Proto-Semitic language
Encyclopedia
Proto-Semitic is the hypothetical proto-language
ancestral to historical Semitic languages
of the Middle East
. Locations which have been proposed for its origination include northern Mesopotamia
, the Arabian Peninsula
, and the Levant
with a 2009 study proposing that it may have originated around 5,700 years BP
. The Semitic language family is considered a component of the larger Afroasiatic macro-family of languages.
, dating to ca. the 23rd century BC
(see Sargon of Akkad
) and Eblaite, but earlier evidence of Akkadian comes from personal names in Sumer
ian texts. Researchers in Egypt
also claim to have discovered Canaan
ite snake spells that "date from between 3000 and 2400 B.C.".
has been a constant pattern of human movement in the Middle East since antiquity. As such, the Arabian peninsula
has long been accepted as the original Semitic Urheimat
by a majority of scholars. Older theories positing Mesopotamia
as the Semitic homeland were severely undermined by the identification of the non-Semitic Sumerian culture in Mesopotamia in the late 19th century, which is now generally believed to have predated the Semitic culture in Mesopotamia by many centuries. A mainstream view nowadays maintains that the first wave of Semitic-speakers infiltrated Mesopotamia in the first half of the third millennium BC. A second Amorite
wave is generally believed to have followed around 2000 BC. This Amorite wave was responsible for emergence of the Old Babylonian Empire
and of such urban centers in the west as Ugarit
. An Aramean wave of migration towards the fertile crescent followed in the second half of the second millennium BC. The emergence of the Israelite nation in Canaan
should have occurred around this time, although the origin of the Israelites remains a matter of debate. The Arab
waves of migration toward the fertile crescent started in the last millennium BC and culminated in the 7th century CE with the great Islamic expansion
, which by far surpassed all previous expansions, reaching a maximum extent from southern France
to the borders of China
.
The presence of a non-Semitic culture predating the Canaanites in Canaan has not been proven by archeology. However, a traditional account transmitted by many Greek historians and accepted unanimously in pre-modern times points to a Phoenicia
n (Canaanite) origin in Mesopotamia, to which the Phoenicians had reportedly arrived from the Arabian shores of the Persian Gulf
. Although many attempts have been made to discredit this entire story, it remains accepted.
Given that Proto-Semitic would have been an Afroasiatic language, some believe that the first prehistoric speakers of the ancestral Proto-Semitic language came from Ethiopia
, which would have been the Proto-Semitic homeland. New research, however, suggests that South Semitic
may have been introduced to Ethiopia sometime before the 8th century BC. This is also supported by the presence of nouns in Proto-Semitic that seemingly make an African origin for the language impossible – ice
, oak
, horse
and camel
. The camel and horse did not arrive in Africa until nearly two thousand years after Semitic languages were being written in the Mesopotamia
area.
Other more recent work suggests Syria
/Mesopotamia
as the homeland for Proto-Semitic, due to the flora and fauna described by it, which include oak, pistachio and almond trees and the horse. The presence of ice and four different words for hill also suggest a colder, more mountainous area than Arabia. Eblaite, one of the oldest Semitic languages, when deciphered turned out to have almost no non-Afroasiatic nouns in its lexicon, suggesting a very long presence in the Syria area. Bitumen and naphtha
were also well known and have root words, and these are resources not found in Africa or Arabia, but commonly in the northern parts of the Levant
. Christopher Ehret argues on this basis that there are two possible homelands for Semitic, Northern Mesopotamia where Western Semitic broke away from Eastern Semitic; or the Levant. Ehret states "Because of the many indications that non-Semitic languages predominated in Mesopotamia and all around its northern and eastern flanks in the pre-state eras—and that Akkadian therefore was likely intrusive to that region—the second solution seems by far the more probable of the two. The Levant
regions, as the part of Asia nearest and more directly connected to Africa, also make much better sense as the proto-Semitic territory, considering the solely African locations of all the rest of the Afrasan family." A more recent study by Andrew Kitchen and others using Bayesian techniques in phylogenetic analysis
identifies a place of origin for Semitic in the Levant, suggesting that Akkadian
is the most basal of Semitic languages.
