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The Proto-Semitic article, which is linked in the history/origin section of this article, seems to have suffered a fatal HTML flaw. Is it fixable? Can it be restored? —Preceding unsigned comment added by PinkWorld ( talk • contribs) 09:14, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
Beneath the examples of Arabic and Hebrew roots, the Maltese examples are preceded by the paragraph
Is this needed? It is true for all other Semitic languages, and the same statement is given in the opening paragraph of the section so it is redundant. The only difference is that in Maltese it is called mamma. Etams 17:50, 10 January 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Etams ( talk • contribs)
It is not called mamma. Mamma is what we call the most simple form of the verb, the 3rd person masculine singular of the 1st form of the verb, which may not always exist. The root consonants themselves are called the għerq (root). For example, k-t-b is the għerq but kiteb is the mamma. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.71.245.21 ( talk) 17:41, 31 July 2010 (UTC)
The extinct Eteocyprian (included in the Semitic languages in the map) was not Semitic. The language has not been deciphered and there are few theories as to it origins, but there is hardly any evidence it was Semitic. As such the map is erroneous and should be corrected or removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.251.117.65 ( talk) 13:51, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
Can anyone add a map of the distribution of modern Semitic languages today? It would be very useful. -- Boguslav M 23:23, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
I would say mostly right, but the placement inside modern Ethiopia is completely inaccurate. How is it possible to change the map? For example Sidama is not where it should be nor is Harari. Gafat may be dead I have been in that region and it's mostly Amharic, how can we make legit changes to this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zacharias elias ( talk • contribs) 21:13, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
A plural of paucity appears in Classical Arabic, in a few words. In some degree, it is a fourth grammatical number, referring to 3 to 10 items. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.169.201.1 ( talk) 10:34, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
The term "Semitic" for these languages, after Shem, the son of Noah in the Bible, is etymologically a misnomer in some ways (see Semitic)
The Semitic article doesn't say that anywhere. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.132.142.209 ( talk) 05:00, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
Unfortunately this is probably beyond the scope of Wikipedia. They should probably be called Akkaddian languages since that is region of the oldest know record. And even the Biblical account references "Semitic languages" spoken by people not descendant from Shem by it's own account. At least a note about this etymology could be in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.88.95.156 ( talk) 14:36, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
It now seems to be at http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Transwiki:List_of_Proto-Semitic_stems , though I'm not sure why it was deleted from here, or what good it's doing anyone over there... AnonMoos ( talk) 00:08, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
5 million is the number of the Israeli Jewish citizens 11 years ago (by the citation). The article does not count:
According to Hebrew Wikipedia there are 8 million Hebrew speakers. Eddau ( talk) 02:10, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
Oh, on this page someone claims that Encarta claims that there are 7 million natural Hebrew speakers. It is just great. Every source has a different number and none has a good justification. Eddau ( talk) 19:14, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
I did a bit of fixing of the speaker numbers. The Encarta reference, for example, is no longer online, so I removed it and replaced the numbers for Arabic with the Ethnologue number. ( Taivo ( talk) 06:24, 23 December 2009 (UTC))
In the main article, under "Morphology: triliteral roots", it is said "Verbs in other non-Semitic Afroasiatic languages show similar radical patterns". In the following passage, only Kabyle is mentioned. Perhaps examples can be produced from Hausa, Somali and other languages of similar inflections. As it is, the false impression is given, that there is more similarity than is actually the case. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.141.121.193 ( talk) 15:23, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
Under the above caption, only six examples are given. The much larger number of common words in Semitic languages can be estimated numerically. Otherwise, the impression will be given that the common vocabulary is much smaller than it is. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.157.29.1 ( talk) 10:37, 22 May 2010 (UTC) For instance, about 90% of the words in Classical Arabic can be found elsewhere in other Semitic languages. The proportion of Semitic words in Ethiopic and Babylonian is smaller. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.148.18.65 ( talk) 11:03, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
The original text said 5750 BP and 2800 BP, dates for the born of the semitic languages in the Levant and for the introduction of semitic languages in Ethiopia. But in fact cited source say: 5750 years ago and 2800 years ago , so the correct years are 2750 BC and 800 BC. I'm not sure if this support the asiatic origin hypothesis, but certainlly these dates concur with the rise of the Akkadians and with archeological-agriculture changes in Ethiopia, respectively. -- Bentaguayre ( talk) 01:21, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
Per our classification, Semitic consists of E, W, & S branches. W in turn consists of C & S branches. Thus West = Central. Which should we go with here? — kwami ( talk) 07:37, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
The grammar section of this page begins with "...although variation has naturally occurred – even within the same language as it evolved through time, such as Arabic from the 6th century AD to the present."
It then goes on to explain some of the ways in which all the Semitic languages have changed, with no specific focus on Arabic. It is important to recognize that Arabs regard the contemporary literary register of their language- Modern Standard Arabic- as being a continuation of the Qur'anic Arabic spoken in the 6th century A.D. Aside from the presence of modern loanwords in MSA, Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic are virtually identical in terms of grammar, morphology, and pronunciation. It is the only form of Arabic taught in schools, spoken in professional situations such as the news or government, and transcribed into literature. The survival and integrity of the Arabic language is a matter of cultural pride for many Arabs, and most would surely attest that the "real" Arabic - الفصحى, the term used collectively for the language of the Qur'an and the language spoken on Al-Jazeera - is by far the closest to its historical roots out of all the Semitic languages. In my opinion, they would be correct.
I feel that the statement in question is inflammatory and also misleading, by not specifying that it is the spoken Arabic dialects which have changed from 6th-century Arabic. MSA is written with the same grammar as the Qur'an, and bears the same proto-Semitic case endings when read aloud. It is my opinion that this specific singling-out of Arabic should either be clarified, or (preferably) removed altogether, as it adds no new information to the article.
