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Ghayn
The Arabic letter (, or ) is one of the six letters the Arabic alphabet added to the twenty-two inherited from the Phoenician alphabet (the others being , , , , ). It represents the sound or . In name and shape, it is a variant of ʻayn (). Its numerical value is 1000 (see Abjad numerals). In Persian, it represents ~ and is the twenty-second letter in the new Persian alphabet. ' is written in several ways depending on its position in the word: History Proto-Semitic (usually reconstructed as voiced velar fricative or voiced uvular fricative ) merged with ʻayn in most Semitic languages except for Arabic, Ugaritic and older varieties of the Canaanite languages. The South Arabian alphabet retained a symbol for , . Biblical Hebrew, as of the 3rd century BCE, apparently still distinguished the phonemes and , based on transcriptions in the Septuagint, such as that of the name " Gomorrah" as ''Gomorrha'' () for the Hebrew ''‘Ămōrā'' (). Canaanite languages, inclu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ayin
''Ayin'' (also ''ayn'' or ''ain''; transliterated ) is the sixteenth letter of the Semitic scripts, including Phoenician ''ʿayin'' 𐤏, Hebrew ''ʿayin'' , Aramaic ''ʿē'' 𐡏, Syriac ''ʿē'' ܥ, and Arabic ''ʿayn'' (where it is sixteenth in abjadi order only). It is related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪒, South Arabian , and Ge'ez . The letter represents a voiced pharyngeal fricative () or a similarly articulated consonant. In some Semitic languages and dialects, the phonetic value of the letter has changed, or the phoneme has been lost altogether. In the revived Modern Hebrew it is reduced to a glottal stop or is omitted entirely. The Phoenician letter is the origin of the Greek, Latin and Cyrillic letters O, O and O. It is also the origin of the Armenian letters Ո and Օ. The Arabic character is the origin of the Latin-script letter Ƹ. Origins The letter name is derived from Proto-Semitic "eye", and the Phoenician letter had the shape of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semitic Languages
The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. They include Arabic, Amharic, Tigrinya language, Tigrinya, Aramaic, Hebrew language, Hebrew, Maltese language, Maltese, Modern South Arabian languages and numerous other ancient and modern languages. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of Western Asia, West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Malta, and in large Immigration, immigrant and Expatriate, expatriate communities in North America, Europe, and Australasia. The terminology was first used in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen school of history, who derived the name from Shem, one of the three Generations of Noah, sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis. Semitic languages List of languages by first written account, occur in written form from a very early historical date in West Asia, with East Semitic languages, East Semitic Akkadian language, Akkadian (also known as Ancient Assyrian language, Assyrian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proto-Semitic Language
Proto-Semitic is the Linguistic reconstruction, reconstructed common ancestor of the Semitic languages. There is no consensus regarding the location of the linguistic homeland for Proto-Semitic: scholars hypothesize that it may have originated in the Levant, the Sahara, the Horn of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, or northern Africa. The Semitic language family is considered part of the broader macro-family of Afroasiatic languages. Dating The earliest attestations of any Semitic language are in Akkadian language, Akkadian, dating to around the 24th to 23rd centuries BC (see Sargon of Akkad) and the Eblaite language, but earlier evidence of Akkadian comes from personal names in Sumerian language, Sumerian texts from the first half of the third millennium BC. One of the earliest known Akkadian inscriptions was found on a bowl at Ur, addressed to the very early pre-Sargonic king Meskiagnunna of Ur (–2450 BC) by his queen Gan-saman, who is thought to have been from Akkad. The earli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Biblical Hebrew
Biblical Hebrew ( or ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanite languages, Canaanitic branch of the Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Israel, roughly west of the Jordan River and east of the Mediterranean Sea. The term 'Hebrew' was not used for the language in the Hebrew Bible, which was referred to as 'language of Canaan' or 'Judean', but it was used in Koine Greek and Mishnaic Hebrew texts. The Hebrew language is attested in inscriptions from about the 10th century BCE, when it was almost identical to Phoenician language, Phoenician and other Canaanite languages, and spoken Hebrew persisted through and beyond the Second Temple period, which ended in 70 CE with the siege of Jerusalem (70 CE), siege of Jerusalem. It eventually developed into Mishnaic Hebrew, which was spoken until the 5th century. The language of the Hebrew Bible reflects various stages of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South Arabian Alphabet