Juris Zarins
has suggested the development of a Circum-Arabian Nomadic Pastoral Complex of cultures in the period of the 6,200 BCE climatic crisis, stretching from the Red Sea shoreline and northeastward into modern day Syria and Iraq, which spread Proto-Semitic languages through the region. This complex may have developed from the fusion of Harifian
and Pre-Pottery Neolithic B
cultures in the Southern Levant, first evidenced in the Munhata
culture and later Yarmukian culture of the region.
As Harifian used the Outacha retouch point technique found earlier in the Fayyum, it has been suggested that Proto-Semitic may have come from Egypt across the Sinai. The climatic recovery during the Chalcolithic, led to the development of the secondary products revolution
and the Ghassulian
culture, pioneering the Mediterranean mixed economy with subsistence horticulture
, extensive grain
farming, commercial production of olives and wine
, and nomadic transhumance
pastoralism
. The mix has varied historically with climate change
. The Ghassulians are usually accepted as being early Semitic speakers.
, which preserves 28 out of the evident 29 consonantal phonemes. Thus, the phonemic inventory of reconstructed Proto-Semitic is very similar to that of Arabic, with only one phoneme less in Arabic than in reconstructed Proto-Semitic.
As such, Proto-Semitic is generally reconstructed as having the following phoneme
s (as usually transcribed in Semitology):
The probable phonetic realization of most consonants is straightforward, and is indicated in the table with the IPA
. Two subsets of consonants however call for further comment:
See Semitic languages#Phonology for a fuller discussion of the various theories concerning the pronunciation of the Proto-Semitic sounds and their outcomes in the various daughter languages.
These are the basic numeral stems without feminine suffixes. Note that in most older Semitic languages, the forms of the numerals from 3 to 10 exhibit gender polarity (also called "chiastic concord" or reverse agreement), i.e. if the counted noun is masculine, the numeral would be feminine and vice versa.
Proto-language
A proto-language in the tree model of historical linguistics is the common ancestor of the languages that form a language family. Occasionally, the German term Ursprache is used instead.Often the proto-language is not known directly...
ancestral to historical Semitic languages
Semitic languages
The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 270 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...
of the Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
. Locations which have been proposed for its origination include northern Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...
, the Arabian Peninsula
Arabian Peninsula
The Arabian Peninsula is a land mass situated north-east of Africa. Also known as Arabia or the Arabian subcontinent, it is the world's largest peninsula and covers 3,237,500 km2...
, and the Levant
Levant
The Levant or ) is the geographic region and culture zone of the "eastern Mediterranean littoral between Anatolia and Egypt" . The Levant includes most of modern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and sometimes parts of Turkey and Iraq, and corresponds roughly to the...
with a 2009 study proposing that it may have originated around 5,700 years BP
Before Present
Before Present years is a time scale used in archaeology, geology, and other scientific disciplines to specify when events in the past occurred. Because the "present" time changes, standard practice is to use AD 1950 as the origin of the age scale, reflecting the fact that radiocarbon...
. The Semitic language family is considered a component of the larger Afroasiatic macro-family of languages.
Dating
The earliest attestations of a Semitic language are in AkkadianAkkadian language
Akkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate...
, dating to ca. the 23rd century BC
23rd century BC
The 23rd century BC is a century which lasted from the year 2300 BC to 2201 BC.-Events:*2334 BC – 2279 BC: Sargon of Akkad's conquest of Mesopotamia....
(see Sargon of Akkad
Sargon of Akkad
Sargon of Akkad, also known as Sargon the Great "the Great King" , was an Akkadian emperor famous for his conquest of the Sumerian city-states in the 23rd and 22nd centuries BC. The founder of the Dynasty of Akkad, Sargon reigned in the last quarter of the third millennium BC...