Some weeks ago, user Akivagoldberg edited the Hebrew number, replacing the original source (Ethnologue) with a new online-source, a commercial translation page, which reveals a speaker number for Hebrew just as a mouse-over feature. Do we really accept such a source as a better source than the Ethnologue? I have the impression that once more someone was happy to stumble across any web-page just to have a reference for an inflated number. Landroving Linguist ( talk) 21:31, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
Am I missing something, or do many references mentioned in the Notes section not have a corresponding listing in the References section? For example, notes 14 - 16 are:
• Dolgopolsky 1999, p. 29.
• Taylor 1997, p. 147.
• Woodard 2008, p. 219.
Dolgopolsky is used in several notes, but there is no title associated with Dolgopolsky (or the other two mentioned) in the Reference section. Without a title to refer to, aren't these citations more or less worthless? —
al-Shimoni (
talk)
10:14, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
The row about Hebrew in the paragraph "Living Semitic languages by number of speakers" is WAY out of date. I've checked the refrence and it says "Population 4,850,000 in Israel (1998). Population total all countries: 5,316,700." which is true to 1998, not 2012. Israel's population is almost 7,900,000 people, which is almost twice the people stated in the site. Now, we are not in 1998, and I don't know exactly how to fix it without getting a message in my talk page, so I'm counting on you to fix it, by any means you thing are 'kosher'.
P.S. I have the ref. about Israel's population (from the respective Wikipedia article) here: http://www.cbs.gov.il/www/yarhon/b1_e.htm
Thanks in advance, TomeHale ( talk) 20:12, 14 April 2012 (UTC).
This is from the infobox in the Arabic article Native speakers more than 422 million (2008)[7] This article gives half that number of Arabic speakers. Alázhlis ( talk) 16:26, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
Some followers of Abrahamic religions claim that the Semitic languages (especially Arabic, Hebrew) were chosen by God because these languages are more comprehensive. Can anyone attest to this? Pass a Method talk 11:35, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
Some comments on the Image on the distribution of Semitic language around the 1st century A.D (Semitic_1st_AD.svg):
It is doubtful that Amharic can be dated so far back and was spoken so far South at 1st century AD. It's not only a modern language; ancient Amhara region is said to have been conquered in the 9th century AD and Amharic language only became the royal language in 13th century AD, spread mainly in the 14th century with a lot of conquests under Gäbrä Mäsqäl ʿAmdä-Ṣiyon.
It shoult be termed Old South Arabian instead of Southern Arabic, to avoid confusion...
One might consider to separate (the predecessor of) Modern South Arabian, which is presumably closer to Ge'ez than the other, and Old South Arabian.
-- Aferghes ( talk) 04:10, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
How do you proove that kab. afeg / yufeg is more probable to be related with Hebrew hafleg than with general sem. ʕwf ? How is a possible relation with ʕwf / teʿufah to be excluded ?
Though afeg / yufeg looks biconsonantal, one could yet argue for a weak root with three radicals (ufg) and lost u in certain positions: *yáufəg > yafəg ; *yáusi > yas; *yáufi > yaf; but *yəúfag > yufəg; cf. for example also Arab. yaǧidu from wgd, yaṣilu from wṣl and yalidu from wld.
-- Aferghes ( talk) 14:39, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
As noted at Gurage languages, the languages of the Gurage do not form a coherent group, but belong to different sub-branches of Southern Ethio-Semitic. As far as I can see, this is sufficient explanation for their diversity and a linguistic basis for grouping them together as a branch of their own is lacking. Moreover, I have seen no argument ascribing their alleged divergence from the rest of Semitic (which, in light of their classification as belonging to specific subgroups of Southern Ethio-Semitic, would seem to be more apparent than anything else, or at least it is completely unclear what exactly their divergent qualities are) to an early split from Semitic, rather than, for example, areal influence from Cushitic (or other non-Semitic) languages, or the retention of ancient features which have disappeared in their close non-Gurage relatives. Therefore, this argument for an East African origin of Semitic is simply mistaken (unless it can be shown that the accepted classification of Southern Ethio-Semitic is completely wrong, and that would require a really high-quality citation, not just a throwaway remark like Blench's), and other arguments in its favour are nowhere to be seen. I propose to remove the Gurage argument, along with the East African proposal, from the article. No scholar advocates an East African origin for Semitic nowadays, as far as I am aware; importantly, even Blench does not seriously do that, as his phrasing makes clear. (Note that while the traditional bipartition of Ethio-Semitic into a northern and southern branch has recently been challenged, even if the objection is valid – and it might very well be –, this does not weaken the argument against an exclusive Gurage branch at all, rather strengthen it because it would mean that the so-called Gurage languages do not even all belong to the same primary subbranch of Ethio-Semitic.)-- Florian Blaschke ( talk) 14:02, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
Don't know what that means... AnonMoos ( talk) 15:32, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
I have corrected this file, after its deletion from this page (Semitic languages) by user Til Eulenspiegel. I had 'XVI' intead of 'XIV' as the date of the first texts in Amharic; a misspelling, I guess. Any other correction is very welcome. Thanks, Til Eulenspiegel. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Msanzl ( talk • contribs) 19:50, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
... needs to be standardized. Long i, long u should for clearness's sake always carry macrons (Semitists, but not everybody, know(s) that there are no short i, u) - in accordance with chapter Vowels. Transliterations in chapters Common vocabulary and Cardinal Numerals should have ə instead of i/e.
"libb", "lissan": Since when is there a sign to denote gemination in Ge'ez?
Nuremberg - Ángel.García 131.188.2.12 ( talk) 16:59, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
Landroving Linguist reverted my change, saying that the paragraph "lists mother tongue speakers only". Who has decided that and why does the table below speak about "by number of speakers"? I looked at Amharic. It only tells about a census and the other source say "the majority of the 25 million or so speakers of Amharic can be found in Ethiopia". The figures for Hebrew does specifically mention the whole world. This source, though, say "The Semitic group of languages includes Arabic (206 million native speakers), Amharic (27 million), Hebrew (7 million), Tigrinya (6.7 million), Syriac (1 million) and Maltese (419 thousand)". It is used one time in the article and that is one time in the table. There is also no consistency between the lead and table, let alone between what the sources say and the figures given here.
