As TIGRIGNA and AMHARIC speaker, I was quite surprised to discover how Geez, Arabic, and Hebrew are so similar. We have to revive Geez, it is a beautiful language. GOOD PRESENTATION AND INFORMATION!
I'm doing a degree in Semitic Languages, yet this is still exciting for me to listen to. I'm happy you're back! Ever since you left, the world has become a total mess...
about 30 minutes into this video is a wall looking stone with symbols on it, i have a tablet with these same exact symbol's and was hoping some one could help me to determine what it says, please contact me here and i will coordinate with who ever feels they can help with this
One of the three sons of Noah was Shem, aka Sem. This letter ש in Hebrew can be S or Sh. From his line comes Abraham, which the sons of Ishmael and Isaac come, Arabs and Israelis and others relatives. The languages from these middle eastern brothers are the languages of Shem or Shemitic aka Semitic, like Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, Syrian, etc etc Hope that helps
Since your a Master in languages, I send my original message in French😀 Thank you so much for your generosity of sharing your knowledge. I’m French but originally from Algeria, and very interested in ancien langages, especially in Punic and Tamazight origin.
I will mention Amazigh languages in my next video but I'm not an expert on them. Punic on the other hand will be discussed in more detail, including one or two authentic texts.
I just made my old videos accessible again (unlisted). You might find this one interesting as there is Punic in it (though only Punic lines from Poenulus, no Punic inscriptions): ruclips.net/video/cgbzCAKy_yU/видео.html
Arabia was green the same time the Sahara was green. The African Humid period included the Middle East which is why some scientists just call it the Holocene humid period. We've found Hippo bones in the Empty Quarter and Neolithic settlements in East Arabia
This is fantastic. I'm speaking south Arabic Sam tic (Shari) And I'm ready for any information for your research you doing good Joo keep those languages alive 🙏 Thanks alot
Arabic is much more important than Hebrew Arabic is pure Semitic, modern Hebrew is mixed of polish, Ukrainian, German, and few Semitic words Plus you can use Arabic in more than 22 countries, and learn another Semitic language easier when you know Arabic
@sisjnwjwk7832 i am gloing to learn akkadian. there is no meaning to learn a language for usefulness because English is the only language you will ever need for practical reasons
Thank you a lot for your lectures! It's hard to find ressources for semitic languages on the internet. I really appreciated and enjoyed the information and your pacing. Looking forward to the next lectures 🙂
I understand this is your field of study but as a non native speaker of any of these languages your pronunciation is remarkably on point. Especially for Arabic and Hebrew.
Would be interesting to know where the 15-18th cent. BC so-called Proto Sinaitic of Wadi el Hol, Serabit el Khadem, etc fit as earliest vs. Canaanite/Phoenician/Hebrew... 16:05
Interesting indeed. As far as I know the material in that Proto-Sinaitic script is too scarce to assign it to any known Semitic language. Though it might represent the earliest known texts in Canaanite.
@@AncientSemitic Vor kurzem hat man in Tell Umm el-Marra, Syrien eine alphabetische Inschrift entdeckt, die 600 Jahre älter ist als die proto-sinaitischen Inschriften ist und auf c. 2350 v.chr. datiert wurde!
Can you please do a video on the theories surrounding the Proto-Semitic Urheimat? What are your thoughts on the various hypotheses which attempt to deal with the question? Are there any archaeological cultures which you believe can be associated with speakers of early through late Proto-Semitic (the same way Sredny Stog/Khvalynsk/Yamnaya/Corded Ware and other Pontic-Caspian Steppe cultures are associated with forms & dialects of PIE by most scholars?) What do you believe the genetics were like of the people who spoke Proto-Semitic, if you have any thoughts or knowledge on that matter? Do you believe the Ghassulian Culture is a candidate for a society of Proto-Semitic speakers? Editing to say that a video on Proto-Semitic linguistic paleontology would be awesome: what can we reconstruct about their homeland, society, culture, religion, gender relations, and worldview from their language?
Thank you very much for this informative lecture. You mentioned being a native speaker of German. Are there any research centres of Semitic historical linguistics in Germany?
134:17 here is a possible Arabic translation: قررت ( او عزمت ) الالهة العظمى أن ترسل سيلا ( أو طوفانا) لتقتل الناس ( البشر) و سلم ( او اوصل ) الاله عثتر هذا القرار للإنسان يرعي نفسا في بيته و أمر عثتر يرعي نفسا أن يهجر بيته و أن يبني مركبا ( أو فلكا) ذي مئة و عشرين ربعة ( أو حجرة) لينقذ الحيوانات و أتى الصناع( أو العمال) في الصباح ليبنوا المركب و اكتمل المركب و ملأه يرعي نفسا بكل الحيوانات و في الصباح اظلمت السماء و صب هدد مطرا عظيما( أو جما)
will you add bibliographies for all the videos? ancient semitics is quite an obscure topic and it'd be nice to have a curated uptodate bibliography without having to browse dozens academic publications.
Im so happy to find your channel sir.. i live in Syria and since i was young i've been so curious to know why we in middle east pronounce Arabic words and some letters in a different way of Gulf countries.. i tried to dig more then i was astonished that there was Syriac and Aramiac but the subject is prohibited due to religion reasons.. then youtube popped up and here we go such amazing contents like this channel.. ill watch it all but can you please answer my ever old question: aren't Syriac & Aramiac older than Arabic and they are considered the Godfather of Arabic( at least that's what i have a very strong suspesion and sense)
Calling one language older than another one does not make a lot of sense. All languages evolve from older forms. Like Modern English evolved from Middle English and Middle English evolved from Old English etc. That means that all the languages in the world have their roots in prehistoric times and none can be said to be older that the other. Arabic and Aramaic have the same origin, so I'd call them sister languages. They both evolved out of the same ancestral Semitic language thousands of years ago. What you can measure though, is the first time a language was written down. In that respect Aramaic (ca 3000 years ago) is recorded a little earlier than Arabic (ca 2800 years ago). But that is just writing. Both languages have existed as spoken languages before anyone started writing them down.
Finally I found your youtube channel. Before I saw several videos about Semitic languages but now I could not find all the videos. How can we find those old videos?
Thanks for the video! You make an important point when you say the tree structure has its limitations. I think Sprachbund effects are still underestimated even by linguists, especially between closely related or those that are culturally tightly bound for a long period of time. However, I think the Latin examples are not the best. A reconstructed proto-Romance would not be Classical Latin (by construction), but an approximation of some version of late Latin, the time when the first branch used in the reconstruction split off (which, of course, would not be an exact date, as some ties with Latin exist up to this date, so here come the limitations). This version of late Latin would have lost the case system in a large part already, so it would not have the final -s anymore. They would have said amicu or amico, probably depending on the dialect. This has actually happened, it is most likely well documented. Also, by that time speakers of Latin probably used galbu/galbo in the sense of yellow already. Going back to classical times in reconstruction would call for extra input, like from contact languages, or maybe using another branch, like Sardinian. Also there may be some vestigial forms of the old nominative from which we could figure out the earlier ending. But that would not be the last assumed common form.
As a modern Hebrew speaker who is significantly familiar with ancient Hebrew text I must wonder where did the dual pronouns disappear, they do exist in modern hebrew as well as in ancient dialects. שתינו, שנינו, שניכם, שתיכן, שתיהן, שניהם. There are also similar forms to groups of three, four, five and six. For example שלושתנו, ארבעתן, חמשתם, ששתנו. All of those forms exist in modern Hebrew and some of them can be found in the bible and other texts, if I'm not mistaking only the gender category for those plural forms wasn't standardized until Ben Yehuda did it in modern times. Also there are dual forms for feminine nouns, two female dogs are כלבותיים, that is also why two hundred are מאתיים.
@Shlomo Markman Well observed. The Comparative Dictionary of Ge'ez also mentions an Arabic verb naǧaša 'pursue, press, drive vehemently', Sabaic ngš 'impose (tribute)', Hebrew nāgaś 'exact tribute, drive to work, press', and Ugaritic ngš 'overseer'.
I just wanted to say that I loved your video especially the reconstructed text from proto-semitic. I've been looking for so long for reconstructed texts and all I could find is words. Can you by any chance refer me to sources of more reconstructed texts please?
You could say it's optional.. but then again, if you wanted to speak biblical Hebrew to modern speakers it would still be technically correct, because modern Hebrew is continuing where biblical Hebrew left off, so the grammar is the same grammar, but some forms are now less used, and there are different norms. So in first and second persons the subject is definitely unnecessary, but in third it would sound a bit weird if you don't use it... Still, technically correct.
