Canaanite languages

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Not to be confused with Knaanic language.
Canaanite
Geographic
distribution		Levant, Carthage
Linguistic classificationAfroasiatic
Subdivisions
Glottologcana1267

The Canaanite languages, sometimes referred to as

Aramaic and Amorite. These closely related languages originate in the Levant and Mesopotamia, and were spoken by the ancient Semitic-speaking peoples of an area encompassing what is today Israel, Jordan, the Sinai Peninsula, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, as well as some areas of southwestern Turkey (Anatolia), western and southern Iraq (Mesopotamia) and the northwestern corner of Saudi Arabia
.

The

Moabites, Suteans and sometimes the Ugarites
.

The Canaanite languages continued to be everyday

State of Israel
.

Classification

Analogous to the Romance languages, the Canaanite languages operate on a spectrum of

logographic/syllabic writing of the region, which originated in Mesopotamia
and was used to record Sumerian, Akkadian, Eblaite, Elamite, Hurrian and Hittite.

They are heavily attested in

Hebrew (Israelian, Judean/Biblical, Samaritan), Phoenician/Punic, Amorite, Ammonite, Moabite, Sutean and Edomite; the dialects were all mutually intelligible, being no more differentiated than geographical varieties of Modern English.[2]

The Canaanite languages or dialects can be split into the following:[1][3]

North Canaan

South Canaan

  • Ammonite – an extinct Canaanite dialect of the Ammonite people mentioned in the Bible.
  • Edomite people
    mentioned in the Bible and Egyptian texts.
  • dead language
    .
  • El-Kerak Stela
    .

Other

Other possible Canaanite languages:

Comparison to Aramaic

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

  • The prefix h- is the definite article (Aramaic has a postfixed -a), which seems to be an innovation of Canaanite.
  • The first person pronoun is ʼnk (אנכ anok(i), which is similar to Akkadian, Ancient Egyptian and Berber, versus Aramaic ʾnʾ/ʾny.
  • The change of *ā > ō, called the Canaanite shift.

Descendants

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. It may also include Samaritan Hebrew, a variety formerly spoken by the Samaritans. The main sources of Classical Hebrew are the Hebrew Bible and inscriptions such as the Gezer calendar and Khirbet Qeiyafa pottery shard. All of the other Canaanite languages seem to have become extinct by the early first millennium AD except Punic, which survived into late antiquity (or possibly even longer).

Slightly varying forms of Hebrew preserved from the first millennium BC until modern times include:

The Phoenician and Carthaginian expansion spread the

Western Mediterranean for a time, but there too it died out, although it seems to have survived longer than in Phoenicia
itself.

Sources

The primary modern reference book for the many extra-biblical Canaanite inscriptions, together with Aramaic inscriptions, is the German-language book Kanaanäische und Aramäische Inschriften, from which inscriptions are often referenced as KAI n (for a number n).[6]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Rendsburg 1997, p. 65.
  2. ^ Rendsburg 1997, p. 66.
  3. ^ Waltke & O'Connor (1990:8): "The extrabiblical linguistic material from the Iron Age is primarily epigraphic, that is, texts written on hard materials (pottery, stones, walls, etc.). The epigraphic texts from Israelite territory are written in Hebrew in a form of the language which may be called Inscriptional Hebrew; this 'dialect' is not strikingly different from the Hebrew preserved in the Masoretic text. Unfortunately, it is meagerly attested. Similarly limited are the epigraphic materials in the other South Canaanite dialects, Moabite and Ammonite; Edomite is so poorly attested that we are not sure that it is a South Canaanite dialect, though that seems likely. Of greater interest and bulk is the body of Central Canaanite inscriptions, those written in the Phoenician language of Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos, and in the offshoot Punic and Neo-Punic tongues of the Phoenician colonies in North Africa. "An especially problematic body of material is the Deir Alla wall inscriptions referring to a prophet Balaam (c. 700 BC), these texts have both Canaanite and Aramaic features. W. R. Garr has recently proposed that all the Iron Age Canaanite dialects be regarded as forming a chain that actually includes the oldest forms of Aramaic as well."
  4. ISBN 978-90-474-2721-6
    .
  5. ISBN 978-90-429-0815-4
    .
  6. ^ For example, the Mesha Stele is "KAI 181".

Bibliography

Further reading

External links
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