We should use the best sources available and that does not always mean Ethnologue. In this case, the figure for Arabic is 15 years old. Why use that when we have better figures? Similary, the figures for Hebrew are a year older and that is probably why they are not used here. Their figures for Amharic and Tigrigna are from 2007 so it is pretty much better. -- IRISZOOM ( talk) 10:12, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
There is the spoken language and the written language. There is no heading for the written language, no description that the language is wrote and read from the right to left.-- Mark v1.0 ( talk) 21:26, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
I originally posted this to the Akkadian Language talk page...should have been on this talk page from the beginning, d'oh!
According to an article on sciencedaily.com, Canaanitic is the oldest attested of the Semitic languages.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070129100250.htm
But there are Sumerian samples from as far back as 3500-3200 BC.( /info/en/?search=Kish_tablet) 50.88.95.156 ( talk) 14:12, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
How mutually intelligible are the languages? Is it easy for speaker of one such language to learn another in this family? 86.178.174.199 ( talk) 22:51, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
The word given for the Maltese for "father" is misleading. There are separate words for the speaker's father and the father of another. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.228.163.152 ( talk) 12:03, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
The Arabic vernaculars column is inaccurate and unreliable. It needs to be rewritten by a native Arabic speaker. 2.91.40.115 ( talk) 12:06, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
In the lead, do you prefer Middle east or Near East? Personally I prefer Near East.. it's much more specific and concise. Ljgua124 ( talk) 06:53, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
In this 1795 article [5], Eichhorn, who is credited with popularising the usage of the term Semitic, summarizes the early debate around usage of the term:
Google translates it as follows:
Unfortunately the key paragraph doesn't make much sense per google's translation. Is anyone with better knowledge of German than me able to help? Oncenawhile ( talk) 21:48, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
This article needs to be updated which I have done theres a couple problems there are 29 million Amhara speakers and 420 million Arabic speakers native although its actually 450 million you have to exlude the 30 million non-native l2 speakers Hebrew is spoken by 7 million isralis worldwide not 5 million ill fix the errors. ArabAmazigh12 ( talk) 19:26, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
If the total of speakers is 470 million and the most widely spoken languages are 300+22+7+5=334 million. That would mean 136 million users with languages of less then 5 million users each; this is hard to believe. Maybe different sources and/or different definitions used. ABMvandeBult ( talk) 12:35, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
The semitic languages are artifical. Not artifical in the sense of esperanto being belarussian grammar mated with spanish words, but artificial in being a result of careful design and implementation, before being gifted to the people who speak it. The triliteral root system means the entity who created the language (YHWH) built it on top the "platonic ideals" theory, except Platon wasn't yet born at the time. Every trilateral root conforms to one "platonic ideal" e.g. book -> read/write/learn. The platonic ideals we can only comprehend as much as shadowy reflections on a cave's wall, were (are) clearly laid out before his all-seeing eye.
This shows ur-semitic (the original form of arabic and hebrew) was not a result of natural evolution like PIE, but a carefully designed and implemented, ready-made gift bestowed from above on the carnivorous people of monotheism! Any later fractioning and splits are unfortunate results of corruption.
This realization also counters the theories promulgated by indo-aryan political supremacists, who want to posit sanskrit/PIE as the mother of all human languages and recently use it to push a poly-theistic, vegetarian agenda for hinduism, buddhism and germanic neo-paganism. 91.82.36.150 ( talk) 14:53, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
Under: Common vocabulary
The Arabic ʿ-r-f root does relate to the Hebrew root ʿ-r-f which stands for back-of-neck and to-behead. In the past people in this Semitic region used to hold or scratch the back of their necks when trying to remember something. It is noted by Maimonides somewhere but I cannot remember where (*scratching the back of my neck*). Also, the Arabic ʿ-l-m root corresponds with the Hebrew root for World (Olam), Youth (Elem) as well as invisible (Ne'elam) all connected to knowlege or lack thereof. Regarding Amharic, the root ʿ-w-q has an equivalent in Hebrew for words that deal with mental burden. The root f-l-ṭ can also be found in Hebrew in words related to discharge of matter as well as information. (I am a native Hebew speaker and Arabic lit. Major).
This article does not define all its terms or link to definitions. There is a discussion on "reflex" of a consonant and Akkadian with no way for a reader to know what the technical term "reflex" means. Referring to a source is inadequate because hardly any readers have access to it. If there's a non-technical word for this, use it. 100.15.120.162 ( talk) 13:47, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
I was expecting a schema with a language tree, it displays clearly the info, could you add it?
I wonder if someone here can give me a hand at Ladino Wikipedia. I am trying to merge two articles:
The surviving article, wherever it actually lives, will clearly be based on the text of the first article. But what I could use help on over there is to classify the languages listed in the second of the articles within the sections of the first article. So if any experts out there can help me I'd greatly appreciate that. Thanks. StevenJ81 ( talk) (administrator there) 15:32, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
Two maps in this article purport to show the Semitic language area in the 1st century AD and 1000-2000 years ago. I don't know about other areas, but the extension of the Ethio-Semitic area seems to me to be overambitious. I don't think there is any evidence that in the 1st century AD Ethio-Semitic was spoken anywhere outside what is now Eritrea. The map shows Amharic (a language that is only attested since the 12th century) spoken way south of Lake T'ana, and linguists agree that this area was entirely occupied by speakers of Cushitic languages well into the second half of the 2nd millennium. Do others agree with me that these maps need to be adjusted? As a starter, I would take out any reference to Amharic, and then better reflect the situation of the 1st millennium by pushing the Semitic boundary to north of the Tekeze river. Landroving Linguist ( talk) 11:20, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
According to the consonants table at the phonology section, Biblical Hebrew distinguished /ð/ and /z/ (both written as ז) and also /ʃ/ and /θ/ (both written as שׁ). I couldn't find any source for that claim in the article, and moreover it contradicts the Hebrew-Aramaic-Arabic fricative correspondence table below.
