Ancient North Arabian is a language known from fragmentary inscriptions in modern day Iraq

Iraq

Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

, Jordan

Jordan

Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...

, Syria

Syria

Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....

 and Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...

, dating to between roughly the 6th century BC and the 6th century AD, all written in scripts derived from Epigraphic South Arabian. Pre-classical Arabic (or Old Arabic), the predecessor of Classical Arabic

Classical Arabic

Classical Arabic , also known as Qur'anic or Koranic Arabic, is the form of the Arabic language used in literary texts from Umayyad and Abbasid times . It is based on the Medieval dialects of Arab tribes...

, seems to have coexisted with these languages in central and north Arabia.
However, it remained spoken until it was first attested in an inscription in Qaryat Al-Faw (Qaryat Dhat Kahil) in the 1st century BC.

Ancient North Arabian includes a number of closely related extinct dialects of pre-Islamic Arabia

Pre-Islamic Arabia

Pre-Islamic Arabia refers to the Arabic civilization which existed in the Arabian Plate before the rise of Islam in the 630s. The study of Pre-Islamic Arabia is important to Islamic studies as it provides the context for the development of Islam.-Studies:...

, summarized as Ancient or Old North Arabian (ISO 639-3

ISO 639-3

ISO 639-3:2007, Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 3: Alpha-3 code for comprehensive coverage of languages, is an international standard for language codes in the ISO 639 series. The standard describes three‐letter codes for identifying languages. It extends the ISO 639-2...

 xna), including:

• Safaitic
  Safaitic
  Safaitic is the name given to an Old North Arabian dialect, preserved in the form of inscriptions which are written in a type of South Semitic script. These inscriptions were written by bedouin and semi-nomadic inhabitants of the Syro-Arabian desert...
  
  
• Dedanitic/Lihyan
  Lihyan
  Lihyan is an ancient Arab kingdom. It was located in northwestern Arabia, and is known for its Old North Arabian inscriptions dating to ca...
  
  itic (Dedanite/Lihyanite)
• Thamudic
  Thamudic
  Thamudic is an Old North Arabian dialect known from pre-Islamic inscriptions scattered across the Arabian desert and the Sinai. Dating to between the 4th century BC and the 3rd or 4th century AD, they were incorrectly named after the Thamud people, with whom they are not directly...
  
  
• Hasaitic
  Hasaitic
  Hasaitic is an Old North Arabian dialect attested in inscriptions in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia at Thaj, Hinna, Qatif, Ras Tanura, Abqaiq in the al-Hasa region, Ayn Jawan, Mileiha and at Uruk....
  
  
• Hismaic
• Taymanitic
• Dumaitic

The main characteristic differences between Classical Arabic and Ancient North Arabian:

• The definite article is h-/hn- (or zero) in Ancient North Arabian and al- in CA. However, the oldest evidence of both articles occurs in the 5th century BC, in the epithet of a goddess which Herodotus
  Herodotus
  Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
  
   quotes in its preclassical Arabic form as ʼal-ʼilat, and which occurs in its Ancient North Arabian form as hn-ʼlt in a number of Aramaic inscriptions. Both mean "the goddess".
• Verb
  Verb
  A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
  
   morphology differences regarding weak roots and roots with a doubled consonant. Ancient North Arabian banaya becomes banā in CA, and bayata becomes bāta and ʼaẓlala becomes ʼaẓalla.
• In Dedanite, verb stem IV can occur in the form hafʻal(a) (perfect) and yuhafʻil(u) (imperfect). Dedanite also uses the Classical form of verb stem IV (ʼafʻala and yufʻilu).
• As in Classical Arabic, the common word order in Ancient North Arabian is VSO, but most Dedanite inscriptions show a SVO order.
• Most Ancient North Arabian languages have 28 consonantal phonemes (similar to CA). There are, however, some variations in the "s" sibilants among Ancient North Arabian languages and Classical Arabic. Taymanite has only 27 phonemes (lacks the ظ "ẓ" phoneme).
• Nasal assimilation of the vowelless "n" occurs in some Ancient North Arabian languages: ʼintaẓar "wait" becomes ʼittaẓar, and bnt "daughter" becomes bt. (The same happens in Hebrew.)
• Safaitic shows considerable alternations in roots between w and y, e.g. wrḫ which becomes yrḫ "month". (This change is also characteristic of Northwest Semitic languages).
• Safaitic and Hismaic show a -y where CA has -ā or -āʼ, such as CA samāʼ (which means heaven or sky) which occurs as smy. This y could also indicate a diphthong (ay).
• Compound (non-construct) names are more frequent in Ancient North Arabian, and occur in a manner similar to that found in Northwest Semitic names. For example:
  • ʼl-rym (ʼil-riyām): which means "high ʼil"
  • ʼl-ntn (ʼil-natan)
  • ntn-ʼl (natan-ʼil): which means "ʼil has given"; equivalent of Nathaniel.
  • ṣlm-nʻmt
  • ṣlm-ntn
  • yhyṯʻ-nʻmt (yuhayṯiʻ-niʻmat): which means "the one who assists niʻmat". yuhayṯiʻ being the imperfect aspect of Dedanite verb stem IV (root y-ṯ-ʻ).
  • ḫršt-nʻmt (ḫaršat-niʻmat)
  • mt-nʻmt (this name also occurs in Phoenician inscriptions)

ʼil and niʻmat being deity names.

Literature

• Lozachmeur, H., (ed.), (1995) Presence arabe dans le croissant fertile avant l'Hegire (Actes de la table ronde internationale Paris, 13 Novembre 1993) Paris: Editions Recherche sur les Civilisations. ISBN 286538 2540
• Macdonald, M.C.A., (2000) "Reflections on the linguistic map of pre-Islamic Arabia" Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 11(1), 28–79
• Scagliarini, F., (1999) "The Dedanitic inscriptions from Jabal 'Ikma in north-western Hejaz" Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 29, 143-150 ISBN 2-503-50829-4
• Winnett, F.V. and Reed, W.L., (1970) Ancient Records from North Arabia (Toronto: University of Toronto
  University of Toronto
  The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...
  
  )
• Woodard, Roger D. Ancient Languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia. Cambridge University Press
  Cambridge University Press
  Cambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest publishing house, and the second largest university press in the world...
  
  2008.