1.
Hebrew language
–
Hebrew is a language native to Israel, spoken by over 9 million people worldwide, of whom over 5 million are in Israel. Historically, it is regarded as the language of the Israelites and their ancestors, the earliest examples of written Paleo-Hebrew date from the 10th century BCE. Hebrew belongs to the West Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family, Hebrew is the only living Canaanite language left, and the only truly successful example of a revived dead language. Hebrew had ceased to be a spoken language somewhere between 200 and 400 CE, declining since the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt. Aramaic and to a lesser extent Greek were already in use as international languages, especially among elites and it survived into the medieval period as the language of Jewish liturgy, rabbinic literature, intra-Jewish commerce, and poetry. Then, in the 19th century, it was revived as a spoken and literary language, and, according to Ethnologue, had become, as of 1998, the language of 5 million people worldwide. After Israel, the United States has the second largest Hebrew-speaking population, with 220,000 fluent speakers, Modern Hebrew is one of the two official languages of the State of Israel, while premodern Hebrew is used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world today. Ancient Hebrew is also the tongue of the Samaritans, while modern Hebrew or Arabic is their vernacular. For this reason, Hebrew has been referred to by Jews as Leshon Hakodesh, the modern word Hebrew is derived from the word Ivri, one of several names for the Israelite people. It is traditionally understood to be a based on the name of Abrahams ancestor, Eber. This name is based upon the root ʕ-b-r meaning to cross over. Interpretations of the term ʕibrim link it to this verb, cross over, in the Bible, the Hebrew language is called Yәhudit because Judah was the surviving kingdom at the time of the quotation. In Isaiah 19,18 it is called the Language of Canaan, Hebrew belongs to the Canaanite group of languages. In turn, the Canaanite languages are a branch of the Northwest Semitic family of languages, according to Avraham ben-Yosef, Hebrew flourished as a spoken language in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah during about 1200 to 586 BCE. Scholars debate the degree to which Hebrew was a vernacular in ancient times following the Babylonian exile. In July 2008 Israeli archaeologist Yossi Garfinkel discovered a ceramic shard at Khirbet Qeiyafa which he claimed may be the earliest Hebrew writing yet discovered, dating around 3000 years ago. The Gezer calendar also dates back to the 10th century BCE at the beginning of the Monarchic Period, classified as Archaic Biblical Hebrew, the calendar presents a list of seasons and related agricultural activities. The Gezer calendar is written in an old Semitic script, akin to the Phoenician one that through the Greeks, the Gezer calendar is written without any vowels, and it does not use consonants to imply vowels even in the places where later Hebrew spelling requires it
Hebrew language
–
Hebrew street sign, above in
Hebrew alphabet, below in
Latin transliteration. Aluf Batslut veAluf Shum (he) ("The Onion Champion and the Garlic Champion") is a
play by
Hayim Nahman Bialik.
Hebrew language
–
Portion of the
Temple Scroll, one of the longest of the
Dead Sea Scrolls discovered at
Qumran
Hebrew language
–
The
Shebna Inscription, from the tomb of a royal steward found in
Siloam, dates to the 7th century BCE.
Hebrew language
–
Hebrew script used in writing a Torah scroll. Note ornamental "crowns" on tops of certain letters.
2.
Semitic languages
–
The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family originating in the Middle East. The terminology was first used in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen School of History, the most widely spoken Semitic languages today are Arabic, Amharic, Tigrinya, Hebrew, Aramaic and Maltese. Among them are the Ugaritic, Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Maltese is the only Semitic language written in the Latin script and the only Semitic language to be an official language of the European Union. The Semitic languages are notable for their nonconcatenative morphology and that is, word roots are not themselves syllables or words, but instead are isolated sets of consonants. Words are composed out of not so much by adding prefixes or suffixes. For example, in Arabic, the root meaning write has the form k-t-b, the similarity of the Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic languages was accepted by Jewish and Islamic scholars since medieval times. Almost two centuries later, Hiob Ludolf described the similarities between these three languages and the Ethiopian Semitic languages, however, neither scholar named this grouping as Semitic. Viewed from this too, with respect to the alphabet used. Previously these languages had been known as the Oriental languages in European literature. In the 19th century, Semitic became the name, however. There are several locations proposed as sites for prehistoric origins of Semitic-speaking peoples, Mesopotamia, The Levant, Mediterranean, the Arabian Peninsula. Both the Near East and North Africa saw an influx of Muslim Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula, followed later by non-Semitic Muslim Iranian and Turkic peoples. The Arabs spread their Central Semitic language to North Africa where it gradually replaced Coptic and many Berber languages, with the patronage of the caliphs and the prestige of its liturgical status, Arabic rapidly became one of the worlds main literary languages. Its spread among the masses took much longer, however, as many of the populations outside the Arabian Peninsula only gradually abandoned their languages in favour of Arabic. As Bedouin tribes settled in conquered areas, it became the language of not only central Arabia, but also Yemen, the Fertile Crescent. Most of the Maghreb followed, particularly in the wake of the Banu Hilals incursion in the 11th century, and Arabic became the native language of many inhabitants of al-Andalus. After the collapse of the Nubian kingdom of Dongola in the 14th century, Arabic began to spread south of Egypt into modern Sudan, soon after, the Beni Ḥassān brought Arabization to Mauritania. Meanwhile, Semitic languages were diversifying in Ethiopia and Eritrea, where, under heavy Cushitic influence, they split into a number of languages, including Amharic, Arabic languages and dialects are currently the native languages of majorities from Mauritania to Oman, and from Iraq to the Sudan
Semitic languages
–
11th-century manuscript of the
Hebrew Bible with
Targum
Semitic languages
–
Approximate historical distribution of Semitic languages.
Semitic languages
–
Page from a 15th-century Bible in
Ge'ez (Ethiopia & Eritrea)
Semitic languages
–
9th century
Syriac manuscript
3.
Latin
–
Latin is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. The Latin alphabet is derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets, Latin was originally spoken in Latium, in the Italian Peninsula. Through the power of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language, Vulgar Latin developed into the Romance languages, such as Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Romanian. Latin, Italian and French have contributed many words to the English language, Latin and Ancient Greek roots are used in theology, biology, and medicine. By the late Roman Republic, Old Latin had been standardised into Classical Latin, Vulgar Latin was the colloquial form spoken during the same time and attested in inscriptions and the works of comic playwrights like Plautus and Terence. Late Latin is the language from the 3rd century. Later, Early Modern Latin and Modern Latin evolved, Latin was used as the language of international communication, scholarship, and science until well into the 18th century, when it began to be supplanted by vernaculars. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the language of the Holy See and the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. Today, many students, scholars and members of the Catholic clergy speak Latin fluently and it is taught in primary, secondary and postsecondary educational institutions around the world. The language has been passed down through various forms, some inscriptions have been published in an internationally agreed, monumental, multivolume series, the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Authors and publishers vary, but the format is about the same, volumes detailing inscriptions with a critical apparatus stating the provenance, the reading and interpretation of these inscriptions is the subject matter of the field of epigraphy. The works of several hundred ancient authors who wrote in Latin have survived in whole or in part and they are in part the subject matter of the field of classics. The Cat in the Hat, and a book of fairy tales, additional resources include phrasebooks and resources for rendering everyday phrases and concepts into Latin, such as Meissners Latin Phrasebook. The Latin influence in English has been significant at all stages of its insular development. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, English writers cobbled together huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek words, dubbed inkhorn terms, as if they had spilled from a pot of ink. Many of these words were used once by the author and then forgotten, many of the most common polysyllabic English words are of Latin origin through the medium of Old French. Romance words make respectively 59%, 20% and 14% of English, German and those figures can rise dramatically when only non-compound and non-derived words are included. Accordingly, Romance words make roughly 35% of the vocabulary of Dutch, Roman engineering had the same effect on scientific terminology as a whole
Latin
–
Latin inscription, in the
Colosseum
Latin
–
Julius Caesar 's
Commentarii de Bello Gallico is one of the most famous classical Latin texts of the Golden Age of Latin. The unvarnished, journalistic style of this
patrician general has long been taught as a model of the urbane Latin officially spoken and written in the floruit of the
Roman republic.
Latin
–
A multi-volume Latin dictionary in the
University Library of Graz
Latin
–
Latin and Ancient Greek Language - Culture - Linguistics at
Duke University in 2014.
4.
Aleph
–
Aleph is the first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Ālep, Hebrew Ālef א, Aramaic Ālap
Aleph
–
Hieroglyph
5.
He (letter)
–
He is the fifth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Hē, Hebrew Hē ה, Aramaic Hē, Syriac Hē ܗ, and Arabic Hāʾ ﻫ. Its sound value is a glottal fricative. The proto-Canaanite letter gave rise to the Greek Epsilon, Etruscan
He (letter)
–
ה
6.