Another thing I noticed is the somewhat peculiar transliteration *ṱ for Biblical Hebrew צ. What does it stand for? 109.65.22.101 ( talk) 17:24, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
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Oranjelo100 added the following sources to the initial paragraph of the article: http://e-learning.tsu.ge/pluginfile.php/5868/mod_resource/content/0/dzveli_armosavluri_enebi_-ugarituli_punikuri_arameuli_ebrauli_arabuli.pdf, https://books.google.pl/books?id=KQpFAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA11&lpg=PA11&dq=old+south+arabian+central+semitic&source=bl&ots=pEV0cdsVOu&sig=o8Mg12NX6BsfCLes-2Roh2-AK5Y&hl=pl&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj4gOyTr_PTAhXE1xoKHf-4BbUQ6AEIfzAN#v=onepage&q=old%20south%20arabian%20central%20semitic&f=false and https://books.google.pl/books?id=LfruK29pVl8C&pg=PA124&lpg=PA124&dq=old+south+arabian+languages+grammar&source=bl&ots=C_2xqghETA&sig=iAxC60ax0rjqVYtObzAAP_RQLCY&hl=pl&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi-3_2N8PLTAhUFGZoKHdHxCKUQ6AEIczAN#v=onepage&q=old%20south%20arabian%20languages%20grammar&f=false. In the references section these sources show up as shown here. In fact, all three sources are good and relevant sources regarding Semitic languages, but what we see here in each case are cryptic links which entirely hide the identity of the sources unless you click on these links, pointing to google books or other websites. The first link actually leads to the whole book as a pdf, but the google book pages leave you in the dark what particular point is supposed to be supported here. I took these sources out as insufficiently documented, but got reverted on that by Oranjelo. I still believe that cryptic links don't satisfy the requirement of well documented sources, but I may be mistaken. Can others here clarify on how things should be done according to best practices or wikipedia policies? Landroving Linguist ( talk) 19:37, 26 May 2017 (UTC)
"Proto-Semitic *ś was still pronounced as [ɬ] in Biblical Hebrew, but no letter was available in the Phoenician alphabet, so the letter ש did double duty, representing both /ʃ/ and /ɬ/". No proof is produced of this assertion in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.153.143.86 ( talk) 13:31, 14 August 2017 (UTC)
My change to indicate the total number of Hebrew speakers at around 9 million ( https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Semitic_languages&oldid=809954069) was reverted by @ Landroving Linguist:.
The current figure of "unknown; 5 million native and non-native L1 speakers" seems to be inaccurate and out of date, and the idea of a "non-native L1 speaker" doesn't make sense. The references I added (borrowed from Hebrew language) indicate that there are around 9 million total speakers today. Almost all of the Jewish population of Israel (~6 million) speaks it, even though some struggle with the language as indicated in the reference, and about half the non-Jewish population (~50% × ~2 million), and a substantial population of Israeli expats and non-Israeli jews.
Hebrew has an unusually large proportion of non-native but fluent or near-fluent daily users, so listing only L1 speakers doesn't seem to make sense to me. — Moxfyre ( ǝɹʎℲxoɯ | contrib) 07:37, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
This:
most scripts used to write Semitic languages are abjads – a type of alphabetic script that omits some or all of the vowels, which is feasible for these languages because the consonants in the Semitic languages are the primary carriers of meaning.
contradicts this:
Words are composed out of 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 additional consonants, e.g. كتاب kitāb "book", كتب kutub "books", كاتب kātib "writer", كتّاب kuttāb "writers", كتب kataba "he wrote", يكتب yaktubu "he writes", etc.
-- Espoo ( talk) 10:23, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
The map on the left is not accurate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.174.232.113 ( talk) 15:59, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
Is there anyone who understand several semitic languages who can explain to us how closely the languages are related, for example in comparison to relationship between the Germanic languages such as English, German, Dutch, Danish. For a speaker of one semitic language, how easy is it to learn another one? How easy is it for a Hebrew speaker to learn or cross over to speaking Aramaic? How easy is it for an Arabic speaker to learn or cross over to speaking Hebrew? 2A00:23C5:C102:9E00:8829:E061:DE19:C46C ( talk) 00:50, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
§ Independent personal pronouns glosses second-person dual and plural pronouns with the archaic English word "ye", for no reason that I could see. The explicit quantifier ("dual", "plural") is quite sufficient and causes no confusion. I am changing "ye" to "you".
