semitic languages are notable for their nonconcatenative morphology . That is, word roots are not themselves syllables or words, but instead are isolated sets of consonants (usually three, making

2990-491: The eastern coast of Saudi Arabia , and Bahrain , Qatar , Oman , and Yemen . South Semitic languages are thought to have spread to the Horn of Africa circa 8th century BC where the Ge'ez language emerged (though the direction of influence remains uncertain). Classical Syriac , a 200 CE Eastern Middle Aramaic dialect, used as a liturgical language in Mesopotamia , the Levant , and Kerala , India, rose to importance as

3055-508: The evident 29 consonantal phonemes. with *s [ s ] and *š [ ʃ ] merging into Arabic / s / ⟨ س ⟩ and *ś [ ɬ ] becoming Arabic / ʃ / ⟨ ش ⟩ . Note: the fricatives *s, *z, *ṣ, *ś, *ṣ́, and *ṱ may also be interpreted as affricates (/t͡s/, /d͡z/, /t͡sʼ/, /t͡ɬ/, /t͡ɬʼ/, and /t͡θʼ/), as discussed in Proto-Semitic language § Fricatives . This comparative approach

3120-691: The indigenous Semitic languages and cultures of the Near East . Both the Near East and North Africa saw an influx of Muslim Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula, followed later by non-Semitic Muslim Iranian and Turkic peoples . The previously dominant Aramaic dialects maintained by the Assyrians, Babylonians and Persians gradually began to be sidelined, however descendant dialects of Eastern Aramaic (including Suret (Assyrian and Chaldean varieties), Turoyo , and Mandaic ) survive to this day among

3185-707: The language remain, as after settling in south eastern Mesopotamia from the Levant during the 9th century BC, the Chaldeans appear to have rapidly adopted the Akkadian and Aramaic languages of the indigenous Mesopotamians. Old South Arabian languages (classified as South Semitic and therefore distinct from the Central-Semitic Arabic) were spoken in the kingdoms of Dilmun , Sheba , Ubar , Socotra , and Magan , which in modern terms encompassed part of

3250-466: The legends about the invention of the syllabograms and alphabetic script go back to the Semites. In contrast, all so called Hamitic peoples originally used hieroglyphs, until they here and there, either through contact with the Semites, or through their settlement among them, became familiar with their syllabograms or alphabetic script, and partly adopted them. Viewed from this aspect too, with respect to

3315-662: The main language of not only central Arabia, but also Yemen, the Fertile Crescent , and Egypt . Most of the Maghreb followed, specifically in the wake of the Banu Hilal 's incursion in the 11th century, and Arabic became the native language of many inhabitants of al-Andalus . After the collapse of the Nubian kingdom of Dongola in the 14th century, Arabic began to spread south of Egypt into modern Sudan ; soon after,

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3380-612: The many colloquial forms of Semitic languages. Modern Standard Arabic maintains such case distinctions, although they are typically lost in free speech due to colloquial influence. An accusative ending -n is preserved in Ethiopian Semitic. In the northwest, the scarcely attested Samalian reflects a case distinction in the plural between nominative -ū and oblique -ī (compare the same distinction in Classical Arabic). Additionally, Semitic nouns and adjectives had

3445-417: The northern Levant c.  2100 BC , followed by the mutually intelligible Canaanite languages (including Hebrew, Phoenician, Moabite, Edomite, and Ammonite, and perhaps Ekronite, Amalekite and Sutean), the still spoken Aramaic , and Ugaritic during the 2nd millennium BC. Most scripts used to write Semitic languages are abjads  – a type of alphabetic script that omits some or all of

3510-581: The population in the area. Wadi Barada is located in the north-western part of the Syrian capital of Damascus, in the Qalamoun district. It is known for being a mountainous area and in direct contact with the eastern mountain range of Lebanon . The Barada River is located in the western suburb of Damascus, it is 84 km long, stems from Zabadani, and drains in Al Otaiba Lake. The region also has

3575-509: The possibility that the letters with the fewest strokes may have been the most frequent. Lists of Ugaritic letters, abecedaria , have been found in two alphabetic orders. The "Northern Semitic order" more is similar to the one found in Phoenician , Hebrew and Arabic , the earlier, so-called ʾabjadī order, and more distantly, the Greek and Latin alphabets . The "Southern Semitic order"