Waw (letter)
–
Waw is the sixth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician wāw, Aramaic waw, Hebrew vav ו, Syriac waw ܘ and Arabic wāw و. It represents the consonant and the vowels and and it is the origin of Greek Ϝ, Υ and Latin F, V and the derived letters U, W, Y. The preceding consonant could either have no diacritic or a mark, damma. A long /oː/ In many dialects, as a result of the monophthongization that underwent the diphthong /aw/ in most of the words, a part of a diphthong, /aw/. In this case it has no diacritic, but could be marked with a sukun in some traditions, the preceding consonant could either have no diacritic or have fatḥa sign, hinting to the first vowel /a/ in the diphthong. As a vowel, wāw can serve as the carrier of a hamza, wāw serves several functions in Arabic. Perhaps foremost among them is that it is the conjunction in Arabic, equivalent to and, it is usually prefixed to other conjunctions, such as وَلَكِن wa-lākin, meaning. Another function is the oath, by preceding a noun of great significantly valued by the speaker and it is often literally translatable to By. or I swear to. And is often used in the Quran in this way, with an additional triple dot diacritic above waw, the letter then named ve is used to represent distinctively the consonant /v/ sometimes in Arabic-based Sorani Kurdish and in Arabic-based Uyghur. /o/ in Sorani Kurdish, /v/ in Arabic-based Kazakh, /ø/ in Uyghur, thirty-fourth letter of the Azerbaijani Arabic script, represents Ô /ɔ/. In Jawi script, Used for /v/. 00% and it is pronounced, like in Arabic, as a by some Jews of Mizrahi origin. In modern Israeli Hebrew, some loanwords, the pronunciation of whose source contains /w/, modern Hebrew has no standardized way to distinguish orthographically between and. The pronunciation is determined by prior knowledge or must be derived through context, some non standard spellings of the sound are sometimes found in modern Hebrew texts, such as word-initial double-vav, וואללה – /ˈwala/ or, rarely, vav with a geresh, ו׳יליאם – /ˈwiljam/. Vav can be used as a mater lectionis for an o vowel, in case it is known as a ḥolam male. The distinction is normally ignored and the HEBREW POINT HOLAM is used in all cases and this vowel can be denoted without the vav, as just the dot placed above and to the left of the letter it points, and is called then ḥolam ḥaser. Some inadequate typefaces dont support the distinction between the ḥolam male ⟨וֹ⟩ /o/, the consonantal vav pointed with a ḥolam ḥaser ⟨וֺ⟩ /vo/. In the word שִׁוּוּק, marketing, the first denotes a vav with dagesh and this is the most common usage. For example, yomar means he will say and vayomar means he said, for example, ahavtah means you loved, and veahavtah means you will love
Waw (letter)
–
ו
7.
Yodh
–
Yodh is the tenth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Yōd, Hebrew Yōd י, Aramaic Yodh, Syriac Yōḏ ܚ, and Arabic Yāʾ ي. Its sound value is /j/ in all languages for which it is used, in languages, it also serves as a long vowel. The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Iota, Latin I, J, Cyrillic І, Й, Coptic iauda, Yodh is thought to have originated with a pictograph of a hand that ultimately derives from Proto-Semitic *yad-. It may be related to the Egyptian hieroglyphic of an arm, a long /iː/ usually in the middle or end of words. In this case it has no diacritic, but could be marked with a kasra in the letter in some traditions. A long /eː/ In many dialects, as a result of the monophthongization that underwent the diphthong /aj/ in most of the words, a part of a diphthong, /aj/. Then, it has no diacritic but could be marked with a sukun in some traditions, the preceding consonant could have no diacritic or have fatḥa sign, hinting to the first vowel in the diphthong, i. e. /a/. As a vowel, yāʾ can serve as the seat of the hamza, Yāʾ as a prefix is the marker for a singular imperfective verb, as in يَكْتُب yaktub he writes from the root ك-ت-ب K-T-B. Yāʾ with a shadda is particularly used to turn a noun into an adjective, for instance, مِصْر Miṣr → مِصْرِيّ Miṣriyy. The transformation can be abstract, for instance, مَوْضَوع mawḍūʿ → مَوْضُوعِيّ mawḍūʿiyy. Still other uses of this function can be a bit further from the root, the common pronunciation of the final /-ijj/ is most often pronounced as or. A form similar to but distinguished from yāʾ is the ʾalif maqṣūrah broken alif and it indicates a final long /aː/. In Egypt, Sudan and sometimes the Maghreb, the form is always ى. ى representing final /-aː/ is less likely to occur in Modern Standard Arabic, in this case, it is commonly known as, especially in Egypt, أَلِف لَيِّنَة ʾalif layyinah. In Egypt, it is short if used in Egyptian Arabic and most commonly short in Modern Standard Arabic. In the Persian alphabet, the letter is generally called ye following Persian-language custom, in its final form, the letter does not have dots, much like the Arabic ʾalif maqṣūrah or, more to the point, much like the custom in Egypt, Sudan and sometimes Maghreb. On account of this difference, Perso-Arabic ye is located at a different Unicode code point than both of the standard Arabic letters, in computers, the Persian version of the letter automatically appears with two dots initially and medially. The Arabic version without dots ى is not used initially or medially, however, it is used in the Uyghur Arabic alphabet and the Arabic-based Kyrgyz alphabet
Yodh
–
י
8.
Arabic
–
Arabic is a Central Semitic language that was first spoken in Iron Age northwestern Arabia and is now the lingua franca of the Arab world. Arabic is also the language of 1.7 billion Muslims. It is one of six languages of the United Nations. The modern written language is derived from the language of the Quran and it is widely taught in schools and universities, and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, government, and the media. The two formal varieties are grouped together as Literary Arabic, which is the language of 26 states. Modern Standard Arabic largely follows the standards of Quranic Arabic. Much of the new vocabulary is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the post-Quranic era, Arabic has influenced many languages around the globe throughout its history. During the Middle Ages, Literary Arabic was a vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics. As a result, many European languages have borrowed many words from it. Many words of Arabic origin are found in ancient languages like Latin. Balkan languages, including Greek, have acquired a significant number of Arabic words through contact with Ottoman Turkish. Arabic has also borrowed words from languages including Greek and Persian in medieval times. Arabic is a Central Semitic language, closely related to the Northwest Semitic languages, the Ancient South Arabian languages, the Semitic languages changed a great deal between Proto-Semitic and the establishment of the Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include, The conversion of the suffix-conjugated stative formation into a past tense, the conversion of the prefix-conjugated preterite-tense formation into a present tense. The elimination of other prefix-conjugated mood/aspect forms in favor of new moods formed by endings attached to the prefix-conjugation forms, the development of an internal passive. These features are evidence of descent from a hypothetical ancestor. In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside of the Ancient South Arabian family were spoken and it is also believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages were also spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hijaz, Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages, in Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested
Arabic
–
The Galland Manuscript of
One Thousand and One Nights, 14th century
Arabic
–
Arabic is the sole official language
Arabic
–
Bilingual traffic sign in
Qatar.
Arabic
–
Examples of how the Arabic root and form system works.
9.
Ugaritic alphabet
–
The Ugaritic script is a cuneiform abjad used from around either the fifteenth century BCE or 1300 BCE for Ugaritic, an extinct Northwest Semitic language, and discovered in Ugarit, Syria, in 1928. Other languages were written in the Ugaritic script in the area around Ugarit. Arabic and Old South Arabian are the only other Semitic alphabets which have letters for all or almost all of the 29 commonly reconstructed proto-Semitic consonant phonemes, the script was written from left to right. Although cuneiform and pressed into clay, its symbols were unrelated to those of the Akkadian cuneiform, in most syllables only consonants were written, including the /w/ and /j/ of diphthongs. However, Ugaritic was unusual among early abjads in also writing vowels after the glottal stop, in function, is like Ugaritic s, but only in certain words – other s-words are never written with. Segert instead theorizes that it may have been syllabic /su/, and for this reason grouped with the syllabic signs /ʔi/. Probably the last three letters of the alphabet were originally developed for transcribing non-Ugaritic languages, and were applied to write the Ugaritic language. The three letters denoting glottal stop plus vowel combinations were used as simple vowel letters when writing other languages, the only punctuation is a word divider. At the time the Ugaritic script was in use, Ugarit was at the centre of the world, among Egypt, Anatolia, Cyprus, Crete. Ugaritic combined the system of the Semitic abjad with cuneiform writing methods, however, scholars have searched in vain for graphic prototypes of the Ugaritic letters in Mesopotamian cuneiform. Recently, some have suggested that Ugaritic represents some form of the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet, the letter forms distorted as an adaptation to writing on clay with a stylus. Other letters look similar as well,
Ugaritic alphabet
–
The Ugaritic Alphabet
Ugaritic alphabet
–
dark green shows approximate spread of writing by 1300 BCE
10.