-- Thnidu ( talk) 15:09, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
The article states "Maltese is the only Semitic language written in the Latin script". However, Hasaniyya Arabic is written in the Latin script too (in Senegal). Should this article be changed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2603:3024:18F1:6400:6807:5709:C143:4261 ( talk) 21:56, 13 August 2020 (UTC)
Certainly, as long as there are WP: Reliable sources. If you can cite any, you can make the change yourself. -- Thnidu ( talk) 23:03, 15 August 2020 (UTC)
http://www.jo.gouv.sn/spip.php?article4790 looks promising? Ewx ( talk) 16:49, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
The map shows Babylonian, which became extinct centuries earlier. Hebrew was surely not as widely spoken as is shown. In fact, pretty much the entire middle east was speaking Aramaic back then. TFighterPilot ( talk) 20:19, 23 July 2021 (UTC)
Perhaps the page should mention https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.18.342816v2.full, which finds genetic evidence for population changes consistent with Kitchen 2009? Ewx ( talk) 19:34, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
I want to connect this article to other Wikipedia languages. Md. Rayan Alam Rifat ( talk) 18:31, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
Does anyone know what "originated" is intended to mean here? Is it meant as 'entered the Levant' or similar? The way it's written will surely suggest to readers not familiar with language evolution in general that the languages suddenly appeared out of nothing, i.e. nonsense. Enlightened re-wording is definitely in order. Barefoot through the chollas ( talk) 14:04, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
According to the Manual of Style MOS:ERA there is no preference between using BCE/CE and BC/AD, but it should be uniform within an article. In this article, BCE and BC seem to appear about equally often. I'm not going to make my choice, but I am just calling attention to the facts. TomS TDotO ( talk) 02:00, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
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The Proto-Semitic article, which is linked in the history/origin section of this article, seems to have suffered a fatal HTML flaw. Is it fixable? Can it be restored? —Preceding unsigned comment added by PinkWorld ( talk • contribs) 09:14, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
Beneath the examples of Arabic and Hebrew roots, the Maltese examples are preceded by the paragraph
Is this needed? It is true for all other Semitic languages, and the same statement is given in the opening paragraph of the section so it is redundant. The only difference is that in Maltese it is called mamma. Etams 17:50, 10 January 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Etams ( talk • contribs)
It is not called mamma. Mamma is what we call the most simple form of the verb, the 3rd person masculine singular of the 1st form of the verb, which may not always exist. The root consonants themselves are called the għerq (root). For example, k-t-b is the għerq but kiteb is the mamma. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.71.245.21 ( talk) 17:41, 31 July 2010 (UTC)
The extinct Eteocyprian (included in the Semitic languages in the map) was not Semitic. The language has not been deciphered and there are few theories as to it origins, but there is hardly any evidence it was Semitic. As such the map is erroneous and should be corrected or removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.251.117.65 ( talk) 13:51, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
Can anyone add a map of the distribution of modern Semitic languages today? It would be very useful. -- Boguslav M 23:23, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
I would say mostly right, but the placement inside modern Ethiopia is completely inaccurate. How is it possible to change the map? For example Sidama is not where it should be nor is Harari. Gafat may be dead I have been in that region and it's mostly Amharic, how can we make legit changes to this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zacharias elias ( talk • contribs) 21:13, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
A plural of paucity appears in Classical Arabic, in a few words. In some degree, it is a fourth grammatical number, referring to 3 to 10 items. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.169.201.1 ( talk) 10:34, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
The term "Semitic" for these languages, after Shem, the son of Noah in the Bible, is etymologically a misnomer in some ways (see Semitic)
The Semitic article doesn't say that anywhere. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.132.142.209 ( talk) 05:00, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
Unfortunately this is probably beyond the scope of Wikipedia. They should probably be called Akkaddian languages since that is region of the oldest know record. And even the Biblical account references "Semitic languages" spoken by people not descendant from Shem by it's own account. At least a note about this etymology could be in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.88.95.156 ( talk) 14:36, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
It now seems to be at http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Transwiki:List_of_Proto-Semitic_stems , though I'm not sure why it was deleted from here, or what good it's doing anyone over there... AnonMoos ( talk) 00:08, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
5 million is the number of the Israeli Jewish citizens 11 years ago (by the citation). The article does not count:
According to Hebrew Wikipedia there are 8 million Hebrew speakers. Eddau ( talk) 02:10, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
Oh, on this page someone claims that Encarta claims that there are 7 million natural Hebrew speakers. It is just great. Every source has a different number and none has a good justification. Eddau ( talk) 19:14, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
I did a bit of fixing of the speaker numbers. The Encarta reference, for example, is no longer online, so I removed it and replaced the numbers for Arabic with the Ethnologue number. ( Taivo ( talk) 06:24, 23 December 2009 (UTC))
In the main article, under "Morphology: triliteral roots", it is said "Verbs in other non-Semitic Afroasiatic languages show similar radical patterns". In the following passage, only Kabyle is mentioned. Perhaps examples can be produced from Hausa, Somali and other languages of similar inflections. As it is, the false impression is given, that there is more similarity than is actually the case. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.141.121.193 ( talk) 15:23, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
Under the above caption, only six examples are given. The much larger number of common words in Semitic languages can be estimated numerically. Otherwise, the impression will be given that the common vocabulary is much smaller than it is. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.157.29.1 ( talk) 10:37, 22 May 2010 (UTC) For instance, about 90% of the words in Classical Arabic can be found elsewhere in other Semitic languages. The proportion of Semitic words in Ethiopic and Babylonian is smaller. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.148.18.65 ( talk) 11:03, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
The original text said 5750 BP and 2800 BP, dates for the born of the semitic languages in the Levant and for the introduction of semitic languages in Ethiopia. But in fact cited source say: 5750 years ago and 2800 years ago , so the correct years are 2750 BC and 800 BC. I'm not sure if this support the asiatic origin hypothesis, but certainlly these dates concur with the rise of the Akkadians and with archeological-agriculture changes in Ethiopia, respectively. -- Bentaguayre ( talk) 01:21, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
Per our classification, Semitic consists of E, W, & S branches. W in turn consists of C & S branches. Thus West = Central. Which should we go with here? — kwami ( talk) 07:37, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
The grammar section of this page begins with "...although variation has naturally occurred – even within the same language as it evolved through time, such as Arabic from the 6th century AD to the present."
It then goes on to explain some of the ways in which all the Semitic languages have changed, with no specific focus on Arabic. It is important to recognize that Arabs regard the contemporary literary register of their language- Modern Standard Arabic- as being a continuation of the Qur'anic Arabic spoken in the 6th century A.D. Aside from the presence of modern loanwords in MSA, Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic are virtually identical in terms of grammar, morphology, and pronunciation. It is the only form of Arabic taught in schools, spoken in professional situations such as the news or government, and transcribed into literature. The survival and integrity of the Arabic language is a matter of cultural pride for many Arabs, and most would surely attest that the "real" Arabic - الفصحى, the term used collectively for the language of the Qur'an and the language spoken on Al-Jazeera - is by far the closest to its historical roots out of all the Semitic languages. In my opinion, they would be correct.
I feel that the statement in question is inflammatory and also misleading, by not specifying that it is the spoken Arabic dialects which have changed from 6th-century Arabic. MSA is written with the same grammar as the Qur'an, and bears the same proto-Semitic case endings when read aloud. It is my opinion that this specific singling-out of Arabic should either be clarified, or (preferably) removed altogether, as it adds no new information to the article.
