Semitic languages


The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They include Arabic,
Amharic, Tigrinya, Aramaic, Hebrew, Maltese, Modern South Arabian languages and numerous other ancient and modern languages. They are spoken by more than 460 million people across much of West Asia, North Africa, 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.
Arabic is by far the most widely spoken of the Semitic languages with million native speakers of all varieties, and it is the most spoken native language in Africa and West Asia. Other Semitic languages include Amharic, Tigrinya, Hebrew, Tigre, and Maltese. Arabic, Amharic, Hebrew, Tigrinya, and Maltese are considered national languages with an official status.
Semitic languages occur in written form from a very early historical date in West Asia, with East Semitic Akkadian and Eblaite texts appearing from in Mesopotamia and the northeastern Levant respectively. The only earlier attested languages are Sumerian and Elamite, both language isolates, and Egyptian, a sister branch within the Afroasiatic family, related to the Semitic languages but not part of them. Amorite appeared in Mesopotamia and the northern Levant, followed by the mutually intelligible Canaanite languages, the still spoken Aramaic, and Ugaritic during the 2nd millennium BC.
Most scripts used to write Semitic languages are abjadsa type of alphabetic script that omits some or all of 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 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. 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 kit'āb "book", كُتُب ku'tub "books", كاتِب kāt'ib "writer", كُتّاب ku'ttāb "writers", كَتَب kat'aba "he wrote", يكتُب yaktu'bu "he writes", etc or the Hebrew equivalent root K-T-B כתב forming words like כַתָב ka'tav "he wrote", יִכתוב yichto'v "he will write", כותֵב kot'ev "he writes" or "writer", מִכתָב michtav "letter", הִכתִיב hichti'v "he dictated", etc.. The Hebrew Kaf alternatively becomes Khaf depending on the letter preceding it.

Name and identification

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 the similarities between these three languages and the Ethio-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, to designate the languages closely related to Arabic, Aramaic, and Hebrew. The choice of name was derived from Shem, one of 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,. Johann Gottfried Eichhorn is credited with popularising the term, particularly via a 1795 article "Semitische Sprachen" in which he justified the terminology against criticism that Hebrew and Canaanite were the same language despite Canaan being "Hamitic" in the Table of Nations:
Previously these languages had been commonly known as the "" in European literature. In the 19th century, "Semitic" became the conventional name; however, an alternative name, "", was later introduced by James Cowles Prichard and used by some writers.

History

Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples

Semitic languages were spoken and written across much of the Middle East and Asia Minor during the Bronze Age and Iron Age, the earliest attested being the East Semitic Akkadian of Mesopotamia 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, 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, and were introduced to the Horn of Africa c. 800 BC from the southern Arabian Peninsula. Others assign the arrival of Semitic speakers in 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; desertification led to emigration in the fourth millennium BC to both what is now Ethiopia and northeast out of Africa into West Asia.
The various extremely closely related and mutually intelligible Canaanite languages, a branch of the Northwest Semitic languages included Edomite, Hebrew, Ammonite, Moabite, Phoenician, 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 the case of Phoenician, coastal regions of Tunisia, 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.
File:Tablet_XI_or_the_Flood_Tablet_of_the_Epic_of_Gilgamesh,_currently_housed_in_the_British_Museum_in_London.jpg|thumb|Epic of Gilgamesh, an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia, regarded as the earliest surviving notable literature, written in Akkadian.
A hybrid Canaano-Akkadian language also emerged in Canaan 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 the Near East, particularly after being adopted as the lingua franca of the vast Neo-Assyrian Empire by Tiglath-Pileser III during the 8th century BC, and being retained by the succeeding Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid Empires.
The Chaldean language was a Northwest Semitic language, possibly closely related to Aramaic, but no examples of 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 were spoken in the kingdoms of Dilmun, Sheba, Ubar, Socotra, and Magan, which in modern terms encompassed part of 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 Geʽez language emerged.

