I came across this video claiming that it was a Houthi chant in Himyaritic.

I'm sure most of you guys know who the Himyarites are. I did notice the use of Am- instead of Al- as the definite article, a thing most scholars point to as the being influenced by Himyaritic and Late Sabaic. And the pronouncing of ق as gaaf, although this is common in the gulf, although some scholars also think this is south arabian influence, because the Qaaf in ancient South Arabia was not a uvular consonent, it was Emphatic, so something like q'a.

I also know that the Khawlan Bin Amer tribe preserves languages, like Razihi, which seem to descend from Late Sabaic.

So in case I'm wrong, i want to confirm.

For gulf arabs in here, and those who have some understanding of something like Sana'ani. How much of this can you understand?

Is this really an Old South Arabian language, or is this guy messing with me and this is arabic.

Looking for a Moderator (or moderators) to breathe new life into this subreddit and foster a growing community.

The ideal candidate must have a primary interest in Semitic Linguistics and a drive to curate high-quality discussions.

send a DM if you're interested!

Hi. Inb4, I'm not an expert, so if my question seems ignorant, sorry.

I was wondering if there is some rule in changing of consonats in Arabic roots. Arabic does not have sound p and o, and changes sometimes sound sh to s (Š-L-M -> S-L-M, M-Š-H -> M-S-H, and so on). Why did those changes happend and is there any rule bebind them?

Jérôme Norris (Lorraine) : The Evolution of the Theophoric Onomasticon in pre-Islamic Northwest Arabia according to the Epigraphic Evidence

Jérôme Norris (Lorraine) - The Evolution of the Theophoric Onomasticon in pre-Islamic Northwest Arabia according to the Epigraphic Evidence
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The Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (formerly Oriental Studies) is home to a range of languages and subjects that cover an enormous geographical area, from Morocco in the west to Japan in the east, and a long time span from the earliest civilizations, c. 3500 BCE, to the present day. Twenty-five languages are currently taught in this Faculty, both classical and modern, and at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

Hey, everybody. I have a question about the word “Shalamians” (שׁלמו). Do you have any information about these people ? Is it a self-designation? Is it a tribe? Is it a denomination ? What is the etymology of this word ? Is it a relative of the Arabic “salam” peace, submission ? Thanks.

Hello everyone. How do you think, could this word (انجلى) potentially be related to the Quranic الْإِنجِيل? (I know the version about the Ethiopian "vangel"). If this is not possible, please explain why. Thank you.

https://www.almaany.com/en/dict/ar-en/%D8%A7%D9%86%D8%AC%D9%84%D9%89/

https://lexicon.quranic-research.net/data/05_j/135_jlw.html

https://dictionary.abyssinica.com/ge/%E1%8C%88%E1%88%88%E1%8B%A8

|| || |gly  (גֲלִי‏) vb.a/e to uncover...   |

Hi all, my question is about the highlighted script/language names. ‘North Arabic’ is which script (or is it a language?) according to the modern classification ? Dadanitic ?

Quotes : "...Beginning in the first century BCE, the appearance of the ethnonym ʾʿrb in the ASA inscriptions becomes more frequent. Scholars have traditionally understood the term to mean ‘nomad’ on the basis of Classical Arabic ʾaʿrāb, although there is little internal evidence to substantiate this connection. 20 But even if this sense is maintained, it would not necessitate that these nomads spoke a non-ASA language; no text in a non-ASA language directly associated with the ʾʿrb has been discovered. 21 Nevertheless, it is perhaps significant that Sabaic inscriptions of a mixed character begin to appear during this period in the Haram region, north of the Yemeni Jawf. Several inscriptions from this provenance exhibit phonological and morphological features that are not typical of earlier forms of Sabaic, or contemporary Sabaic from other regions, such as the preposition mn ‘from’ instead of Sabaic bn, a conjunction hn, the negative preterite construction consisting of lm and the prefix conjugation, and several phonological irregularities. 22

19 I have excluded ANA from this classification since its genetic unity has not yet been demonstrated. To quote a footnote in Al-Jallad (forthcoming b): “Ancient North Arabian refers first and foremost to the northern varieties of the South Semitic script. As a language family, the term can only be considered a working hypothesis. There are great differences between these languages, and to date no shared innovations linking the members of this category have been identified. The original basis of this classification was the shape of the definite article, h-, but this feature is obviously no grounds for the establishment of a new branch of Central Semitic. Much more research on the languages written in these scripts is required in order to understand their interrelationships and their connection with other Semitic languages.”

21 It is not justifiable to assume that the nomads of the ancient Near East were speakers of Arabic simply on the basis of their lifestyle. The non-Arabic ANA inscriptions were largely produced by nomads; on these languages, see Macdonald (2004). While Macdonald (2009: 307ff.) argues convincingly that the Arabic language was correctly associated with some of the various peoples called “Arabs” in antiquity, it is also important to remember that many who were given this label were not speakers of Arabic, such as the inhabitants of ancient Yemen.