Moabite language
–
Moab is the historical name for a mountainous tract of land in Jordan. The land lies alongside much of the shore of the Dead Sea. The existence of the Kingdom of Moab is attested to by numerous archaeological findings, most notably the Mesha Stele, according to the Hebrew Bible, Moab was often in conflict with its Israelite neighbours to the west. Moab occupied a plateau about 3,000 feet above the level of the Mediterranean, or 4,300 feet above the Dead Sea, the northern boundary varied, but generally is represented by a line drawn some miles above the northern extremity of the Dead Sea. In Ezekiel 25,9 the boundaries are given as being marked by Beth-jeshimoth, Baal-meon, the principal rivers of Moab mentioned in the Bible are the Arnon, the Dimon or Dibon, and the Nimrim. The limestone hills which form the almost treeless plateau are generally steep, in the spring they are covered with grass and the table-land itself produces grain. In the north are a number of long, deep ravines, the rainfall is fairly plentiful and the climate, despite the hot summer, is cooler than the area west of the Jordan river, snow falling frequently in winter and in spring. The plateau is dotted with hundreds of dolmens, menhirs, and stone circles, the land is now occupied chiefly by Bedouin, though it contains such towns as al-Karak. The country of Moab was the source of natural resources, including limestone, salt. The Moabites occupied a place along the Kings Highway, the ancient trade route connecting Egypt with Mesopotamia, Syria. Like the Edomites and Ammonites, trade along this route gave them considerable revenue, the Moabites likely settled in the Transjordanian highlands. Whether they were among the nations referred to in the Egyptian language as Shutu or Shasu is a matter of debate among scholars. According to the account, Moab and Ammon were born to Lot and Lots elder and younger daughters, respectively, in the aftermath of the destruction of Sodom. The Bible refers to both the Moabites and Ammonites as Lots sons, born of incest with his daughters and these Amorites, described in the Bible as being ruled by King Sihon, confined the Moabites to the country south of the river Arnon, which formed their northern boundary. God renewed his covenant with the Israelites at Moab before the Israelites entered the promised land, Moses died there, prevented by God from entering the promised land. He was buried in a location in Moab and the Israelites spent a period of thirty days there in mourning. According to the Book of Judges, the Israelites did not pass through the land of the Moabites, after the conquest of Canaan the relations of Moab with Israel were of a mixed character, sometimes warlike and sometimes peaceable. With the tribe of Benjamin they had at least one severe struggle, in union with their kindred the Ammonites and the Amalekites
Moabite language
–
Moabite sarcophagus in Jordan Archaeological Museum in
Amman
Moabite language
–
A theoretical map of the region around 830 BCE. Moab is shown in purple on this map, between the
Arnon and
Zered rivers.
Moabite language
–
The
Mesha stele as photographed circa 1891. The stele describes King
Mesha 's wars against the
Israelites.
11.
South Arabian alphabet
–
The ancient Yemeni alphabet branched from the Proto-Sinaitic script in about the 9th century BC. It was used for writing the Old South Arabian languages of the Sabaic, Qatabanic, Hadramautic, Minaean, Himyaritic, the earliest inscriptions in the alphabet date to the 9th century BC in the Akele Guzai region, Eritrea. There are no vowels, instead using the mater lectionis to mark them, in Ethiopia and Eritrea it evolved later into the Geez script, which, with added symbols throughout the centuries, has been used to write Amharic, Tigrinya and Tigre, as well as other languages. Zabūr is the name of the form of the South Arabian script that was used by the ancient Yemenis in addition to their monumental script. As yet only one thousand such texts have been discovered, of which perhaps some 26 have been published. It is usually written from right to left but can also be written left to right. When written from left to right the characters are flipped horizontally, the spacing or separation between words is done with a vertical bar mark. Letters in words are not connected together and it does not implement any diacritical marks, differing in this respect from the modern Arabic alphabet. The South Arabian alphabet was added to the Unicode Standard in October,2009 with the release of version 5.2, the Unicode block, called Old South Arabian, is U+10A60–U+10A7F. Note that U+10A7D OLD SOUTH ARABIAN NUMBER ONE represents both the one and a word divider. Photos from National Museum of Yemen, Photos from Yemen Military Museum, Eduard Glaser Carl Rathjens Stein, the Ancient South Arabian Minuscule Inscriptions on Wood, A New Genre of Pre-Islamic Epigraphy. Jaarbericht van het Vooraziatisch-Egyptisch Genootschap Ex Oriente Lux, die altsüdarabischen Minuskelinschriften auf Holzstäbchen aus der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek in München. Il trono della regina di Saba, Artemide, Roma. pp. 149–155, Ancient scripts on South Arabian SI Omniglots entry on South Arabian
South Arabian alphabet
–
South Arabian inscription addressed to the Sabaean "national" god
Almaqah
South Arabian alphabet
12.
Phoenician alphabet
–
The Phoenician alphabet, called by convention the Proto-Canaanite alphabet for inscriptions older than around 1050 BC, is the oldest verified alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet is an abjad consisting of 22 letters, all consonants and it was used for the writing of Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language, used by the civilization of Phoenicia. The Phoenician alphabet is derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs and it became one of the most widely used writing systems, spread by Phoenician merchants across the Mediterranean world, where it evolved and was assimilated by many other cultures. The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet was derived from Phoenician. Another derivative script is the Aramaic alphabet, which was the ancestor of the modern Arabic script, the Modern Hebrew script is a stylistic variant of the Aramaic script. The Greek alphabet was derived from Phoenician. Phoenician was usually written from right to left, although there are texts written in boustrophedon. The earliest known inscriptions are the so-called Proto-Sinaitic script sporadically attested in the Sinai and in Canaan in the late Middle. The script was not widely used until the rise of new Semitic kingdoms in the 13th and 12th centuries BC, the Phoenician alphabet is a direct continuation of the Proto-Canaanite script of the Bronze Age collapse period. Beginning in the 9th century BC, adaptations of the Phoenician alphabet -- such as Greek, Old Italic, Anatolian, and the Paleohispanic scripts -- were very successful. This simple system contrasted with the scripts in use at the time, such as cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs. Another reason for its success was the trading culture of Phoenician merchants. Phoenician inscriptions have been found in sites at a number of former Phoenician cities and colonies around the Mediterranean, such as Byblos. Later finds indicate earlier use in Egypt, Phoenician had long-term effects on the social structures of the civilizations that came in contact with it. As mentioned above, the script was the first widespread phonetic script and its simplicity not only allowed it to be used in multiple languages, but it also allowed the common people to learn how to write. The Phoenician alphabet was first uncovered in the 17th century, and it was at first believed that the script was a direct variation of Egyptian hieroglyphs. This idea was popular due to the recent decipherment of hieroglyphs. However, scholars could not find any link between the two writing systems, nor to hieratic or cuneiform, the theories of independent creation ranged from the idea of a single man conceiving it, to the Hyksos people forming it from corrupt Egyptian
Phoenician alphabet
–
Phoenician alphabet
13.
Alphabet
–
An alphabet is a standard set of letters that is used to write one or more languages based upon the general principle that the letters represent phonemes of the spoken language. This is in contrast to other types of writing systems, such as syllabaries and logographies, the Proto-Canaanite script, later known as the Phoenician alphabet, is the first fully phonemic script. Thus the Phoenician alphabet is considered to be the first alphabet, the Phoenician alphabet is the ancestor of most modern alphabets, including Arabic, Greek, Latin, Cyrillic, Hebrew, and possibly Brahmic. Under a terminological distinction promoted by Peter T. Daniels, an alphabet is a script that represents both vowels and consonants as letters equally. In this narrow sense of the word the first true alphabet was the Greek alphabet, in other alphabetic scripts such as the original Phoenician, Hebrew or Arabic, letters predominantly or exclusively represent consonants, such a script is also called an abjad. A third type, called abugida or alphasyllabary, is one where vowels are shown by diacritics or modifications of consonantal letters, as in Devanagari. The Khmer alphabet is the longest, with 74 letters, there are dozens of alphabets in use today, the most popular being the Latin alphabet. Many languages use modified forms of the Latin alphabet, with additional letters formed using diacritical marks, while most alphabets have letters composed of lines, there are also exceptions such as the alphabets used in Braille. Alphabets are usually associated with an ordering of letters. This makes them useful for purposes of collation, specifically by allowing words to be sorted in alphabetical order and it also means that their letters can be used as an alternative method of numbering ordered items, in such contexts as numbered lists and number placements. The English word alphabet came into Middle English from the Late Latin word alphabetum, the Greek word was made from the first two letters, alpha and beta. The names for the Greek letters came from the first two letters of the Phoenician alphabet, aleph, which also meant ox, and bet, in the alphabet song in English, the term ABCs is used instead of the word alphabet. Knowing ones ABCs, in general, can be used as a metaphor for knowing the basics about anything, the history of the alphabet started in ancient Egypt. These glyphs were used as guides for logograms, to write grammatical inflections. Based on letter appearances and names, it is believed to be based on Egyptian hieroglyphs and this script had no characters representing vowels, although originally it probably was a syllabary, but unneeded symbols were discarded. An alphabetic cuneiform script with 30 signs including three that indicate the vowel was invented in Ugarit before the 15th century BC. This script was not used after the destruction of Ugarit, the Proto-Sinaitic script eventually developed into the Phoenician alphabet, which is conventionally called Proto-Canaanite before ca.1050 BC. The oldest text in Phoenician script is an inscription on the sarcophagus of King Ahiram and this script is the parent script of all western alphabets
Alphabet
–
Edward Bernard 's "Orbis eruditi", comparing all known alphabets as of 1689.