The Ancient South Arabian script (Old South Arabian: ; modern ) branched from the Proto-Sinaitic script in about the late 2nd millennium BCE, and remained in use through the late sixth century CE. It is an abjad, a writing system where only consonants are obligatorily written, a trait shared with its predecessor, Proto-Sinaitic, as well as some of its sibling writing systems, including Arabic and Hebrew. It is a predecessor of the Ge'ez script, and a sibling script of the Phoenician alphabet and, through that, the modern Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek alphabets. History The earliest instances of the Ancient South Arabian (''ASA'') script are painted pottery sherds from Raybun in Hadhramaut in Yemen, which are dated to the late 2nd millennium BCE. It is an abjad script, meaning that only consonants are usually written in the script, with vowels inferred from context; it shares this feature both with its predecessor, the Proto-Sinaitic script, and modern Semitic languages. It is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Septuagint
The Septuagint ( ), sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy (), and abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Biblical Hebrew. The full Greek title derives from the story recorded in the Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates that "the laws of the Jews" were translated into Koine Greek, the Greek language at the request of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285–247 BC) by seventy-two Hebrew sofer, translators—six from each of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.Megillah (Talmud), Tractate Megillah 9](9a)/ref>Soferim (Talmud), Tractate Soferim 1](1:7-8)/ref> Textual criticism, Biblical scholars agree that the Torah, first five books of the Hebrew Bible were translated from Biblical Hebrew into Koine Greek by Jews living in the Ptolemaic Kingdom, centred on the History of the Jews in Alexandria, large community in Alexandria, probably in the early or middle part of the 3rd century BC. The remainin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Persian Alphabet
The Persian alphabet (), also known as the Perso-Arabic script, is the right-to-left alphabet used for the Persian language. It is a variation of the Arabic script with four additional letters: (the sounds 'g', 'zh', 'ch', and 'p', respectively), in addition to the obsolete that was used for the sound . This letter is no longer used in Persian, as the -sound changed to , e.g. archaic > 'language'. It was the basis of many Arabic-based scripts used in Central and South Asia. It is used for both Iranian and Dari: standard varieties of Persian; and is one of two official writing systems for the Persian language, alongside the Cyrillic-based Tajik alphabet. The script is mostly but not exclusively right-to-left; mathematical expressions, numeric dates and numbers bearing units are embedded from left to right. The script is cursive, meaning most letters in a word connect to each other; when they are typed, contemporary word processors automatically join adjacent letter f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Canaanite Languages
The Canaanite languages, sometimes referred to as Canaanite dialects, are one of four subgroups of the Northwest Semitic languages. The others are Aramaic and the now-extinct Ugaritic and Amorite language. These closely related languages originated in the Levant and Upper Mesopotamia. Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples spoke them in an area encompassing what is today Israel, Palestine, Jordan, the Sinai Peninsula, Lebanon, Syria, as well as some areas of southwestern Turkey, Iraq, and the northwestern corner of Saudi Arabia. From the 9th century BCE, they also spread to the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa in the form of Phoenician. The Canaanites are broadly defined to include the Hebrews (including Israelites, Judeans, and Samaritans), Ammonites, Edomites, Ekronites, Hyksos, Phoenicians (including the Punics/Carthaginians), Moabites, Suteans and sometimes the Ugarites and Amorites. The Canaanite languages continued to be spoken languages until at least the 5th centur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ugaritic
Ugaritic () is an extinct Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language known through the Ugaritic texts discovered by French archaeology, archaeologists in 1928 at Ugarit, including several major literary texts, notably the Baal cycle. Ugaritic has been called "the greatest literary discovery from antiquity since the deciphering of the Egyptian hieroglyphs and Cuneiform, Mesopotamian cuneiform". Corpus The Ugaritic language is attested in texts from the 14th through the early 12th century BC. The city of Ugarit was destroyed roughly 1190 BC. Literary texts discovered at Ugarit include the ''Legend of Keret'' or Kirta, the legends of Danel (AKA 'Aqhat), the ''Myth of Baal-Aliyan'', and the ''Death of Baal''. The latter two are also known collectively as the ''Baal Cycle''. These texts reveal aspects of ancient Northwest Semitic religion in Syria-Palestine during the Late Bronze Age. Edward Greenstein has proposed that Ugaritic texts might help solve Bible, biblica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arabic
Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic, including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic, which is derived from Classical Arabic. This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as ( "the eloquent Arabic") or simply ' (). Arabic is the List of languages by the number of countries in which they are recognized as an official language, third most widespread official language after English and French, one of six official languages of the United Nations, and the Sacred language, liturgical language of Islam. Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the wo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