Some weeks ago, user Akivagoldberg edited the Hebrew number, replacing the original source (Ethnologue) with a new online-source, a commercial translation page, which reveals a speaker number for Hebrew just as a mouse-over feature. Do we really accept such a source as a better source than the Ethnologue? I have the impression that once more someone was happy to stumble across any web-page just to have a reference for an inflated number. Landroving Linguist ( talk) 21:31, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
Am I missing something, or do many references mentioned in the Notes section not have a corresponding listing in the References section? For example, notes 14 - 16 are:
• Dolgopolsky 1999, p. 29.
• Taylor 1997, p. 147.
• Woodard 2008, p. 219.
Dolgopolsky is used in several notes, but there is no title associated with Dolgopolsky (or the other two mentioned) in the Reference section. Without a title to refer to, aren't these citations more or less worthless? —
al-Shimoni (
talk)
10:14, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
The row about Hebrew in the paragraph "Living Semitic languages by number of speakers" is WAY out of date. I've checked the refrence and it says "Population 4,850,000 in Israel (1998). Population total all countries: 5,316,700." which is true to 1998, not 2012. Israel's population is almost 7,900,000 people, which is almost twice the people stated in the site. Now, we are not in 1998, and I don't know exactly how to fix it without getting a message in my talk page, so I'm counting on you to fix it, by any means you thing are 'kosher'.
P.S. I have the ref. about Israel's population (from the respective Wikipedia article) here: http://www.cbs.gov.il/www/yarhon/b1_e.htm
Thanks in advance, TomeHale ( talk) 20:12, 14 April 2012 (UTC).
This is from the infobox in the Arabic article Native speakers more than 422 million (2008)[7] This article gives half that number of Arabic speakers. Alázhlis ( talk) 16:26, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
Some followers of Abrahamic religions claim that the Semitic languages (especially Arabic, Hebrew) were chosen by God because these languages are more comprehensive. Can anyone attest to this? Pass a Method talk 11:35, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
Some comments on the Image on the distribution of Semitic language around the 1st century A.D (Semitic_1st_AD.svg):
It is doubtful that Amharic can be dated so far back and was spoken so far South at 1st century AD. It's not only a modern language; ancient Amhara region is said to have been conquered in the 9th century AD and Amharic language only became the royal language in 13th century AD, spread mainly in the 14th century with a lot of conquests under Gäbrä Mäsqäl ʿAmdä-Ṣiyon.
It shoult be termed Old South Arabian instead of Southern Arabic, to avoid confusion...
One might consider to separate (the predecessor of) Modern South Arabian, which is presumably closer to Ge'ez than the other, and Old South Arabian.
-- Aferghes ( talk) 04:10, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
How do you proove that kab. afeg / yufeg is more probable to be related with Hebrew hafleg than with general sem. ʕwf ? How is a possible relation with ʕwf / teʿufah to be excluded ?
Though afeg / yufeg looks biconsonantal, one could yet argue for a weak root with three radicals (ufg) and lost u in certain positions: *yáufəg > yafəg ; *yáusi > yas; *yáufi > yaf; but *yəúfag > yufəg; cf. for example also Arab. yaǧidu from wgd, yaṣilu from wṣl and yalidu from wld.
-- Aferghes ( talk) 14:39, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
As noted at Gurage languages, the languages of the Gurage do not form a coherent group, but belong to different sub-branches of Southern Ethio-Semitic. As far as I can see, this is sufficient explanation for their diversity and a linguistic basis for grouping them together as a branch of their own is lacking. Moreover, I have seen no argument ascribing their alleged divergence from the rest of Semitic (which, in light of their classification as belonging to specific subgroups of Southern Ethio-Semitic, would seem to be more apparent than anything else, or at least it is completely unclear what exactly their divergent qualities are) to an early split from Semitic, rather than, for example, areal influence from Cushitic (or other non-Semitic) languages, or the retention of ancient features which have disappeared in their close non-Gurage relatives. Therefore, this argument for an East African origin of Semitic is simply mistaken (unless it can be shown that the accepted classification of Southern Ethio-Semitic is completely wrong, and that would require a really high-quality citation, not just a throwaway remark like Blench's), and other arguments in its favour are nowhere to be seen. I propose to remove the Gurage argument, along with the East African proposal, from the article. No scholar advocates an East African origin for Semitic nowadays, as far as I am aware; importantly, even Blench does not seriously do that, as his phrasing makes clear. (Note that while the traditional bipartition of Ethio-Semitic into a northern and southern branch has recently been challenged, even if the objection is valid – and it might very well be –, this does not weaken the argument against an exclusive Gurage branch at all, rather strengthen it because it would mean that the so-called Gurage languages do not even all belong to the same primary subbranch of Ethio-Semitic.)-- Florian Blaschke ( talk) 14:02, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
Don't know what that means... AnonMoos ( talk) 15:32, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
I have corrected this file, after its deletion from this page (Semitic languages) by user Til Eulenspiegel. I had 'XVI' intead of 'XIV' as the date of the first texts in Amharic; a misspelling, I guess. Any other correction is very welcome. Thanks, Til Eulenspiegel. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Msanzl ( talk • contribs) 19:50, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
... needs to be standardized. Long i, long u should for clearness's sake always carry macrons (Semitists, but not everybody, know(s) that there are no short i, u) - in accordance with chapter Vowels. Transliterations in chapters Common vocabulary and Cardinal Numerals should have ə instead of i/e.
"libb", "lissan": Since when is there a sign to denote gemination in Ge'ez?
Nuremberg - Ángel.García 131.188.2.12 ( talk) 16:59, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
Landroving Linguist reverted my change, saying that the paragraph "lists mother tongue speakers only". Who has decided that and why does the table below speak about "by number of speakers"? I looked at Amharic. It only tells about a census and the other source say "the majority of the 25 million or so speakers of Amharic can be found in Ethiopia". The figures for Hebrew does specifically mention the whole world. This source, though, say "The Semitic group of languages includes Arabic (206 million native speakers), Amharic (27 million), Hebrew (7 million), Tigrinya (6.7 million), Syriac (1 million) and Maltese (419 thousand)". It is used one time in the article and that is one time in the table. There is also no consistency between the lead and table, let alone between what the sources say and the figures given here.