Alphabet
–
Writing systems
Alphabet
–
A Specimen of
typeset fonts and
languages, by
William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728
Cyclopaedia.
Alphabet
–
Codex Zographensis in the
Glagolitic alphabet from Medieval
Bulgaria
14.
Aramaic language
–
Aramaic is a language or group of languages belonging to the Semitic subfamily of the Afroasiatic language family. More specifically, it is part of the Northwest Semitic group, the Aramaic alphabet was widely adopted for other languages and is ancestral to the Hebrew, Syriac and Arabic alphabets. During its approximately 3000 years of history, Aramaic has served variously as a language of administration of empires, therefore, there is not one singular, static Aramaic language, each time and place rather has had its own variation. The Aramaic languages are now considered endangered, Aram is used as a proper name of several people in the Torah including descendants of Shem, Nahor, and Jacob. Ancient Aram, bordering northern Israel and now called Syria, is considered the epicenter of Aramaic. The language is often considered to have originated within Assyria. Interestingly, the Christian New Testament, for which the constituent texts are written in Koine Greek. The Hellenized Jewish community of Alexandria instead translated Aramaic to the Syrian tongue, a related language, Mlahsô, has recently become extinct. Mandaeans living in the Khuzestan Province of Iran and scattered throughout Iraq and it is quite distinct from any other Aramaic variety. Central Neo-Aramaic consists of Turoyo and the recently extinct Mlahsô, very little remains of Western Aramaic. All these speakers of Modern Western Aramaic are fluent in Arabic, Jewish Palestinian Aramaic and Samaritan Aramaic are preserved in liturgical and literary usage. Each dialect of Aramaic has its own pronunciation, and it would not be feasible here to go into all these properties. Aramaic has a palette of 25 to 40 distinct phonemes. The open vowel is an open near-front unrounded vowel and it usually has a back counterpart, and a front counterpart. There is much correspondence between these vowels between dialects, there is some evidence that Middle Babylonian dialects did not distinguish between the short a and short e. In West Syriac dialects, and possibly Middle Galilean, the long a became the o sound, the open e and back a are often indicated in writing by the use of the letters א alaph or ה he. The close front vowel is the long i and it has a slightly more open counterpart, the long e, as in the final vowel of café. Both of these have shorter counterparts, which tend to be pronounced more open
Aramaic language
–
Arāmāyā in Syriac Esṭrangelā script
Aramaic language
–
Syriac Aramaic inscription at
Syro-Malabar Catholic Major Archbishop's House in
India.
Aramaic language
–
Syriac-Aramaic alphabet
Aramaic language
–
Amen in
East Syriac Aramaic
15.
Syriac language
–
Syriac /ˈsɪri. æk/, also known as Syriac Aramaic, is a dialect of Middle Aramaic that was once spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent and Eastern Arabia. Indeed, Syriac literature comprises roughly 90% of the extant Aramaic literature, Old Aramaic was adopted by the Neo-Assyrian Empire when they conquered the various Aramean city-kingdoms to its west. The Achaemenid Empire, which rose after the fall of the Assyrian Empire, also adopted Old Aramaic as its official language, during the course of the third and fourth centuries AD, the inhabitants of the region began to embrace Christianity. Along with Latin and Greek, Syriac became one of the three most important Christian languages in the centuries of the Christian Era. Primarily a Christian medium of expression, Syriac had a cultural and literary influence on the development of Arabic. Syriac remains the language of Syriac Christianity to this day. Syriac is a Middle Aramaic language and, as such, a language of the Northwestern branch of the Semitic family and it is written in the Syriac alphabet, a derivation of the Aramaic alphabet. Syriac was the local accent of Aramaic in Edessa, that evolved under the influence of Church of the East and it has been found as far afield as Hadrians Wall in Ancient Britain, with inscriptions written by Assyrian and Aramean soldiers of the Roman Empire. Modern Syriac/Modern Syriac Aramaic is an occasionally used to refer to the modern Eastern Aramaic languages. In this terminology, Modern Syriac is divided into, Modern Western Syriac Aramaic, note however that these are sometimes excluded from the category of Modern Syriac. The modern varieties are, therefore, not discussed in this article, in 132 BC, the kingdom of Osroene was founded in Edessa and Proto-Syriac evolved in that kingdom. Many Syriac-speakers still look to Edessa as the cradle of their language, there are about eighty extant early Syriac inscriptions, dated to the first three centuries AD. All of these examples of the language are non-Christian. As an official language, Syriac was given a relatively coherent form, style, in the 3rd century, churches in Edessa began to use Syriac as the language of worship. There is evidence that the adoption of Syriac, the language of the Assyrian people, was to effect mission, much literary effort was put into the production of an authoritative translation of the Bible into Syriac, the Peshitta. At the same time, Ephrem the Syrian was producing the most treasured collection of poetry, in 489, many Syriac-speaking Christians living in the eastern reaches of the Roman Empire fled to the Sassanid Empire to escape persecution and growing animosity with Greek-speaking Christians. The Christological differences with the Church of the East led to the bitter Nestorian schism in the Syriac-speaking world, as a result, Syriac developed distinctive western and eastern varieties. Syriac literature is by far the most prodigious of the various Aramaic languages and its corpus covers poetry, prose, theology, liturgy, hymnody, history, philosophy, science, medicine and natural history
Syriac language
–
Syriac Aramaic alphabet
Syriac language
–
Although once a major language in the
Fertile Crescent and
Bahrain, Syriac is now limited to the towns and villages in the
Nineveh plains,
Tur Abdin, the
Khabur plains, in and around the cities of
Mosul,
Irbil and
Kurkuk.
Syriac language
–
An 11th-century Syriac
manuscript.
Syriac language
–
Isho or Eesho, the
Aramaic name of
Jesus
16.
North Africa
–
North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of Africa. The United Nationss definition of Northern Africa is, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, the countries of Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and Libya are often collectively referred to as the Maghreb, which is the Arabic word for sunset. Egypt lies to the northeast and encompasses part of West Asia, while Sudan is situated on the edge of the Sahel, Egypt is a transcontinental country because of the Sinai Peninsula, which geographically lies in Western Asia. North Africa also includes a number of Spanish possessions, the Canary Islands and Madeira in the North Atlantic Ocean northwest of the African mainland are included in considerations of the region. From 3500 BC, following the abrupt desertification of the Sahara due to changes in the Earths orbit. The Islamic influence in the area is significant, and North Africa is a major part of the Muslim world. Some researchers have postulated that North Africa rather than East Africa served as the point for the modern humans who first trekked out of the continent in the Out of Africa migration. The Atlas Mountains extend across much of Morocco, northern Algeria and Tunisia, are part of the mountain system that also runs through much of Southern Europe. They recede to the south and east, becoming a steppe landscape before meeting the Sahara desert, the sediments of the Sahara overlie an ancient plateau of crystalline rock, some of which is more than four billion years old. Sheltered valleys in the Atlas Mountains, the Nile Valley and Delta, a wide variety of valuable crops including cereals, rice and cotton, and woods such as cedar and cork, are grown. Typical Mediterranean crops, such as olives, figs, dates and citrus fruits, the Nile Valley is particularly fertile, and most of the population in Egypt and Sudan live close to the river. Elsewhere, irrigation is essential to improve yields on the desert margins. The inhabitants of Saharan Africa are generally divided in a manner corresponding to the principal geographic regions of North Africa, the Maghreb, the Nile valley. The edge of the Sahel, to the south of Egypt has mainly been inhabited by Nubians, Ancient Egyptians record extensive contact in their Western desert with people that appear to have been Berber or proto-Berber, as well as Nubians from the south. They have contributed to the Arabized Berber populations, the official language or one of the official languages in all of the countries in North Africa is Arabic. The people of the Maghreb and the Sahara regions speak Berber languages and several varieties of Arabic, the Arabic and Berber languages are distantly related, both being members of the Afroasiatic language family. The Tuareg Berber languages are more conservative than those of the coastal cities. Over the years, Berbers have been influenced by contact with cultures, Greeks, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Romans, Vandals, Arabs, Europeans
North Africa
–
Market of
Biskra in Algeria, 1899
North Africa
–
Northern Africa (UN subregion)
North Africa
–
The
kasbah of
Aït Benhaddou in Morocco
North Africa
–
The first
Roman emperor native to North Africa was
Septimius Severus, born in Leptis Magna in present-day Libya.