) and Eblaite, but earlier evidence of Akkadian comes from personal names in Sumer
Sumer
Sumer was a civilization and historical region in southern Mesopotamia, modern Iraq during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age....
ian texts. Researchers in Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
also claim to have discovered Canaan
Canaan
Canaan is a historical region roughly corresponding to modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and the western parts of Jordan...
ite snake spells that "date from between 3000 and 2400 B.C.".
Homeland
Migration from Arabia into the fertile crescentFertile Crescent
The Fertile Crescent, nicknamed "The Cradle of Civilization" for the fact the first civilizations started there, is a crescent-shaped region containing the comparatively moist and fertile land of otherwise arid and semi-arid Western Asia. The term was first used by University of Chicago...
has been a constant pattern of human movement in the Middle East since antiquity. As such, the Arabian peninsula
Arabian Peninsula
The Arabian Peninsula is a land mass situated north-east of Africa. Also known as Arabia or the Arabian subcontinent, it is the world's largest peninsula and covers 3,237,500 km2...
has long been accepted as the original Semitic Urheimat
Urheimat
Urheimat is a linguistic term denoting the original homeland of the speakers of a proto-language...
by a majority of scholars. Older theories positing Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...
as the Semitic homeland were severely undermined by the identification of the non-Semitic Sumerian culture in Mesopotamia in the late 19th century, which is now generally believed to have predated the Semitic culture in Mesopotamia by many centuries. A mainstream view nowadays maintains that the first wave of Semitic-speakers infiltrated Mesopotamia in the first half of the third millennium BC. A second Amorite
Amorite
Amorite refers to an ancient Semitic people who occupied large parts of Mesopotamia from the 21st Century BC...
wave is generally believed to have followed around 2000 BC. This Amorite wave was responsible for emergence of the Old Babylonian Empire
Babylonia
Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia , with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as a major power when Hammurabi Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as...
and of such urban centers in the west as Ugarit
Ugarit
Ugarit was an ancient port city in the eastern Mediterranean at the Ras Shamra headland near Latakia, Syria. It is located near Minet el-Beida in northern Syria. It is some seven miles north of Laodicea ad Mare and approximately fifty miles east of Cyprus...
. An Aramean wave of migration towards the fertile crescent followed in the second half of the second millennium BC. The emergence of the Israelite nation in Canaan
Canaan
Canaan is a historical region roughly corresponding to modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and the western parts of Jordan...
should have occurred around this time, although the origin of the Israelites remains a matter of debate. The Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
waves of migration toward the fertile crescent started in the last millennium BC and culminated in the 7th century CE with the great Islamic expansion
Muslim conquests
Muslim conquests also referred to as the Islamic conquests or Arab conquests, began with the Islamic prophet Muhammad. He established a new unified polity in the Arabian Peninsula which under the subsequent Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates saw a century of rapid expansion of Muslim power.They...
, which by far surpassed all previous expansions, reaching a maximum extent from southern France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
to the borders of China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
.
The presence of a non-Semitic culture predating the Canaanites in Canaan has not been proven by archeology. However, a traditional account transmitted by many Greek historians and accepted unanimously in pre-modern times points to a Phoenicia
Phoenicia
Phoenicia , was an ancient civilization in Canaan which covered most of the western, coastal part of the Fertile Crescent. Several major Phoenician cities were built on the coastline of the Mediterranean. It was an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean from 1550...
n (Canaanite) origin in Mesopotamia, to which the Phoenicians had reportedly arrived from the Arabian shores of the Persian Gulf
Persian Gulf
The Persian Gulf, in Southwest Asia, is an extension of the Indian Ocean located between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula.The Persian Gulf was the focus of the 1980–1988 Iran-Iraq War, in which each side attacked the other's oil tankers...
. Although many attempts have been made to discredit this entire story, it remains accepted.
