Edomite was a Northwest Semitic Canaanite language, very similar to

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

, Ekronite, Ammonite, Phoenician, Amorite and Sutean, spoken by the Edomites in southwestern

Jordan Jordan ( ar, الأردن; tr. ' ), officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,; tr. ' is a country in Western Asia. It is situated at the crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, within the Levant region, on the East Bank of the Jordan Rive ...

and parts of

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

in the 2nd and 1st millennium BCE. It is extinct and known only from a very small corpus. It is attested in a scant number of impression seals, ostraca, and a single late 7th or early 6th century BCE letter, discovered in

Horvat Uza Horvat Uza ( he, חורבת עוזה) is an archaeological site located in the northeast of the Negev desert in Israel. The site is located in the east of the Arad Valley and overlooks Nahal Qinah (Qinah Valley). In ancient times, forts were ...

. Like Moabite, but unlike Hebrew, it retained the feminine ending ''-t'' in the singular

absolute state In Afro-Asiatic languages, the first noun in a genitive phrase of a possessed noun followed by a possessor noun often takes on a special morphological form, which is termed the construct state ( Latin ''status constructus''). For example, in Ara ...

. In early times, it seems to have been written with a

Phoenician alphabet The Phoenician alphabet is an alphabet (more specifically, an abjad) known in modern times from the Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions found across the Mediterranean region. The name comes from the Phoenician civilization. The Phoenician al ...

. However, by the 6th century BCE, it adopted the Aramaic alphabet. Meanwhile,

Aramaic The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated i ...

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

features such as ''whb'' ("gave") and ''tgr'' ("merchant") entered the language, with ''whb'' becoming especially common in proper names. Like many other Canaanite languages, Edomite features a prefixed definite article derived from the presentative particle (''h-ʔkl'' ‘the food’). The diphthong /aw/ contracted to /o/ between the 7th and 5th century BCE, as foreign transcriptions of the divine name " Qos" indicate a transition in pronunciation from ''Qāws'' to ''Qôs''.

Examples

References

Canaanite languages Hebrew language Edom Languages attested from the 1st millennium BC Languages extinct in the 6th century BC {{Semitic-lang-stub