17.
Ayin
–
Ayin or Ayn is the sixteenth letter of the Semitic abjad, including Phoenician ʿayin, Hebrew ʿayin ע, Aramaic ʿē, Syriac ʿē ܥ, and Arabic ʿayn ع. ﻉ comes twenty‐first in the Persian alphabet and eighteenth in the order of Arabic. The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Ο, Latin O, the sound represented by ayin is common to much of the Afroasiatic language family, such as in the Egyptian language, the Cushitic languages and the Semitic languages. Some scholars believe that the sound in Proto-Indo-European transcribed h3 was similar, ʿayin is usually transliterated into the Latin alphabet with ʿ, modifier letter left half ring, such as in the DIN31635 romanization of Arabic. This symbol originated from Semitic romanization and the transliteration of Ancient Egyptian, there, it was inspired by the Greek rough breathing mark. However, such substitutions obviously may cause confusion, such as with the glottal stop consonant hamza, specifically for use in transliterating Ancient Egyptian, Ꜥ and ꜥ were added to the Latin Extended-D range in Unicode version 5.1. Maltese, which uses a Latin alphabet, the only Semitic language to do so in its standard form and it is usually unvocalized in speech. The Somali Latin alphabet represents the ʿayin with the letter c, the informal way to represent it in Arabic chat alphabet uses the digit 3 as transliteration. The Arabic letter ﻉ is the letter of the alphabet. It is written in one of several ways depending on its position in the word, depending on the region, it ranges from a pharyngeal to an epiglottal. It is voiced, its unvoiced counterpart being ح, in Persian language and other languages using the Persian alphabet, it is pronounced as /ʔ/, and rarely as /ʁ/ in some languages. As in Hebrew, the letter stood for two sounds, /ʕ/ and /ʁ/. When pointing was developed, the sound /ʁ/ was distinguished with a dot on top, in Maltese, which is written with the Latin alphabet, the digraph għ, called ʿajn, is used to write what was originally the same sound. Hebrew spelling, עַיִן ʿayin, along with Aleph, Resh, ʿayin has traditionally been described as a voiced pharyngeal fricative. In some historical Sephardi and Ashkenazi pronunciations, ʿayin represented a velar nasal, in Israeli Hebrew, it represents a glottal stop in certain cases but is usually silent. However, changes in adjoining vowels often testify to the presence of a pharyngeal or epiglottal articulation. As well, it may be used as a shibboleth to identify the background of a speaker, as Mizrahim. Ayin is also one of the three letters that can take a furtive patach / patach ganuv, in Hebrew loanwords in Greek and Latin, ʿayin is sometimes reflected as /g/, since the biblical phonemes /ʕ/ and /ʁ/ were both represented in Hebrew writing by the letter ʿayin
Ayin
–
ע
18.
Yiddish orthography
–
Yiddish orthography is the writing system used for the Yiddish language. It includes Yiddish spelling rules and the Hebrew script, which is used as the basis of a full vocalic alphabet, letters that are silent or glottal stops in the Hebrew language are used as vowels in Yiddish. Additional phonetic distinctions between letters that share the same character are also indicated by pointing or by the adjacent placement of otherwise silent base characters. Several Yiddish points are not commonly used in any present-day Hebrew context, there is significant variation in the way this is applied in literary practice. There are also several differing approaches to the disambiguation of characters that can be used as either vowels or consonants, words of Aramaic and Hebrew origin are normally written in the traditional orthography of the source language—i. e. The orthography of these words, which is consonant-based, is generally preserved, all other Yiddish words are represented with a phonemic orthography. Both forms can appear in a single example, where a Yiddish affix is applied to a Hebrew stem. Yiddish pointing may also be applied to words that are written entirely with traditional orthography. In the early 20th century, for cultural and political reasons, efforts were initiated toward the development of a uniform Yiddish orthography. Additional illustrations of this variation are provided in source excerpts in Fishman 1981, there is a less detailed English language review of this process in Estraikh 1999. The first action undertaken by a government was in the Soviet Union in 1920. This was extended twelve years later with the elimination of the five separate final-form consonants which were, however, the changes are both illustrated in the way the name of the author Sholem Aleichem is written. Note also the Germanized מילכיגער in the former exemplifying another widespread trend, daytshmerish and these were further considered during the 1930s by the Yidisher visnshaftlekher institut, YIVO. This led to the development of their תּקנות פֿון ייִדישן אויסלייג and this has become the most frequently referenced such system in present-day use. Although it regularly figures in pedagogical contexts, it would be misleading to suggest that it is similarly dominant elsewhere, other orthographies are frequently encountered in contemporary practice and are house standards for many publishers. A useful review of this variation is provided in the Oxford University כלל־תקנות פון יידישן אויסלייג, written in, the former treats orthographic variation as a positive attribute of the Yiddish literature and describes essential elements of that variation. The latter presents a uniform Yiddish orthography, based on observed practice, strong difference of opinion about the relative merit of the two approaches has been a prominent aspect of the discussion from the outset and shows little sign of abating. The intent of the SYO is not to describe the spectrum of traditional orthographic practice, the bulk of Yiddish literature predates the formulation of those rules and the discrepancies are significant
Yiddish orthography
–
Traditional orthography
Yiddish orthography
–
Soviet orthography
Yiddish orthography
–
Yiddish transliteration of text on bus stop signs in
Kiryas Joel, New York. This is completely unpointed; for example stop is written סטאפ rather than סטאָפּ.
19.
Solomon
–
Solomon, also called Jedidiah, was, according to the Bible, Quran, hadith and Hidden Words a fabulously wealthy and wise king of Israel and a son of David, the previous king of Israel. The conventional dates of Solomons reign are circa 970 to 931 BC and he is described as the third king of the United Monarchy, which would break apart into the northern Kingdom of Israel and the southern Kingdom of Judah shortly after his death. Following the split, his descendants ruled over Judah alone. According to the Talmud, Solomon is one of the 48 prophets, in the Quran, he is considered a major prophet, and Muslims generally refer to him by the Arabic variant Sulayman, son of David. Solomon was, according to the Quran, a king of ancient Israel as well as the son of David, the Hebrew Bible credits him as the builder of the First Temple in Jerusalem. It portrays him as great in wisdom, wealth, and power any of the previous kings of the country. His sins included idolatry, marrying foreign women, and ultimately turning away from Yahweh, Solomon is the subject of many other later references and legends, most notably in the 1st-century apocryphal work known as the Testament of Solomon. Solomon was born in Jerusalem, the second child of David and his wife Bathsheba. The first child, a son conceived adulterously during Uriahs lifetime, had died before Solomon was conceived as a punishment on account of the death of Uriah by Davids order. Solomon had three named full brothers through Bathsheba, Nathan, Shammua, and Shobab, besides six known older half-brothers through as many mothers, according to the First Book of Kings, when David was old, he could not get warm. So they sought a young woman throughout all the territory of Israel, and found Abishag the Shunammite. The young woman was very beautiful, and she was of service to the king and attended to him, while David was in this state, court factions were maneuvering for power. Solomon greatly expanded his military strength, especially the cavalry and chariot arms and he founded numerous colonies, some of which doubled as trading posts and military outposts. Trade relationships were a focus of his administration, Solomon is considered the most wealthy of the Israelite kings named in the Bible. Solomon also built the First Temple, beginning in the year of his reign. Solomon was the Biblical king most famous for his wisdom, in 1 Kings he sacrificed to God and prayed for wisdom. God personally answered his prayer, promising him great wisdom because he did not ask for self-serving rewards like long life or the death of his enemies. Perhaps the best known story of his wisdom is the Judgment of Solomon, Solomon easily resolved the dispute by commanding the child to be cut in half and shared between the two
Solomon
–
The Judgment of Solomon, 1617 by
Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640)
Solomon
–
Cornelis de Vos, The Anointing of Solomon. According to 1
Kings 1:39, Solomon was
anointed by
Zadok.
Solomon
–
Luca Giordano – Dream of Solomon – God promises Solomon Wisdom.
Solomon
–
The judgment of Solomon, painting on ceramic, Castelli, 18th century, Lille Museum of Fine Arts
20.
