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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 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. For example, "knowledge" is represented in Hebrew by the root y-d-ʿ , but in Arabic by the roots ʿ-r-f and ʿ-l-m and in Ethiosemitic by the roots ...
The first known recorded text in the Arabic alphabet is known as the Zabad inscription, composed in 512. It is a trilingual dedication in Greek, Syriac and Arabic found at the village of Zabad in northwestern Syria. The version of the Arabic alphabet used includes only 21 letters, of which only 15 are different, being used to note 28 phonemes:
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.
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.
Modern Hebrew, revived in the modern era from an extinct dialect of the ancient Israelites preserved in literature, poetry, liturgy; also known as Classical Hebrew, the oldest form of the language attested in writing. The original pronunciation of Biblical Hebrew is accessible only through reconstruction.
The Paleo-Hebrew script (Hebrew: הכתב העברי הקדום), also Palaeo-Hebrew, Proto-Hebrew or Old Hebrew, is the writing system found in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions, including pre-Biblical and Biblical Hebrew, from southern Canaan, also known as the biblical kingdoms of Israel (Samaria) and Judah.
Hebrew was preserved, however, as a Jewish liturgical language and language of scholarship, and resurrected in the 19th century, with modern adaptations, to become the Modern Hebrew language of the State of Israel. After the Muslim conquests of the 7th century, Arabic began to gradually replace Aramaic throughout the region.