Arab-Jewish relatives? Language secrets? Afro-Asian language analysis?
In modern society, the contradictions between Arabs and Jews are deepening. However, both from ancient religious legends and modern scientific research, the two groups share a common origin.
The key evidence of this common origin is the language system known as the Afro-Asian language family. So, what exactly is the common origin of Arabs and Jews? What other languages are in the Afro-Asian language family?
What is the history of this language family? The question of the origin of Afro-Asian languages has already been covered in our previous articles. Within this language family, both Arabic and Hebrew are thought to have a common origin, and both are considered to belong to the Afro-Asian language family.
Historically, for religious reasons, the Afro-Asiatic language family used to be called the Semitic language family, a name derived from the names of the two sons of Noah, a legendary figure commonly recognized in the Abrahamic religion.
However, after 1950, the name Afro-Asian gradually replaced the old name of the Semitic language family and became a common name in the international academic community.
The traditional theory that Afro-Asian languages originated in the Levant, the eastern Mediterranean region where Asia and Africa meet, is somewhat controversial. The latest view is that the Afro-Asian language family originated in Northeast Africa, including Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea.
One view is that the Afro-Asian language family originated in the vicinity of present-day Eritrea and was used by local fruit-gathering and nomadic groups, who later moved into the Levant, where they created the Natuf culture and brought with them crops endemic to North Africa.
Although this view is somewhat controversial, it offers a new possibility for understanding the origins of Afro-Asian languages.
The Afro-Asian language family originated from **, and how has it developed to the present? This issue has attracted the attention and research of many scholars. One view is that the Afro-Asian language family was first born in the Omo Valley region of Ethiopia because of the high degree of diversity within the Afro-Asian language family and the fact that no evidence has been found that the Afro-Asian language family migrated from elsewhere.
Another view is that the Afro-Asian language family originated on the edge of the Sahara Desert or around Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, but these views are controversial and not the mainstream understanding.
At present, the Afro-Asian language family can be divided into about 6 language families, namely Berber, Chadian, Cushitic, Egyptian, Semitic and Omo.
Among them, the Omo language group, which we mentioned earlier, is mainly spoken by the ethnic group in the Omo Valley region of Ethiopia, with about 6.2 million people. Because the Omo language family is the most different from other language families, it is considered to be the earliest language family to diverge from Proto-Afro-Asian, but the exact time of their differentiation has not yet been determined.
Although the timing of the differentiation of several other language families is also controversial, some studies suggest that they may have diverged from Proto-Afro-Asian languages between 4 and 5000 years ago at the latest.
Now, let's focus on the development of two Afro-Asian language branches that have been influential in modern times, namely Egyptian and Semitic.
The excavated seals of the early Egyptian script reveal a striking fact: the Egyptian language family was formed long before 3300 BC. The languages of this language family are widely considered by modern people to be the language used by the creators of ancient Egyptian civilization.
However, since the language of this language family has been almost lost in modern times, it is classified mainly according to its age in modern times. The earliest Egyptian language to emerge from Proto-Afro-Asian** is known as Ancient Egyptian.
Since then, it has undergone several major changes, evolving into Ancient Egyptian, Middle Egyptian, Late Egyptian, and Secular Egyptian. Around the 4th century AD, the Egyptians were assimilated to a certain extent by the Greeks and began to use the Greek alphabet extensively to spell Egyptian, which led to another significant change in the Egyptian language, which evolved into Coptic.
However, after the 17th century AD, Coptic was completely replaced by Arabic among the people, and was almost only used in some religious activities of the Coptic Church, the native church of Egypt, and became a quasi-dead language, similar to Latin in Europe.
Around 3000 BC, Semitic languages began to emerge, and their origins are still disputed today, including Mesopotamia, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Arabian Peninsula, and North Africa.
With the dispersion of the Semitic language family, geographical isolation led to significant internal differentiation, forming Semitic branches in the northwest, east, and south. Around the 21st century BCE, a mutually intelligible language emerged in places such as Palestine Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, which is known as Northwest Semitic.
Languages such as Akkadian, which emerged in Mesopotamia during the same period, are known as East Semitic, the lingua franca of ancient Assyrian and Babylonian civilizations. Due to the cultural and comprehensive strength of Assyria and Babylon, the East Semitic languages gradually spread.
