Everything about Semitic totally explained
In
linguistics and
ethnology,
Semitic (from the
Biblical "
Shem", Hebrew: שם, translated as "name",
Arabic: ساميّ) was first used to refer to a
language family of largely
Middle Eastern origin, now called the
Semitic languages.
This family includes the ancient and modern forms of
Akkadian,
Amharic,
Arabic,
Aramaic,
Ge'ez,
Hebrew,
Maltese,
Phoenician,
Tigre and
Tigrinya among others.
As language studies are interwoven with
cultural studies, the term also came to describe the extended
cultures and
ethnicities, as well as the history of these varied peoples as associated by close geographic and linguistic distribution.
The late 19th century term "
anti-Semitism" refers specifically to hostility toward
Jews, further complicating the understood meaning and boundaries of the term.
Origin
The term
Semite means a member of any of various ancient and modern peoples originating in southwestern Asia, including Akkadians, Canaanites, Phoenicians, Hebrews, Arabs, and Ethiopian Semites. It was proposed at first to refer to the languages related to Hebrew by
Ludwig Schlözer, in
Eichhorn's "Repertorium", vol. VIII (Leipzig, 1781), p. 161. Through Eichhorn the name then came into general usage (cf. his "Einleitung in das Alte Testament" (Leipzig, 1787), I, p. 45. In his "Gesch. der neuen Sprachenkunde", pt. I (Göttingen, 1807) it had already become a fixed technical term.
The word "Semitic" is an adjective derived from
Shem, one of the three
sons of Noah in the
Bible (
Genesis 5.32, 6.10, 10.21), or more precisely from the
Greek derivative of that name, namely
Σημ (Sēm); the noun form referring to a person is
Semite. In modern English the negative form of the adjective,
anti-Semitic, is almost always used to mean "anti-Jewish" specifically.
The concept of "Semitic" peoples is derived from Biblical accounts of the origins of the cultures known to the ancient
Hebrews. Those closest to them in culture and language were generally deemed to be descended from their forefather Shem. Enemies were often said to be descendants of his cursed nephew,
Canaan. In Genesis 10:21-31, Shem is described as the father of
Aram,
Asshur, and
Arpachshad: the Biblical ancestors of the
Arabs,
Aramaeans,
Assyrians,
Babylonians,
Chaldeans,
Sabaeans, and
Hebrews, etc., all of whose languages are closely related; the
language family containing them was therefore named Semitic by linguists. However, the
Canaanites and
Amorites also spoke a language belonging to this family, and are therefore also termed Semitic in linguistics, despite being described in Genesis as sons of Ham (See
Sons of Noah). Shem is also described in Genesis as the father of
Elam and
Lud, although the
Elamites and
Lydians usually thought to descend from these spoke languages that were not Semitic.
The hypothetical
Proto-Semitic language, ancestral to historical Semitic languages in the Middle East, is thought to have been originally from either the
Arabian Peninsula (particularly around
Yemen) or the adjacent Ethiopian highlands, but its region of origin is still much debated and uncertain. The Semitic language family is also considered a component of the larger
Afro-Asiatic macro-family of languages. Identification of the hypothetical proto-Semitic region of origin is therefore dependent on the larger geographic distributions of the other language families within
Afro-Asiatic.
Ancient Semitic peoples
The following is a list of ancient Semitic peoples.
Languages
The modern linguistic meaning of "Semitic" is therefore derived from (though not identical to) Biblical usage. In a linguistic context the
Semitic languages are a subgroup of the larger
Afro-Asiatic language family (according to
Joseph Greenberg's widely accepted classification) and include, among others:
Akkadian, the ancient language of Babylon;
Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia;
Tigrinya, a language spoken in Eritrea and in northern Ethiopia;
Arabic;
Aramaic;
Canaanite;
Ge'ez, the ancient language of the
Eritrean and
Ethiopian Orthodox scriptures;
Hebrew;
Phoenician or
Punic; and
South Arabian, the ancient language of
Sheba/Saba, which today includes
Mehri, spoken by only tiny minorities on the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula.
Wildly successful as second languages far beyond their numbers of contemporary first-language speakers, a few Semitic languages today are the base of the sacred literature of some of the world's great religions, including
Islam (Arabic),
Judaism (Hebrew and Aramaic), and Orthodox
Christianity (Aramaic and Ge'ez). Millions learn these as a second language (or an archaic version of their modern tongues): many
Muslims learn to read and recite
Classical Arabic, the language of the
Qur'an, and many
Jews all over the world outside of
Israel with other first languages speak and study Hebrew, the language of the
Torah,
Midrash, and other Jewish scriptures.
