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The root l-ḥ-m means "meat" in Arabic, but "bread" in Hebrew and "cow" in Ethiopian Semitic; the original meaning was most probably "food". The word medina (root: d-y-n/d-w-n) has the meaning of "metropolis" in Amharic, "city" in Arabic and Ancient Hebrew, and "State" in Modern Hebrew. There is sometimes no relation between the roots.
Modern languages. Modern Arabic [1] < Classical Arabic ( 7th-10th century AD) < Old Arabic (5th century BC. -6th AD) < Proto-Arabic < Central Proto-Semitic; Coptic (3rd-17th century) [2] < Egyptian demotic (4th BC – 1st century AD) < Late Ancient Egyptian (c. 1350-700 BC) < Classical Egyptian (c. 2000-1350 BC) < Archaic Egyptian (3300-2000 BC)
Old Arabic and its descendants are classified as Central Semitic languages, which is an intermediate language group containing the Northwest Semitic languages (e.g., Aramaic and Hebrew), the languages of the Dadanitic, Taymanitic inscriptions, the poorly understood languages labeled Thamudic, and the ancient languages of Yemen written in the Ancient South Arabian script.
In languages not directly in contact with the Arab world, Arabic loanwords are often transferred indirectly via other languages rather than being transferred directly from Arabic. For example, most Arabic loanwords in Hindustani and Turkish entered through Persian. Older Arabic loanwords in Hausa were borrowed from Kanuri.
There is no consensus among scholars whether Arabic diglossia (between Classical Arabic, also called "Old Arabic" and Arabic vernaculars, also called "New Arabic" or "Neo-Arabic") was the result of the Islamic conquests and due to the influence of non-Arabic languages or whether it was already the natural state in 7th-century Arabia (which ...
The Arabic grammarians of North Africa changed the new letters, which explains the differences between the alphabets of the East and the Maghreb. The old alphabetical order, as in the other alphabets shown here, is known as the Levantine or Abjadi order. If the letters are arranged by their numeric order, the Levantine order is restored:
Approximate historical distribution of the Semitic languages in the Ancient Near East.. Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples or Proto-Semitic people were speakers of Semitic languages who lived throughout the ancient Near East and North Africa, including the Levant, Mesopotamia, the Arabian Peninsula and Carthage from the 3rd millennium BC until the end of antiquity, with some, such as Arabs ...
Façade of Al Khazneh in Petra, Jordan, built by the Nabateans.. Ancient North Arabian texts give a clearer picture of Arabic's developmental history and emergence. Ancient North Arabian is a collection of texts from Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria which not only recorded ancient forms of Arabic, such as Safaitic and Hismaic, but also of pre-Arabic languages previously spoken in the Arabian ...