Consonant
–
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. For example, the sound spelled th in this is a different consonant than the th sound in thin, the word consonant comes from Latin oblique stem cōnsonant-, from cōnsonāns sounding-together, a calque of Greek σύμφωνον sýmphōnon. Dionysius Thrax calls consonants sýmphōna pronounced with because they can only be pronounced with a vowel, the word consonant is also used to refer to a letter of an alphabet that denotes a consonant sound. The 21 consonant letters in the English alphabet are B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, V, X, Z, and usually W and Y. The letter Y stands for the consonant /j/ in yoke, the vowel /ɪ/ in myth, the vowel /i/ in funny, and the diphthong /aɪ/ in my. W always represents a consonant except in combination with a letter, as in growth, raw, and how. In some other languages, such as Finnish, y represents a vowel sound. Such syllables may be abbreviated CV, V, and CVC and this can be argued to be the only pattern found in most of the worlds languages, and perhaps the primary pattern in all of them. However, the distinction between consonant and vowel is not always clear cut, there are consonants and non-syllabic vowels in many of the worlds languages. One blurry area is in segments variously called semivowels, semiconsonants, on one side, there are vowel-like segments that are not in themselves syllabic, but form diphthongs as part of the syllable nucleus, as the i in English boil. On the other, there are approximants that behave like consonants in forming onsets, some phonologists model these as both being the underlying vowel /i/, so that the English word bit would phonemically be /bit/, beet would be /bii̯t/, and yield would be phonemically /i̯ii̯ld/. Likewise, foot would be /fut/, food would be /fuu̯d/, wood would be /u̯ud/, the other problematic area is that of syllabic consonants, segments articulated as consonants but occupying the nucleus of a syllable. Other languages use fricative and often trilled segments as syllabic nuclei, as in Czech and several languages in Democratic Republic of the Congo, in Mandarin, they are historically allophones of /i/, and spelled that way in Pinyin. Ladefoged and Maddieson call these fricative vowels and say that they can usually be thought of as syllabic fricatives that are allophones of vowels and that is, phonetically they are consonants, but phonemically they behave as vowels. Many Slavic languages allow the trill and the lateral as syllabic nuclei, in languages like Nuxalk, it is difficult to know what the nucleus of a syllable is, or if all syllables even have nuclei. If the concept of syllable applies in Nuxalk, there are consonants in words like /sx̩s/ seal fat. Miyako in Japan is similar, with /f̩ks̩/ to build and /ps̩ks̩/ to pull, each spoken consonant can be distinguished by several phonetic features, The manner of articulation is how air escapes from the vocal tract when the consonant or approximant sound is made. Manners include stops, fricatives, and nasals, the place of articulation is where in the vocal tract the obstruction of the consonant occurs, and which speech organs are involved
Consonant
–
The letter
T, the most common consonant letter in English.
21.
Aleph (Hebrew)
–
Aleph is the first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Ālep, Hebrew Ālef א, Aramaic Ālap
Aleph (Hebrew)
–
Hieroglyph
22.
Hebrew alphabet
–
Historically, there have been two separate abjad scripts to write Hebrew. In the remainder of this article, the term Hebrew alphabet refers to the Jewish square script unless otherwise indicated, the Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters. It does not have case, but five letters have different forms used at the end of a word. Hebrew is written right to left. Originally, the alphabet was an abjad consisting only of consonants, as with other abjads, such as the Arabic alphabet, scribes later devised means of indicating vowel sounds by separate vowel points, known in Hebrew as niqqud. In both biblical and rabbinic Hebrew, the letters א ה ו י are also used as matres lectionis to represent vowels. There is a trend in modern Modern Hebrew toward the use of matres lectionis to indicate vowels that have traditionally gone unwritten, the paleo-Hebrew alphabet was used in the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah. The Samaritans, who remained in the Land of Israel, continued to use the paleo-Hebrew alphabet, after the fall of the Persian Empire in 330 BCE, Jews used both scripts before settling on the Assyrian form. The square Hebrew alphabet was adapted and used for writing languages of the Jewish diaspora – such as Karaim, the Judeo-Arabic languages, Judaeo-Spanish. In the traditional form, the Hebrew alphabet is an abjad consisting only of consonants and it has 22 letters, five of which use different forms at the end of a word. Also, a system of points to indicate vowels, called niqqud, was developed. In modern forms of the alphabet, as in the case of Yiddish and to some extent Modern Hebrew, today, the trend is toward full spelling with the weak letters acting as true vowels. When used to write Yiddish, vowels are indicated, using letters, either with or without niqqud-diacritics, except for Hebrew words. To preserve the proper vowel sounds, scholars developed several different sets of vocalization, one of these, the Tiberian system, eventually prevailed. Aaron ben Moses ben Asher, and his family for generations, are credited for refining and maintaining the system. These points are used only for special purposes, such as Biblical books intended for study. The Tiberian system also includes a set of marks, called trope. These are shown below the normal form in the following table, although Hebrew is read and written from right to left, the following table shows the letters in order from left to right
Hebrew alphabet
–
A Jewish stele near the archeological excavations of the early medieval walls of
Serdica
Hebrew alphabet
–
Aleppo Codex: 10th-Century-AD
Hebrew Bible with
Masoretic pointing. Text of
Joshua 1:1
Hebrew alphabet
–
A replica of the Gezer Calendar in the
Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
Hebrew alphabet
–
Hebrew script on the
bustier of
Jan van Scorel 's
Maria Magdalena, 1530.
23.
Vowels
–
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, with two competing definitions. There is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis and this contrasts with consonants, such as the English sh, which have a constriction or closure at some point along the vocal tract. In the other, phonological definition, a vowel is defined as syllabic, a phonetically equivalent but non-syllabic sound is a semivowel. In oral languages, phonetic vowels normally form the peak of many to all syllables, whereas consonants form the onset and coda. Some languages allow other sounds to form the nucleus of a syllable, the word vowel comes from the Latin word vocalis, meaning vocal. In English, the vowel is commonly used to mean both vowel sounds and the written symbols that represent them. The phonetic definition of vowel does not always match the phonological definition, the approximants and illustrate this, both are produced without much of a constriction in the vocal tract, but they occur at the onset of syllables. A similar debate arises over whether a word like bird in a dialect has an r-colored vowel /ɝ/ or a syllabic consonant /ɹ̩/. The American linguist Kenneth Pike suggested the terms vocoid for a vowel and vowel for a phonological vowel, so using this terminology. Nonetheless, the phonetic and phonemic definitions would still conflict for the syllabic el in table, or the syllabic nasals in button, daniel Jones developed the cardinal vowel system to describe vowels in terms of the features of tongue height, tongue backness and roundedness. These three parameters are indicated in the schematic quadrilateral IPA vowel diagram on the right, there are additional features of vowel quality, such as the velum position, type of vocal fold vibration, and tongue root position. This conception of vowel articulation has been known to be inaccurate since 1928, Peter Ladefoged has said that early phoneticians. Thought they were describing the highest point of the tongue, and they were actually describing formant frequencies. The IPA Handbook concedes that the quadrilateral must be regarded as an abstraction. Vowel height is named for the position of the tongue relative to either the roof of the mouth or the aperture of the jaw. However, it refers to the first formant, abbreviated F1. Height is defined by the inverse of the F1 value, The higher the frequency of the first formant, however, if more precision is required, true-mid vowels may be written with a lowering diacritic. Although English contrasts six heights in its vowels, they are interdependent with differences in backness and it appears that some varieties of German have five contrasting vowel heights independently of length or other parameters
Vowels
–
X-rays of Daniel Jones' [i, u, a, ɑ].
24.
