ABSTRACT

Let me start with what I mean by “Semitic” in this context. What is often referred to as the “family of Semitic languages,” or, more correctly, the Hamito-Semitic family, is not easy to define. Philologists can tell us who the members of the family are (and were) by pointing out common threads in the languages in question. But they are less certain about the parents or whether parents ever actually existed at the start of the family tree from which various languages and dialects later evolved. Rabin (1999) suggested that the common threads in Semitic languages were developed in regions where these languages were spoken, and that the notion of branches that preceded the languages themselves is somewhat mistaken. Even researchers who trace the genesis of Semitic languages to a single source admit, as Faber (1997) stated, that “In particular cases, it may be difficult-if not impossible-to determine whether a particular similarity between two Semitic languages results from their shared ancestry or from subsequent contact” (pp. 3-4). Such a subsequent contact might have been of various kinds-political, cultural, economic, commercial, and many others. We know of major influences such as Akkadian, Amorite, and Hamitic on Semitic languages spoken far beyond their regions. Interestingly, both Rabin and Faber, who cautioned against genetic speculations, continued to use the term Proto-Semitic in postulating an ancient parent of Semitic languages. I am not in a position to settle this issue, so my discussion is limited to the geographic perimeters of the spoken Semitic languages, past and present, listing the groups of languages in different regions of the “Semitic space.” I also briefly mention aspects of similarity in Semitic languages.