ZHEMITIC (Semitic") LANGUAGES, the general name of a certain number of dialects supposed at one time to have been spoken by the descendants of Shcm. The term is of recent origin (Sehllizer, Eichhorn), and a misnomer; for, in the first place, not all the nations derived in Genesis from Shem spoke an idiom akin to those understood by the term Shemitic (e.g., the Elamites, Lud, etc.), and, on the other hand, Canaan and Cush, whose Shcmitic speech is undoubted, are there traced to Ham. Shemitic languages, however, as a "conventional appellation," is still the best of all the general terms hith erto proposed (Arabic; Syro-Arabic, analogous to Indo-Germanic).
The family of Shemitic languages which spread originally over Canaan (Phenicia and Palestine), Assyria, Aram (Syria, Mesopotamia, Babylonia), and Arabia ; and at is later period over part of Asia Minor and the Punic northern coast—i.e., from the coun tries on the Mediterranean to the Tigris, and from time Armenian mountains to the s. coast of Arabia—may broadly be divided into three principal classes: 1. The Aramaic or northern (north-eastern) dialect., comprising chiefly the so-called Chaldee and Syriac; 2. The southern, the chief representative of which is the Arabic, closely allied to whose older (Himyaritie) form. is the Ethiopic; 3. The Middle, or principally llebraic, to which also belong the languages of the other Palestinian inhabitants, those of the Canaanites and Phenicians above all. The difference between the middle and northern branches is less sharply marked than between time middle and the southern or Arabic.
Before proceeding to treat of them individuallywe shall try to point out their general position among other languages, and principally the salient points of difference between the Shemitic and that other most important family of the Indo-Germanic or Aryan lan guages. First of all, then, we notice the preponderance given in Shemitic to the conso-' mints in contradistinction to the vowels. The former are indeed the basis and the body of its words. The vowels arc more or less accessories, modifying, fixing, precising the meaning. but never themselves containing it, while in the Indo-Germanic languages the root itself consists generally of a combination of vowels and consonants. A further peculiarity is the prevailing " triliteralness" of Shemitic roots in the advanced stage in which we now know them. The Indo-Germanic languages derive their wealth from the logical law of their composition of roots, of verbs, and particles; the Shemitic add to their store in phonetically multiplying their sounds: either by splitting, as it were, their single consonants into two or more, through the reduplication of radicals, or by the addition of new consonants to the primary root, which is thus developed often from a monosyllabic (for by fur the greatest number of Shemitic roots consisted primarily of two consonants only, to which a third was generally added at a later period) into a root of five letters. Compound words are of the utmost rarity both in the noun (except
proper names) and the verb, and they never consist of combined roots of verbs and particles, but of verbal and nominal roots, Regarding the formation of cases, tenses, and all those other grammatical changes of noun and verb which, in the Indo-Germanic family. arc wrought—as far as the verb or noun itself is concerned—almost exclusively /by suffixes, while the radical vowel changes merely according to euphonic rules within its own limited sphere; the Shemitic languages, principally and chiefly work their flectious by a change of vowels within the radical consonants, leaving the latter them selves intact. Only when these changes suffice no louger for the more elaborate modes of speech and thought, supplementary letters and syllables are sought, in aid and a cer tain small number of prefixes or affixes represents thh vast and varied groups of little words (amounting at times to whole phrases) of the ludo-Germanic. The Shemitic lan guages are also, if poorer, less complicated in forms than the former family. There are only two genders—which, however, are also distinguished in the second and third per sons of the verb—mid two principal tenses. These are strongly marked by the position of the personal pronoun, represented by a suffix in the so-called perfect and by a prefix in the so-called aorist or imperfect (future). The former expresses the finite, the com pleted action, the fact; the latter the incompleted action, the thought, that which is becoming, growing as it were into a fact. One of the most curious features is the sud den change that may be produced in the two by a certain prefixed conjunctive-consonant. Perfect then becomes future, and rice rend. Declension in the ludo-Germanic sense exists, if at all, in an extremely limited sense in Shemitic. The juxtaposition of two words (with slight vowel changes) forms the genitive, while the other cases (in the Hebraic at least) are formed by prepositions. The oblique cases of pronouns are indi cated by suffixes. The syntax is of the crudest and simplest description: a mere string iug together of sentences without any particular attempt at a logical and methodical arrangemeut of periods, according to their temporary superior or inferior relation to the subject-matter.