Diphthongs
–
A diphthong, also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets, that is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel, in many dialects of English, the phrase no highway cowboys /ˌnoʊ ˈhaɪweɪ ˈkaʊbɔɪz/ has five distinct diphthongs, one in every syllable. Diphthongs contrast with monophthongs, where the tongue or other organs do not move. For instance, in English, the word ah is spoken as a monophthong, where two adjacent vowel sounds occur in different syllables—for example, in the English word re-elect—the result is described as hiatus, not as a diphthong. Diphthongs often form when separate vowels are run together in rapid speech during a conversation, however, there are also unitary diphthongs, as in the English examples above, which are heard by listeners as single-vowel sounds. Diphthongs use two vowel sounds in one syllable to make a speech sound, in the International Phonetic Alphabet, monophthongs are transcribed with one symbol, as in English sun, in which ⟨ʌ⟩ represents a monophthong. Diphthongs are transcribed with two symbols, as in English high or cow, in which ⟨aɪ⟩ and ⟨aʊ⟩ represent diphthongs, diphthongs may be transcribed with two vowel symbols or with a vowel symbol and a semivowel symbol. Transcribing the diphthongs as ⟨aɪ̯ aʊ̯⟩ is a precise or narrower transcription. The non-syllabic diacritic, the inverted breve below ⟨◌̯⟩, is placed under the prominent part of a diphthong to show that it is part of a diphthong rather than a vowel in a separate syllable. When there is no contrastive vowel sequence in the language, the diacritic may be omitted, other common indications that the two letters are not separate vowels are a superscript, ⟨aᶦ aᶷ⟩, or a tie bar, ⟨a͡ɪ a͡ʊ⟩ or ⟨a͜ɪ a͜ʊ⟩. The tie bar can be useful when its not clear which letter represents the syllable nucleus, superscripts are especially used when an on- or off-glide is particularly fleeting. The period ⟨. ⟩ is the opposite of the non-syllabic diacritic, if two vowels next to each other belong to two different syllables, meaning that they do not form a diphthong, they can be transcribed with two vowel symbols with a period in between. Thus, lower can be transcribed ⟨ˈloʊ. ər⟩, with a period separating the first syllable, /loʊ/, from the second syllable, the non-syllabic diacritic is only used when necessary. It is typically omitted when there is no ambiguity, as in ⟨haɪ kaʊ⟩, no words in English have the vowel sequences *, so the non-syllabic diacritic is unnecessary. The less prominent component in the diphthong may also be transcribed as an approximant, thus in eye, however, when the diphthong is analysed as a single phoneme, both elements are often transcribed with vowel letters. There are many languages that contrast one or more rising diphthongs with similar sequences of a glide, in closing diphthongs, the second element is more close than the first, in opening diphthongs, the second element is more open. Closing diphthongs tend to be falling, and opening diphthongs are rising, as open vowels are more sonorous. However, exceptions to this rule are not rare in the worlds languages, in Finnish, for instance, the opening diphthongs /ie̯/ and /uo̯/ are true falling diphthongs, since they begin louder and with higher pitch and fall in prominence during the diphthong
Diphthongs
–
German diphthongs ending in [ɐ̯] (part 1), from Kohler (1999:88)
25.
Niqqud
–
In Hebrew orthography, niqqud or nikkud is a system of diacritical signs used to represent vowels or distinguish between alternative pronunciations of letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Several such diacritical systems were developed in the Early Middle Ages, the most widespread system, and the only one still used to a significant degree today, was created by the Masoretes of Tiberias in the second half of the first millennium AD in the Land of Israel. Text written with niqqud is called ktiv menuqad, Niqqud marks are small compared to consonants, so they can be added without retranscribing texts whose writers did not anticipate them. In modern Israeli orthography niqqud is seldom used, except in specialised texts such as dictionaries, poetry, for purposes of disambiguation, a system of spelling without niqqud, known in Hebrew as ktiv maleh has developed. This was formally standardised in the Rules for Spelling without Niqqud enacted by the Academy of the Hebrew Language in 1996, one reason for the lesser use of niqqud is that it no longer reflects the current pronunciation. In modern Hebrew, tzere is pronounced the same as segol, although they were distinct in Tiberian Hebrew, among those who do not speak Hebrew, niqqud are the sometimes unnamed focus of controversy regarding the interpretation of the name written with the Tetragrammaton—written as יְהֹוָה in Hebrew. The interpretation affects discussion of the ancient pronunciation of the name whose other conventional English forms are Jehovah. This table uses the consonants ב, ח or ש, where appropriate, any other consonants shown are actually part of the vowel. Note that there is variation among different traditions in exactly how some vowel points are pronounced. The table below shows how most Israelis would pronounce them, but the classic Ashkenazi pronunciation, for example and it works very well when dir=rtl is added in the HTML source. This is because, currently, the Windows text display engine does not combine the niqqud automatically, except as noted, the vowel pointings should appear directly beneath the consonants and the accompanying vowel letter consonants for the mālê forms appear after. Note concerning IPA, the symbols are linked to the articles about the sounds they represent. The diacritic ˘ indicates a vowel, the triangular colon symbol ː indicates that the vowel is long. Both consonants and niqqud can be typed from virtual graphical keyboards available on the World Wide Web, in Windows 8 or later, niqqud can be entered using the right alt + the first Hebrew letter of the name of the value, when using the standard Hebrew keyboard layout. On earlier versions, the typist can enter niqqud by pressing CapsLock, placing the cursor after the consonant letter, the user can configure the registry to allow use of the Alt key with the numeric plus key to type the hexadecimal Unicode value. The user can use the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator to produce a custom keyboard layout, in GTK+ Linux systems, niqqud can be entered by holding down AltGR and pressing the same keys as for Windows below. Or by pressing followed by the appropriate 4 digit Unicode. Using the Hebrew keyboard layout in Mac OS X, the typist can enter niqqud by pressing the Option key together with a number on the top row of the keyboard
Niqqud
–
Niqqud
26.
Talmud
–
The Talmud is a central text of Rabbinic Judaism. It is also referred to as Shas, a Hebrew abbreviation of shisha sedarim, the six orders. Talmud translates literally as instruction in Hebrew, and the term may refer to either the Gemara alone, or the Mishnah, the entire Talmud consists of 63 tractates, and in standard print is over 6,200 pages long. The Talmud is the basis for all codes of Jewish law, Rabbis expounded and debated the Torah and discussed the Tanakh without the benefit of written works, though some may have made private notes, for example of court decisions. It is during this period that rabbinic discourse began to be recorded in writing, the earliest recorded oral Torah may have been of the midrashic form, in which halakhic discussion is structured as exegetical commentary on the Pentateuch. But an alternative form, organized by subject matter instead of by biblical verse, became dominant about the year 200 CE, the Oral Torah was far from monolithic, rather, it varied among various schools. The most famous two were the School of Shammai and the School of Hillel, in general, all valid opinions, even the non-normative ones, were recorded in the Talmud. The oldest full manuscript of the Talmud, known as the Munich Talmud, each tractate is divided into chapters,517 in total, that are both numbered according to the Hebrew alphabet and given names, usually using the first one or two words in the first mishnah. A perek may continue over several pages, each perek will contain several mishnayot with their accompanying exchanges that form the building-blocks of the Gemara, the name for a passage of gemara is a sugya. A sugya, including baraita or tosefta, will comprise a detailed proof-based elaboration of a Mishnaic statement. A sugya may, and often does, range widely off the subject of the mishnah, in a given sugya, scriptural, Tannaic and Amoraic statements are cited to support the various opinions. In so doing, the Gemara will highlight semantic disagreements between Tannaim and Amoraim, and compare the Mishnaic views with passages from the Baraita. Rarely are debates formally closed, in instances, the final word determines the practical law. There is a literature on the procedural principles to be used in settling the practical law when disagreements exist, see under #Logic. The Mishnah is a compilation of legal opinions and debates, statements in the Mishnah are typically terse, recording brief opinions of the rabbis debating a subject, or recording only an unattributed ruling, apparently representing a consensus view. The rabbis recorded in the Mishnah are known as the Tannaim, the Mishnahs topical organization thus became the framework of the Talmud as a whole. But not every tractate in the Mishnah has a corresponding Gemara, also, the order of the tractates in the Talmud differs in some cases from that in the Mishnah. In addition to the Mishnah, other tannaitic teachings were current at about the time or shortly thereafter
Talmud
–
Talmud Readers by
Adolf Behrman
Talmud
–
The first page of the
Vilna Edition of the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Berachot, folio 2a.
Talmud
–
A page of a medieval Jerusalem Talmud manuscript, from the
Cairo Genizah.
Talmud
–
A full set of the Babylonian Talmud.
27.
