Minaean language
Minaean | |
---|---|
Native to | Yemen |
Era | 800 BC – 100 AD |
Afro-Asiatic
| |
Ancient South Arabian | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | Either:inm – Minaeanxha – Harami |
inm Minaean | |
xha Harami | |
Glottolog | mina1279 Minaean |
The Minaean language (also Minaic, Madhabaic or Madhābic) was an Old South Arabian or Ṣayhadic language spoken in Yemen in the times of the Old South Arabian civilisation. The main area of its use may be located in the al-Jawf region of North-East Yemen, primarily in the Wādī Madhāb. Most of texts in this language were composed by the Minaeans, but the other civil-temple communities of the Wādī Madhāb (Nashshan, Kaminahu, Ḥaram, and Inabba') also used it as a literary medium.
History
The earliest Minaean inscriptions are contemporary with the earliest
Phonology
The phonology of the ancient Minaean language seems to be essentially similar to that of the other
Minaean seems to insert an etymologically unexplained h in certain nominal endings, pronouns and particles; some plurals also exhibit this same feature: bhn and bhnt, plurals of bn (son). These may be
Grammatical features peculiar to Minaean
Due to the limited number of texts that have survived, many forms are not attested, though hopefully the discovery of new texts will provide us with more source material. In Minaean, external plurals seem to be especially common; an -h is often used at the end of words in the construct state, even in the singular.
Minaean nominal endings
Construct | Indeterminate | Determinate | |
---|---|---|---|
Sing. /broken plur. | -h, no ending | -(m) | -n |
Dual | -y, -hy | -ny | -nhn, -nyhn |
External Plural | -hw, -hy | -hn |
(Compare the table given under
Relative pronouns
Masculine | Feminine | |
---|---|---|
Singular | ḏy- | ḏt |
Dual | ḏy | ḏtyn |
Plural | 'hl, hl |
Particles
Whereas Sabaean uses the preposition l- to mean "to(wards)", or to express the dative case, Minaean often has k- (compare Ḥaḑramitic h-). The particle k- has a prefixed s2 in Minaean, as in bn s2-kḏ[3] "from (the possibility) that ...". Minaean, like the other non-Sabaean languages also has a temporal conjunction mty ("when").
The Minaean negative particle, which has been so far badly attested, is lhm.
Verbs
Minaean is distinguished from the other Old South Arabian languages by having an extra form for verb stems with a reduplicated second radical, spelled fˁˁl (as in ˁlly, "raise"[4]).
Conjugation of the perfect tense
Minaean, like the other South Arabian languages, forms the
References
Bibliography
- Leonid Kogan and Andrey Korotayev: Sayhadic Languages (Epigraphic South Arabian). Semitic Languages. London: Routledge, 1997, p. 157-183.
- ISBN 0-19-922237-1
External links
- Corpus of Minaic Inscriptions from the Digital Archive for the Study of pre-Islamic Arabian Inscriptions (DASI)