Given that Proto-Semitic would have been an Afroasiatic language, some believe that the first prehistoric speakers of the ancestral Proto-Semitic language came from Ethiopia
Ethiopia
Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...
, which would have been the Proto-Semitic homeland. New research, however, suggests that South Semitic
South Semitic
South Semitic is a commonly accepted branch of the Semitic languages. Semitic itself is a branch of the larger Afro-Asiatic language family found in Africa and Asia....
may have been introduced to Ethiopia sometime before the 8th century BC. This is also supported by the presence of nouns in Proto-Semitic that seemingly make an African origin for the language impossible – ice
Ice
Ice is water frozen into the solid state. Usually ice is the phase known as ice Ih, which is the most abundant of the varying solid phases on the Earth's surface. It can appear transparent or opaque bluish-white color, depending on the presence of impurities or air inclusions...
, oak
Oak
An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus Quercus , of which about 600 species exist. "Oak" may also appear in the names of species in related genera, notably Lithocarpus...
, horse
Horse
The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...
and camel
Camel
A camel is an even-toed ungulate within the genus Camelus, bearing distinctive fatty deposits known as humps on its back. There are two species of camels: the dromedary or Arabian camel has a single hump, and the bactrian has two humps. Dromedaries are native to the dry desert areas of West Asia,...
. The camel and horse did not arrive in Africa until nearly two thousand years after Semitic languages were being written in the Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...
area.
Other more recent work suggests 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....
/Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...
as the homeland for Proto-Semitic, due to the flora and fauna described by it, which include oak, pistachio and almond trees and the horse. The presence of ice and four different words for hill also suggest a colder, more mountainous area than Arabia. Eblaite, one of the oldest Semitic languages, when deciphered turned out to have almost no non-Afroasiatic nouns in its lexicon, suggesting a very long presence in the Syria area. Bitumen and naphtha
Naphtha
Naphtha normally refers to a number of different flammable liquid mixtures of hydrocarbons, i.e., a component of natural gas condensate or a distillation product from petroleum, coal tar or peat boiling in a certain range and containing certain hydrocarbons. It is a broad term covering among the...
were also well known and have root words, and these are resources not found in Africa or Arabia, but commonly in the northern parts of the Levant
Levant
The Levant or ) is the geographic region and culture zone of the "eastern Mediterranean littoral between Anatolia and Egypt" . The Levant includes most of modern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and sometimes parts of Turkey and Iraq, and corresponds roughly to the...
. Christopher Ehret argues on this basis that there are two possible homelands for Semitic, Northern Mesopotamia where Western Semitic broke away from Eastern Semitic; or the Levant. Ehret states "Because of the many indications that non-Semitic languages predominated in Mesopotamia and all around its northern and eastern flanks in the pre-state eras—and that Akkadian therefore was likely intrusive to that region—the second solution seems by far the more probable of the two. The Levant
Levant
The Levant or ) is the geographic region and culture zone of the "eastern Mediterranean littoral between Anatolia and Egypt" . The Levant includes most of modern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and sometimes parts of Turkey and Iraq, and corresponds roughly to the...
regions, as the part of Asia nearest and more directly connected to Africa, also make much better sense as the proto-Semitic territory, considering the solely African locations of all the rest of the Afrasan family." A more recent study by Andrew Kitchen and others using Bayesian techniques in phylogenetic analysis
Bayesian inference in phylogeny
Bayesian inference in phylogeny generates a posterior distribution for a parameter, composed of a phylogenetic tree and a model of evolution, based on the prior for that parameter and the likelihood of the data, generated by a multiple alignment. The Bayesian approach has become more popular due...
identifies a place of origin for Semitic in the Levant, suggesting that Akkadian
Akkadian language
Akkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate...
is the most basal of Semitic languages.