It should be noted that
Berber,
Egyptian (including
Coptic),
Hausa,
Somali, and many other related languages within the wider area of Northern Africa and the Middle East don't belong to the Semitic group, but to the larger
Afro-Asiatic language family of which the Semitic languages are also a subgroup. Other ancient and modern Middle Eastern languages —
Azerbaijani,
Armenian,
Kurdish,
Persian,
Gilaki,
Turkish, ancient
Sumerian, and
Nubian — don't belong to the larger Afro-Asiatic language family.
For a complete list of Semitic languages arranged by subfamily, see list from SIL's
Ethnologue
.
Geography
Semitic peoples and their languages, in both modern and ancient historic times, have covered a broad area bridging Africa, Western Asia and the Arabian Peninsula. The earliest historic (written) evidences of them are found in the
Fertile Crescent, an area encompassing the Babylonian and Assyrian civilizations along the
Tigris and
Euphrates rivers, extending northwest into southern
Asia Minor (modern
Turkey) and the
Levant along the eastern Mediterranean. Early traces of Semitic speakers are found, too, in South Arabian inscriptions in
Yemen,
Eritrea, Northern
Ethiopia and later, in Roman times, in
Nabataean inscriptions from
Petra (modern
Jordan) south into Arabia.
Later historical Semitic languages also spread into
North Africa in two widely separated periods. The first expansion occurred with the ancient
Phoenicians, along the southern Mediterranean Sea all the way to the
Atlantic Ocean (colonies which included ancient Rome's nemesis
Carthage). The second, a millennium later, was the expansion of the Muslim armies and Arabic in the 7th-8th centuries AD, which, at their height, controlled the
Iberian Peninsula (until 1492) and
Sicily. Arab Muslim expansion is also responsible for modern Arabic's presence from
Mauritania, on the Atlantic coast of
West Africa, to the
Red Sea in the northeastern corner of Africa, and its reach south along the
Nile River through traditionally non-Semitic territory, as far as the northern half of
Sudan, where, as the national language, non-Arab Sudanese even farther south must learn it.
Modern Hebrew was reintroduced in the 20th century, and together with Arabic, is a national language in Israel. Western
Aramaic dialects remain spoken in Malula near Damascus. Eastern Neo-Aramaic is spoken along the northern border of
Syria and
Iraq and in far northwestern
Iran. These speakers are often called Chaldean or Neo-Assyrian. Mandean is still spoken in parts of southern
Iraq. Semitic languages and peoples are also found in the Horn of Africa, especially
Eritrea and
Ethiopia. Tigrinya, a North Ethiopic dialect, has around six million speakers in Eritrea and
Tigray. In Eritrea,
Tigre is the language of around 800,000 Muslims.
Amharic is the national language of
Ethiopia and is spoken by at least 10 million Coptic
Christians. Semitic languages today are also spoken in
Malta (where an Italian-influenced dialect of North African Arabic is spoken) and on the island of
Socotra in the
Indian Ocean between
Yemen and
Somalia, where a dying vestige of South Arabian is spoken in the form of
Soqotri.
Religion
In a religious context, the term Semitic can refer to the religions associated with the speakers of these languages: thus
Judaism,
Christianity and
Islam are often described as "Semitic religions", though the term
Abrahamic religions is more commonly used today. A truly comprehensive account of "Semitic" religions would include the
polytheistic Ancient Semitic religions (such as the religions of
Adad,
Hadad) that flourished in the Middle East before the Abrahamic religions.
Ethnicity and race
In
Medieval Europe, all
Asian peoples were thought of as descendants of Shem. By the nineteenth century, the term Semitic was confined to the ethnic groups who have historically spoken Semitic languages. These peoples were often considered to be a distinct
race. However, some anti-Semitic racial theorists of the time argued that the Semitic peoples arose from the blurring of distinctions between previously separate races. This supposed process was referred to as
Semiticization by the race-theorist
Arthur de Gobineau. The notion that Semitic identity was a product of racial "confusion" was later taken up by the Nazi ideologue
Alfred Rosenberg.
Modern science, in contrast, identifies a population's common physical descent through genetic research, and analysis of the Semitic-speaking peoples suggests that they've some common ancestry. Though no significant common
mitochondrial results have been yielded,
Y-chromosomal links between Semitic-speaking
Near-Eastern peoples like
Arabs,
Assyrians and
Jews have proved fruitful, despite differences contributed from other groups (
see Y-chromosomal Aaron). Although
population genetics is still a young science, it seems to indicate that a significant proportion of these peoples' ancestry comes from a common Near Eastern population to which (despite the differences with the Biblical genealogy) the term "Semitic" has been applied. However, this correlation should rather be attributed to said common
Near Eastern origin, as for example Semitic-speaking Near Easterners from the
Fertile Crescent are generally more closely related to non-Semitic speaking Near Easterners, such as
Iranians,
Anatolians, and
Caucasians, than to other Semitic-speakers, such as
Gulf Arabs,
Eritrean Semites,
Ethiopian Semites, and
North African Arabs.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Semitic'.
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