Hello is there any way of contacting you to obtain the slides used in the video? (Willing to pay) thank you so much for your work, I am not a student of linguistics but a hobbyist and your videos have been an amazing resource
I don't know. I was just interested in languages since my childhood. I found it fascinating how different languages sound different, what the writing looks like etc. And Arabic was particularly fascinating. And from Arabic I got into Semitic studies. I did my Bacherlor's in linguistics and Arabic studies and my Master's in Semitic studies. Both in Germany.
1:08:50 the Akkadian and Qahtanic words for one are related to the Arabic است (IST) which means foundation, tail bone or butt hole, if I'm not mistaken. I also think there is an old way of saying eleven that has this word in ancient Hebrew. I think it's in the Bible too. Thanks for this. You are doing El's عbadah. Oh God, the first line of your reconstruction I understood as "The Lord came to us to eat a camel to kill people".
Thanks again for your informative videos. I'm learning a lot about Semitic languages from you! I have a question, regarding the relationship between Ge'ez and Tigre. The translation for "is" in Ge'ez is ወእቱ (wa'tu) as you mentioned in the video if I'm not mistaken. To my first question, does the Ge'ez word have a connection with ቱ (tu) masculine / ታ (ta) feminine in Tigre, which by the way also corresponds to "is". My other question, from my observation the article word "the" in Ge'ez is ዘ (zä), are there similar word cognates found in other Semitic languages? Alternatively, is this word somehow borrowed from an Indo-European language? Furthermore, the article word "the" in Tigre is ለ (lä), which is surprisingly similar to Italian and Spanish la.
As for the Ge'ez and Tigre copula, I've just browsed some articles on Tigre and none of them gave an etymology for the Tigre copula ቱ/ታ but I think they might be related to the Ge'ez form ውእቱ. As for the word ዘ in Ge'ez which you call article... I think you mean ዝ (it is only ዘ in the accusative case). It is normally regarded as a demonstrative, rather than an article, thus being translated as "this". It does indeed have cognates all across West Semitic, for example the Arabic element ذا (ḏā) in demonstratives like هذا (hāḏā) and ذلك (ḏālika). Or in Hebrew there is masculine זה (ze) and feminine זות (zot). Targumic Aramaic has masculine דין (dēn) and feminine דא (dā). Only Akkadian as an East Semitic language uses a completely different demonstrative for "this", namely annûm/annītum. I would exclude the possibility that this word or the Tigre article is borrowed from Indo-European. Language contact normally starts with lexical items. The borrowing of grammatical items is expected in case of very intense language contact. So if there were language contact between Italian and Tigre intense enough to borrow grammatical elements, one would expect a significant amount of lexical material (nouns, verbs, edjectives) as well.
@@AncientSemitic Thanks for your quick reply! Ah I understand, I assumed "zä" was somehow related to the English word "the", however as you pointed it out it's not even an article word 😅 . I have also been browsing some articles regarding the word "lä" and found this article from 2005, which I believe is written by an Italian. The author/authors stated that the word is somehow related to the Hebrew lamed... but they do not explain the etymology of the word. This backs your statement that more intense contact is needed so that the pronouns and other core elements of a language to be altered. Danke schön! Here is the link if you want to take a look at it: (If you want to save extra time look at page 450) www.researchgate.net/publication/309619829_The_early_history_of_Eritrea_A_new_perspective_in_Loquentes_linguis_Studi_linguistici_e_orientali_in_onore_di_Fabrizio_A_Pennacchietti_Wiesbaden_Harrassowitz_2006_pp_447-454
As a Arabic speaker I was amazed that your Proto-Semitic reconstruction almost sounded like Arabic to the point I was able to understand over half of what was written before you translated it. Why do you think Arabic is in particular so conservative compared to the rest despite the relatively late appearance of Arabic in written history?
I would very carefully assume that Arabic was relatively isolated for a long time. Other Semitic languages were at the periphery of the Semitic language zone and in contact with other languages. Akkadian was influenced by Sumerian, Ethio-Semitic was influenced by Cushitic, Canaanite and Aramaic were maybe in contact with other languages from Anatolia and the greater Mediterranean area. It could be that. But language change is not always induced by contact. Sometimes it's hard to tell why one language changes drastically while a closely related language changes at a slower rate.
@AncientSemitic do you think that this is an indication that the Ancient North Arabian languages could be a lot older than what is currently assumed, or are at least directly descended from an older undiscovered language within North/Central Arabia considering it preserves features from such an early era? Of course this is assuming the reconstruction is close enough, like you said there could be features that are just lost with no explanation that don't appear in North Arabian or Arabic, or verb forms like kilāb may have been present
As to answer your question both המלך הוא בעלי and המלך בעלי are correct, there is a tendency to insert the word הוא but it is not necessary. In Israeli Hebrew the possesive pronouns are not as widely used as they used to be, the are mostly replaced by the של + pronominal suffix. The most frequent form you'd find in Israeli Hebrew is therefore המלך הוא בעל שלי.
about 30 minutes into this video is a wall looking stone with symbols on it, i have a tablet with these same exact symbol's and was hoping some one could help me to determine what it says, please contact me here and i will coordinate with who ever feels they can help with this
Usually when you add של in modern Hebrew you also add ה, so it will be הבעל שלי and not just בעל שלי. Also the word ba'al doesn't stand for master anymore, it means husband most of the time or owner (as in בעל החנות but you can't call the owner הבעל by itself you need to pluralize it and say הבעלים even if the owner is one person). It would make more sense to say המלך הוא אדוני instead.
hiiii am surprised that u put sabaic with these languages am trying to learn it and himyarite but it's hard and idk anyone who speaks it also it's a old south Arabian and ilovelanguages chanlle posted a vid abt it but it got delated idk why can u help me learning it or select any ways
If you want to learn Sabaic, you might want to get a grammar book first. The "Sabaic Grammar" by A.F.L. Beeston is a good book to start with. It is not brand-new (from 1985) but still good to begin with. Maybe you find a used copy or a .pdf online. I cannot give you any links though. The best book to learn Sabaic is the "Lehrbuch der Sabäischen Sprache" (2013) by Peter Stein. It is excellent but you need to know German. If you want to read Old South Arabian inscriptions you can visit dasi.cnr.it It is a project by Pisa University and they have digitalized more than 3000 Sabaic, 1800 Qatabanic, 1400 Minaic and 900 Hadramitic inscriptions.
Great job, well done. 3 Questions 1: As you ended with a Flood story is it possible that the original dates from many thousands of prior to the Sumerian or Hebrew (Younger Dryas )? 2: Is it possible that Samson and Delilah is actually Shamashun wa (Di)Layla or The Sun and Night/Darkness? 3: That everyone in the region could understand everyone else until some unknown event caused the language to start diverging?
in Arabic, the Nunation "un" at the end of the word, it's not a part of the word and it's not mandatory, it's optional and in some cases, it's not allowed to be added, for example unconjugated noun (mamnua min al-sarf) or when the word ends with long "I" or "ae" we never use Nunation in this case whatever the situation of the word in the sentence, also in Arabic, a sentence should start with a vowel or consonant with a short vowel mark (Haraka) and must not be ended with a consonant with a short vowel mark nor nunation, it should end with a zero short vowel (sukun) so in the example of "one thousand" in Arabic is just "Alf" without necessarily adding the Nunation, because we read the word "Alf" and we stop right after this word, it's the end of the statement, and nunation not allowed at the end of the statement, except if a word ends with long "A" in this case we can use Nunation as an option and pronounce the word with "An" at the end or just pronounce the "A" alone without Nunation, both are correct in this particular case, also Nunation is allowed at the end of a statement if we are reading a poem, becasue it sounds butiful. I hope this will be helpful for anyone who reads this comment.
is the Himyarite language a semitic language? Are there any texts written in Himyarite left? Or people just know the language from the descriptions of Arabic records.
It seems like Himyarite is just the Arabic term for something that was still spoken in Yemen in the Middle Ages that was not perceived as Arabic. Probably remnants of Sabaic or other Old South Arabian languages. But none of the attested Old South Arabian languages is labeled as Himyarite by Semitists.
@@AncientSemitic thanks for the reply sir. I just read the wiki of Himyarite language which says there are himyarite elements left in three texts .What are they? Are they just unclear words in a familiar old south Arabian language text or in a text written in a completely unfamiliar language.
Arabic does have masculine plural suffixes, but only used for human nouns. Also I don't think you can append nunation in all those places that you did.
I always wonder why the second most widely spoken Semitic language, #Amharic with more than 40 million native speakers, does not get listed when anyone talks about languages?
