Skip to content
Language Lineage

Central Semitic

A new imperfective, yaqtulu, replaced the older yiqattal type: Arabic yaktubu and Hebrew yikhtov 'he writes', against Ge'ez yəqättəl, which keeps the old pattern.

c. 3rd – 2nd millennium BCE – presentThe Levant, Syria and northern Arabia
On this page
  1. Origins
  2. Arabic and Hebrew Side by Side
  3. Where its languages are spoken
  4. Turning points
  5. Contested classifications

01

Origins

Central Semitic groups Arabic with the Northwest Semitic languages: Hebrew, Phoenician, Aramaic and Ugaritic. Robert Hetzron set it out in the 1970s, and it has since become the standard view, with John Huehnergard as its main defender. The key evidence is in the verb. The present-future form of the old type, still seen in Akkadian iparras and Ge'ez yəqättəl, was replaced by a new form built on the old past-tense prefix: Arabic yaktubu, Hebrew yikhtov.

This was a change of view. For a long time Arabic was classed with the South Semitic languages of Arabia and Ethiopia, which share with it the 'broken plurals' (Arabic kitāb 'book', plural kutub). That older grouping appears here as a dotted arc between Arabic and Ethiosemitic.

02

Arabic and Hebrew Side by Side

Because Arabic and Hebrew are both well documented and closely enough related, they are the pair most often used to show what Central Semitic shares, and where its two halves went separate ways.

The common ground is easy to see. Both form the past with suffixes and the present-future with prefixes built on the same stem: Arabic kataba 'he wrote', yaktubu 'he writes'; Hebrew kātav, yikhtōv. Both have a definite article that the older Semitic languages lacked, though they built it differently: Arabic prefixes al- (al-bayt 'the house'), Hebrew ha- with doubling of the next consonant (ha-bbayit). Aramaic went its own way again, marking definiteness with a suffix -ā (baytā). The article probably arose separately in each line after they parted, a sign that Proto-Central Semitic had none.

The differences are in the sounds and the plurals. Arabic kept almost the full Proto-Semitic set of consonants, including *ṯ and *ḏ, which Hebrew merged with š and z. Hebrew and Aramaic, on the other hand, lost the case endings that Classical Arabic preserves (-u, -i, -a), and they rarely use Arabic's internal 'broken' plurals, preferring suffixes: Hebrew sūs 'horse', sūsīm 'horses'.

On the map

Where its languages are spoken

IsraelLebanonPalestineKuwaitMalta
Spoken todayShading marks whole countries, not the regions within them.
  1. EgyptArabic c. 100 million
  2. SudanArabic c. 40 million
  3. AlgeriaArabic c. 35 million
  4. IraqArabic c. 35 million · Aramaic
  5. YemenArabic c. 30 million
  6. MoroccoArabic c. 25 million
  7. Saudi ArabiaArabic c. 20 million
  8. SyriaArabic c. 20 million · Aramaic
15 more countries
  1. TunisiaArabic c. 12 million
  2. JordanArabic c. 10 million
  3. IsraelArabic c. 2 million · Canaanite c. 5 million
  4. LibyaArabic c. 6 million
  5. LebanonArabic c. 5 million
  6. PalestineArabic c. 5 million
  7. OmanArabic c. 3 million
  8. ChadArabic c. 2 million
  9. KuwaitArabic c. 1.5 million
  10. MaltaArabic c. 500,000 (Maltese)
  11. GermanyAramaic
  12. IranAramaic
  13. SwedenAramaic
  14. TurkeyAramaic
  15. United StatesAramaic

Figures are rough first-language estimates, rounded, from censuses and Ethnologue. Counts for small or scattered communities are especially uncertain.

Rings along the limb

Turning points

Oldest first.

  1. Splitc. 2nd millennium BCEContested

    Arabic and Northwest Semitic part

    The ancestors of Arabic in northern Arabia and of the Northwest Semitic languages in the Levant and Syria diverge. The date is inferred rather than documented: Arabic is not written until the first millennium BCE.

    Sources (1)
    • Huehnergard, John & Aaron D. Rubin. 2011. Phyla and waves: Models of classification of the Semitic languages. In The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook, ed. Stefan Weninger. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

Outside the tree

Contested classifications

These disagreements may never be settled. Each position is given with its grounds, and no side is declared correct.

  • Largely rejected

    Arabic as South Semitic

    Arabic belongs with the Ethiopian and South Arabian languages rather than with Hebrew and Aramaic

    Would join · Ethiosemitic + Arabic

    Evidence for

    Arabic shares 'broken' internal plurals with Ethiosemitic and South Arabian (kitāb 'book' → kutub), and the peoples were neighbours across Arabia. This was the standard classification in 19th- and early 20th-century handbooks.

    Evidence against

    Broken plurals are probably an old Semitic feature that the Northwest Semitic languages mostly lost, so sharing them proves nothing. Arabic shares with Northwest Semitic the new imperfective yaqtulu and other innovations. Following Hetzron and Huehnergard, Arabic is now generally placed in Central Semitic.

    Sources (2)
    • Hetzron, Robert. 1976. Two principles of genetic reconstruction. Lingua 38.
    • Huehnergard, John & Aaron D. Rubin. 2011. Phyla and waves: Models of classification of the Semitic languages. In The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook, ed. Stefan Weninger. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.