Babylonia
–
Babylonia was an ancient Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in central-southern Mesopotamia. A small Amorite-ruled state emerged in 1894 BC, which contained at this time the city of Babylon. Babylon greatly expanded during the reign of Hammurabi in the first half of the 18th century BC, during the reign of Hammurabi and afterwards, Babylonia was called Māt Akkadī the country of Akkad in the Akkadian language. It was often involved in rivalry with its older fellow Akkadian-speaking state of Assyria in northern Mesopotamia and it retained the Sumerian language for religious use, but by the time Babylon was founded, this was no longer a spoken language, having been wholly subsumed by Akkadian. The earliest mention of the city of Babylon can be found in a tablet from the reign of Sargon of Akkad. During the 3rd millennium BC, a cultural symbiosis occurred between Sumerian and Akkadian-speakers, which included widespread bilingualism. The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian and vice versa is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a scale, to syntactic, morphological. This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the millennium as a sprachbund. Traditionally, the religious center of all Mesopotamia was the city of Nippur. The empire eventually disintegrated due to decline, climate change and civil war. Sumer rose up again with the Third Dynasty of Ur in the late 22nd century BC and they also seem to have gained ascendancy over most of the territory of the Akkadian kings of Assyria in northern Mesopotamia for a time. The states of the south were unable to stem the Amorite advance, King Ilu-shuma of the Old Assyrian Empire in a known inscription describes his exploits to the south as follows, The freedom of the Akkadians and their children I established. I established their freedom from the border of the marshes and Ur and Nippur, Awal, past scholars originally extrapolated from this text that it means he defeated the invading Amorites to the south, but there is no explicit record of that. More recently, the text has been taken to mean that Asshur supplied the south with copper from Anatolia and these policies were continued by his successors Erishum I and Ikunum. During the first centuries of what is called the Amorite period and his reign was concerned with establishing statehood amongst a sea of other minor city states and kingdoms in the region. However Sumuabum appears never to have bothered to give himself the title of King of Babylon, suggesting that Babylon itself was only a minor town or city. He was followed by Sumu-la-El, Sabium, Apil-Sin, each of whom ruled in the same manner as Sumuabum. Sin-Muballit was the first of these Amorite rulers to be regarded officially as a king of Babylon, the Elamites occupied huge swathes of southern Mesopotamia, and the early Amorite rulers were largely held in vassalage to Elam
Babylonia
–
The extent of the Babylonian Empire at the start and end of Hammurabi's reign
Babylonia
–
Old Babylonian
Cylinder Seal,
hematite, The king makes an animal offering to
Shamash. This seal was probably made in a workshop at
Sippar.
Babylonia
–
Geography
28.
Middle Ages
–
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or Medieval Period lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance, the Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history, classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is subdivided into the Early, High. Population decline, counterurbanisation, invasion, and movement of peoples, the large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the seventh century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire—came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was not complete. The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire survived in the east and remained a major power, the empires law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or Code of Justinian, was rediscovered in Northern Italy in 1070 and became widely admired later in the Middle Ages. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions, monasteries were founded as campaigns to Christianise pagan Europe continued. The Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, briefly established the Carolingian Empire during the later 8th, the Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation states, reducing crime and violence, intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, and by the founding of universities. Controversy, heresy, and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the conflict, civil strife. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages, the Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history, classical civilisation, or Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Period. Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the Six Ages or the Four Empires, when referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being modern. In the 1330s, the humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua, leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People. Bruni and later argued that Italy had recovered since Petrarchs time. The Middle Ages first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or middle season, in early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum, or middle age, first recorded in 1604, and media saecula, or middle ages, first recorded in 1625. The alternative term medieval derives from medium aevum, tripartite periodisation became standard after the German 17th-century historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. The most commonly given starting point for the Middle Ages is 476, for Europe as a whole,1500 is often considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there is no universally agreed upon end date. English historians often use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period
Middle Ages
–
The
Cross of Mathilde, a
crux gemmata made for
Mathilde, Abbess of Essen (973–1011), who is shown kneeling before the Virgin and Child in the
enamel plaque. The body of Christ is slightly later. Probably made in
Cologne or
Essen, the cross demonstrates several medieval techniques:
cast figurative sculpture,
filigree, enamelling, gem polishing and setting, and the reuse of Classical
cameos and
engraved gems.
Middle Ages
–
A late Roman statue
depicting the four Tetrarchs, now in
Venice
Middle Ages
–
Coin of
Theodoric
Middle Ages
–
Mosaic showing
Justinian with
the bishop of
Ravenna, bodyguards, and courtiers
29.
Ashkenazi Jews
–
The traditional diaspora language of Ashkenazi Jews is Yiddish, with Hebrew used only as a sacred language until relatively recently. Throughout their time in Europe, Ashkenazim have made important contributions to philosophy, scholarship, literature, art, music. Ashkenazim originate from the Jews who settled along the Rhine River, in Western Germany, there they became a distinct diaspora community with a unique way of life that adapted traditions from Babylon, The Land of Israel, and the Western Mediterranean to their new environment. The Ashkenazi religious rite developed in such as Mainz, Worms. The eminent French Rishon Rabbi Shlomo Itzhaki would have a significant impact on the Jewish religion, in the late Middle Ages, the majority of the Ashkenazi population shifted steadily eastward, moving out of the Holy Roman Empire into the Pale of Settlement. The genocidal impact of the Holocaust devastated the Ashkenazim and their culture, immediately prior to the Holocaust, the number of Jews in the world stood at approximately 16.7 million. Statistical figures vary for the demography of Ashkenazi Jews, oscillating between 10 million and 11.2 million. Sergio DellaPergola in a calculation of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews. Other estimates place Ashkenazi Jews as making up about 75% of Jews worldwide, genetic studies on Ashkenazim—researching both their paternal and maternal lineages—suggest a significant proportion of Middle Eastern ancestry. Ashkenazi Jews are popularly contrasted with Sephardi Jews, who are descendants of Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, there are some differences in how the two groups pronounce certain Hebrew letters, and in points of ritual. The name Ashkenazi derives from the figure of Ashkenaz, the first son of Gomer, son of Khaphet, son of Noah. The name of Gomer has often been linked to the ethnonym Cimmerians, the intrusive n in the Biblical name is likely due to a scribal error confusing a waw ו with a nun נ. In Jeremiah 51,27, Ashkenaz figures as one of three kingdoms in the far north, the others being Minni and Ararat, perhaps corresponding to Urartu, called on by God to resist Babylon. Ashkenaz is linked to Scandza/Scanzia, viewed as the cradle of Germanic tribes and his contemporary Saadia Gaon identified Ashkenaz with the Saquliba or Slavic territories, and such usage covered also the lands of tribes neighboring the Slavs, and Eastern and Central Europe. In modern times, Samuel Krauss identified the Biblical Ashkenaz with Khazaria, sometime in the early medieval period, the Jews of central and eastern Europe came to be called by this term. In conformity with the custom of designating areas of Jewish settlement with biblical names, Spain was denominated Sefarad, France was called Tsarefat, Rashi uses leshon Ashkenaz to describe German speech, and Byzantium and Syrian Jewish letters referred to the Crusaders as Ashkenazim. Given the close links between the Jewish communities of France and Germany following the Carolingian unification, the term Ashkenazi came to refer to both the Jews of medieval Germany and France. Outside of their origins in ancient Israel, the history of Ashkenazim is shrouded in mystery, the most well-supported theory is the one that details a Jewish migration from Israel through what is now Italy and other parts of southern Europe
Ashkenazi Jews
–
Vilna Gaon
Ashkenazi Jews
Ashkenazi Jews
–
Heinrich Heine
Ashkenazi Jews
–
Marc Chagall
30.
Languages of Europe
–
Most languages of Europe belong to the Indo-European language family. This family is divided into a number of branches, including Romance, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Albanian, Celtic, Armenian, the Uralic languages, which include Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian, also have a significant presence in Europe. The Indo-European language family descended from Proto-Indo-European, believed to have spoken thousands of years ago. Indo-European languages are spoken throughout Europe, Albanian has two major dialects, Tosk Albanian and Gheg Albanian. It is spoken in Albania and Kosovo, neighboring Republic of Macedonia, Serbia, Greece, Italy and it is also widely spoken in the Albanian diaspora. Armenian has two dialects, Western Armenian and Eastern Armenian. It is spoken in Armenia, where it has official status, and is also spoken in neighboring Georgia, Iran. It is also spoken in Turkey by a small minority. The Baltic languages are spoken in Lithuania and Latvia, samogitian and Latgalian are usually considered to be dialects of Lithuanian and Latvian respectively. There are also several extinct Baltic languages, including, Galindian, Curonian, there are six living Celtic languages, spoken in areas of northwestern Europe dubbed the Celtic nations. The Germanic languages make up the predominant language family in northwestern Europe, reaching from Iceland to Sweden and from parts of the United Kingdom, there are two extant major sub-divisions, West Germanic and North Germanic. A third group, East Germanic, is now extinct, the known surviving East Germanic texts are written in the Gothic language. It is spoken in regions throughout Northern Germany and the North. It has no status in either of the two countries. Low German Low Saxon East Low German Dutch is spoken throughout the Netherlands, northern Belgium, as well as the Nord-Pas de Calais region of France, in Belgian and French contexts, Dutch is sometimes referred to as Flemish. Dutch dialects are varied and cut across national borders, in Germany it is called East Bergish. Afrikaans is spoken by South African emigrant communities in Europe, most notably in the Netherlands, Belgium, additionally, Yiddish is a Jewish language developed in Germany and shares many features of German dialects and Hebrew. The North Germanic languages are spoken in Scandinavian countries and include Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, or Elfdalian, Faroese, and Icelandic
Languages of Europe
–
Latin script:
Fraktur variant
Languages of Europe
–
Distribution of the Baltic languages in the Baltic (simplified).
Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar, §7