First century to twentieth century CE

, a 200 CE Eastern Middle Aramaic dialect, used as a liturgical language in Mesopotamia, the Levant, and Kerala, India, rose to importance as 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 [Muslim conquests|early Arab conquests] of the seventh and eighth centuries, Classical Arabic eventually replaced many of 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 survive to this day among 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 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, where it gradually replaced Egyptian Coptic and many Berber languages, and for a time to the Iberian Peninsula and Malta.
File:AndalusQuran.JPG|thumb|right|upright=0.9|Page from a 12th-century Quran in Arabic
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 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 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, 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 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 and non-Semitic languages, and replacing Geʽez as the principal literary language ; this spread continues to this day, with Qimant set to disappear in another generation.

Present distribution

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, 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 the base of the sacred literature of some of the world's major religions, including Islam, Judaism, churches of Syriac Christianity and Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Christianity. Millions learn these as a second language : many Muslims learn to read and recite 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 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 Eastern Orthodox Christians in the Middle East, who compose the patriarchates of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria. Mandaic 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 as a Jewish literary, intellectual, and liturgical language, was revived in spoken form at the end of the 19th century. Modern Hebrew is the main language of Israel, with easily understandable Biblical Hebrew remaining as the language of the Bible, Jewish liturgy and religious scholarship of Jews worldwide. Modern Hebrew is the only example of an ancient tongue revived in modern times to become a vibrant, modern language used by Israel's 10 million citizens and many more in other countries.
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 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 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. Geʽez remains the liturgical language for certain groups of Christians in Ethiopia and in Eritrea and Ethiopean Jews.

Phonology

The phonologies of the attested Semitic languages are presented here from a comparative point of view. The reconstruction of Proto-Semitic was originally based primarily on Arabic, whose phonology and morphology is very conservative, and which preserves as contrastive 28 out of the evident 29 consonantal phonemes. with and merging into Arabic and becoming Arabic .
Note: the fricatives *s, *z, *ṣ, *ś, *ṣ́, and *ṱ may also be interpreted as affricates, as discussed in.
This comparative approach 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.

Consonants

Each Proto-Semitic phoneme was reconstructed to explain a certain regular sound correspondence between various Semitic languages. Note that Latin letter values for extinct languages are 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.
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 a result of the loss of gemination.
In languages exhibiting pharyngealization of emphatics, the original velar emphatic has rather developed to a uvular stop.


Note: the fricatives *s, *z, *ṣ, *ś, *ṣ́, and *ṱ may also be interpreted as affricates.

