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Language Lineage

Northwest Semitic

Word-initial *w became y: Hebrew yeled 'child' beside Arabic walad, which keeps the old w.

c. 2nd millennium BCE – presentThe Levant and Syria
On this page
  1. Origins
  2. Ugarit
  3. Where its languages are spoken
  4. Turning points

01

Origins

Northwest Semitic is the Semitic of the Levant and Syria in the Bronze and Iron Ages. Its earliest traces are the names of Amorites, West Semitic newcomers who appear in Mesopotamian records around 2000 BCE and who founded dynasties at Mari and Babylon. Hammurabi's name is Amorite. A clear shared change is at the start of words, where *w became y: Hebrew yeled 'child' corresponds to Arabic walad.

Its two great branches are Canaanite (Hebrew, Phoenician, Moabite) and Aramaic. Ugaritic, the language of the city of Ugarit on the Syrian coast, is also Northwest Semitic, but whether it is a form of Canaanite or a separate branch is disputed.

02

Ugarit

Ugarit's scribes of the 14th–13th centuries BCE wrote their language in a unique alphabet of 30 wedge-shaped signs, an alphabet pressed into clay in cuneiform style. Its myths of the storm god Baal and the ruler god El illuminate Canaanite religion and the background of the Hebrew Bible. The city was destroyed around 1185 BCE in the upheavals at the end of the Bronze Age, and the language disappeared with it.

On the map

Where its languages are spoken

Israel
Spoken todayShading marks whole countries, not the regions within them.
  1. IsraelCanaanite c. 5 million
  2. GermanyAramaic
  3. IranAramaic
  4. IraqAramaic
  5. SwedenAramaic
  6. SyriaAramaic
  7. TurkeyAramaic
  8. 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. Contactc. 2000 – 1600 BCEContested

    Amorites in Mesopotamia

    Amorite names fill Mesopotamian records as West Semitic groups establish dynasties at Mari and Babylon. The language is known only from names. Its precise relationship to later Northwest Semitic is debated.

    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.
  2. Sound lawc. 2nd millennium BCE

    Initial *w becomes y

    *w- → y- (*wald- → yeled 'child'; Arabic walad)

    At the start of a word, *w becomes y: Hebrew yeled 'child' against Arabic walad. Inside words the old w often survives, so the change shows up as alternations within verb families.

    Compare with other consonant shifts across families →

    Sources (1)
    • Sáenz-Badillos, Angel. 1993. A History of the Hebrew Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  3. Writing14th – 12th century BCE

    The Ugaritic alphabet

    Ugarit writes its language in a 30-sign alphabet in cuneiform style, with its own letter order. Abecedaries found at the site show that this order is ancestral to the order of the later Semitic and Greek alphabets.

    Sources (1)
    • Hetzron, Robert, ed. 1997. The Semitic Languages. London: Routledge.
  4. SplitLate 2nd millennium BCE

    Canaanite and Aramaic diverge

    In the Iron Age, the Canaanite dialects of the coast and southern Levant and the Aramaic of inland Syria develop into separate language groups, each soon with its own writing tradition.

    Sources (1)
    • Gzella, Holger. 2015. A Cultural History of Aramaic. Leiden: Brill.