Semitic languages in the context of "Ergative–absolutive alignment"

The Hattians (/ˈhætiənz/) were an ancient Bronze Age people that inhabited the land of Hatti, in central Anatolia (modern Turkey). They spoke a distinctive Hattian language, which was neither Semitic nor Indo-European. Hattians are attested by archeological records from the Early Bronze Age and by historical references in later Hittite and other sources. Their main centre was the city of Hattush. Faced with Hittite expansion (since c. 2000 BC), Hattians were gradually absorbed (by c. 1700 BC) into the new political and social order, imposed by the Hittites, who were one of the Indo-European-speaking Anatolian peoples. The Hittites kept the country name ("land of Hatti") unchanged, which also became the main designation for the Hittite state.

Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples or Proto-Semitic people were speakers of Semitic languages who lived throughout the ancient Near East and North Africa, including the Levant, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, the Arabian Peninsula and Carthage from the 3rd millennium BC until the end of antiquity, with some, such as Arabs, Arameans, Assyrians, Jews, Mandaeans, and Samaritans having a historical continuum into the present day.

Their languages are usually divided into three branches: East, Central and South Semitic languages.the oldest attested forms of Semitic date to the early to mid-3rd millennium BC (the Early Bronze Age) in Mesopotamia, the northwest Levant and southeast Anatolia.

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 Akkadian Empire (/əˈkeɪdiən/) or kingdom of Akkad/Agade was an ancient kingdom, often thought to be the first known empire, succeeding the long-lived city-states of Sumer. Centered on the city of Akkad (/ˈækæd/ or /ˈɑːkɑːd/) and its surrounding region in modern-day Iraq, the empire united the Semitic Akkadian and Sumerian speakers under one rule and exercised significant influence across Mesopotamia, the Levant, modern-day Iran and Anatolia, sending military expeditions as far south as Dilmun and Magan (modern United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman) in the Arabian Peninsula.

Established by Sargon of Akkad after defeating the Sumerian king Lugal-zage-si, it replaced the system of independent Sumero-Akkadian city-states and unified a vast region, stretching from the Mediterranean to Iran and from Anatolia to the Persian Gulf, under a centralized government. Sargon and his successors, especially his grandson Naram-Sin, expanded the empire through military conquest, administrative reforms, and cultural integration. Naram-Sin took the unprecedented step of declaring himself a living god and adopted the title "King of the Four Quarters." The Semitic Akkadian language became the empire’s lingua franca, although Sumerian (a language isolate) remained important in religion and literature. The empire was documented through inscriptions, administrative tablets, and seals, including notable sources like the Bassetki Statue. Enheduanna, Sargon’s daughter, served as high priestess and is recognized as the first known named author in history.

The states called Neo-Hittite, Syro-Hittite (in older literature), or Luwian-Aramean (in modern scholarly works) were Luwian and Aramean regional polities of the Iron Age, situated in southeastern parts of modern Turkey and northwestern parts of modern Syria, known in ancient times as lands of Hatti and Aram. They arose following the collapse of the Hittite New Kingdom in the 12th century BCE, and lasted until they were subdued by the Assyrian Empire in the 8th century BCE. They are grouped together by scholars, on the basis of several cultural criteria, that are recognized as similar and mutually shared between both societies, northern (Luwian) and southern (Aramean). Cultural exchange between those societies is seen as a specific regional phenomenon, particularly in light of significant linguistic distinctions between the two main regional languages, with Luwian belonging to the Anatolian group of Indo-European languages and Aramaic belonging to the Northwest Semitic group of Semitic languages. Several questions related to the regional grouping of Luwian and Aramaean states are viewed differently among scholars, including some views that are critical towards such grouping in general.

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 history of the Greek alphabet starts with the adoption of Phoenician letter forms in the 9th–8th centuries BC during early Archaic Greece and continues to the present day. The Greek alphabet was developed during the Iron Age, centuries after the loss of Linear B, the syllabic script that was used for writing Mycenaean Greek until the Late Bronze Age collapse and Greek Dark Age. This article concentrates on the development of the alphabet before the modern codification of the standard Greek alphabet.

The Phoenician alphabet was consistently explicit only about consonants, though even by the 9th century BC it had developed matres lectionis to indicate some, mostly final, vowels. This arrangement is much less suitable for Greek than for Semitic languages, and these matres lectionis, as well as several Phoenician letters which represented consonants not present in Greek, were adapted according to the acrophonic principle to represent Greek vowels consistently, if not unambiguously.

Sabaic, sometimes referred to as Sabaean, was a Sayhadic language that was spoken between c. 1000 BC and the 6th century AD by the Sabaeans. It was used as a written language by some other peoples of the ancient civilization of South Arabia, including the Ḥimyarites, Ḥashidites, Ṣirwāḥites, Humlanites, Ghaymānites, and Radmānites. Sabaic belongs to the South Arabian Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family. Sabaic is distinguished from the other members of the Sayhadic group by its use of h to mark the third person and as a causative prefix; all of the other languages use s₁ in those cases. Therefore, Sabaic is called an h-language and the others s-languages. Numerous other Sabaic inscriptions have also been found dating back to the Sabean colonization of Africa.

Sabaic is very similar to Arabic and the languages may have been mutually intelligible.

Hamites is the name formerly used for some Northern and Horn of Africa peoples in the context of a now-outdated model of dividing humanity into different races; this was developed originally by Europeans in support of colonialism and slavery. The term was originally borrowed from the Book of Genesis, in which it refers to the descendants of Ham, son of Noah.

The term was originally used in contrast to the other two proposed divisions of mankind based on the story of Noah: Semites and Japhetites. The appellation Hamitic was applied to the Berber, Cushitic, and Egyptian branches of the Afroasiatic language family, which, together with the Semitic branch, was formerly labelled "Hamito-Semitic". Because the three Hamitic branches have not been shown to form an exclusive (monophyletic) phylogenetic unit of their own, separate from other Afroasiatic languages, linguists no longer use the term in this sense. Each of these branches is instead now regarded as an independent subgroup of the larger Afroasiatic family.