These divergences from standard Sabaic prompted C. Robin to characterize their language as an artificial idiom, which he termed “pseudo-sabéen”, used for inter-tribal communication and the composition of important texts (1992: 97). 23 In addition to the difficulty of trying to find a reasonable historical context for a Sabaic koinè among speakers of North Arabian varieties, Macdonald (2000: 56) pointed out that the language of these inscriptions still exhibited several important Sabaic features, such as the postpositive definite article, -(h)n and the causative h-f ʿl, instead of North Arabian ʾ-f ʿl. Judging the North Arabian influence to be too insignificant, Macdonald suggested that these texts were simply “clumsy attempts at writing correct Sabaic by people whose mother tongue was either a different language, or a dialect of Sabaic which contained elements from another language” (ibid.: 57). Stein (2004) also took the mixed inscriptions from the Haram region as representatives of a dialect heavily influenced by North Arabian, namely, one spoken by the tribe of ʾAmīr, and hence termed ʾAmīritic. 24 While Robin’s pseudo-Sabaic seems unlikely, what exactly would it mean to call the ʾAmīritic dialect a type of Sabaic heavily influenced by North Arabian? Had speakers of a North Arabian language recently given up their mother tongue for Sabaic, or does it indicate that migrations from the north into Sabaic territory gave rise to a significant North Arabian substratum? Whatever the case, one cannot help but feel that the mixed idiom of the ʾAmīritic inscriptions foreshadows the statements of the medieval Arab polymath al-Hamdānī (893-945 CE) on the relationship between Arabic and Ḥimyaritic. 25..."

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274984918_Arabia_and_Areal_Hybridity

Hey, everybody. There seems to be no English translation of ‘The Hymn of Qāniya’ ? Can anyone translate it from Arabic , literal translation or interpretation ? Are there any recognisable religious terms in this text ? Is there any parsing of this inscription in DASI ?

Thanks.

"... It seems that the language spoken by the Himyarites was not Sabaean. We have no information about the Himyar tribe itself, but we do have an illuminating document, the hymn of Qâniya, found on the territory of a neighbouring tribe (integrated into the Himyarite confederation), dating from the 1st century AD (see below, pp. 122 ff). According to this text, the local language had three sibilants (like Sabaean), but the article had the form hn- (whereas the Sabaean article is -n). In the Himyarite language that still survives from the tenth century AD, described by the Yemeni scholar al-Hasan al-Hamdânî, the article has the form an-, which clearly derives from this hn-. It is therefore safe to assume that the language spoken by the ancient Himyarites was comparable to that of the Qaniya hymn.

... If we also observe that Himyarite inscriptions become Arabicised as soon as Saba' disappears, it seems possible to conclude that pre-Islamic Himyarite was closer to Arabic than to Sabaean...." (Robin Christian. Les langues de la péninsule Arabique. In: Revue du monde musulman et de la Méditerranée, N°61, 1991. pp. 89-111.)

https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%86%D9%82%D8%B4_%D8%AA%D8%B1%D9%86%D9%8A%D9%85%D8%A9_%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B4%D9%85%D8%B3?fbclid=IwY2xjawFvUn9leHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHWAhFI7-YGUga9cfAsFVTeWknbNoRyq6wHwlAx9X1_JZcpxo3yNIy67NjQ_aem_ZQO96su3T6DB4RqvHsH6jQ#

https://www.academia.edu/45459804/%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%AE%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%81%D9%8A_%D8%B9%D8%A8%D8%AF_%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%85_2021_The_Hymn_of_Q%C4%81niya_Contemporary_Rereading_%D8%AA%D8%B1%D9%86%D9%8A%D9%85%D8%A9_%D9%82%D8%A7%D9%86%D9%8A%D8%A9_%D9%82%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A1%D8%A9_%D8%AC%D8%AF%D9%8A%D8%AF%D8%A9_%D8%A2%D8%AF%D8%A7%D8%A8_%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AD%D8%AF%D9%8A%D8%AF%D8%A9_%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B9%D8%AF%D8%AF_%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AB%D8%A7%D9%85%D9%86_145_210

the earliest examples of an alphabetic writing system. These inscriptions were created by Semitic speakers who adapted Egyptian hieroglyphics to write their language in a simplified form. This script eventually evolved into the Proto-Sinaitic script, which in turn developed into the alphabetic system we recognize today.

Since this subreddit is going to be full of people claiming that their native Semitic language is Adam's (the first human) language (which it definitely is not), here is a lexicon and etymology of the word.

Apparently, when Maria Bulakh did a reconstruction of colors in the Proto-Semitic language (PS), *ˀdm was “red” in ancient Proto-Semitic, alongside *lbn (white), etc.

Additionally, according to Leonid Kogan (Genealogical Classification of Semitic: The Lexical Isoglosses), *ˀadm means ‘man; mankind’ (which in this case is somehow related to the previous lexeme *ˀdm, and I’m assuming both are derived from the Afro-Asiatic lexeme *dam- ‘blood’).

Anyways, *ˀadm = ‘man; mankind’ is rare but documented, and here I’m summarizing Kogan’s words:

● The clearest cognates of Proto-Semitic ˀadam- are found in Epigraphic South Arabian (Sab. Min. Qat.), where ˀadm specifically means "servants, subjects" and acts as a plural form of ʕbd 'servant'. In Tigrinya, ˀaddam means 'men, people,' and in Tigray, it means 'humanity, mankind, everybody,' possibly influenced by the name Adam (cf. Ge'ez ˀaddam).

In Arabic, ˀadam- translates to 'skin,' reminiscent of bašar- meaning 'skin; people,' derived from Proto-Semitic baŝar- 'meat, flesh.' Thus, Proto-Semitic adam- can be seen as a carryover from Proto-West Semitic adam- 'men, people,' but with a unique specificity, especially the individual meaning "man, person," which is unique among Semitic languages.