We should use the best sources available and that does not always mean Ethnologue. In this case, the figure for Arabic is 15 years old. Why use that when we have better figures? Similary, the figures for Hebrew are a year older and that is probably why they are not used here. Their figures for Amharic and Tigrigna are from 2007 so it is pretty much better. -- IRISZOOM ( talk) 10:12, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
There is the spoken language and the written language. There is no heading for the written language, no description that the language is wrote and read from the right to left.-- Mark v1.0 ( talk) 21:26, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
I originally posted this to the Akkadian Language talk page...should have been on this talk page from the beginning, d'oh!
According to an article on sciencedaily.com, Canaanitic is the oldest attested of the Semitic languages.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070129100250.htm
But there are Sumerian samples from as far back as 3500-3200 BC.( /info/en/?search=Kish_tablet) 50.88.95.156 ( talk) 14:12, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
How mutually intelligible are the languages? Is it easy for speaker of one such language to learn another in this family? 86.178.174.199 ( talk) 22:51, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
The word given for the Maltese for "father" is misleading. There are separate words for the speaker's father and the father of another. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.228.163.152 ( talk) 12:03, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
The Arabic vernaculars column is inaccurate and unreliable. It needs to be rewritten by a native Arabic speaker. 2.91.40.115 ( talk) 12:06, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
In the lead, do you prefer Middle east or Near East? Personally I prefer Near East.. it's much more specific and concise. Ljgua124 ( talk) 06:53, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
In this 1795 article [5], Eichhorn, who is credited with popularising the usage of the term Semitic, summarizes the early debate around usage of the term:
Google translates it as follows:
Unfortunately the key paragraph doesn't make much sense per google's translation. Is anyone with better knowledge of German than me able to help? Oncenawhile ( talk) 21:48, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
This article needs to be updated which I have done theres a couple problems there are 29 million Amhara speakers and 420 million Arabic speakers native although its actually 450 million you have to exlude the 30 million non-native l2 speakers Hebrew is spoken by 7 million isralis worldwide not 5 million ill fix the errors. ArabAmazigh12 ( talk) 19:26, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
If the total of speakers is 470 million and the most widely spoken languages are 300+22+7+5=334 million. That would mean 136 million users with languages of less then 5 million users each; this is hard to believe. Maybe different sources and/or different definitions used. ABMvandeBult ( talk) 12:35, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
The semitic languages are artifical. Not artifical in the sense of esperanto being belarussian grammar mated with spanish words, but artificial in being a result of careful design and implementation, before being gifted to the people who speak it. The triliteral root system means the entity who created the language (YHWH) built it on top the "platonic ideals" theory, except Platon wasn't yet born at the time. Every trilateral root conforms to one "platonic ideal" e.g. book -> read/write/learn. The platonic ideals we can only comprehend as much as shadowy reflections on a cave's wall, were (are) clearly laid out before his all-seeing eye.
This shows ur-semitic (the original form of arabic and hebrew) was not a result of natural evolution like PIE, but a carefully designed and implemented, ready-made gift bestowed from above on the carnivorous people of monotheism! Any later fractioning and splits are unfortunate results of corruption.
This realization also counters the theories promulgated by indo-aryan political supremacists, who want to posit sanskrit/PIE as the mother of all human languages and recently use it to push a poly-theistic, vegetarian agenda for hinduism, buddhism and germanic neo-paganism. 91.82.36.150 ( talk) 14:53, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
Under: Common vocabulary
The Arabic ʿ-r-f root does relate to the Hebrew root ʿ-r-f which stands for back-of-neck and to-behead. In the past people in this Semitic region used to hold or scratch the back of their necks when trying to remember something. It is noted by Maimonides somewhere but I cannot remember where (*scratching the back of my neck*). Also, the Arabic ʿ-l-m root corresponds with the Hebrew root for World (Olam), Youth (Elem) as well as invisible (Ne'elam) all connected to knowlege or lack thereof. Regarding Amharic, the root ʿ-w-q has an equivalent in Hebrew for words that deal with mental burden. The root f-l-ṭ can also be found in Hebrew in words related to discharge of matter as well as information. (I am a native Hebew speaker and Arabic lit. Major).
This article does not define all its terms or link to definitions. There is a discussion on "reflex" of a consonant and Akkadian with no way for a reader to know what the technical term "reflex" means. Referring to a source is inadequate because hardly any readers have access to it. If there's a non-technical word for this, use it. 100.15.120.162 ( talk) 13:47, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
I was expecting a schema with a language tree, it displays clearly the info, could you add it?
I wonder if someone here can give me a hand at Ladino Wikipedia. I am trying to merge two articles:
The surviving article, wherever it actually lives, will clearly be based on the text of the first article. But what I could use help on over there is to classify the languages listed in the second of the articles within the sections of the first article. So if any experts out there can help me I'd greatly appreciate that. Thanks. StevenJ81 ( talk) (administrator there) 15:32, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
Two maps in this article purport to show the Semitic language area in the 1st century AD and 1000-2000 years ago. I don't know about other areas, but the extension of the Ethio-Semitic area seems to me to be overambitious. I don't think there is any evidence that in the 1st century AD Ethio-Semitic was spoken anywhere outside what is now Eritrea. The map shows Amharic (a language that is only attested since the 12th century) spoken way south of Lake T'ana, and linguists agree that this area was entirely occupied by speakers of Cushitic languages well into the second half of the 2nd millennium. Do others agree with me that these maps need to be adjusted? As a starter, I would take out any reference to Amharic, and then better reflect the situation of the 1st millennium by pushing the Semitic boundary to north of the Tekeze river. Landroving Linguist ( talk) 11:20, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
According to the consonants table at the phonology section, Biblical Hebrew distinguished /ð/ and /z/ (both written as ז) and also /ʃ/ and /θ/ (both written as שׁ). I couldn't find any source for that claim in the article, and moreover it contradicts the Hebrew-Aramaic-Arabic fricative correspondence table below.