3640-459: The region); this spread continues to this day, with Qimant set to disappear in another generation. Arabic is currently the native language of majorities from Mauritania to Oman , and from Iraq to Sudan . Classical Arabic is the language of the Quran . It is also studied widely in the non-Arabic-speaking Muslim world . The Maltese language is a descendant of the extinct Siculo-Arabic ,

3705-475: The similarities between these three languages and the Ethiopian Semitic languages . However, neither scholar named this grouping as "Semitic". The term "Semitic" was created by members of the Göttingen school of history , initially by August Ludwig von Schlözer (1781), to designate the languages closely related to Arabic, Aramaic, and Hebrew. The choice of name was derived from Shem , one of

3770-557: The surrounding Arabic dialects and from the languages of the Old South Arabian inscriptions. Historically linked to the peninsular homeland of Old South Arabian, of which only one language, Razihi , remains, Ethiopia and Eritrea contain a substantial number of Semitic languages; the most widely spoken are Amharic in Ethiopia, Tigre in Eritrea , and Tigrinya in both. Amharic is the official language of Ethiopia. Tigrinya

3835-466: The tablets of the standard Ugaritic alphabet and unlike the standard version it is usually written right to left. One variant contained 27 letters and the other 22 letters. It is not known what the relative chronology of the different Ugaritic alphabets was. Ugaritic script was added to the Unicode Standard in April, 2003 with the release of version 4.0. The Unicode block for Ugaritic is U+10380–U+1039F: Six letters for transliteration were added to

3900-439: The three Semitic letters with circles, preserved in the Greek Θ , O and Latin Q , are all made with corner wedges in Ugaritic: 𐎉 ṭ , 𐎓 ʕ , and 𐎖 q . Other letters look similar as well: 𐎅 h resembles its assumed Greek cognate E, while 𐎆 w, 𐎔 p, and 𐎘 θ are similar to Greek Y, Π, and Σ turned on their sides. Jared Diamond believes the alphabet was consciously designed, citing as evidence

3965-452: The three sons of Noah in the genealogical accounts of the biblical Book of Genesis , or more precisely from the Koine Greek rendering of the name, Σήμ (Sēm) . Johann Gottfried Eichhorn is credited with popularising the term, particularly via a 1795 article "Semitische Sprachen" ( Semitic languages ) in which he justified the terminology against criticism that Hebrew and Canaanite were the same language despite Canaan being " Hamitic " in

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4030-470: The vowels, which is feasible for these languages because the consonants are the primary carriers of meaning in the Semitic languages. These include the Ugaritic , Phoenician , Aramaic , Hebrew , Syriac , Arabic , and ancient South Arabian alphabets. The Geʽez script , used for writing the Semitic languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea , is technically an abugida  – a modified abjad in which vowels are notated using diacritic marks added to

4095-572: The water spring remained in place. After the rebel capture of Wadi Barada, government forces imposed a blockade on the villages. The army retook control of the town on 28 January 2017 and the next day the Army took full control of Wadi Barada. Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family . They include Arabic , Amharic , Tigrinya , Aramaic , Hebrew , Maltese and numerous other ancient and modern languages. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia , North Africa ,

4160-665: Was also influenced by the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic writing system, and adapted for Amharic . The Arabic and Ancient South Arabian scripts are the only other Semitic alphabets which have letters for all or almost all of the 29 commonly reconstructed proto-Semitic consonant phonemes. Note that several of these distinctions were only secondarily added to the Arabic alphabet by means of diacritic dots. According to Manfried Dietrich and Oswald Loretz in Handbook of Ugaritic Studies , 1999,: "The language they [the 30 signs] represented could be described as an idiom which in terms of content seemed to be comparable to Canaanite texts, but from

4225-434: Was revived in spoken form at the end of the 19th century. Modern Hebrew is the main language of Israel , with Biblical Hebrew remaining as the language of liturgy and religious scholarship of Jews worldwide. In Arab-dominated Yemen and Oman, on the southern rim of the Arabian Peninsula, a few tribes continue to speak Modern South Arabian languages such as Mahri and Soqotri . These languages differ greatly from both

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