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Proto-Semitic is the hypothetical proto-language
Proto-language

A proto-language is the common ancestor of the languages that form a language family. Occasionally, the German language term Ursprache is used instead....
 of the Semitic languages
Semitic languages

File:Amarna Akkadian letter.pngThe Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 467 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa....
. The earliest attestations of a Semitic language are in Akkadian
Akkadian language

Akkadian or Assyrian-Babylonian is a Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian language, an unrelated language isolate....
, dating to ca. the 23rd century BC (see Sargon of Akkad
Sargon of Akkad

Sargon of Akkad, also known as Sargon the Great , was an Akkadian Empire emperor famous for his conquest of the Sumerian city-states in the 24th and 23rd centuries BC....
)and Eblaite. Early inscriptions in the (pre-)Proto-Canaanite alphabet
Proto-Canaanite alphabet

The Proto-Canaanite alphabet is a consonantal alphabet of twenty-two Acrophony glyphs, found in Levantine texts of the Late Bronze Age , by convention taken to last until a cut-off date of 1050 BC, after which it is called Phoenician alphabet....
, presumably by speakers of a Semitic language, date to ca. 1800 BC. The specific appearance of the donkey (an African animal)in prot Semitic but total absence of any reference to wheeled vehicles rather narrowly dates proto Semitic to between 4,800 BP, an 4,500 BP.

Semitic Urheimat
Urheimat

Urheimat is a Linguistics term denoting the original homeland of the speakers of a proto-language....
 is suggested by some to be in the Middle East; more specifically, Kienast (2001) advocates the Arabian peninsula
Arabian Peninsula

The Arabian Peninsula , Arabia, Arabistan, and the Arabian subcontinent is a peninsula in Southwest Asia at the junction of Africa and Asia. The area is an important part of the Middle East and plays a critically important geopolitics role because of its vast reserves of petroleum and natural gas....
.






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Proto-Semitic is the hypothetical proto-language
Proto-language

A proto-language is the common ancestor of the languages that form a language family. Occasionally, the German language term Ursprache is used instead....
 of the Semitic languages
Semitic languages

File:Amarna Akkadian letter.pngThe Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 467 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa....
. The earliest attestations of a Semitic language are in Akkadian
Akkadian language

Akkadian or Assyrian-Babylonian is a Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian language, an unrelated language isolate....
, dating to ca. the 23rd century BC (see Sargon of Akkad
Sargon of Akkad

Sargon of Akkad, also known as Sargon the Great , was an Akkadian Empire emperor famous for his conquest of the Sumerian city-states in the 24th and 23rd centuries BC....
)and Eblaite. Early inscriptions in the (pre-)Proto-Canaanite alphabet
Proto-Canaanite alphabet

The Proto-Canaanite alphabet is a consonantal alphabet of twenty-two Acrophony glyphs, found in Levantine texts of the Late Bronze Age , by convention taken to last until a cut-off date of 1050 BC, after which it is called Phoenician alphabet....
, presumably by speakers of a Semitic language, date to ca. 1800 BC. The specific appearance of the donkey (an African animal)in prot Semitic but total absence of any reference to wheeled vehicles rather narrowly dates proto Semitic to between 4,800 BP, an 4,500 BP.

Homeland

The Semitic Urheimat
Urheimat

Urheimat is a Linguistics term denoting the original homeland of the speakers of a proto-language....
 is suggested by some to be in the Middle East; more specifically, Kienast (2001) advocates the Arabian peninsula
Arabian Peninsula

The Arabian Peninsula , Arabia, Arabistan, and the Arabian subcontinent is a peninsula in Southwest Asia at the junction of Africa and Asia. The area is an important part of the Middle East and plays a critically important geopolitics role because of its vast reserves of petroleum and natural gas....
. The East and West Semitic branches spread to Mesopotamia and the Levant during the Bronze Age, while South Semitic
South Semitic

South Semitic is one of the three macro-classifications in Semitic languages linguistics, the other two being East Semitic and West Semitic . Semitic itself is considered a branch of the larger Afro-Asiatic language family found, as indicated in the name, both in Africa and Asia....
 speakers migrated to Africa before the 8th century BC (see D?mt
D?mt

was a monarchy located in current region of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia that existed during the 8th and 7th centuries BC. Few inscriptions by or about this kingdom exist, as very little archaeological work has taken place....
) via the Yemen gap. This is also supported by the presence of nouns in proto Semitic that seemingly make an African orign for the language impossible - ice
Ice

Ice is a solid phases of matter, usually crystalline solid, of a non-metallic substance that is liquid or gas at room temperature, such as ammonia ice or methane ice....
, oak
Oak

The term oak can be used as part of the common name of any of about 400 species of trees and shrubs in the genus Quercus , which are listed in the List of Quercus species, and some related genera, notably Lithocarpus....
, horse
Horse