@@AncientSemitic Vielen Dank! Diesen Ohr hab ich schon immer gehabt. Deutsch ist meine zweite Sprache aber die deutschen können es nicht hören. Sie denken immer ich wär auch Deutscher. 😆
great introduction: Gurage ( the original ugrait language ) we are lucky that the ancient languges are actully preserved in the tribal languages of africa ( great lakes ) and ethiopia ( you missed Bantu ( which is highly connected to hierglphic languges and some ethiopic languages , the Maltese part was a bit wrong ( i am Maltese descent ) ..they have ein ( it is usually ommited by using an apostrophe )
Hi there, first of all I want to appreciate you for your effort. my question is based on your explanation I don’t know why you included Amharic as semitic? it is not. second I don’t understand why you use ethiopic word. Thanks
@@michael30000 Probably from the ideas of religious people. This whole question "What language is the oldest?" is nonsense. All languages evolved from older forms. English evolved from West-Germanic, which evolved from Germanic, which evolved from Indo-European etc. So you cannot really measure the age of a language as all languages derive from older languages. The only thing you can measure is the date of earliest known written records. In that case, Egyptian is on the 1st place, Sumerian on the 2nd, Akkadian on the 3rd.
Hebrew and Phoenician were basically the same language, or dialects of the same language. Then Hebrew changes it's script to what it is today - from Hebrew Script(Canaanite/Phoenician Script) to the Assyrian Script(Aramaic).
@@AncientSemitic But there is semitic cognets in greek, even the alphabet itself drived from Phoenician. So how can't it be classified in different branch ?
@@supermavro6072 The origin of the alphabet does not have anything to do with the classification of the language. Somali and Vietnamese use the Latin alphabet. But that does not mean the languages themselves are related to Latin. Spoken language and writing are two completely different things.
@@AncientSemitic The language you mentioned use latin script, because they have no alphabet of their own (and careful here we are not talking from contemporary perspective). If lets say, some one want to create his own writing system, he/she can easily search around different type writing system and use them as inspiration and create their own with slight modification. But the supposed Greek alphabet was codifed in ancient times (at a time when there was no easy access to mentain suchthing) unless you were under the control or colonization of other groups, there is no way you could adopt their writing system. So the theory here is flowed, What makes Greek an exception from the rest ? We use phonecian alphabet but our language is part of different branch. That doesn't make any sense to me.
@@supermavro6072 Greek is an Indo-European language that adopted the Phoenician Alphabet. So simple is that. It's not even a theory. It's consensus and very basic linguistic knowledge. This is the stuff that you literally learn in the first semester of a linguistics program. You should start reading some basics. "Historical Linguistics: An Introduction" by Lyle Campbell is a good book to start with. Read it and then come back.
How come the Language we speak in Egypt now is "Arabic"? For example, مش حتدي العيش للست؟ is an example of how modern Egyptian is closer to ancient Egyptian syntax and lexicon than it is to any Semitic language. I am aware of the heavy Arabization in Egyptian (with maybe strong NW Semitic specially Aramaic to Cairene variety which is now lingua franca of "Arab" region who cannot understand each others varieties like Saudis speaking to Moroccans and Sudanis speaking to Iraqis). But I am aware of geopolitics imposing very strong influence on what is "Arabic" and what is not. For all I know Hebrew is closer to Arabic than anything we speak in Egypt. But geopolitics impose the definition that modern Egyptian is Arab and Hebrew is absolutely not! I thought that Scholars like the ones you were quoting at the first 20 minutes of the video would use definitions that are more consistent with facts when it comes to languages than what geopolitics BS is imposing on us. For example, you insist that revived Hebrew is its own language and distinctly different from Arabic (i beg to differ since many Arabic words have infiltrated revived Hebrew) while you lump almost the ENTIRE (?!) hodge-podge of the Afro-Asiatic languages nations (aka, League of Arab Nations) as "Arabs" of 350 Millions?
Basically all the different languages/dialects/varieties, what ever you want to call them, that are today included by the umbrella term "Arabic" can be traced back to the original group of Arabic dialects that were spoken on the Arabian peninsula prior to the Islamic Conquests. It is true that all those Arabic dialects outside of the Arabian Peninsula have different degrees of influence by non-Arabic substrate, i.e., Aramaic substrate in Mesopotamia and the Levant, Coptic substrate in Egypt, Amazigh substrate in Northwest Africa etc. But apart from some lexical borrowing, some limited syntactic influence as in Egyptian Arabic or rather heavy influence on prosody and syllable structure in Moroccan Arabic, the basic morpho-syntactic structure and the basic vocabulary in all those Arabic varieties is Arabic in origin. For lexical comparison, just look at a Swadesh List or Leipzig-Jakarta List of Semitic languages and compare it to Egyptian/Coptic. The basic vocabulary of most varieties of Arabic, i.e., numerals 1-10, body parts, kinship terms etc. is not just overwhelmingly Semitic but also specifically Arabic.
@@AncientSemitic thanks for answering. About numbers and kinship, etc. I am sure you know when we adopted the Arabic numbers recently in our history we didn't take them exactly. Like Danish Femten vs English Fifteen, Egyptians say خمستاشر vs Arabic خمسة عشر. But English is English, Danish is Danish while Egyptian (by your standard) is certainly now an Arabic variety not originated in Arabia and intelligible with Arabic. My dear Sir, whoever told you it's intelligible with Arabic speakers from Arabian peninsula, he must have been taught by an Egyptian teacher and embedded in Egyptian material from Cairo (movies, songs, radio, TV, novels). In practice, allbthose who are fully versed by their families in their heritage language from peninsula but never been taught "Egyptian Arabic" failed to understand any sentence and most words and failed almost completely to even understand their general direction. The words are so different and the structure is so foriegn. Here's my famous example again "Aren't you going to give the bready to this woman?" Egyptian: مش حتدي العيش للست دي؟ mesh hatedi elEish lesett di? Arabic: ألن تعطي الخبز لهذه المرأة؟ alen toAti alkhobz lehathi almar'ah? I stand corrected of course. But scholars should do better than geopolitics
@@mabroukatis I never said Arabic dialects were mutually intelligible. Mutual intelligibility says nothing about linguistic relationship as related languages drift apart over time which lowers their mutual intelligibility. Germans from Northern Germany cannot understand German-speakers from Switzerland or Austria or even other regions of Germany. Still they all call their languages German and there is no doubt that all those varieties had a common origin less than 2000 years ago. On the numbers, just to clarify: If you count to ten, what numbers do you use? Are they closer to wahid, ithnan, thalatha, arbaa, khamsa, sitta, sabaa, thamanya, tisaa, ashara? Or are they closer to wa, snau, shomt, ftow, tiw, sow, sashf, shmun, psit, met? The first is Arabic, the latter is Egyptian. Or how do you say mother, father, brother and sister? Is it closer to umm, ab, akh, ukht? Or closer to ma'au, yot, son, sone? How do you say I, you (male and female), he, she? Is it more like ana, anta, anti, huwa, hiya? Or more like anok, ntok, nto, ntof, ntos? Those are very basic parts of the language that pretty easily determine the relationship of what you speak.
@@AncientSemitic thanks for continuing the discussion. You are aware that our Egyptian languages aren't all Arabized like Coptic (the language of the majority). The southern Egyptian Nubian Arabization is so fast now; a single generation difference is unintelligible to each other! The grandmothers are counting in Nubian while their granddaughters are counting in Arabic in their "Nubian" language remains local to south Egypt and unintelligible to non-Nubians. Does that make their language now a "variety of Arabic"? Why not a 'variety of Nubian' with heavy influence from rest of Nile Valley? And why don't we call English that it's a variety of Danish? Why don't we call Arabized Egyptian, Arabized Turkish, Arabized Persian because their lexicon has significantly changed by Arabic words, but they remain a variety of their own rather than a variety of Arabic? Note that "geopolitically" Pan-Arabism was a device by Egypt to exclude the influence of Turkey and Iran from the rest of the region. The official name of the state is "Arab Republic of Egypt". So I understand why you scholars are afraid to 'offend' anyone. But the fact remains that, specially for Cairene (which is now the tongue of the Nile Valley majority), it maybe more influenced by French and Aramaic than Arabic! I am all respect to your endeavor on youtube. It's quite unique. But the scholars you sited, didn't do any serious linguistic studies on Aamia of Egypt. Every scholar keeps ridiculing Egyptians for their corrupt "Arabic" which is Barbaric and idiotic and not appropriate! But in fact, we're still speaking a variety of Egyptian language and not Arabic at all. This is the only way to show that our "corruption" is in fact holding to the proper rules of our language that we have spoken and written for 7 millenia but now mixed with several other languages: Arabic, Turkish, French and English. But in its bulk it's still a variety of Egyptian language
@@mabroukatis You seem to misunderstand the point of linguistics. Linguistics describes languages, and languages alone. It does not describe ethnic background. If a Nubian speaks Arabic, then his language is called Arabic. No matter if he looks Nubian, has Nubian DNA, follows Nubian customs etc. None of that is the concern of linguistics. What you're looking for is anthropology.