Around the 14th century B.C.E., a new language emerged in present-day Palestine, Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon, combining the original Northwest Semitic languages with Eastern Semitic languages originating from Assyria and Babylon.
Around the 6th century BCE, Aramaic became the lingua franca of the Neo-Assyrian Empire due to its writing system, but the Northwestern Semitic and Eastern Semitic languages gradually declined.
Around the 1st century AD, Arabic, a branch of the Southern Semitic language, became popular in the southern part of the Eastern Mediterranean. In the 7th century AD, the Arab Empire was established and expanded, and the use of Arabic quickly expanded to places like Egypt in North Africa.
The expansion of the Arabic language also hastened to some extent the decline of other Afro-Asian languages such as Egyptian, and they have survived only in areas less affected by the Arab Empire.
There are about 4 in the worldArabic and its various dialects are spoken by 2.2 billion people. In addition to this, the most populous language in the Afro-Asian language family is the Chadian language family, which is mainly found in sub-Saharan Black Africa and is spoken by about 25 million people.
In addition, in countries such as Morocco, Algeria and Libya in North Africa, about 4 million people speak Berber languages, while in the Horn of Africa region, about 1 million people speak Cushitic languages, which belong to the Afro-Asian language family.
The Semitic language family is widely distributed, with Ethiopia, a large African country, having a large population of other Semitic languages. In addition, although Malta is derived from the Arabic language, due to historical reasons, its language has introduced a large number of European language vocabulary and is now considered part of the Semitic language family.
Combined, these populations are about tens of millions of people. Hebrew, the official language of Israel, also belongs to the Afro-Asian language family, with at least a few million native speakers.
Although it has left its mark in the history of the world, its peculiarities have led it to be included in a separate section for a brief introduction.
In a Hebrew newspaper at the end of the 19th century C.E., we mentioned that Hebrew was a Northwestern Semitic language. Although the language was widely spoken in the ancient Jewish sphere of influence, the Jews were forced into mass exile in Babylon in 587 BC after the fall of the ancient Jewish regime by Babylon.
During this period, the spoken language of the Jews gradually changed to Aramaic, but the use of Hebrew remained widespread. However, around 63 BC, the Jewish settlement was completely conquered by the Roman general Pompey.
Over the next few hundred years, most of the Jews under Roman rule gradually left their settlements in the Eastern Mediterranean, either by force or will, and scattered to different parts of the Roman Empire.
In the process, although the national identity of the Jews was preserved, the Hebrew language inevitably embarked on the path of extinction.
Reliefs of Roman soldiers celebrating the defeat of the Jews from the 4th to 6th centuries AD depict scenes from that time. Although the spoken Hebrew language had largely died out, Jewish merchants continued to communicate with each other in Hebrew in order to overcome the language barrier.
In addition, Hebrew is also used in some religious settings. However, Hebrew, whose status at the time was similar to that of modern Latin and Coptic, had become a dead language.
Jews in Europe, Asia and Africa mainly speak the languages that are prevalent in their respective regions, the most popular of which is Yiddish, a variant of German. Although Yiddish is considered the language of the Jews, it has little to do with Afro-Asian, Semitic, and Hebrew languages.
In general, the linguistic condition of the Jews changed significantly between the 4th and 6th centuries CE, moving from Hebrew to Yiddish.
At the end of the 19th century, some Jewish scholars began to try to activate and reuse Hebrew as a language of oral application. Although most of these scholars lived in the German region, and their mother tongue was Yiddish, a variant of German, they still designed and promoted the new Hebrew language according to the old Hebrew language.
However, due to the influence of Yiddish, the new Hebrew language has a strong German language with strong German roots, and some of its pronunciations are also directly derived from German. In addition, Jews from Spain also influenced the new Hebrew language to some extent.
As a result, modern Hebrew incorporates elements of European languages and is a distinctively Afro-Asian language. Hebrew is currently spoken by about 9 million people worldwide.
Trilingual street signs that bear witness to Israel's diverse culture. According to the latest genetic research, E-M215, a paternal gene commonly found in Ethiopian, Somali, North African Berbers, and some ethnic groups in Kenya, is distributed in various ethnic groups of the current Afro-Asian language family.
This may imply that this gene may be the earliest Afro-Asian language group paternal gene, further supporting the idea that Afro-Asian language groups may have a common origin.