The horse is a hoofed mammal, a subspecies of one of seven extant species of the family Equidae. The horse has evolution of the horse over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, odd-toed ungulate animal of today....
 and camel
Camel

Camels are even-toed ungulates within the genus Camelus. The dromedary, one-humped or Arabian camel has a single hump and is well known for its healthy low fat milk, and the Bactrian camel has two humps....
.The camel and horse did not arrive in Africa until nearly two thousand years until after Semitic languages were being written in the Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia is the area of the Tigris-Euphrates river system, along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, largely corresponding to modern Iraq, as well as some parts of northeastern Syria, some parts of southeastern Turkey, and some parts of the Khuzestan Province of southwestern Iran....
 area.

Other people suggest Syria/Mesopotamia as the homeland for proto Semitic, due to the flora and fauna described by it, which include oak, pistachio and almond trees and the horse. The presence of ice and four different words for hill also suggest a colder more mountainous area than Arabia. Eblaite, one of the oldest Semitic languages, when deciphered had almost no non Afro Asiatic nouns in it's lexicon, sugesting a very long presence in the Syria area. Bitumen and Naptha were also well known and have root words, and these are resources not found in Africa or Arabia, but commonly in the Northern parts of the Levant
Levant

The Levant describes, traditionally, the Eastern Mediterranean at large, but can be used as a geographical term that denotes a large area in Western Asia formed by the lands bordering the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean, roughly bounded on the north by the Taurus Mountains, on the south by the Arabian Desert, and on the west by the M...
.

Yet others believe that the first prehistoric speakers of the ancestral Proto-Semitic language came from Africa. In historic times, the Semitic languages spread throughout the region via migrations from Arabia that displaced and subjugated the local populations. This alternative scenario makes Ethiopia
Ethiopia

Ethiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast....
 the Proto-Semitic homeland.

Since Semitic is a branch of Afro-Asiatic, the question of the Proto-Afro-Asiatic
Proto-Afro-Asiatic

Proto-Afro-Asiatic is the hypothetical proto-language from which modern Afro-Asiatic languages are descended.Ilya Yabonovich and other linguists, in examining the differences between the various members of the Afro-Asiatic family have realised that all of the old etymologies for this group were inherently semitocentric....
 homeland is a related debate.

More recently, Juris Zarins
Juris Zarins

Juris Zarins is an American archaeologist and professor at Missouri State University, who specializes in the Middle East.Dr. Zarins is ethnically Latvian, but was born in Germany at the end of the Second World War....
 has suggested that the development of a Circum-Arabian Nomadic Pastoral Complex of cultures developed in the period of the 6,200 BCE climatic crisis, stretching from Southern Palestine down the Red Sea shoreline, and northeastward into Syria and Iraq, spread Proto-Semitic languages through the region. This complex may have developed from the fusion of Harifian
Harifian

The Harifian is a specialized regional cultural development of the Epipalaeolithic of the Negev Desert. It corresponds to the latest stages of the Natufian culture....
 and Pre-Pottery Neolithic B
Pre-Pottery Neolithic B

Pre-Pottery Neolithic B is a division of the Neolithic developed by Dame Kathleen Kenyon during her archaeological excavations at Jericho in the southern Levant region....
 cultures in Southern Palestine. As Harifian used the Outacha retouch point technique found earlier in the Fayyum, it has been suggested that Proto-Semitic may have come from Egypt across the Sinai. Given the fact that Semitic is most closely related to the Ancient Egyptian language of all the Afro-Asiatic languages, this origin is also distinctly possible.

Sound system

Proto-Semitic is generally reconstructed as having the following phoneme
Phoneme

In human language, a phoneme is the smallest posited linguistically distinctive unit of sound. Phonemes carry no semantic content themselves. In theoretical terms, phonemes are not the physical segment s themselves, but cognitive abstractions or categorizations of them....
s (as usually transcribed in Semitology; tentative IPA
International Phonetic Alphabet

The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic....
 values are given in square brackets):

 Consonant phonemes
  Labial
Labial consonant

Labials are consonants articulated either with both lips or with the lower lip and the upper teeth . English is a bilabial nasal consonant sonorant, and are bilabial stop consonant , and are labiodental fricative consonant....
 Inter-
dental
Interdental consonant

Interdental consonants are produced by placing the blade of the tongue against the upper incisors. This differs from a dental consonant in that the tip of the tongue is placed between the upper and lower front teeth, and therefore may Manner of articulation with both the upper and lower incisors, while a dental consonant is articulated wi...
 Dental
Dental consonant

In linguistics, a dental consonant or dental is a consonant that is articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as , , , and in some languages....
/
Alveolar
Alveolar consonant

Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the Dental alveolus of the superior teeth....
 Post-
alveolar
Postalveolar consonant

Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, placing them a bit further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate ....
 Palatal
Palatal consonant

Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate . Consonants with the tip of the tongue curled back against the palate are called retroflex consonant....
 Velar
Velar consonant

Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the Soft palate)....
 Pharyn-
geal
Pharyngeal consonant

A pharyngeal consonant is a type of consonant which is articulated with the root of the tongue against the pharynx.Pharyngeal consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet :...
 Glottal
Glottal consonant

Glottal consonants are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricatives, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider them to be consonants at all....
Nasal
Nasal consonant

A nasal consonant is produced with a lowered soft palate in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the tongue....
            