The authors of the Torah probably intented Sheba, son of Sem's grandson Yoqtan to be the ancestor of the peoples of Southern Arabia. But it's mythology so I wouldn't waste too much time thinking about it. From a linguistic perspective it looks like speakers of Proto-Ethio-Semitic split off the Proto-West-Semitic speaking community roughly 2500 - 3000 years BCE, migrating to Africa. Sabaic probably formed some time later, diverging from West-Semitic around 1600 - 2500 years BCE.
@@AncientSemitic another question i read on the Internet that a language called old amharic existed with out the heavy cushitic influences that modern amharic exibits is it true and how different was it , what modern semitic language is the most similar to akkadian
@@AMR_k400 Old Amharic is just an older stage of Amharic. So it is the same language with the same Cushitic substrate. It only has a few notable differences from Modern Amharic, e.g. retention of pharyngeal consonants. As for Akkadian, there is no modern Semitic language that is particularly similar to it, as Akkadian was probably the most divergent Semitic language.
@@AncientSemitic hmm interesting i imagined old amharic to be a little different considering that it existed before the oromo migration and the ethiopian conquest of agaw lands,most of the cushitic influence on amharic comes from afan oromo and agaw Maybe the words are different and the structure is the same
17:26 how it is successfully revived if modern hebrew is like a Frankenstein creature, it is an invention in fact or fabrication, the zioNAZī did put Semitic languages with yiddish which is germanic in a blinder and voilà. They claimed it was revived. No. It is not. Beside is it Palestine. For your information, Phoenicians are Canaanites and Canaanites are Arabs, so they spoke Arabic.
You know what is interesting? A person born in Israel who knows only Modern Hebrew could easily understand Biblical Hebrew and Phoenician. Arabs can't.
Arabic is considered a sacred language since it is the language of the Holy Quran. But How is Aramiac is a sacred language while there is no Holy Book in Aramiac?
Syriac, a variant of Aramaic, is a liturgical language in several Eastern churches, and several theological texts have been composed in Syriac, not to mention Syriac translations of the Bible.
I propose to rename the word Semitic to “Shemitic”. Not named after the mythological character “Shem”, but rather to be named after the land of “Shem” which is the name of the levant, or the land spanning from the eastern coast of the Mediterranean sea to Mesopotamia. This name is still in use until today in Arabic languages as “بلاد الشام" Bilaad Esh-Shaam, or the land of the Shaam, which is another pronunciation of Shem. It is after the name of this land that the mythological character “Shem” was created to function as a paternal figure for the peoples of this land, rather than the other way around.
To many syrians, palestineans, jordanians and lebanese who call their land the land of Shaam, the name “Shaam” has nothing to do with biblical or islamic prophets or mythical figures. It is purely the name of a geographical area.
To call them “Shemitic” languages it makes clear that these are languages that originated in the land of Shem, regardless of mythology. Yes not all shemitic languages are spoken solely in Shem, but this is most probably where they originated. More likely than the Arabian or Ethiopian Urheimat hypotheses for many reasons.
I really like your program but with all due respect for your scholarship I can surly tell you islam means submission and obviously we know well to Whom
Languages are evolving. This evolution leads to differences. So it's like languages are drifting apart over time. This means the further you go back in time, the more similar they are. But there are also cases where languages become more similar due to contact and mutual exchange. That's for example why Amharic has some similarities to Cushitic languages like Agaw. Both have been in contact for a long time and the lexicon and grammatical structure have influenced each other.
@@AncientSemitic I have see comparative similarities of vocabularies of Tigrigna and Amharic languages with the other Semetic languages. However, when you were comparing Geez with the other Semetic languages, the similarities increased by almost about 50%. Thanks for the information.
The oldest attested languages are Sumerian and Egyptian, with Sumerian being a language isolate, and Egyptian belonging to the Afro-Asiatic family, distantly related to the Semitic subgroup containing Hebrew, but distinct from it.
about 30 minutes into this video is a wall looking stone with symbols on it, i have a tablet with these same exact symbol's and was hoping some one could help me to determine what it says, please contact me here and i will coordinate with who ever feels they can help with this
Could that second, voiced way of pronunciation (ɮˤ) in 40:59 be the reason why the Persians and Turks naturalised Arabic words containing ض as "z" instead of the reason given there? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E1%B8%8C%C4%81d#Pronunciation
Yes, it's possible. It is also likely reflected in borrowings from Arabic to Spanish that render ض as ld, e.g. القاضي > alcalde. But the explanation in that Wikipedia article makes sense as well
As a Tigre speaker it’s really motivating to see people learning Semitic languages. Keep up the great work ❤️.
You should teach your language, perhaps a Tigre language channel.
@@alejandroto3094 Perhaps I should hahahaha no am not very fluent in it.
Love from Arab
❤❤
As TIGRIGNA and AMHARIC speaker, I was quite surprised to discover how Geez, Arabic, and Hebrew are so similar. We have to revive Geez, it is a beautiful language. GOOD PRESENTATION AND INFORMATION!
Geez is not similar to Amharic
@@zenqx-j3vneither is it to tigrigna
@@brookendale3611 68% of Tigrinya is lexically similar to Ge'ez 🤡 almost 3/4th to the language
@keshi5541 hahaha amharics level of lexical similarity stands at 62% dingay
@@brookendale3611 Amharic evolved from TIGRIGNA, that is why TIGRIGNA is so similar to Geez, Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic.
I'm doing a degree in Semitic Languages, yet this is still exciting for me to listen to. I'm happy you're back! Ever since you left, the world has become a total mess...
about 30 minutes into this video is a wall looking stone with symbols on it, i have a tablet with these same exact symbol's and was hoping some one could help me to determine what it says, please contact me here and i will coordinate with who ever feels they can help with this
Please can you simply tell me what's Semitic language mean?
One of the three sons of Noah was Shem, aka Sem. This letter ש in Hebrew can be S or Sh. From his line comes Abraham, which the sons of Ishmael and Isaac come, Arabs and Israelis and others relatives. The languages from these middle eastern brothers are the languages of Shem or Shemitic aka Semitic, like Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, Syrian, etc etc Hope that helps
@@jesusstudentbrett that's folk mythology and not based on linguistics
Since your a Master in languages, I send my original message in French😀
Thank you so much for your generosity of sharing your knowledge. I’m French but originally from Algeria, and very interested in ancien langages, especially in Punic and Tamazight origin.
I will mention Amazigh languages in my next video but I'm not an expert on them.
Punic on the other hand will be discussed in more detail, including one or two authentic texts.
I just made my old videos accessible again (unlisted). You might find this one interesting as there is Punic in it (though only Punic lines from Poenulus, no Punic inscriptions):
ruclips.net/video/cgbzCAKy_yU/видео.html
@Green98 genetics and languages are not necessarily connected. I speak English but I'm not an English
Arabia was green the same time the Sahara was green. The African Humid period included the Middle East which is why some scientists just call it the Holocene humid period. We've found Hippo bones in the Empty Quarter and Neolithic settlements in East Arabia
Semitic languages are very beautiful 😊❤
Stellar video. You hit the perfect balance between concise and thorough. Very helpful to me as a student of Semitic linguistics.
This is fantastic. I'm speaking south Arabic Sam tic (Shari) And I'm ready for any information for your research you doing good Joo keep those languages alive 🙏
Thanks alot
I can't believe I am so late. It's great to see you are back! Your content is much appreciated.
Semitic languages are the most beautiful. I hope I can learn Hebrew, Arabic etc. Such amazing languages ☺️
Learn Arabic
Learn Hebrew. It's Arabics mother.
Arabic is much more important than Hebrew
Arabic is pure Semitic, modern Hebrew is mixed of polish, Ukrainian, German, and few Semitic words
Plus you can use Arabic in more than 22 countries, and learn another Semitic language easier when you know Arabic
In Ethiopia there is a lot semitic languages
@sisjnwjwk7832 i am gloing to learn akkadian. there is no meaning to learn a language for usefulness because English is the only language you will ever need for practical reasons
Thank you a lot for your lectures! It's hard to find ressources for semitic languages on the internet. I really appreciated and enjoyed the information and your pacing. Looking forward to the next lectures 🙂
Merci à vous, je me suis abonnée l’année dernière et, j’attendais vos vidéos avec impatience. Thank you so much
Thank you tremendously. I've watched just this 3 times and realized the e enormous amount of time you've spent on this video.