Notes:
  1. Proto-Semitic was still pronounced as in Biblical Hebrew, but no letter was available in the Early Linear Script, so the letter ש did double duty, representing both and. Later on, however, merged with, but the old spelling was largely retained, and the two pronunciations of ש were distinguished graphically in Tiberian Hebrew as שׁ vs. שׂ <.
  2. Biblical Hebrew as of the 3rd century BCE apparently still distinguished the phonemes and from and , respectively, based on transcriptions in the Septuagint. As in the case of, no letters were available to represent these sounds, and existing letters did double duty: ח and ע. In both of these cases, however, the two sounds represented by the same letter eventually merged, leaving no evidence of the former distinctions.
  3. Although early Aramaic had only 22 consonants in its alphabet, it apparently distinguished all of the original 29 Proto-Semitic phonemes, including,,,,,, and although by Middle Aramaic times, these had all merged with other sounds. This conclusion is mainly based on the shifting representation of words etymologically containing these sounds; in early Aramaic writing, the first five are merged with,,,, and respectively, but later with,,,, and. The sounds and were always represented using the pharyngeal letters and, but they are distinguished from the pharyngeals in the Demotic-script papyrus Amherst 63, written about 200 BCE. This suggests that these sounds, too, were distinguished in Old Aramaic language, but written using the same letters as they later merged with.
  4. The earlier pharyngeals can be distinguished in Akkadian from the zero reflexes of *ḥ, *ʕ by e-coloring adjacent *a, e.g. pS *ˈbaʕal-um 'owner, lord' > Akk. bēlu.
  5. Hebrew and Aramaic underwent begadkefat spirantization at a certain point, whereby the stop sounds were softened to the corresponding fricatives when occurring after a vowel and not geminated. This change probably happened after the original Old Aramaic phonemes disappeared in the 7th century BCE, and most likely occurred after the loss of Hebrew . It is known to have occurred in Hebrew by the 2nd century CE. After a certain point this alternation became contrastive in word-medial and final position, but in word-initial position they remained allophonic. In Modern Hebrew, the distinction has a higher functional load due to the loss of gemination, although only the three fricatives are still preserved. Samaritan Hebrew hasn't undergone this process at all.
  6. In the Northwest Semitic languages, became at the beginning of a word, e.g. Hebrew yeled "boy" < *wald.
  7. There is evidence of a rule of assimilation of /j/ to the following coronal consonant in pre-tonic position, shared by Hebrew, Phoenician, and Aramaic.
  8. In Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, is nonexistent. In general cases, the language would lack pharyngeal fricative . However, /ʕ/ is retained in educational speech, especially among Assyrian priests.
  9. The palatalization of Proto-Semitic gīm to Arabic jīm, might be connected to the pronunciation of qāf as a gāf in most of the Arabian peninsula; since in most of the colloquial dialects of the Arabian Peninsula ج is pronounced jīm and ق is pronounced gāf, except in western and southern Yemen and parts of Oman where ج is gīm and ق is qāf.
  10. Ugaritic orthography indicated the vowel after the glottal stop.
  11. The Arabic letter ' has three main pronunciations in Modern Standard Arabic. in north Algeria, Iraq, also in most of the Arabian peninsula and as the predominant pronunciation of Literary Arabic outside the Arab world, occurs in most of the Levant and most North Africa; and is used in northern Egypt and some regions in Yemen and Oman. In addition to other minor allophones.
  12. ' can be written ', and always is in the Ugaritic and Arabic contexts. In Ugaritic, sometimes assimilates to ', as in ġmʔ 'thirsty'.
  13. Early Amharic might have had a different phonology.
  14. The pronunciations /ʕ/ and /ħ/ for ʿAyin and Ḥet, respectively, still occur among some older Mizrahi speakers, but for most modern Israelis, ʿAyin and Ḥet are realized as /ʔ, -/ and /χ ~ x/, respectively.
  15. the correspondence between Proto-Semitic phonemes and Modern South Arabian languages is not one-to-one, since some phonemes have merged, some phonemes have changed their pronunciation and some phonemes were split depending on the language, for example the phoneme appears to be connected to different phonological developments.

Plain sibilants

Sibilants have been one of the aspects of Semitic phonology that historical linguists have taken the most interest in, and Semiticists are nearly unanimous in the opinion that Proto-Semitic contained three plain sibilants, referred to by the shorthand S1, S2, and S3, or as š, ś, and s. The realizations of these phonemes in earlier times is debated, with hypotheses ranging from a palatal for S1, and or for S3, to plain for S1 and for S3.
Interestingly, the point of least controversy is the realization of S2, widely accepted to be lateral, In spite of the fact that this phoneme has completely merged with S1 or S3 in every other Semitic language outside of Modern South Arabian languages, such that the most widely-spoken Semitic languages have a two-way sibilant distinction rather than the original three-way distinction. This merger occurred at different times, and in different ways across Semitic which has led to the non-correspondence of, for example, Arabic, Hebrew and Shehri words for ‘ten’ from Proto-Semitic.
Proto-Semiticʕ-s₂-r
Arabic
Hebrew
Shehri

Notes: s₁ is, sometimes and - and .
The following table shows the development of the various fricatives in Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic and Maltese through cognate words:


  1. possibly affricated

Vowels

Proto-Semitic vowels are, in general, harder to deduce due to 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:
  1. in a stressed open syllable
  2. in a stressed closed syllable before a geminate
  3. in a stressed closed syllable before a consonant cluster
  4. when the proto-Semitic stressed vowel remained stressed
  5. pS *a,*ā > Akk. e,ē in the neighborhood of pS *ʕ,*ħ and before r
  6. i.e. pS *g,*k,*ḳ,*χ > Geʽez gʷ, kʷ,ḳʷ,χʷ / _u

Grammar

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.