Plosive voiceless        
voiced          
emphatic      
Fricative
Fricative consonant

Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two Place of articulation close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German language , the final consonant of Bach; or the side of the tongue ag...
 voiceless    
voiced        
emphatic          
Lateral
Lateral consonant

Laterals are "L"-like consonants pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the tongue, while air from the lungs escapes at one side or both sides of the tongue....
 voiceless              
voiced              
emphatic              
Trill
Trill consonant

In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. Standard Spanish <rr > as in perro is an alveolar trill, while in Parisian French it is almost always uvular trill....
              
Approximant
Approximant consonant

Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and "typical" consonants. In the articulation of approximants, articulatory organs produce a narrowing of the vocal tract, but leave enough space for air to flow without much audible turbulence....
            


Notes:

  1. Nowadays it has become more fashionable to reconstruct *z, *s, , and sometimes as affricates, i.e. , , , and . If these sounds were affricates, many scholars are inclined to think that š was really a simple . This is the reconstruction for other branches of Proto-Afro-Asiatic; suggesting that this was still the case for Proto-Semitic as well would explain merging in Canaanite with š, rather than s. However, the exact history of these sounds has yet to be worked out.
  2. The sounds notated here as "emphatic" sounds occur in nearly all Semitic languages, as well as in most other Afroasiatic languages, are generally reconstructed as glottalized in Proto-Semitic. In modern Semitic languages, they are variously realized as pharyngealized
    Pharyngeal consonant

    A pharyngeal consonant is a type of consonant which is articulated with the root of the tongue against the pharynx.Pharyngeal consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet :...
     (Arabic, Aramaic) or glottalized (Ethiopian Semitic languages
    Ethiopian Semitic languages

    Ethiopian Semitic is a language group, which together with Old South Arabian, forms the Western branch of the South Semitic languages. Today, the name Ethiopian can be considered a misnomer, as the North languages are also found in Eritrea, with two of them being exclusively used there; however, the term came into use before Eritrea had...
    , Modern South Arabian languages); Modern Hebrew
    Hebrew language

    Hebrew is a Semitic languages of the Afro-Asiatic languages. Modern Hebrew is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel and Classical Hebrew is used for prayer or study in Jews communities around the world....
     and Maltese
    Maltese language

    Maltese is the national language of Malta, and a co-official Languages of Malta alongside English language,while also serving as an Languages of the European Union European Union, the only Semitic languages so distinguished....
     are exceptions to this general retention, with all emphatics merging into plain consonants.
  3. In Aramaic and Hebrew, all non-emphatic stops were softened to fricatives when occurring singly after a vowel, leading to an alternation that was often later phonemicized as a result of the loss of gemination.


Reflexes of Proto-Semitic sounds in daughter languages

Each Proto-Semitic phoneme was reconstructed to explain a certain regular sound correspondence between various Semitic languages
Semitic languages

File:Amarna Akkadian letter.pngThe Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 467 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa....
:

Proto-Semitic Akkadian
Akkadian language

Akkadian or Assyrian-Babylonian is a Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian language, an unrelated language isolate....
 Arabic
Arabic language

Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages languages such as Hebrew language and Aramaic language....
 Phoenician Hebrew Modern Hebrew Aramaic
Aramaic language

Aramaic is a Semitic languages with a 3,000-year history. It has been the language of administration of empires and the language of divine worship....
 Ge'ez
Ge'ez language