Reading comments like yours, making this video was worth every second. Glad you enjoyed it.
So glad to see you are back!!!!
እንቋዕ ገባእከ ካዕበ! Welcome back!
I have been waiting for this one for a long time. Thanks you very much
Great presentation! Small correction, Amharic is likely to have over 50 million speakers when accounting for non-native speakers.
As Amharic speaker I found this video very informative ❤
Love from Arab ❤
1:20:47 discussion of Proto-Semitic
Thanks for making this introduction.
I absolutely appreciated this video!
Keep it coming!
You came back!! Nice to have you back with your informative videos :)
I understand this is your field of study but as a non native speaker of any of these languages your pronunciation is remarkably on point. Especially for Arabic and Hebrew.
Would be interesting to know where the 15-18th cent. BC so-called Proto Sinaitic of Wadi el Hol, Serabit el Khadem, etc fit as earliest vs. Canaanite/Phoenician/Hebrew... 16:05
Interesting indeed. As far as I know the material in that Proto-Sinaitic script is too scarce to assign it to any known Semitic language. Though it might represent the earliest known texts in Canaanite.
@@AncientSemitic Vor kurzem hat man in Tell Umm el-Marra, Syrien eine alphabetische Inschrift entdeckt, die 600 Jahre älter ist als die proto-sinaitischen Inschriften ist und auf c. 2350 v.chr. datiert wurde!
@@philipps6032
Dazu haben wir uns letztes Semester mal Auschnitte einer Pressekonferenz angesehen. Bin gespannt auf die Publikation.
Can you please do a video on the theories surrounding the Proto-Semitic Urheimat? What are your thoughts on the various hypotheses which attempt to deal with the question? Are there any archaeological cultures which you believe can be associated with speakers of early through late Proto-Semitic (the same way Sredny Stog/Khvalynsk/Yamnaya/Corded Ware and other Pontic-Caspian Steppe cultures are associated with forms & dialects of PIE by most scholars?) What do you believe the genetics were like of the people who spoke Proto-Semitic, if you have any thoughts or knowledge on that matter? Do you believe the Ghassulian Culture is a candidate for a society of Proto-Semitic speakers?
Editing to say that a video on Proto-Semitic linguistic paleontology would be awesome: what can we reconstruct about their homeland, society, culture, religion, gender relations, and worldview from their language?
1:17:36 So Ge'ez retain the second form as an archaism. Has it been preserved in its daughter languages and in Amharic ?
In all Ethio-Semitic languages, as far as I know.
And Modern South Arabian as well.
Yihhuuu.. exactly the thing I was looking for...
Very much looking forward to watching!
Thank you very much for this informative lecture. You mentioned being a native speaker of German. Are there any research centres of Semitic historical linguistics in Germany?
My favorite channel fr
Great 👍 video, and upload the previous videos please, thanks
134:17 here is a possible Arabic translation:
قررت ( او عزمت ) الالهة العظمى أن ترسل سيلا ( أو طوفانا) لتقتل الناس ( البشر)
و سلم ( او اوصل ) الاله عثتر هذا القرار للإنسان يرعي نفسا في بيته
و أمر عثتر يرعي نفسا أن يهجر بيته و أن يبني مركبا ( أو فلكا) ذي مئة و عشرين ربعة ( أو حجرة) لينقذ الحيوانات
و أتى الصناع( أو العمال) في الصباح ليبنوا المركب
و اكتمل المركب و ملأه يرعي نفسا بكل الحيوانات
و في الصباح اظلمت السماء و صب هدد مطرا عظيما( أو جما)
Great video. One minor correction; in Hebrew the prefix "y" is future tense. Yishlam- he will be safe. Yeshallem - he will pay etc.
Y is present tense masculine singular
this is not modern hebrew
1:01:41 in Hebrew we say both ways (but this one is more common)
Thanks for your patience and effort in these videos. I also want to study semitics and linguistics, in what university you've studied?
will you add bibliographies for all the videos? ancient semitics is quite an obscure topic and it'd be nice to have a curated uptodate bibliography without having to browse dozens academic publications.
Yes I could probably add some bibliography to the videos' descriptions.
Im so happy to find your channel sir.. i live in Syria and since i was young i've been so curious to know why we in middle east pronounce Arabic words and some letters in a different way of Gulf countries.. i tried to dig more then i was astonished that there was Syriac and Aramiac but the subject is prohibited due to religion reasons.. then youtube popped up and here we go such amazing contents like this channel.. ill watch it all but can you please answer my ever old question: aren't Syriac & Aramiac older than Arabic and they are considered the Godfather of Arabic( at least that's what i have a very strong suspesion and sense)
Calling one language older than another one does not make a lot of sense. All languages evolve from older forms. Like Modern English evolved from Middle English and Middle English evolved from Old English etc.
That means that all the languages in the world have their roots in prehistoric times and none can be said to be older that the other.
Arabic and Aramaic have the same origin, so I'd call them sister languages. They both evolved out of the same ancestral Semitic language thousands of years ago.
What you can measure though, is the first time a language was written down. In that respect Aramaic (ca 3000 years ago) is recorded a little earlier than Arabic (ca 2800 years ago). But that is just writing. Both languages have existed as spoken languages before anyone started writing them down.
Finally I found your youtube channel. Before I saw several videos about Semitic languages but now I could not find all the videos. How can we find those old videos?
I will re-release them at some point.
@@AncientSemitic Ok👍👍😀
Thank you very much!
Excellent video
Thanks for the video! You make an important point when you say the tree structure has its limitations. I think Sprachbund effects are still underestimated even by linguists, especially between closely related or those that are culturally tightly bound for a long period of time. However, I think the Latin examples are not the best. A reconstructed proto-Romance would not be Classical Latin (by construction), but an approximation of some version of late Latin, the time when the first branch used in the reconstruction split off (which, of course, would not be an exact date, as some ties with Latin exist up to this date, so here come the limitations). This version of late Latin would have lost the case system in a large part already, so it would not have the final -s anymore. They would have said amicu or amico, probably depending on the dialect. This has actually happened, it is most likely well documented. Also, by that time speakers of Latin probably used galbu/galbo in the sense of yellow already. Going back to classical times in reconstruction would call for extra input, like from contact languages, or maybe using another branch, like Sardinian. Also there may be some vestigial forms of the old nominative from which we could figure out the earlier ending. But that would not be the last assumed common form.
As a modern Hebrew speaker who is significantly familiar with ancient Hebrew text I must wonder where did the dual pronouns disappear, they do exist in modern hebrew as well as in ancient dialects. שתינו, שנינו, שניכם, שתיכן, שתיהן, שניהם. There are also similar forms to groups of three, four, five and six. For example שלושתנו, ארבעתן, חמשתם, ששתנו. All of those forms exist in modern Hebrew and some of them can be found in the bible and other texts, if I'm not mistaking only the gender category for those plural forms wasn't standardized until Ben Yehuda did it in modern times.
Also there are dual forms for feminine nouns, two female dogs are כלבותיים, that is also why two hundred are מאתיים.
Out of curoisity
Have you read the history of modern day Hebrew language...?
Interesting to say the least
@@ibrahimmohammedibrahim9273 Well of course I read some books about it, I wouldn't know of Ben-Yehuda's work otherwise.
Regarding Nugush for king, in Biblical Hebrew there is a word Nogesh, meaning task master/tyrant, referncing Egyptian slavemasters. Probably connected
@Shlomo Markman
Well observed. The Comparative Dictionary of Ge'ez also mentions an Arabic verb naǧaša 'pursue, press, drive vehemently', Sabaic ngš 'impose (tribute)', Hebrew nāgaś 'exact tribute, drive to work, press', and Ugaritic ngš 'overseer'.
I just wanted to say that I loved your video especially the reconstructed text from proto-semitic. I've been looking for so long for reconstructed texts and all I could find is words. Can you by any chance refer me to sources of more reconstructed texts please?
I've actually never seen a complete text like the one I've done anywhere. Just paradigms.
In modern Hebrew the added "hu" (he is) is optional. I guess it's similar to Ge'ez in that respect...?
You could say it's optional.. but then again, if you wanted to speak biblical Hebrew to modern speakers it would still be technically correct, because modern Hebrew is continuing where biblical Hebrew left off, so the grammar is the same grammar, but some forms are now less used, and there are different norms.
So in first and second persons the subject is definitely unnecessary, but in third it would sound a bit weird if you don't use it... Still, technically correct.
Hello is there any way of contacting you to obtain the slides used in the video? (Willing to pay) thank you so much for your work, I am not a student of linguistics but a hobbyist and your videos have been an amazing resource
Legend
What made you interested in linguistics, particularly Semitic languages in the first place?
Also, where did you study?
