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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.
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.
Paleo-Arabic (or Palaeo-Arabic, previously called pre-Islamic Arabic or Old Arabic [1] [2]) is a pre-Islamic Arabian script used to write Arabic. It began to be used in the fifth century, when it succeeded the earlier Nabataeo-Arabic script, and it was used until the early seventh century, when the Arabic script was standardized in the Islamic era.
Ahmed Sharaf Al-Din has argued that the relationship between the Arabic alphabet and the Nabataeans is only due to the influence of the latter after its emergence (from Ancient South Arabian script). [2] Arabic has a one-to-one correspondence with ancient South Arabian script except for the letter 𐩯 (reconstructed Proto-Semitic s³).
The alphabet is descended from the Aramaic alphabet. In turn, a cursive form of Nabataean developed into the Arabic alphabet from the 4th century, [3] which is why Nabataean's letterforms are intermediate between the more northerly Semitic scripts (such as the Aramaic-derived Hebrew) and those of Arabic. Inscription in the Nabataean script.
Medieval Hebrew was a literary and liturgical language that existed between the 4th and 19th century. It was not commonly used as a spoken language, but mainly in written form by rabbis, scholars and poets. Medieval Hebrew had many features distinguishing it from older forms of Hebrew.
Sabaic is the best attested language in South Arabian inscriptions, named after the Kingdom of Saba, and is documented over a millennium. [4] In the linguistic history of this region, there are three main phases of the evolution of the language: Late Sabaic (10th–2nd centuries BC), Middle Sabaic (2nd century BC–mid-4th century AD), and Late Sabaic (mid-4th century AD–eve of Islam). [16]
The West Semitic languages consist of the clearly defined sub-groups: Modern South Arabian, Old South Arabian, Ethiopic, Arabic (including Maltese), and Northwest Semitic (this including Hebrew, Aramaic, and the extinct Amorite and Ugaritic languages). [5] The East Semitic languages, meanwhile, consist of the extinct Eblaite and Akkadian ...