Ge'ez is an ancient South Semitic language that developed in the current region of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa. It later became the official language of the Kingdom of Aksum and Ethiopian imperial court....
 Modern South Arabian
?
Phoenician Beth
 ? ? ?
?
Phoenician Pe
 ? ? ?
?
Phoenician Zayin
 ? ? ?
?
Phoenician Sin
 ?? ? ?
?
Phoenician Sade
 ? ? ?
?
Phoenician Daleth
 ? ? ?
?
Phoenician Taw
 ? ? ?
?
Phoenician Teth
 ? ? ?
?
Phoenician Sin
 ?? ?? ?
?
Phoenician Zayin
 ? ? ?
?
Phoenician Samekh
 ? ? ?
?
Phoenician Sade
 ? ? ?
?
Phoenician Lamedh
 ? ? ?
?
Phoenician Sin
 ?? ?? ?
?
Phoenician Sade
 ? ? ?
?
Phoenician Gimel
 ? ? ?
?
Phoenician Kaph
 ? ? ?
?
Phoenician Qof
 ? ? ?
- ?
Phoenician Ayin
 ? ? ?
?
Phoenician Heth
 ? ? ?
- ?
Phoenician Ayin
 ? ? ?
- ?
Phoenician Heth
 ? ? ?
- ?
Phoenician Aleph
 ? ? ?
- ?
Phoenician He
 ? ? ?
?
Phoenician Mem
 ? ? ?
?
Phoenician Nun
 ? ?
? 		?
?
Phoenician Res
 ? ? ?
?
Phoenician Waw

Phoenician Yodh
 ?
? 		?
? 		?
?
Phoenician Yodh
 ? ? ?
Proto-Semitic Akkadian
Akkadian language

Akkadian or Assyrian-Babylonian is a Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian language, an unrelated language isolate....
 Arabic
Arabic language

Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages languages such as Hebrew language and Aramaic language....
 Phoenician Hebrew Modern Hebrew Aramaic
Aramaic language

Aramaic is a Semitic languages with a 3,000-year history. It has been the language of administration of empires and the language of divine worship....
 Ge'ez
Ge'ez language

Ge'ez is an ancient South Semitic language that developed in the current region of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa. It later became the official language of the Kingdom of Aksum and Ethiopian imperial court....
 Modern South Arabian


Notes:
  1. Arabic pronunciation is that of reconstructed Qur'anic Arabic
    Classical Arabic

    Classical Arabic , also known as Qur'anic or Koranic Arabic, is the form of the Arabic language used in literary texts from Umayyad Caliphate and Abbasid Caliphate times ....
     of the 7th and 8th centuries CE. If the pronunciation of Modern Standard Arabic differs, this is indicated (for example, ).
  2. Proto-Semitic appears to have merged with in Tiberian Hebrew, but is still distinguished graphically.
  3. Biblical Hebrew as of the 3rd century BCE apparently still distinguished and (based on transcriptions in the Septuagint
    Septuagint

    The Septuagint , or simply "LXX", is the Koine Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, translated in stages between the 3rd century BC and 1st century BC in Alexandria....
    ).
  4. Although early Aramaic (pre-7th century BCE) had only 22 consonants in its alphabet, it apparently distinguished at least 27 of the original 29 Proto-Semitic phonemes, including , , , , . This conclusion is based on the shifting representation of words etymologically containing these sounds; in early Aramaic writing, they are merged with , , , , , respectively, but later with , , , , .


Grammar


Independent Personal Pronouns


English PS Akkadian
Akkadian language

Akkadian or Assyrian-Babylonian is a Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian language, an unrelated language isolate....
 Arabic
Arabic language

Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages languages such as Hebrew language and Aramaic language....
 Ge'ez
Ge'ez language

Ge'ez is an ancient South Semitic language that developed in the current region of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa. It later became the official language of the Kingdom of Aksum and Ethiopian imperial court....
 Hebrew
Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic languages of the Afro-Asiatic languages. Modern Hebrew is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel and Classical Hebrew is used for prayer or study in Jews communities around the world....
 Aramaic
Aramaic language

Aramaic is a Semitic languages with a 3,000-year history. It has been the language of administration of empires and the language of divine worship....
I
You (sg., masc.)
You (sg., fem.)
He
She
We
You (dual)
They (dual)
You (pl., masc.)
You (pl., fem.)
They (masc.)
They (fem.)


Cardinal numerals


English Proto-Semitic
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten


See also

  • List of Proto-Semitic stems
  • History of the alphabet
    History of the alphabet

    The history of the alphabet begins in Ancient Egypt, more than a millennium into the history of writing. The first pure alphabet emerged around 2000 BCE to represent the language of Semitic workers in Egypt , and was derived from the alphabetic principles of the Egyptian hieroglyphs....
  • Afro-Asiatic languages
    Afro-Asiatic languages

    The Afro-Asiatic languages constitute a language family with about 375 living languages and more than 300 million speakers spread throughout North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and Southwest Asia ....
  • Proto-Afro-Asiatic
    Proto-Afro-Asiatic

    Proto-Afro-Asiatic is the hypothetical proto-language from which modern Afro-Asiatic languages are descended.Ilya Yabonovich and other linguists, in examining the differences between the various members of the Afro-Asiatic family have realised that all of the old etymologies for this group were inherently semitocentric....
  • Proto-Indo-European language
    Proto-Indo-European language

    The Proto-Indo-European language is the unattested, linguistic reconstruction common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans....


External links