LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Comparative Vocabulary in Semitic languages:
Arabic, Syriac and Hebrew

Nassim Obeid, Ph.D. Candidate

Introduction to Semitic Languages

Each of human language has its own historical developments which differ from age to age, and most of the languages have a system of writing, and that system also can be modified, and it is not stable.

Semitic languages are part of the Afro-asiatic family. This family contains many languages which were spoken in ancient world from the Mediterranean in the west to Iraq in the east, and from Ethiopia north to Anatolia. In the age of Islamic empire it was spoken by many people as the religious language (Arabic) from east of north India and west China to north Magnolia to south Russia, and from Spain to middle Africa and all Arab countries.

Nowadays, the major languages that still used are Arabic and Hebrew, both are still spoken. Arabic is by far the most common; some dialects of Arabic are spoken by more than 250 million speakers, from Morocco to Tajikistan, and it is also used in Classical and Modern Standard forms, for religious and other formal purposes. Modern Ethiopic languages like Amharic, Tigrinya, and Tigre are spoken by 25 million people in Ethiopia and Eritrea. Modern Hebrew is the language of 5 million inhabitants of Israel. And Aramaic dialects continue as the languages of a few hundred thousand speakers who have left the Middle East in recent years and spread far and wide.

Classification of the Semitic Family

The classification offered by the Western studies in the field of Semitic languages is different from the classification offered by the Eastern studies in many aspects. Each group (Western studies and Eastern studies) tried to give their evidences for their theories. In fact, both groups were influenced by their religious backgrounds. Western scholars classified the Semitic languages based on the Bible, especially the Old Testament. For them, Hebrew is the original and the oldest language and based on that assumption they classified other languages. On the other hand, Eastern scholars were influenced by the Islamic point of views. For them Arabic, which is language of Holy Quran, is the original language of all other Semitic languages. So, in their studies, they considered Arabic as the oldest language in the Semitic languages family, which is nearer to the proto Semitic language. Perhaps the truth may be in between the two.

Language Timelines

Arabic

Arabic belongs to the Semitic language family. The earliest evidence of Arabic was found in inscriptions written in Nabatean and Palmyrene (although the script letters were Aramaic). Evidence for Arabic is available from between the first centuries B.C.E. and C.E. There were several dialects of Old Arabic that predated Classical Arabic, which drew on the Qur'an and pre-Islamic poetry in the 7th century C.E. and is spoken up to the present, along with many dialects.

Within a hundred years after the death (in 632 C.E) of the Prophet Muhammad, Arabic had become the official language of a world empire whose boundaries stretched from the Oxus River in Central Asia to the Atlantic Ocean, and had even moved northward into the Iberian Peninsula of Europe.

Syriac

Syriac was an important Christian literary and liturgical language from the 3rd through the 7th century AD. Syriac was based on the East Aramaic dialect, which became one of the centres of Christianity in the Middle East at the end of the 2nd century. The earliest Syriac inscriptions date from the first half of the 1st century; the earliest documents not inscribed on stone date from 243. Because of theological disputes, Syriac-speaking Christians divided during the 5th century into Nestorians, or East Syrians, under the Persian sphere of influence, and Jacobites, or West Syrians, under the Byzantine sphere. After this division the two groups developed distinct dialects differing chiefly in the pronunciation and written symbolization of vowels. Arabic dialects have been impacted by Syriac Languages especially in slang. And Syriac is still spoken in a few villages in Syria.

Biblical Hebrew

The earliest form of Hebrew is known as Biblical Hebrew. Spoken in ancient times in Palestine, Hebrew was supplanted by the western dialect of Aramaic beginning about the 3rd century BC; the language continued to be used as a liturgical and literary language, however. It was revived as a spoken language in the 19th and 20th centuries and is the official language of Israel . The oldest parts of the Bible, may have been written in the period 1300-1200 B.C.E. and are considered Archaic Hebrew.

The Hebrew used in most of the Bible is considered Classical Biblical Hebrew and covers the period from the first temple to the Babylonian exile. Late Biblical Hebrew covers the period of Persian domination, from 53S B.C.E. (post-exile) to 332 B.C.E., when the conquest of Palestine by Alexander of Macedon began the period of Hellene domination . During the Babylonian exile (586-538 B.C.E.) Hebrew was highly influenced by another Semitic language, Aramaic, which was the lingua franca of the Near East. Thereafter, Aramaic grew in influence, especially in urban areas like Jerusalem and among the aristocratic (urban) and commercial classes. Hebrew, on the other hand, continued to be the language of the rural population which constituted the majority of the people. Though Aramaic was the spoken language among the urban population, most of the official and administrative documents were written in Hebrew. The language used in official documents laid the groundwork for the legal language that was later used in the rabbinical academies in Palestine.

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