I don't know. I was just interested in languages since my childhood. I found it fascinating how different languages sound different, what the writing looks like etc. And Arabic was particularly fascinating. And from Arabic I got into Semitic studies.
I did my Bacherlor's in linguistics and Arabic studies and my Master's in Semitic studies.
Both in Germany.
Your pronunciation spot on, and thanks for the education, are you native German?
@@samyosef
Yes, I'm German.
As you know about the Semitic languages, would you please answer my question.
Do Semitic languages have letters V and P?
That depends on the alphabet used by each language.
The Maltese Alphabet has V and P for example.
1:08:50 the Akkadian and Qahtanic words for one are related to the Arabic است (IST) which means foundation, tail bone or butt hole, if I'm not mistaken. I also think there is an old way of saying eleven that has this word in ancient Hebrew. I think it's in the Bible too.
Thanks for this. You are doing El's عbadah.
Oh God, the first line of your reconstruction I understood as "The Lord came to us to eat a camel to kill people".
If Semitic peoples could rename their language family or even make a new ethnonym...what would it be?
They would fight over that forever. 😄
Thanks again for your informative videos. I'm learning a lot about Semitic languages from you!
I have a question, regarding the relationship between Ge'ez and Tigre. The translation for "is" in Ge'ez is ወእቱ (wa'tu) as you mentioned in the video if I'm not mistaken. To my first question, does the Ge'ez word have a connection with ቱ (tu) masculine / ታ (ta) feminine in Tigre, which by the way also corresponds to "is".
My other question, from my observation the article word "the" in Ge'ez is ዘ (zä), are there similar word cognates found in other Semitic languages? Alternatively, is this word somehow borrowed from an Indo-European language? Furthermore, the article word "the" in Tigre is ለ (lä), which is surprisingly similar to Italian and Spanish la.
As for the Ge'ez and Tigre copula, I've just browsed some articles on Tigre and none of them gave an etymology for the Tigre copula ቱ/ታ but I think they might be related to the Ge'ez form ውእቱ.
As for the word ዘ in Ge'ez which you call article... I think you mean ዝ (it is only ዘ in the accusative case). It is normally regarded as a demonstrative, rather than an article, thus being translated as "this". It does indeed have cognates all across West Semitic, for example the Arabic element ذا (ḏā) in demonstratives like هذا (hāḏā) and ذلك (ḏālika). Or in Hebrew there is masculine זה (ze) and feminine זות (zot). Targumic Aramaic has masculine דין (dēn) and feminine דא (dā).
Only Akkadian as an East Semitic language uses a completely different demonstrative for "this", namely annûm/annītum.
I would exclude the possibility that this word or the Tigre article is borrowed from Indo-European. Language contact normally starts with lexical items. The borrowing of grammatical items is expected in case of very intense language contact. So if there were language contact between Italian and Tigre intense enough to borrow grammatical elements, one would expect a significant amount of lexical material (nouns, verbs, edjectives) as well.
@@AncientSemitic Thanks for your quick reply! Ah I understand, I assumed "zä" was somehow related to the English word "the", however as you pointed it out it's not even an article word 😅 .
I have also been browsing some articles regarding the word "lä" and found this article from 2005, which I believe is written by an Italian. The author/authors stated that the word is somehow related to the Hebrew lamed... but they do not explain the etymology of the word. This backs your statement that more intense contact is needed so that the pronouns and other core elements of a language to be altered.
Danke schön!
Here is the link if you want to take a look at it: (If you want to save extra time look at page 450)
www.researchgate.net/publication/309619829_The_early_history_of_Eritrea_A_new_perspective_in_Loquentes_linguis_Studi_linguistici_e_orientali_in_onore_di_Fabrizio_A_Pennacchietti_Wiesbaden_Harrassowitz_2006_pp_447-454
Final -us survives in Old French nominative singular -s, the nominative singular of leu 'wolf' is leus
Are there any schools or universities in the world that teach Proto Semitic by itself ? Thank you God bless you for uploading these videos .
As a Arabic speaker I was amazed that your Proto-Semitic reconstruction almost sounded like Arabic to the point I was able to understand over half of what was written before you translated it. Why do you think Arabic is in particular so conservative compared to the rest despite the relatively late appearance of Arabic in written history?
I would very carefully assume that Arabic was relatively isolated for a long time.
Other Semitic languages were at the periphery of the Semitic language zone and in contact with other languages. Akkadian was influenced by Sumerian, Ethio-Semitic was influenced by Cushitic, Canaanite and Aramaic were maybe in contact with other languages from Anatolia and the greater Mediterranean area.
It could be that. But language change is not always induced by contact. Sometimes it's hard to tell why one language changes drastically while a closely related language changes at a slower rate.
@AncientSemitic do you think that this is an indication that the Ancient North Arabian languages could be a lot older than what is currently assumed, or are at least directly descended from an older undiscovered language within North/Central Arabia considering it preserves features from such an early era? Of course this is assuming the reconstruction is close enough, like you said there could be features that are just lost with no explanation that don't appear in North Arabian or Arabic, or verb forms like kilāb may have been present
As to answer your question both המלך הוא בעלי and המלך בעלי are correct, there is a tendency to insert the word הוא but it is not necessary. In Israeli Hebrew the possesive pronouns are not as widely used as they used to be, the are mostly replaced by the של + pronominal suffix. The most frequent form you'd find in Israeli Hebrew is therefore המלך הוא בעל שלי.
about 30 minutes into this video is a wall looking stone with symbols on it, i have a tablet with these same exact symbol's and was hoping some one could help me to determine what it says, please contact me here and i will coordinate with who ever feels they can help with this
Usually when you add של in modern Hebrew you also add ה, so it will be הבעל שלי and not just בעל שלי. Also the word ba'al doesn't stand for master anymore, it means husband most of the time or owner (as in בעל החנות but you can't call the owner הבעל by itself you need to pluralize it and say הבעלים even if the owner is one person). It would make more sense to say המלך הוא אדוני instead.
Fantastic!
hiiii am surprised that u put sabaic with these languages am trying to learn it and himyarite but it's hard and idk anyone who speaks it also it's a old south Arabian and ilovelanguages chanlle posted a vid abt it but it got delated idk why can u help me learning it or select any ways
If you want to learn Sabaic, you might want to get a grammar book first. The "Sabaic Grammar" by A.F.L. Beeston is a good book to start with. It is not brand-new (from 1985) but still good to begin with. Maybe you find a used copy or a .pdf online. I cannot give you any links though.
The best book to learn Sabaic is the "Lehrbuch der Sabäischen Sprache" (2013) by Peter Stein. It is excellent but you need to know German.
If you want to read Old South Arabian inscriptions you can visit dasi.cnr.it
It is a project by Pisa University and they have digitalized more than 3000 Sabaic, 1800 Qatabanic, 1400 Minaic and 900 Hadramitic inscriptions.
hello, i need your video of the 10 commandment in ancient hebrew, can you send it to me please??
Wait for the re-release.
Great job, well done. 3 Questions
1: As you ended with a Flood story is it possible that the original dates from many thousands of prior to the Sumerian or Hebrew (Younger Dryas )?
2: Is it possible that Samson and Delilah is actually Shamashun wa (Di)Layla or The Sun and Night/Darkness?
3: That everyone in the region could understand everyone else until some unknown event caused the language to start diverging?
in Arabic, the Nunation "un" at the end of the word, it's not a part of the word and it's not mandatory, it's optional and in some cases, it's not allowed to be added, for example unconjugated noun (mamnua min al-sarf) or when the word ends with long "I" or "ae" we never use Nunation in this case whatever the situation of the word in the sentence, also in Arabic, a sentence should start with a vowel or consonant with a short vowel mark (Haraka) and must not be ended with a consonant with a short vowel mark nor nunation, it should end with a zero short vowel (sukun) so in the example of "one thousand" in Arabic is just "Alf" without necessarily adding the Nunation, because we read the word "Alf" and we stop right after this word, it's the end of the statement, and nunation not allowed at the end of the statement, except if a word ends with long "A" in this case we can use Nunation as an option and pronounce the word with "An" at the end or just pronounce the "A" alone without Nunation, both are correct in this particular case, also Nunation is allowed at the end of a statement if we are reading a poem, becasue it sounds butiful.
I hope this will be helpful for anyone who reads this comment.
Are you saying that south American language is based from Germany before the Spanish and others arrived? Ty
is the Himyarite language a semitic language? Are there any texts written in Himyarite left? Or people just know the language from the descriptions of Arabic records.
It seems like Himyarite is just the Arabic term for something that was still spoken in Yemen in the Middle Ages that was not perceived as Arabic.