Another thing I noticed is the somewhat peculiar transliteration *ṱ for Biblical Hebrew צ. What does it stand for? 109.65.22.101 ( talk) 17:24, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
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Oranjelo100 added the following sources to the initial paragraph of the article: http://e-learning.tsu.ge/pluginfile.php/5868/mod_resource/content/0/dzveli_armosavluri_enebi_-ugarituli_punikuri_arameuli_ebrauli_arabuli.pdf, https://books.google.pl/books?id=KQpFAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA11&lpg=PA11&dq=old+south+arabian+central+semitic&source=bl&ots=pEV0cdsVOu&sig=o8Mg12NX6BsfCLes-2Roh2-AK5Y&hl=pl&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj4gOyTr_PTAhXE1xoKHf-4BbUQ6AEIfzAN#v=onepage&q=old%20south%20arabian%20central%20semitic&f=false and https://books.google.pl/books?id=LfruK29pVl8C&pg=PA124&lpg=PA124&dq=old+south+arabian+languages+grammar&source=bl&ots=C_2xqghETA&sig=iAxC60ax0rjqVYtObzAAP_RQLCY&hl=pl&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi-3_2N8PLTAhUFGZoKHdHxCKUQ6AEIczAN#v=onepage&q=old%20south%20arabian%20languages%20grammar&f=false. In the references section these sources show up as shown here. In fact, all three sources are good and relevant sources regarding Semitic languages, but what we see here in each case are cryptic links which entirely hide the identity of the sources unless you click on these links, pointing to google books or other websites. The first link actually leads to the whole book as a pdf, but the google book pages leave you in the dark what particular point is supposed to be supported here. I took these sources out as insufficiently documented, but got reverted on that by Oranjelo. I still believe that cryptic links don't satisfy the requirement of well documented sources, but I may be mistaken. Can others here clarify on how things should be done according to best practices or wikipedia policies? Landroving Linguist ( talk) 19:37, 26 May 2017 (UTC)
"Proto-Semitic *ś was still pronounced as [ɬ] in Biblical Hebrew, but no letter was available in the Phoenician alphabet, so the letter ש did double duty, representing both /ʃ/ and /ɬ/". No proof is produced of this assertion in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.153.143.86 ( talk) 13:31, 14 August 2017 (UTC)
My change to indicate the total number of Hebrew speakers at around 9 million ( https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Semitic_languages&oldid=809954069) was reverted by @ Landroving Linguist:.
The current figure of "unknown; 5 million native and non-native L1 speakers" seems to be inaccurate and out of date, and the idea of a "non-native L1 speaker" doesn't make sense. The references I added (borrowed from Hebrew language) indicate that there are around 9 million total speakers today. Almost all of the Jewish population of Israel (~6 million) speaks it, even though some struggle with the language as indicated in the reference, and about half the non-Jewish population (~50% × ~2 million), and a substantial population of Israeli expats and non-Israeli jews.
Hebrew has an unusually large proportion of non-native but fluent or near-fluent daily users, so listing only L1 speakers doesn't seem to make sense to me. — Moxfyre ( ǝɹʎℲxoɯ | contrib) 07:37, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
This:
most scripts used to write Semitic languages are abjads – a type of alphabetic script that omits some or all of the vowels, which is feasible for these languages because the consonants in the Semitic languages are the primary carriers of meaning.
contradicts this:
Words are composed out of 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 additional consonants, e.g. كتاب kitāb "book", كتب kutub "books", كاتب kātib "writer", كتّاب kuttāb "writers", كتب kataba "he wrote", يكتب yaktubu "he writes", etc.
-- Espoo ( talk) 10:23, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
The map on the left is not accurate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.174.232.113 ( talk) 15:59, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
Is there anyone who understand several semitic languages who can explain to us how closely the languages are related, for example in comparison to relationship between the Germanic languages such as English, German, Dutch, Danish. For a speaker of one semitic language, how easy is it to learn another one? How easy is it for a Hebrew speaker to learn or cross over to speaking Aramaic? How easy is it for an Arabic speaker to learn or cross over to speaking Hebrew? 2A00:23C5:C102:9E00:8829:E061:DE19:C46C ( talk) 00:50, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
§ Independent personal pronouns glosses second-person dual and plural pronouns with the archaic English word "ye", for no reason that I could see. The explicit quantifier ("dual", "plural") is quite sufficient and causes no confusion. I am changing "ye" to "you".
-- Thnidu ( talk) 15:09, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
The article states "Maltese is the only Semitic language written in the Latin script". However, Hasaniyya Arabic is written in the Latin script too (in Senegal). Should this article be changed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2603:3024:18F1:6400:6807:5709:C143:4261 ( talk) 21:56, 13 August 2020 (UTC)
Certainly, as long as there are WP: Reliable sources. If you can cite any, you can make the change yourself. -- Thnidu ( talk) 23:03, 15 August 2020 (UTC)
http://www.jo.gouv.sn/spip.php?article4790 looks promising? Ewx ( talk) 16:49, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
The map shows Babylonian, which became extinct centuries earlier. Hebrew was surely not as widely spoken as is shown. In fact, pretty much the entire middle east was speaking Aramaic back then. TFighterPilot ( talk) 20:19, 23 July 2021 (UTC)
Perhaps the page should mention https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.18.342816v2.full, which finds genetic evidence for population changes consistent with Kitchen 2009? Ewx ( talk) 19:34, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
I want to connect this article to other Wikipedia languages. Md. Rayan Alam Rifat ( talk) 18:31, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
Does anyone know what "originated" is intended to mean here? Is it meant as 'entered the Levant' or similar? The way it's written will surely suggest to readers not familiar with language evolution in general that the languages suddenly appeared out of nothing, i.e. nonsense. Enlightened re-wording is definitely in order. Barefoot through the chollas ( talk) 14:04, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
According to the Manual of Style MOS:ERA there is no preference between using BCE/CE and BC/AD, but it should be uniform within an article. In this article, BCE and BC seem to appear about equally often. I'm not going to make my choice, but I am just calling attention to the facts. TomS TDotO ( talk) 02:00, 20 April 2023 (UTC)