David Christensen

Linguistics 450

Cynthia Hallen

August 7, 1999

I have always been fascinated with the ancient languages of the Middle East. There is so much history, especially spiritual or gospel history and culture tied to them that I was anxious for the chance to learn a little bit more about how these languages came to be. Another aspect of the Middle East peoples that really interests me is how powerful and different their culture can be and how that could have affected the development of the Semitic language family. I was surprised at the vast amount of information I was able to locate and the depths to which these materials went to with the various branches of this language family. Below I will list some of the factors that provoked the branching of what some call the "Proto-Semitic" language (Bergstraesser 2) into the other languages that find themselves in the Semitic group.

The Semitic language family consists of five basic branches – each with their own similarities and differences. These branches are Arabic, Abyssinian, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Assyrian. According to De Lacy O’Leary, a linguist specializing in Semitic Languages, the Abyssinian sub-group tends to be somewhat gray. He believes that there are some languages that are categorized in the Abyssinian sub-group that do not share the same kinship as the others in the Semitic language family. This could be due to the fact that the Abyssinians were the Arabs that settled in the area of Africa across from the Arabian peninsula and some African languages could be mixed in with the Semitic tongues in this sub-group (O’Leary 1). O’Leary states that in the eleventh century, people began to compare some of the Semitic language descendents. It is interesting that people already had the interest in the actual classification of languages and attempted to group and isolate the differences in each. People could already see a relationship between Hebrew and Aramaic, but they usually viewed Aramaic as a corruption of Hebrew (O’Leary 1). What I found really interesting about these early comparisons of languages and classifications was that religious reasons led to the acceptance that Hebrew was the parent language of not only Aramaic and Arabic, but of all other languages. What a special and chosen language to be involved in such momentous and incredible events such as those in the Old and New Testaments. Later, scholars recognized that languages could be put into groups or families, but these early classifications dealt more with racial associations rather than shared linguistic attributes and qualities. Looking at that basis for classification, I can only imagine the pain someone would go through when classifying English in America. Under that racial theory, the Semitic language group consisted of Arabs, Hebrews, Aramæans, and Abyssinians, all descendents of Shem. Other groups that have been added to the Semitic language family include Hamitic languages (Berber or Libyan languages of north Africa) and ancient Egyptian

(O’Leary 5).

There have been many events that have contributed to the disbursement and adaptation of the Semitic languages. The two major forces that have affected these languages are wanderings and wars. For example, the Arabic language was introduced to the Egyptians by the Muslim conquest around the seventh century, and it eventually took over the Coptic form of communication (O’Leary 3).

In order to understand the impact of the various geographical movements of the early Semitic people, we have to understand that the accepted center for the Semitic race is central Arabia (Wright 8). The earliest recorded movement of the Semites was into Mesopotamia between 4000 and 2000 B.C. The Sumerians were already present in that part of the continent and they had established themselves as skilled farmers. The most important impact on the Semitic language up to this time, which occurred in Mesopotamia, was when the Babylonian Empire conquered the Sumerian civilization, and the marauders and warriors mixed their language with those Sumerians and Semites they conquered (O’Leary 8). Unlike what happened in Egypt with Arabic and Coptic, the Semitic language actually became the more accepted political and commercial form of communication in the new Babylonian Empire, but many dialects also resulted. It is interesting to speculate why the Semitic language or dialect was chosen as the accepted form of communication. Was it purely because there was so many of them or were the languages mutually intelligible and Semitic a simpler form?

There were obviously some groups in the new Babylonian Empire that were not content with the situation in that area and they longed to return to their tribal life so they decided to emigrate to another area. Here we see quite a few splits under the Semite civilization, which results in the various sub-groups that exist in this language family today.

The first major split were those Semites who departed and settled in Canaan. They returned to their tribal life and their language underwent quite a few changes due to the Phoenician dialects that were present in that area. The most notable language that resulted from this settlement was Hebrew.

The next major groups, which separated from the larger civilization, were the Semitic invaders and warriors that ventured into Palestine and Syria. These invaders settled in the highlands and were the pre-Israelite immigrants (O’Leary 13). From this group we get the Aramaic language sub-group.

Not much is known about the last two influences and resulting languages of the Semitic language family (Arabic and Abyssinian). Arabia, as mentioned before, was the central area from which the Semitic language disbursement originated. Some say that this area was influenced by the Minæan civilization (O’Leary 16). The Abyssinians are said to be Arabs that originated from the central Arabia area and who eventually ventured from the southern coast of the Arabian peninsula into Africa (Wright 9).

I have only touched on a few of the major influences that promoted the branching of the Semitic language family into the sub-groups mentioned above. It is very interesting to note how powerful certain events can be in the changing a culture and the language spoken therein. It would be interesting to speculate what could have happened to this language family if the Babylonians hadn’t been so cooperative in accepting the Semitic language as the accepted form. The linguist Gotthelf Bergstraesser did extensive research in attempting to depict the earliest characteristics of the Semitic language and to create a "Proto-Semitic" language. Bergstraesser concluded that there have been so many interesting changes that it would be virtually impossible to reconstruct such a language with any certainty (Bergstraesser 4). That illustrates what a special history the Semitic language family possesses.

Works Cited