Mimation
Mimation (, ') is the phenomenon of a suffixed ' (the letter mem in many Semitic abjads) which occurs in some Semitic languages. This occurs in Akkadian in singular nouns. Akkadian grammar: Noun declension It was also present in the Proto-Semitic language. It is retained in the plural and dual forms in . It corresponds to the letter nun (-n) in [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Akkadian Language
Akkadian ( ; )John Huehnergard & Christopher Woods, "Akkadian and Eblaite", ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages''. Ed. Roger D. Woodard (2004, Cambridge) Pages 218–280 was an East Semitic language that is attested in ancient Mesopotamia ( Akkad, Assyria, Isin, Larsa, Babylonia and perhaps Dilmun) from the mid- third millennium BC until its gradual replacement in common use by Old Aramaic among Assyrians and Babylonians from the 8th century BC. Akkadian, which is the earliest documented Semitic language, is named after the city of Akkad, a major centre of Mesopotamian civilization during the Akkadian Empire (–2154 BC). It was written using the cuneiform script, originally used for Sumerian, but also used to write multiple languages in the region including Eblaite, Hurrian, Elamite, Old Persian and Hittite. The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian went beyond just the cuneiform script; owing to their close proximity, a lengthy span of con ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Abjad
An abjad ( or abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving the vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowels. The term was introduced in 1990 by Peter T. Daniels. Other terms for the same concept include partial phonemic script, segmentally linear defective phonographic script, consonantary, consonant writing, and consonantal alphabet. Impure abjads represent vowels with either optional diacritics, a limited number of distinct vowel glyphs, or both. Etymology The name ''abjad'' is based on the Arabic alphabet's first (in its Arabic alphabet#Alphabetical order, original order) four corresponding to ''a'', ''b'', ''j'', and to replace the more common terms "consonantary" and "consonantal alphabet" in describing the family of scripts classified as "West Semitic languages, West Semitic". It is similar to other Semitic languages such as Phoenician alphabet, Phoenician, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Semitic Language
The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They include Arabic, Amharic, Tigrinya, Aramaic, Hebrew, Maltese, Modern South Arabian languages and numerous other ancient and modern languages. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Malta, and in large immigrant and 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 sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis. Semitic languages occur in written form from a very early historical date in West Asia, with East Semitic Akkadian (also known as Assyrian and Babylonian) and Eblaite texts (written in a script adapted from Sumerian cuneiform) appearing from in Mesopotamia and the northeastern Levant respectively. The only earlier attested languages are Sumerian and Elamite (2800 BC ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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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]   |
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Hebrew Language
Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') 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 back 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 '' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nun (letter)
Nun is the fourteenth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ''nūn'' 𐤍, Hebrew ''nūn'' , Aramaic ''nūn'' 𐡍, Syriac ''nūn'' ܢ, and Arabic ''nūn'' (in abjadi order). Its numerical value is 50. It is the third letter in Thaana (), pronounced as "noonu". In all languages, it represents the alveolar nasal /n/. It is related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪌, South Arabian , and Ge'ez . The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek nu (Ν), Etruscan , Latin N, and Cyrillic Н. Origins Nun is believed to descend from an Egyptian hieroglyph of a snake (the Hebrew word for snake, ''nachash'' begins with Nun) or eel. Some have hypothesized a hieroglyph of fish in water as its origin (In Aramaic and Akkadian ''nun'' means fish, and in Arabic, ' means large fish or whale). The Phoenician letter was also named "fish", but this name has been suggested to descend from a hypothetical Proto-Canaanite word "snake", based on the letter name in Eth ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Classical Arabic
Classical Arabic or Quranic Arabic () is the standardized literary form of Arabic used from the 7th century and throughout the Middle Ages, most notably in Umayyad Caliphate, Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphate, Abbasid literary texts such as poetry, elevated prose and oratory, and is also the liturgical language of Islam, "Quranic" referring to the Quran. Classical Arabic is, furthermore, the Register (sociolinguistics), register of the Arabic language on which Modern Standard Arabic is based. Several written grammars of Classical Arabic were published with the exegesis of Arabic grammar being at times based on the existing texts and the works of previous texts, in addition to various early sources considered to be of most venerated genesis of Arabic. The primary focus of such works was to facilitate different linguistic aspects. Modern Standard Arabic is its direct descendant used today throughout the Arab world in writing and in formal speaking, for example prepared speeches, some r ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nunation
Nunation (, '), in some Semitic languages such as Arabic, is the addition of one of three vowel diacritics (''ḥarakāt'') to a noun or adjective. This is used to indicate the word ends in an alveolar nasal without the addition of the letter ''nūn''. The noun phrase is fully declinable and syntactically unmarked for definiteness, identifiable in speech. Literary Arabic When writing Literary Arabic in full diacritics, there are three nunation diacritics, which indicate the suffixes ' ( IPA: /-un/) (nominative case), ' /-in/ (genitive), and ' /an/ (accusative). The orthographical rules for nunation with the sign is by an additional ' (, diacritic above alif; or , diacritic before alif; see below), above ('' '' ) or above ('' '' ). In most dialects of spoken Arabic, nunation only exists in words and phrases borrowed from the literary language, especially those that are declined in the accusative (that is, with ). It is still used in some Bedouin dialects in its genitiv ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |