Canaanite languages in the context of "Hebrew (language)"

The Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions, also known as Northwest Semitic inscriptions, are the primary extra-Biblical sources for understanding of the societies and histories of Phoenicia, the Israelites, and the Arameans, which includes groups within the Northwest Semitic languages. Northwest Semitic contains the Aramaic and Canaanite languages; the latter groups includes Phoenician—Punic, the Ammonite language, and Hebrew.

Semitic inscriptions may occur on stone slabs, ostraca, and ornaments and range from simple names to full texts.

Biblical Hebrew (Hebrew: עִבְרִית מִקְרָאִית, romanized: ʿiḇrîṯ miqrāʾîṯ or לְשׁוֹן הַמִּקְרָא, ləšôn ham-miqrāʾ ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the 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 ʿiḇrîṯ 'Hebrew' was not used for the language in the Hebrew Bible, which was referred to as שְֹפַת כְּנַעַן śəp̄aṯ kənaʿan 'language of Canaan' or יְהוּדִית Yəhûḏîṯ 'Judean', but it was used in Koine Greek and Mishnaic Hebrew texts.

Paleo-Hebrew is attested in inscriptions from about the 10th century BCE, when it was almost identical to Phoenician and other Canaanite languages, and spoken Hebrew persisted as a first language through and beyond the Second Temple period, which ended in 70 CE with the siege of Jerusalem. It eventually developed into Mishnaic Hebrew, which was employed as a second language until the 5th century.

The culture of Morocco is a blend of Arab, Berber, Andalusi cultures, with Mediterranean, Hebraic and African influences. It represents and is shaped by a convergence of influences throughout history. This sphere may include, among others, the fields of personal or collective behaviors, language, customs, knowledge, beliefs, arts, legislation, gastronomy, music, poetry, architecture, etc. While Morocco started to be stably predominantly Sunni Muslim starting from 9th–10th century AD, during the Almoravid period, a very significant Andalusi culture was imported, contributing to the shaping of Moroccan culture. Another major influx of Andalusi culture was brought by Andalusis with them following their expulsion from Al-Andalus to North Africa after the Reconquista. In antiquity, starting from the second century A.D and up to the seventh, a rural Donatist Christianity was present, along an urban still-in-the-making Roman Catholicism. All of the cultural super strata tend to rely on a multi-millennial aboriginal Berber substratum still present and dating back to prehistoric times.

The linguistic landscape of Morocco is complex. It generally tends to be horizontally diverse and vertically stratified. It is though possible to broadly classify it into two main components: Arab and Berber. It is hardly possible to speculate about the origin of Berber languages as it is traced back to low antiquity and prehistoric times. The Semitic influence, on the contrary, can be fairly documented by archaeological evidence. It came in two waves: Canaanite, in its Punic, Carthaginian and Hebrew historic varieties, from the ninth century B.C and up to high antiquity, and Arabic, during the low Middle Ages, starting from the seventh century A.D. The two Semitic languages being close, both in syntax and vocabulary it is hard to tell them apart as to who influenced more the structure of the modern Moroccan Arabic dialect. The Arab conquerors having certainly encountered large romanized urban Punic population as they advanced. In any case, the linguistic and cultural identity of Morocco, just as its geography would predict, is the result of the encounter of three main circles: Arab, Berber, and Western Mediterranean European.

The Central Semitic languages comprise one of the three groups of West Semitic languages, alongside Modern South Arabian languages and Ethiopian Semitic languages. They are therefore of the Semitic phylum of the Afroasiatic language family. The group is spoken across much of the Arabic peninsula and north into the Levant region.

Central Semitic can itself be further divided into two groups: Arabic and Northwest Semitic. Northwest Semitic languages largely fall into the Canaanite languages (such as Ammonite, Phoenician and Hebrew) and Aramaic.

Hebrew is a Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and remained in regular use as a first language until after 200 CE and as the liturgical language of Judaism (since the Second Temple period) and Samaritanism. The language was revived as a spoken language in the 19th century, and is the only successful large-scale example of linguistic revival. It is the only Canaanite language, as well as one of only two Northwest Semitic languages, with the other being Aramaic, still spoken today.

The earliest examples of written Paleo-Hebrew date to the 10th century BCE. Nearly all of the Hebrew Bible is written in Biblical Hebrew, with much of its present form in the dialect that scholars believe flourished around the 6th century BCE, during the time of the Babylonian captivity. For this reason, Hebrew has been referred to by Jews as Lashon Hakodesh (לְשׁוֹן הַקֹּדֶש, lit. 'the holy tongue' or 'the tongue [of] holiness') since ancient times. The language was not referred to by the name Hebrew in the Bible, but as Yehudit (transl. 'Judean') or Səpaṯ Kəna'an (transl. "the language of Canaan"). Mishnah Gittin 9:8 refers to the language as Ivrit, meaning Hebrew; however, Mishnah Megillah refers to the language as Ashurit, meaning Assyrian, which is derived from the name of the alphabet used, in contrast to Ivrit, meaning the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet.

The Phoenician alphabet is an abjad (consonantal alphabet) used across the Mediterranean civilization of Phoenicia for most of the 1st millennium BC. It was one of the first alphabets, attested in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions found across the Mediterranean basin. In the history of writing systems, the Phoenician script also marked the first to have a fixed writing direction—while previous systems were multi-directional, Phoenician was written horizontally, from right to left. It developed directly from the Proto-Sinaitic script used during the Late Bronze Age, which was derived in turn from Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The Phoenician alphabet was used to write Canaanite languages spoken during the Early Iron Age, sub-categorized by historians as Phoenician, Hebrew, Moabite, Ammonite and Edomite, as well as Old Aramaic. It was widely disseminated outside of the Canaanite sphere by Phoenician merchants across the Mediterranean, where it was adopted and adapted by other cultures. The Phoenician alphabet proper was used in Ancient Carthage until the 2nd century BC, where it was used to write the Punic language. Its direct descendant scripts include the Aramaic and Samaritan alphabets, several Alphabets of Asia Minor, and the Archaic Greek alphabets.

Phoenician (/fəˈniːʃən/ fə-NEE-shən; Phoenician: śpt knʿn 𐤔𐤐𐤕𐤟𐤊𐤍𐤏𐤍 lit. 'language of Canaan') is an extinct Canaanite Semitic language originally spoken in the region surrounding the cities of Tyre and Sidon. Extensive Tyro-Sidonian trade and commercial dominance led to Phoenician becoming a lingua franca of the maritime Mediterranean during the Iron Age. The Phoenician alphabet spread to Greece during this period, where it became the source of all modern European scripts.

Phoenician belongs to the Canaanite languages and as such is quite similar to Biblical Hebrew and other languages of the group, at least in its early stages, and is therefore mutually intelligible with them.

The Punic language, also called Phoenicio-Punic or Carthaginian, is an extinct variety of the Phoenician language, a Canaanite language of the Northwest Semitic branch of the Semitic languages. An offshoot of the Phoenician language of coastal West Asia (modern Lebanon and north western Syria), it was principally spoken on the Mediterranean coast of Northwest Africa, the Iberian Peninsula and several Mediterranean islands, such as Malta, Sicily, and Sardinia by the Punic people, or western Phoenicians, throughout classical antiquity, from the 8th century BC to the 6th century AD.