Juris Zarins
Juris Zarins
Juris Zarins is an American-Latvian archaeologist and professor at Missouri State University, who specializes in the Middle East....
has suggested the development of a Circum-Arabian Nomadic Pastoral Complex of cultures in the period of the 6,200 BCE climatic crisis, stretching from the Red Sea shoreline and northeastward into modern day Syria and Iraq, which spread Proto-Semitic languages through the region. This complex may have developed from the fusion of Harifian
Harifian
The Harifian is a specialized regional cultural development of the Epipalaeolithic of the Negev Desert. It corresponds to the latest stages of the Natufian culture. Like the Natufian, it is characterized by semi-subterranean houses. These are often more elaborate than those found at Natufian sites...
and Pre-Pottery Neolithic B
Pre-Pottery Neolithic B
Pre-Pottery Neolithic B is a division of the Neolithic developed by Dame Kathleen Kenyon during her archaeological excavations at Jericho in the southern Levant region....
cultures in the Southern Levant, first evidenced in the Munhata
Munhata
Munhata is an archaeological site south of Lake Tiberius, Israel on the north bank and near the outlet of Nahal Tavor on a terrace below sea level.-Excavations:...
culture and later Yarmukian culture of the region.
As Harifian used the Outacha retouch point technique found earlier in the Fayyum, it has been suggested that Proto-Semitic may have come from Egypt across the Sinai. The climatic recovery during the Chalcolithic, led to the development of the secondary products revolution
Secondary products revolution
Andrew Sherratt's model of a secondary products revolution involved a widespread and broadly contemporaneous set of innovations in Old World farming...
and the Ghassulian
Ghassulian
Ghassulian refers to a culture and an archaeological stage dating to the Middle Chalcolithic Period in the Southern Levant...
culture, pioneering the Mediterranean mixed economy with subsistence horticulture
Horticulture
Horticulture is the industry and science of plant cultivation including the process of preparing soil for the planting of seeds, tubers, or cuttings. Horticulturists work and conduct research in the disciplines of plant propagation and cultivation, crop production, plant breeding and genetic...
, extensive grain
GRAIN
GRAIN is a small international non-profit organisation that works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems. Our support takes the form of independent research and analysis, networking at local, regional and...
farming, commercial production of olives and wine
Wine
Wine is an alcoholic beverage, made of fermented fruit juice, usually from grapes. The natural chemical balance of grapes lets them ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, or other nutrients. Grape wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast...
, and nomadic transhumance
Transhumance
Transhumance is the seasonal movement of people with their livestock between fixed summer and winter pastures. In montane regions it implies movement between higher pastures in summer and to lower valleys in winter. Herders have a permanent home, typically in valleys. Only the herds travel, with...
pastoralism
Pastoralism
Pastoralism or pastoral farming is the branch of agriculture concerned with the raising of livestock. It is animal husbandry: the care, tending and use of animals such as camels, goats, cattle, yaks, llamas, and sheep. It may have a mobile aspect, moving the herds in search of fresh pasture and...
. The mix has varied historically with climate change
Climate change
Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...
. The Ghassulians are usually accepted as being early Semitic speakers.
Phonology
The reconstruction of Proto-Semitic was originally based primarily on the Arabic languageArabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, which preserves 28 out of the evident 29 consonantal phonemes. Thus, the phonemic inventory of reconstructed Proto-Semitic is very similar to that of Arabic, with only one phoneme less in Arabic than in reconstructed Proto-Semitic.