Word order

The reconstructed default word order in Proto-Semitic is verb–subject–object, possessed–possessor, and noun–adjective. This was still the case in Classical Arabic and Biblical Hebrew, e.g. Classical Arabic رأى محمد فريدا ra'ā muħammadun farīdan.. In the modern Arabic vernaculars, however, as well as sometimes in Modern Standard Arabic and Modern Hebrew, 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, Geʽez, was VSO, possessed–possessor, and noun–adjective. Akkadian was also predominantly SOV.

Cases in nouns and adjectives

The proto-Semitic three-case system with differing vowel endings, fully preserved in Qur'anic Arabic, Akkadian and Ugaritic, has disappeared everywhere in 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. Additionally, Semitic nouns and adjectives had a category of state, the indefinite state being expressed by nunation.

Number in nouns

Semitic languages originally had three grammatical numbers: singular, dual, and plural. Classical Arabic still has a mandatory dual, marked on nouns, verbs, adjectives and pronouns. Many contemporary dialects of Arabic still have a dual, as in the name for the nation of Bahrain, although it is marked only on nouns. It also occurs in Hebrew in a few nouns, but for those it is obligatory. The curious phenomenon of broken pluralse.g. in Arabic, sadd "one dam" vs. sudūd "dams"found most profusely in the languages of Arabia and Ethiopia, may be partly of proto-Semitic origin, and partly elaborated from simpler origins.

Verb aspect and tense

All Semitic languages show two quite distinct styles of morphology used for conjugating verbs. Suffix conjugations take suffixes indicating the person, number and gender of the subject, which bear some resemblance to the pronominal suffixes used to indicate direct objects on verbs and possession on nouns. So-called prefix conjugations actually takes both prefixes and suffixes, with the prefixes primarily indicating person, while the suffixes indicate number and gender whenever the prefix does not mark this. The prefix conjugation is noted for a particular pattern of prefixes where a t- prefix is used in the singular to mark the second person and third-person feminine, while a y- prefix marks the third-person masculine; and identical words are used for second-person masculine and third-person feminine singular. The prefix conjugation is extremely old, with clear analogues in nearly all the families of Afroasiatic languages. The table on the right shows examples of the prefix and suffix conjugations in Classical Arabic, which has forms that are close to Proto-Semitic.
In Proto-Semitic, as still largely reflected in East Semitic, prefix conjugations are used both for the past and the non-past, with different vocalizations. Cf. Akkadian niprus "we decided", niptaras "we have decided", niparras "we decide", vs. suffix-conjugated parsānu "we are/were/will be deciding". Some of these features, e.g. gemination indicating the non-past/imperfect, are generally attributed to Afroasiatic. Proto-Semitic had an additional form, the jussive, which was distinguished from the preterite only by the position of stress: the jussive had final stress while the preterite had non-final stress.
The West Semitic languages significantly reshaped the system. The most substantial changes occurred in the Central Semitic languages. Essentially, the old prefix-conjugated jussive or preterite became a new non-past, while the stative became a new past, and the old prefix-conjugated non-past with gemination was discarded. New suffixes were used to mark different moods in the non-past, e.g. Classical Arabic -u, -a, vs no suffix. It is not generally agreed whether the systems of the various Semitic languages are better interpreted in terms of tense, i.e. past vs. non-past, or aspect, i.e. perfect vs. imperfect. A special feature in classical Hebrew is the waw-consecutive, prefixing a verb form with the letter waw in order to change its tense or aspect. The South Semitic languages show a system somewhere between the East and Central Semitic languages.
Later languages show further developments. In the modern varieties of Arabic, for example, the old mood suffixes were dropped, and new mood prefixes developed. In the extreme case of Neo-Aramaic, the verb conjugations have been entirely reworked under Iranian influence.

