Canaanite languages

Canaanite
Geographic distribution:	Levant
Linguistic classification:	Afro-Asiatic Semitic Central Semitic Northwest Semitic Canaanite
Subdivisions:	Phoenician Ammonite Moabite Edomite Hebrew (living)

The Canaanite languages are a subfamily of the Semitic languages, which were spoken by the ancient peoples of the Canaan region, including Canaanites, Israelites, Phoenicians, Amorites, Edomites and Moabites. All of them seem to have become extinct as native languages by the early 1st millennium CE (although it is uncertain how long Punic survived), although Hebrew remained in continuous literary and religious use among Jews, and was revived as an everyday spoken language in the 19th and 20th centuries in an effort spearheaded by Eliezer Ben Yehuda. The Phoenician and Carthaginian expansion spread the Phoenician language and its Punic dialect to the Western Mediterranean for a time, but there too it died out, although it seems to have survived slightly longer than in Phoenicia itself.

• Phoenician – extinct
  • Punic – extinct
• Ammonite – extinct
• Moabite – extinct
• Edomite – extinct
• Hebrew
  • Biblical Hebrew – Jews, literary, poetical, liturgical; also known as Classical Hebrew, the oldest form of the language attested in writing. The original pronunciation of Biblical Hebrew is only accessible through reconstruction. There are different pronunciations traditions associated with different diaspora groups, influenced by vernacular languages spoken locally, which are listed below.
  • Samaritan Hebrew – Samaritans, liturgical
  • Tiberian Hebrew – Jews, liturgical
  • Mizrahi Hebrew – Mizrahi Jews, liturgical
  • Yemenite Hebrew – Yemenite Jews, liturgical
  • Sephardi Hebrew – Sephardi Jews, liturgical
  • Ashkenazi Hebrew – Ashkenazi Jews, liturgical
  • Mishnaic Hebrew (Rabbinical Hebrew) – Jews, liturgical, rabbinical
  • Medieval Hebrew – Jews, liturgical, poetical, rabbinical, scientific, literary; lingua franca based on Bible, Mishna and neologisms forms created by translators and commentators
  • Haskala Hebrew – Jews, scientific, literary and journalistic language based on Biblical but enriched with neologisms created by writers and journalists, a transition to the later
  • Modern Hebrew – The transformation and enlargement of the former into a spoken language which in turn emerged as the new contemporary Israeli Hebrew, the main language of the State of Israel, revived

The main sources for study of Canaanite languages are the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), and inscriptions such as:

• in the Moabite: Mesha Stele, El-Kerak Stela
• debated whether in the Paleo-Hebrew or Phoenician script: Gezer calendar, Khirbet Qeiyafa pottery sherd
• in the Phoenician: Ahiram sarcophagus inscription, sarcophagus of Eshmunazar[1], Kilamuwa inscription, the Byblos inscription
• in the later Punic: in Poenulus – by Plautus – beginning of 5th-Act.

The Deir Alla Inscription is written in a dialect with Aramaic and South Canaanite characteristics, which is classified as Canaanite in Hetzron.

The extra-biblical Canaanite inscriptions are gathered along with Aramaic inscriptions in editions of the book "Kanaanäische und Aramäische Inschriften", from which they may be referenced as KAI n (for a number n); for example, the Mesha Stele is "KAI 181".

Distinctive features

The Canaanite languages, together with the Aramaic languages and Ugaritic, form the Northwest Semitic subgroup. Some distinctive features of Canaanite in relation to Aramaic are:

• The prefix 'h-' used as the definite article (whereas Aramaic has a postfixed -a). This seems to be an innovation of Canaanite.
• The first person pronoun being 'ʼnk' (אנכ – anok(i), versus Aramaic – ʼnʼ/ʼny) – which is similar to Akkadian, Ancient Egyptian and Berber.
• The *ā > ō vowel shift (Canaanite shift).

References

• The Semitic Languages. Routledge Language Family Descriptions. Edited by Robert Hetzron. New York: Routledge, 1997.

External links

• Some West Semitic Inscriptions
• How the Alphabet Was Born from Hieroglyphs Biblical Archaeology Review