Another most important point of distinction between the two families is formed by what has been called their lexical difference, i.e., the want—except in a few isolated V:I.CS—Of any correspondence or identity in their individual words. Most of those words which exhibit a similarity can be shown to have been either adopted at a late .[eriod,,or they simply fall under the category of onomatopocie.words (words imitating the sound of the object expressed, and therefore showing in all cases greater or smaller affinity to the original sound); or, again, words in which the common type of human language would involuntarily and under all circumstances connect a special meaning with a special sound, and would, therefore, he more or less identical in all idioms. Of words introduced into European languages by Shemitic (Phenician) traders may be instanced, kanua = cane, genial = camel, mar = myrrh, kezksh = cassia, altellin = aloe, nerd = nard, earkon-= crocus, mppir = sapphire, sak = sack, etc. Of onomatopoeic terms, lakak = (Sansk. lilt) to lick, duffed (Sansk. = to grate, scratch, gall = to roll, parak = to break, etc. On the other hand, words have crept into Shemitic from foreign languages; e.g., the Egyptian, ior, iero, iaro, river, Nile, is found as year in Hebrew, pfirdes (Heb.) paradise, is Persian, /cop (Sansk. kept) is the Heb. for ape, karpas (San*. karpd'a) = wool, cotton, etc.
As regards the age of the family of Shemitic languages, it is matter of great doubt whether or not they were developed earlier than any other, e.g., the Indo-Germanic. The monuments that have survived are not sufficient for us to form a final judgment as yet. It stands to reason, however, that a development may have taken place simultane• ously and independently in the idioms of other nations. The notion long cherished (and still upheld by a few isolated speculators) that Hebrew was the original language of all mankind lip to the episode of the tower of Babel, may here be passed over without remark. See PHILOLOGY.
We shall now endeavor to draw an outline of the relation of the Shemitic languages among themselves, and to cast a rapid glance at their individual characteristics and history, referring for fuller details to the articles devoted to the special branches indi cated. Although the Shemitie languages are clearly sister dialects. their relationship Jo far from being so close its, for instance, that of the different Greek dialects. Thus Abraham, Monring by his descent to a people of Shemitic tongue, and coming from a count•y,where Shemitie was the general language, at his arrival in his new place of abode, inhabited by Shemites, was considered, and considered himself a foreigner to a much greater extent than it would have been the case had a Greek emigrated from one part of Greece into another. It would be more fit perhaps to institute a comparison between the different Shemitie dialects and the Germanic languages among themselves: German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, etc.; or the Slavonic idioms: Lithuanian, Lettish, Russian, Polish, Bohemian. But even these are nut so far removed from each other as the Shemitie idioms. What the latter have in common are those grammatical and other characteristics indicated above, and the •oot-words themselves, which nearly everywhere have the same original signification; only that in this respect the Arabic shows by far the largest development of meanings out of the single roots, and conse quently an unparalleled wealth of derivatives. Yet it must not be forgotten that our relics of ancient, Hebrew are of a scanty nature, and that the Arabic has remained a living language until our day, arid has, through Islam, spread further than any ancient and perhaps even modern language.
Regarding the much-vexed question as to which of the Shemitic languages is the oldest, it must be confessed that no positive result has yet been attained. For although the oldest palpable monuments of Shemitic have survived in Hebrew, while our earliest documents in Aramaic date from Cyrus, and those in Arabic, even centuries lino' Christ (Ilimyaritic, Ethiopic, 4th c.; northern Arabic, Gth c. A.D.). yet we cannot now decide which of these has preserved the type of the original mother-tongue most intact. It sometimes happens that vast internal movements, or a series of events in the history of a people—wanderings, wars, and the like—change, quicken, and develop its language even to decay, before it has had time to beget a literature, When this time does arrive, we meet already with all the traces of this decay in imperfections, corruptions, and archaisms of form. Thus, the Hebrew of the Bible, that is the most ancient form in
which it has survived, offers more grammatical analogies (in incomplete structure, inflection, etc.) to the modern than to the ancient Arabic, which lasted in its primitive Verity an 1 fullness of form as long as the simple life of the dwellers in the desert was not broken by those events which upheaved, from the time of Mohammed, their whole existence, and brought them in closest and most violent contact with other nations of other tongues. Then that process of decomposition, or phase of negligence and corrup tion, set in, whine resulted in the looseness exhibited by modern Arabic. It thus reached the downward of the Hebrew of the Old Testament at ever so much later a period. Ar4bie classieal literature thus exhibits, compared with the Hebrew, and even more with the Ara:naic—whieh we meet in a worse state of aged and crippled organism and stunted form—about the salmi vigor, freshness, and fullness of form and structure which tho Sanskrit exhibits amai; the Indo-Germanic or the Gothic in the narrower circle of the Germanic dialects. With all this, however, we cannot decide in favor of the Arabic as the nearest approach to the original type. The phase in which it enters into our historical horizon may be as far if not further removed from it even as the Aramaic. Its hasty individual development may have quickened more radical changes than even the decaying or decayed other branches present. So that. as we said, for the present at least, the question of priority Must, remain open. We shall, however, allot the first p1.1.00 to the second or southern Shemitic (Arabic) class, simply because of its copiousness of words and development of forms. A faint trace of -its peculiarity of article (al) is'sup posed to be found in Gen. x. 26 (aloaolafl); but this seems fallacious enough, considering that the Hebrew article must have been originally the same, and the word may simply exhibit the ancient Hebrew form. In the golden epoch of the Hebrew literature, Arab culture does indeed seem to have stood in high renown—Solomon's wisdom is likened unto that of the Arabs, queen Sheba is an Arab queen, and Job's friends are Arabs. On its peculiar history and development, however, we cannot here dwell. See ARABIAN LANGUAGE and LITERATURE. Suffice it to observe generally that Arabic is not only the richest of Shemitic, but one of the richest of all languages, with its more than 6,030 wo•d-roots, and about 60,00 words; while the Hebrew has about 2,000 of the former and 6,000 of the latter. The 22 consonants of the Arammans, and the 23 of the Hebrews, have been augmented into 28 with the Arabs. They further have twice the number of the Hebrew regular conjugations, in which again the latter exceed the Aramaic by one. The same uMandanee is noticeable in the Arabic tenses, declensions, etc. The general wealth of this language, however, will be best appreciated by its possessing some thou sand different terms for a sword, and a proportionate number of words for lion. serpent, and the like ;.wldle on the other hand, its, adaptability and versatility is shown by one word often possessing a vast number of meanings. Anciently it 1 t.y had •wo principal branches: the lihnvaride, spoken in the south, which has perished almost completely (a few partly mutilated inscriptions, recently brought to the British museum, have been published some time ago, and their interpretation has been attempted by °slander and Levy in the Gum. Or. Society's Transactions), and tile Koreishite, which, being the idiom of Moham med's tribe, became the paramount Arabic for all times: The Etbiopie (see E•ULOPIA) is by some investigators held to have flowed from the Himyaritic; but from the 14th c., the Amharic dialect (also but with little capacity for writing purposes) has - superseded the Ethiopic almost completely.