As such, Proto-Semitic is generally reconstructed as having the following phoneme
Phoneme
In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
s (as usually transcribed in Semitology):
Inventory
| Labial Labial consonant Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals... |
Inter- dental Interdental consonant Interdental consonants are produced by placing the blade of the tongue against the upper incisors... |
Dental/ Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth... |
Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate... |
Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
Pharyn- geal Pharyngeal consonant A pharyngeal consonant is a type of consonant which is articulated with the root of the tongue against the pharynx.-Pharyngeal consonants in the IPA:Pharyngeal consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet :... |
Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider... |
|||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Central Central consonant A central or medial consonant is a consonant sound that is produced when air flows across the center of the mouth over the tongue. The class contrasts with lateral consonants, in which air flows over the sides of the tongue rather than down its center.... |
Lateral Lateral consonant A lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth.... |
||||||||
| Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :... |
*m [m] | *n [n] | |||||||
| Stop Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &... |
voiceless | *p [p] | *t [t] | *k [k] | [ʔ] | ||||
| voiced | *b [b] | *d [d] | *g [ɡ] | ||||||
| emphatic | [tʼ] | *q [kʼ] | |||||||
| Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or... or affricate Affricate consonant Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :... |
voiceless | [θ] | *š [s] *s [ts] |
*ś [ɬ] | [x] | [ħ] | *h [h] | ||
| voiced | [ð] | *z [dz] | *ġ [ɣ] | [ʕ] | |||||
| emphatic | [θʼ] | [tsʼ] | [tɬʼ] | ||||||
| Trill Trill consonant In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. Standard Spanish <rr> as in perro is an alveolar trill, while in Parisian French it is almost always uvular.... |
*r [r] | ||||||||
| Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no... |
*l [l] | *y [j] | *w [w] | ||||||
| Back | Front | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Pure Vowels | High | } } | } } |
| Low | } } | ||
| Diphthongs | } | } | |
The probable phonetic realization of most consonants is straightforward, and is indicated in the table with the IPA
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
. Two subsets of consonants however call for further comment:
- The sounds notated here as "emphaticEmphatic consonantEmphatic consonant is a term widely used in Semitic linguistics to describe one of a series of obstruent consonants which originally contrasted with series of both voiced and voiceless obstruents. In specific Semitic languages, the members of this series may be realized as pharyngealized,...
" sounds occur in nearly all Semitic languages, as well as in most other Afroasiatic languages, and are generally reconstructed as glottalized in Proto-Semitic. This explains why there is no voicing distinction in the emphatic series (which wouldn't be necessary if the emphatics were pharyngealized). Thus, *ṭ for example represents [tʼ]. (See below for the fricatives/affricates). - The reconstruction of Proto-Semitic (PS) has nine fricative sounds that develop into sibilants at various points in later languages, although it is a matter of dispute whether all started as sibilants already in PS, and whether they were fricatives or affricates in PS. The precise sound of the PS fricatives, notably of , , , and , remains a perplexing problem, and there are various systems of notation to describe them. Many authors now posit values that differ significantly from what these symbols would normally suggest (hence, it may be more appropriate to designate them with , and ), but the older transcription remains predominant in most literature, often even among scholars positing the new pronunciation.
See Semitic languages#Phonology for a fuller discussion of the various theories concerning the pronunciation of the Proto-Semitic sounds and their outcomes in the various daughter languages.
Correspondence of Sounds with other Afroasiatic languages
See table at Proto-Afroasiatic language#Consonant correspondences.Independent Personal Pronouns
| Person | Singular | Dual | Plural | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | ||||
| 2nd | masculine | |||
| feminine | ||||
| 3rd | masculine | |||
| feminine | ||||
Cardinal numerals
These are the basic numeral stems without feminine suffixes. Note that in most older Semitic languages, the forms of the numerals from 3 to 10 exhibit gender polarity (also called "chiastic concord" or reverse agreement), i.e. if the counted noun is masculine, the numeral would be feminine and vice versa.
Comparative vocabulary and reconstructed roots
See appendix in WiktionarySee also
- Afroasiatic languages
- History of the alphabetHistory of the alphabetThe origins of the alphabet are unknown, but there are several theories as to how it developed. One popular proposal — the Proto-Sinaitic theory — is that the history of the alphabet began in Ancient Egypt, more than a millennium into the history of writing...
- Proto-Afroasiatic
- Proto-Indo-European languageProto-Indo-European languageThe Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...