Morphology: triliteral roots

All Semitic languages exhibit a unique pattern of stems called Semitic roots consisting typically of triliteral, or three-consonant consonantal roots, from which nouns, adjectives, and verbs are formed in various ways.
For instance, the root k-t-b yields in Arabic:
and the same root in Hebrew:
In Tigrinya and Amharic, this root was used widely but is now seen as an archaic form. Ethiopic-derived languages use different roots for things that have to do with writing. The primitive root ṣ-f and the trilateral root stems m-ṣ-f, ṣ-h-f, and ṣ-f-r are used. This root also exists in other Semitic languages, such as Hebrew: sep̄er "book", sōp̄er "scribe", mispār "number", and sippūr "story". This root also exists in Arabic and is used to form words with a close meaning to "writing", such as ṣaḥāfa "journalism", and ṣaḥīfa "newspaper" or "parchment".
Verbs in other non-Semitic Afroasiatic languages show similar radical patterns, but more usually with biconsonantal roots; e.g. Kabyle afeg means "fly!", while affug means "flight", and yufeg means "he flew".

Cardinal numerals

These are the basic numeral stems without feminine suffixes. In most older Semitic languages, the forms of the numerals from 3 to 10 exhibit polarity of gender, i.e. if the counted noun is masculine, the numeral would be feminine and vice versa.

Typology

Some early Semitic languages are speculated to have had weak ergative features.

Common vocabulary

Due to the Semitic languages' common origin, they share some words and roots. Others differ. For example:
EnglishProto-SemiticAkkadianArabicAramaicSuretHebrewGeʽezMehriMaltese
father
heart ləbb
house
peace
tongueləssān
water

Terms given in brackets are not derived from the respective Proto-Semitic roots, though they may also derive from Proto-Semitic.
Sometimes, certain roots differ in meaning from one Semitic language to another. For example, the root b-y-ḍ in Arabic has the meaning of "white" as well as "egg", whereas in Hebrew it only means "egg". The root l-b-n means "milk" in Arabic, but the color "white" in Hebrew. The root l-ḥ-m means "meat" in Arabic, but "bread" in Hebrew and "cow" in Ethiopian Semitic; the original meaning was most probably "food". The word medina has the meaning of "metropolis" in Amharic, "city" in Arabic and Ancient Hebrew, and "State" in Modern Hebrew.
There is sometimes no relation between the roots. For example, "knowledge" is represented in Hebrew by the root y-d-ʿ, but in Arabic by the roots ʿ-r-f and ʿ-l-m and in Ethiosemitic by the roots ʿ-w-q and f-l-ṭ.
For more comparative vocabulary lists, see the Wiktionary appendix List of Proto-Semitic stems.

Classification

There are six fairly uncontroversial nodes within the Semitic languages: East Semitic, Northwest Semitic, North Arabian, Old South Arabian, Modern South Arabian, and Ethiopian Semitic. These are generally grouped further, but there is ongoing debate as to which belong together. The classification based on shared innovations given below, established by Robert Hetzron in 1976 and with later emendations by John Huehnergard and Rodgers as summarized in Hetzron 1997, is the most widely accepted today. In particular, several Semiticists still argue for the traditional view of Arabic as part of South Semitic, and a few see Modern South Arabian as a third branch of Semitic alongside East and West Semitic, rather than as a subgroup of South Semitic. However, a new classification groups Old South Arabian as Central Semitic instead.
Roger Blench notes that the Gurage languages are highly divergent and wonders whether they might not be a primary branch, reflecting an origin of Afroasiatic in or near Ethiopia. At a lower level, there is still no general agreement on where to draw the line between "languages" and "dialects"an issue particularly relevant in Arabic, Aramaic and Gurageand the strong mutual influences between Arabic dialects render a genetic subclassification of them particularly difficult.
A computational phylogenetic analysis by Kitchen et al. considers the Semitic languages to have originated in the Levant during the Early Bronze Age, with early Ethiosemitic originating from southern Arabia. Evidence for gene movements consistent with this were found in Almarri et al..
The Himyaritic and Sutean languages appear to have been Semitic, but are unclassified due to insufficient data.
;Summary classification

Detailed list