Probably remnants of Sabaic or other Old South Arabian languages. But none of the attested Old South Arabian languages is labeled as Himyarite by Semitists.
@@AncientSemitic thanks for the reply sir. I just read the wiki of Himyarite language which says there are himyarite elements left in three texts .What are they? Are they just unclear words in a familiar old south Arabian language text or in a text written in a completely unfamiliar language.
Arabic does have masculine plural suffixes, but only used for human nouns.
Also I don't think you can append nunation in all those places that you did.
Fun fact some arabs tribes in early islamic time have تمويم un like quraish arabic تنوين
So كلبٌ in quraish arabic
Become كلبُم in other arabs tribes
Wow! That's definitely quite a conservative grammatical feature. Thanks for the info.
That's really amazing! Which of the nuhaat discussed this and which dialects had this?
Just in south arabian language.. not north arabian
my English is not good but i understood some of your words so i need arabic translation. Can you put it?
Sorry. My Arabic is insufficient to talk about linguistics in this much detail.
@@AncientSemitic No problem. i appreciate your work . Thank you
What's the similarities between bantu and Hebrew
not much
Nothing that is within the scope of historical linguistics.
It’s crazy how this all links back together 😂. The word for king in Ge’Ez is “Nagush” and the word for king in Ethiopian is Negus
1:01. Saying "haMelech hu ba'ali" sounds more archaic. Modern Hebrew would say "HaMelech ba'ali"
I always wonder why the second most widely spoken Semitic language, #Amharic with more than 40 million native speakers, does not get listed when anyone talks about languages?
No native speakers are around 20 to 30 million.
I mention it at 34:25
Interesting video! Your Hebrew pronunciation was a little off, though.
In what regard was my pronunciation off?
@@AncientSemitic I think what he means to say you have a slight German accent. Since your pronunciation was fine.
Höre ich ein deutscher Akzent da? 😅
@@princesseuphemia1007 Gutes Ohr für Akzente.
@@AncientSemitic Vielen Dank! Diesen Ohr hab ich schon immer gehabt. Deutsch ist meine zweite Sprache aber die deutschen können es nicht hören. Sie denken immer ich wär auch Deutscher. 😆
great introduction:
Gurage ( the original ugrait language ) we are lucky that the ancient languges are actully preserved in the tribal languages of africa ( great lakes ) and ethiopia ( you missed Bantu ( which is highly connected to hierglphic languges and some ethiopic languages , the Maltese part was a bit wrong ( i am Maltese descent ) ..they have ein ( it is usually ommited by using an apostrophe )
lmao
Hi there, first of all I want to appreciate you for your effort. my question is based on your explanation I don’t know why you included Amharic as semitic? it is not. second I don’t understand why you use ethiopic word. Thanks
I included Amharic as Semitic because it's by all means a Semitic language.
But didn't the Hebrew alphabet come from Phoenician?
Indirectly. The Hebrew Alphabet came from the Aramaic Alphabet. The Aramaic Alphabet came from the Phoenician Alphabet.
Wow ok!
So how does the whole Hebrew thing “ being the first and oldest language “ come from?
Love from a Lebanese Australian.
@AncientSemetic
@@michael30000
Probably from the ideas of religious people.
This whole question "What language is the oldest?" is nonsense.
All languages evolved from older forms. English evolved from West-Germanic, which evolved from Germanic, which evolved from Indo-European etc.
So you cannot really measure the age of a language as all languages derive from older languages.
The only thing you can measure is the date of earliest known written records.
In that case, Egyptian is on the 1st place, Sumerian on the 2nd, Akkadian on the 3rd.
Hebrew and Phoenician were basically the same language, or dialects of the same language. Then Hebrew changes it's script to what it is today - from Hebrew Script(Canaanite/Phoenician Script) to the Assyrian Script(Aramaic).
Amhara is more than 60 milions not 21
A brief introduction?
Considering that this topic can fill a whole semester...
@@AncientSemitic gotcha
I believe that Harsusi is actually Arabic not western south Arabian. Alharasees actually speak a dialect of Arabic.
Where does Greek language branch from Afro-Semitic ??
It doesn't. Greek is Indo-European.
@@AncientSemitic But there is semitic cognets in greek, even the alphabet itself drived from Phoenician. So how can't it be classified in different branch ?
@@supermavro6072
The origin of the alphabet does not have anything to do with the classification of the language.
Somali and Vietnamese use the Latin alphabet. But that does not mean the languages themselves are related to Latin.
Spoken language and writing are two completely different things.
@@AncientSemitic The language you mentioned use latin script, because they have no alphabet of their own (and careful here we are not talking from contemporary perspective). If lets say, some one want to create his own writing system, he/she can easily search around different type writing system and use them as inspiration and create their own with slight modification. But the supposed Greek alphabet was codifed in ancient times (at a time when there was no easy access to mentain suchthing) unless you were under the control or colonization of other groups, there is no way you could adopt their writing system. So the theory here is flowed, What makes Greek an exception from the rest ? We use phonecian alphabet but our language is part of different branch. That doesn't make any sense to me.
@@supermavro6072
Greek is an Indo-European language that adopted the Phoenician Alphabet. So simple is that.
It's not even a theory. It's consensus and very basic linguistic knowledge. This is the stuff that you literally learn in the first semester of a linguistics program.
You should start reading some basics. "Historical Linguistics: An Introduction" by Lyle Campbell is a good book to start with.
Read it and then come back.
Terriffic video on a too-often overlooked family
When he said bitches: 😈
How come the Language we speak in Egypt now is "Arabic"?
For example, مش حتدي العيش للست؟ is an example of how modern Egyptian is closer to ancient Egyptian syntax and lexicon than it is to any Semitic language.
I am aware of the heavy Arabization in Egyptian (with maybe strong NW Semitic specially Aramaic to Cairene variety which is now lingua franca of "Arab" region who cannot understand each others varieties like Saudis speaking to Moroccans and Sudanis speaking to Iraqis). But I am aware of geopolitics imposing very strong influence on what is "Arabic" and what is not. For all I know Hebrew is closer to Arabic than anything we speak in Egypt. But geopolitics impose the definition that modern Egyptian is Arab and Hebrew is absolutely not!
I thought that Scholars like the ones you were quoting at the first 20 minutes of the video would use definitions that are more consistent with facts when it comes to languages than what geopolitics BS is imposing on us.
For example, you insist that revived Hebrew is its own language and distinctly different from Arabic (i beg to differ since many Arabic words have infiltrated revived Hebrew) while you lump almost the ENTIRE (?!) hodge-podge of the Afro-Asiatic languages nations (aka, League of Arab Nations) as "Arabs" of 350 Millions?
Basically all the different languages/dialects/varieties, what ever you want to call them, that are today included by the umbrella term "Arabic" can be traced back to the original group of Arabic dialects that were spoken on the Arabian peninsula prior to the Islamic Conquests.
It is true that all those Arabic dialects outside of the Arabian Peninsula have different degrees of influence by non-Arabic substrate, i.e., Aramaic substrate in Mesopotamia and the Levant, Coptic substrate in Egypt, Amazigh substrate in Northwest Africa etc.
But apart from some lexical borrowing, some limited syntactic influence as in Egyptian Arabic or rather heavy influence on prosody and syllable structure in Moroccan Arabic, the basic morpho-syntactic structure and the basic vocabulary in all those Arabic varieties is Arabic in origin.
For lexical comparison, just look at a Swadesh List or Leipzig-Jakarta List of Semitic languages and compare it to Egyptian/Coptic. The basic vocabulary of most varieties of Arabic, i.e., numerals 1-10, body parts, kinship terms etc. is not just overwhelmingly Semitic but also specifically Arabic.
@@AncientSemitic thanks for answering. About numbers and kinship, etc. I am sure you know when we adopted the Arabic numbers recently in our history we didn't take them exactly. Like Danish Femten vs English Fifteen, Egyptians say خمستاشر vs Arabic خمسة عشر. But English is English, Danish is Danish while Egyptian (by your standard) is certainly now an Arabic variety not originated in Arabia and intelligible with Arabic. My dear Sir, whoever told you it's intelligible with Arabic speakers from Arabian peninsula, he must have been taught by an Egyptian teacher and embedded in Egyptian material from Cairo (movies, songs, radio, TV, novels).
In practice, allbthose who are fully versed by their families in their heritage language from peninsula but never been taught "Egyptian Arabic" failed to understand any sentence and most words and failed almost completely to even understand their general direction. The words are so different and the structure is so foriegn.
Here's my famous example again
"Aren't you going to give the bready to this woman?"
Egyptian: مش حتدي العيش للست دي؟
mesh hatedi elEish lesett di?
