Canaanite languages

Moabite extinct Hebraic dialect of the

Moabite people mentioned in the Bible (not a
distinct language[3] )
Edomite extinct Hebraic dialect of the
Edomite people mentioned in the Bible (not
a distinct language[4] )
Biblical Hebrew extinct Hebraic dialect of
the ancient Jewish Israelites. Literary, poetical, liturgical; also known as Classical Hebrew, the oldest form of the language attested
in writing. The original pronunciation of Biblical Hebrew is only accessible through reconstruction. There are dierent pronunciations traditions associated with dierent diaspora groups, inuenced by vernacular languages spoken locally, which are listed below.
Tiberian Hebrew Masoretic scholars living in the Jewish community of
Tiberias in Palestine c. 750-950 CE.
Mizrahi Hebrew Mizrahi Jews,
liturgical
Yemenite Hebrew Yemenite Jews,
liturgical
Sephardi Hebrew Sephardi Jews,
liturgical
Ashkenazi Hebrew Ashkenazi
Jews, liturgical
Mishnaic Hebrew (Rabbinical Hebrew)
Jews, liturgical, rabbinical, any of the Hebrew dialects found in the Talmud.
Medieval Hebrew Jews, liturgical,
poetical, rabbinical, scientic, literary; lingua franca based on Bible,
Mishna and neologisms forms created by translators and commentators
Haskala Hebrew Jews, scientic,
literary and journalistic language
based on Biblical but enriched with
neologisms created by writers and
journalists, a transition to the later
Modern Hebrew Transformation
and enlargement of the former into
a spoken language which, in turn
emerged as the new contemporary
Israeli Hebrew
Israeli Hebrew Israelis (Jews,
Samaritans and others), the main
language of the State of Israel,
revived

The Canaanite languages are a subfamily of the Semitic

languages, which were spoken by the ancient peoples of the Canaan region, the Canaanites (including
the Israelites and Phoenicians), Amorites, Ammonites,
Moabites, Edomites, and Carthaginians. All of them
seem to have become extinct as native languages by the
early 1st millennium CE (although it is uncertain how
long Punic survived), although distinct forms of Hebrew
remained in continuous literary and religious use among
Jews and Samaritans. This family of languages has the
distinction of being the rst group of languages to use an
alphabet, derived from the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, to
record their writings.
The Phoenician and Carthaginian expansion spread the
Phoenician language and its Punic dialect to the Western
Mediterranean for a time, but there too it died out, although it seems to have survived slightly longer than in
Phoenicia itself.
Modern Hebrew as a spoken language is the result of a
revival by Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries in an effort spearheaded by Eliezer Ben Yehuda. It is currently
spoken as the colloquial language by the majority of the
Israeli population.

Classication

A part of the Classication of Semitic languages

Hebrew and Phoenician are the two major branches of
the subfamily. The Canaanite languages, together with
the Aramaic languages and Ugaritic, form the Northwest
Semitic genealogical subgroup. Eorts of classication
are complicated by the fact that some language varieties
thought to be Canaanite or closely related thereto have
few or no extant texts written in them, such as the Amorite
language.
Phoenician extinct
Punic extinct
Philistine Semitic, also known as Ekronite - not to be
confused with the pre-Semitic Philistine language.
It is attested by several dozen inscriptions in Phoenician script scattered along Israels southwest coast.
Hebrew
Ammonite extinct Hebraic dialect of the
Ammonite people mentioned in the Bible (not
a distinct language[2] )
1

6
Ancient Samaritan Hebrew extinct dialect
spoken by the ancient Samaritan Israelites
Samaritan Hebrew Samaritans, liturgical

Distinctive features

Some distinctive typological features of Canaanite in relation to Aramaic are:

The prex h- used as the denite article (whereas
Aramaic has a postxed -a). This seems to be an
innovation of Canaanite.
The rst person pronoun being nk ( anok(i), versus Aramaic n/ny) which is similar to Akkadian,
Ancient Egyptian and Berber.
The * > vowel shift (Canaanite shift).

Canaanite texts

See also: Ancient Hebrew writings

The main sources for study of Canaanite languages are
the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), and inscriptions such as:
in Moabite: Mesha Stele, El-Kerak Stela
in Biblical Hebrew:
Qeiyafa pottery sherd

Gezer calendar, Khirbet

in Phoenician: Ahiram sarcophagus inscription, sarcophagus of Eshmunazar,[5] Kilamuwa inscription,

the Byblos inscription
in later Punic: in Plautus' play Poenulus at the beginning of the fth act.
The Deir Alla Inscription is written in a dialect with
Aramaic and South Canaanite characteristics, which is
classied as Canaanite in Hetzron.
The extra-biblical Canaanite inscriptions are gathered
along with Aramaic inscriptions in editions of the book
"Kanaanische und Aramische Inschriften", from which
they may be referenced as KAI n (for a number n); for
example, the Mesha Stele is "KAI 181".

See also
Northwest Semitic languages
Ugaritic language

EXTERNAL LINKS

5 References
[1] Nordho, Sebastian; Hammarstrm, Harald; Forkel,
Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). Canaanite.
Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology.
[2] Harald Hammarstrm, Robert Forkel, Martin Haspelmath, and Sebastian Nordho (eds.). Language: Ammonite. Glottolog 2.3. Retrieved 11 November 2014.
[3] Harald Hammarstrm, Robert Forkel, Martin Haspelmath, and Sebastian Nordho (eds.).
Language:
Moabite. Glottolog 2.3. Retrieved 11 November 2014.
[4] Harald Hammarstrm, Robert Forkel, Martin Haspelmath, and Sebastian Nordho (eds.).
Language:
Edomite. Glottolog 2.3. Retrieved 11 November 2014.
[5]

The Semitic Languages. Routledge Language Family

Descriptions. Edited by Robert Hetzron. New York:
Routledge, 1997.
Garnier, Romain; Jacques, Guillaume (2012). A
neglected phonetic law: The assimilation of pretonic
yod to a following coronal in North-West Semitic.
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies
75.1: 135145. doi:10.1017/s0041977x11001261.

6 External links
Some West Semitic Inscriptions
How the Alphabet Was Born from Hieroglyphs Biblical Archaeology Review

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