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The Canaanite languages, sometimes referred to as Canaanite dialects,[1] are one of four subgroups of the Northwest Semitic languages, the others being Aramaic, Ugaritic and Amorite. These closely related languages originate in the Levant and Mesopotamia, and were spoken by the ancient Semitic-speaking peoples of an area encompassing what is today, Israel, Jordan, the Sinai Peninsula, Lebanon, Syria, as well as some areas of southwestern Turkey (Anatolia), western and southern Iraq (Mesopotamia) and the northwestern corner of Saudi Arabia. From the 9th century BC they also spread to the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa and Mediterranean in the form of Phoenician.
 | This article needs additional citations for verification. (October 2020) |
| Canaanite | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution | Levant, Carthage |
| Linguistic classification | Afroasiatic |
| Subdivisions | |
| Language codes | |
| Glottolog | cana1267 |
The Canaanites are broadly defined to include the Hebrews (including Israelites, Judeans and Samaritans), Ammonites, Amorites, Edomites, Ekronites, Hyksos, Phoenicians (including the Carthaginians), Moabites, Suteans and sometimes the Ugarites.
The Canaanite languages continued to be everyday spoken languages until at least the 5th century AD. Hebrew is the only living Canaanite language today. It remained in continuous use by many Jews well into the Middle Ages and up to the present day as both a liturgical and literary language and was used for commerce between disparate diasporic Jewish communities. It has also remained a liturgical language among Samaritans. Hebrew as a secular language in daily use was revived by Jewish political and cultural activists, particularly through the revitalization and cultivation efforts of Zionists throughout Europe and in Palestine, as an everyday spoken language in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By the mid-20th century, Modern Hebrew had become the primary language of the Jews of Palestine and was later made the official language of the State of Israel.
| This section needs additional citations for verification. (August 2020) |
Analogous to the Romance languages, the Canaanite languages operate on a spectrum of mutual intelligibility with one another, with significant overlap occurring in syntax, morphology, phonetics, and semantics. This family of languages also has the distinction of being the first historically attested group of languages to use an alphabet, derived from the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, to record their writings, as opposed to the far earlier Cuneiform logographic/syllabic writing of the region, which originated in Mesopotamia and was used to record Sumerian, Akkadian, Eblaite, Elamite, Hurrian and Hittite.
They are heavily attested in Canaanite inscriptions throughout the Levant, Mesopotamia, Anatolia and the East Mediterranean, and after the founding of Carthage by Phoenician colonists, in coastal regions of North Africa and Iberian Peninsula also. Dialects have been labelled primarily with reference to Biblical geography: Hebrew (Israelian, Judean/Biblical, Samaritan), Phoenician/Punic, Amorite, Ammonite, Moabite, Sutean and Edomite; the dialects were all mutually intelligible, being no more differentiated than geographical varieties of Modern English.[2]
The Canaanite languages or dialects can be split into the following:[1][3]
North Canaan
- Phoenician (including Punic/Carthaginian). The main sources are the Ahiram sarcophagus inscription, the sarcophagus of Eshmunazar II, the Tabnit sarcophagus, the Kilamuwa inscription, the Cippi of Melqart, and the other Byblian royal inscriptions. For later Punic: in Plautus' play Poenulus at the beginning of the fifth act.
South Canaan
- Ammonite – an extinct Canaanite dialect of the Ammonite people mentioned in the Bible. The main sources are the Amman Citadel Inscription and Tel Siran inscription.
- Edomite – an extinct Canaanite dialect of the Edomite people mentioned in the Bible and Egyptian texts.
- Hebrew – The only Canaanite language that is a living language, and the most successful example of a revived dead language.
- Moabite – an extinct Canaanite dialect of the Moabite people mentioned in the Bible. The main sources are the Mesha Stele and El-Kerak Stela.
Other
Other possible Canaanite languages:
- Philistine language – attested by several dozen inscriptions in Phoenician script scattered along Israel's southwest coast, in particular the Ekron Royal Dedicatory Inscription (though there is evidence the Philistines did originally speak an Anatolian language).
- Ugaritic is possibly also a Northwest Semitic language, but likely not Canaanitic.[4][5]
- The Deir Alla Inscription, written in a dialect with Aramaic and South Canaanitic characteristics, which is classified as Canaanite in Hetzron.
- Sutean language, a Semitic language, possibly of the Canaanite branch.
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Some distinctive typological features of Canaanite in relation to the still spoken Aramaic are:
- The prefix h- is the definite article (Aramaic has a postfixed -a), which seems to be an innovation of Canaanite.
- The first person pronoun is ʼnk (אנכ anok(i), which is similar to Akkadian, Ancient Egyptian and Berber, versus Aramaic ʾnʾ/ʾny.
- The change of *ā > ō, called the Canaanite shift.
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Modern Hebrew, revived in the modern era from an extinct dialect of the ancient Israelites preserved in literature, poetry, liturgy; also known as Classical Hebrew, the oldest form of the language attested in writing. The original pronunciation of Biblical Hebrew is accessible only through reconstruction. It may also include Samaritan Hebrew, a variety formerly spoken by the Samaritans. The main sources of Classical Hebrew are the Hebrew Bible and inscriptions such as the Gezer calendar and Khirbet Qeiyafa pottery shard. All of the other Canaanite languages seem to have become extinct by the early first millennium AD except Punic, which survived into late antiquity (or possibly even longer).
Slightly varying forms of Hebrew preserved from the first millennium BC until modern times include:
- Tiberian Hebrew – Masoretic scholars living in the Jewish community of Tiberias in Palestine c. 750–950.
- Mizrahi Hebrew – Mizrahi Jews, liturgical
- Yemenite Hebrew – Yemenite Jews, liturgical
- Sephardi Hebrew – Sephardi Jews, liturgical
- Ashkenazi Hebrew – Ashkenazi Jews, liturgical
- Mishnaic Hebrew – Jews, liturgical, rabbinical, any of the Hebrew dialects found in the Talmud.
- Medieval Hebrew – Jews, liturgical, poetical, rabbinical, scientific, literary; lingua franca based on the Bible, Mishnah, and neologisms created by translators and commentators
- Haskalah Hebrew – Jews, scientific, literary and journalistic language based on Biblical but enriched with neologisms created by writers and journalists, a transition to the later
- Modern Hebrew used in Israel today
- Samaritan Hebrew – Samaritans, liturgical
The Phoenician and Carthaginian expansion spread the Phoenician language and the Punic variety spoken in the antique-era colonies in Western Mediterranean for a time, but there too it died out, although it seems to have survived longer than in Phoenicia itself.
The primary modern reference book for the many extra-biblical Canaanite inscriptions, together with Aramaic inscriptions, is the German-language book Kanaanäische und Aramäische Inschriften, from which inscriptions are often referenced as KAI n (for a number n).[6]
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