Arabic: ألن تعطي الخبز لهذه المرأة؟
alen toAti alkhobz lehathi almar'ah?
I stand corrected of course. But scholars should do better than geopolitics
@@mabroukatis
I never said Arabic dialects were mutually intelligible. Mutual intelligibility says nothing about linguistic relationship as related languages drift apart over time which lowers their mutual intelligibility.
Germans from Northern Germany cannot understand German-speakers from Switzerland or Austria or even other regions of Germany. Still they all call their languages German and there is no doubt that all those varieties had a common origin less than 2000 years ago.
On the numbers, just to clarify:
If you count to ten, what numbers do you use? Are they closer to wahid, ithnan, thalatha, arbaa, khamsa, sitta, sabaa, thamanya, tisaa, ashara?
Or are they closer to wa, snau, shomt, ftow, tiw, sow, sashf, shmun, psit, met?
The first is Arabic, the latter is Egyptian.
Or how do you say mother, father, brother and sister?
Is it closer to umm, ab, akh, ukht?
Or closer to ma'au, yot, son, sone?
How do you say I, you (male and female), he, she?
Is it more like ana, anta, anti, huwa, hiya?
Or more like anok, ntok, nto, ntof, ntos?
Those are very basic parts of the language that pretty easily determine the relationship of what you speak.
@@AncientSemitic thanks for continuing the discussion.
You are aware that our Egyptian languages aren't all Arabized like Coptic (the language of the majority). The southern Egyptian Nubian Arabization is so fast now; a single generation difference is unintelligible to each other! The grandmothers are counting in Nubian while their granddaughters are counting in Arabic in their "Nubian" language remains local to south Egypt and unintelligible to non-Nubians. Does that make their language now a "variety of Arabic"? Why not a 'variety of Nubian' with heavy influence from rest of Nile Valley?
And why don't we call English that it's a variety of Danish?
Why don't we call Arabized Egyptian, Arabized Turkish, Arabized Persian because their lexicon has significantly changed by Arabic words, but they remain a variety of their own rather than a variety of Arabic?
Note that "geopolitically" Pan-Arabism was a device by Egypt to exclude the influence of Turkey and Iran from the rest of the region. The official name of the state is "Arab Republic of Egypt". So I understand why you scholars are afraid to 'offend' anyone. But the fact remains that, specially for Cairene (which is now the tongue of the Nile Valley majority), it maybe more influenced by French and Aramaic than Arabic!
I am all respect to your endeavor on youtube. It's quite unique. But the scholars you sited, didn't do any serious linguistic studies on Aamia of Egypt. Every scholar keeps ridiculing Egyptians for their corrupt "Arabic" which is Barbaric and idiotic and not appropriate! But in fact, we're still speaking a variety of Egyptian language and not Arabic at all. This is the only way to show that our "corruption" is in fact holding to the proper rules of our language that we have spoken and written for 7 millenia but now mixed with several other languages: Arabic, Turkish, French and English. But in its bulk it's still a variety of Egyptian language
@@mabroukatis
You seem to misunderstand the point of linguistics.
Linguistics describes languages, and languages alone. It does not describe ethnic background.
If a Nubian speaks Arabic, then his language is called Arabic. No matter if he looks Nubian, has Nubian DNA, follows Nubian customs etc. None of that is the concern of linguistics. What you're looking for is anthropology.
Semetic coming from Geez Amhara Ethiopian!
The other way around.
And It's spelled Semitic. Not Semetic.
I would subscribe but you only have e videos so there would be no point
aram is the ancestor of the arameans Wonder who is the ancestor of southern semites (the sabaeans and ethiosemites)
The authors of the Torah probably intented Sheba, son of Sem's grandson Yoqtan to be the ancestor of the peoples of Southern Arabia.
But it's mythology so I wouldn't waste too much time thinking about it.
From a linguistic perspective it looks like speakers of Proto-Ethio-Semitic split off the Proto-West-Semitic speaking community roughly 2500 - 3000 years BCE, migrating to Africa. Sabaic probably formed some time later, diverging from West-Semitic around 1600 - 2500 years BCE.
@@AncientSemitic another question i read on the Internet that a language called old amharic existed with out the heavy cushitic influences that modern amharic exibits is it true and how different was it , what modern semitic language is the most similar to akkadian
@@AncientSemitic is arabic more conservative than ge'ez and sabaic or is it the other way
@@AMR_k400
Old Amharic is just an older stage of Amharic. So it is the same language with the same Cushitic substrate. It only has a few notable differences from Modern Amharic, e.g. retention of pharyngeal consonants.
As for Akkadian, there is no modern Semitic language that is particularly similar to it, as Akkadian was probably the most divergent Semitic language.
@@AncientSemitic hmm interesting i imagined old amharic to be a little different considering that it existed before the oromo migration and the ethiopian conquest of agaw lands,most of the cushitic influence on amharic comes from afan oromo and agaw
Maybe the words are different and the structure is the same
17:26 how it is successfully revived if modern hebrew is like a Frankenstein creature, it is an invention in fact or fabrication, the zioNAZī did put Semitic languages with yiddish which is germanic in a blinder and voilà.
They claimed it was revived. No. It is not.
Beside is it Palestine.
For your information, Phoenicians are Canaanites and Canaanites are Arabs, so they spoke Arabic.
Thanks for your unscholarly rambling.
You know what is interesting? A person born in Israel who knows only Modern Hebrew could easily understand Biblical Hebrew and Phoenician. Arabs can't.
Arabic is considered a sacred language since it is the language of the Holy Quran. But How is Aramiac is a sacred language while there is no Holy Book in Aramiac?
Syriac, a variant of Aramaic, is a liturgical language in several Eastern churches, and several theological texts have been composed in Syriac, not to mention Syriac translations of the Bible.
The proto Semitic look alt like Modern Standard Arabic lol
I propose to rename the word Semitic to “Shemitic”. Not named after the mythological character “Shem”, but rather to be named after the land of “Shem” which is the name of the levant, or the land spanning from the eastern coast of the Mediterranean sea to Mesopotamia. This name is still in use until today in Arabic languages as “بلاد الشام" Bilaad Esh-Shaam, or the land of the Shaam, which is another pronunciation of Shem. It is after the name of this land that the mythological character “Shem” was created to function as a paternal figure for the peoples of this land, rather than the other way around.
To many syrians, palestineans, jordanians and lebanese who call their land the land of Shaam, the name “Shaam” has nothing to do with biblical or islamic prophets or mythical figures. It is purely the name of a geographical area.
To call them “Shemitic” languages it makes clear that these are languages that originated in the land of Shem, regardless of mythology. Yes not all shemitic languages are spoken solely in Shem, but this is most probably where they originated. More likely than the Arabian or Ethiopian Urheimat hypotheses for many reasons.
I really like your program but with all due respect for your scholarship I can surly tell you islam means submission and obviously we know well to Whom
Yes, I've never seen 'islam' translated before as 'reconciliation'. I have only ever read it elsewhere translated as 'submission'.
Modern Hebrew is not Semitic language. Modern Hebrew is Slavic/Germanic language.
That's Paul Wexler's hypothesis. It's hardly accepted by anyone other than himself.
I learned a lot how similar the languages are especially the old languages? Why are they similar?
Languages are evolving. This evolution leads to differences. So it's like languages are drifting apart over time.
This means the further you go back in time, the more similar they are.
But there are also cases where languages become more similar due to contact and mutual exchange.
That's for example why Amharic has some similarities to Cushitic languages like Agaw. Both have been in contact for a long time and the lexicon and grammatical structure have influenced each other.
@@AncientSemitic I have see comparative similarities of vocabularies of Tigrigna and Amharic languages with the other Semetic languages. However, when you were comparing Geez with the other Semetic languages, the similarities increased by almost about 50%. Thanks for the information.
So can someone explain how Hebrew is the oldest language?
Love from a Lebanese guy
Who said it was?
The oldest attested languages are Sumerian and Egyptian, with Sumerian being a language isolate, and Egyptian belonging to the Afro-Asiatic family, distantly related to the Semitic subgroup containing Hebrew, but distinct from it.
about 30 minutes into this video is a wall looking stone with symbols on it, i have a tablet with these same exact symbol's and was hoping some one could help me to determine what it says, please contact me here and i will coordinate with who ever feels they can help with this
Could that second, voiced way of pronunciation (ɮˤ) in 40:59 be the reason why the Persians and Turks naturalised Arabic words containing ض as "z" instead of the reason given there? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E1%B8%8C%C4%81d#Pronunciation
Yes, it's possible.
It is also likely reflected in borrowings from Arabic to Spanish that render ض as ld, e.g. القاضي > alcalde.
But the explanation in that Wikipedia article makes sense as well