Talk:Proto-Semitic language

message: Dating proto-Semitic to "between 4,800 BP and 4,500 BP" can't be right.  Akkadian is attested as early as that, and Akkadian is considerably changed from proto-Semitic.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.186.215.227 (talk) 23:11, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Assuming that "BP"="BC", I would think that you are mistaken about Akkadian being attested so early. For example, this site states that "Akkadian is first attested to in proper names in Sumerian texts (ca. 2800 BCE)". Mo-Al (talk) 01:07, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Assuming that "BP" = "Before Present" that makes a lot of sense tho. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 09:02, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

text: @Mo-Al: Assuming BP = BC? Why would you think that? I'm not looking at the version that was current when this section was added, but... 4800 BP ~= 2800 BCE, which is the date you quoted for Akkadian in Sumerian texts. Browsing the article as it is right now, it doesn't give a BP date, but neither does it give a hypothetical date at present (just the earliest attestations of 3000 BC and ~2400 BC, but neither of these are for PS). Is there a scholarly convergence on a hypothetical date window for PS? Ad hoc, 4800 BCE seems a bit early, and, as the author of this section points out, 2800 BP seems a little late. As a side-note post scriptum: appreciation for your contributions to the Hebrew phonology pages (I don't even bother double checking them when made, at this point, I assume they are good from past experience of your work). — al-Shimoni (talk) 13:38, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm, to be honest I don't know what I was thinking two years ago. It seems clear that BP = "before present", as you say, and I definitely would not believe a PS date later than 3000 BCE. If I have time I may look for some sources to clarify this issue. (And thank you for the approbation -- it's nice to know that my additions help :) )Mo-Al (talk) 22:16, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Dating

message: The article states that Old Aramaic *ś>s was written originally with < š > and then with < s >. Would it be more accurate to say that it was originally written with < ś >, given the niqqud? Mo-Al (talk) 01:51, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The niqqud (meaning shin and sin dots) was only invented in the 6th-century A.D. or later, and was applied retroactively to Biblical Aramaic as part of the Hebrew Bible at that time.  Old Aramaic inscriptions used no dots... AnonMoos (talk) 22:13, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Old Aramaic *ś

message: Every "s" should be replaced by "š". 77.126.19.208 (talk) 22:27, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  The chapter about "Cradinal numbers" is wrong 

message: Ugaritic is mentioned in the first table, but not in the next two.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.139.121.245 (talk) 15:36, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ugaritic 

message: Somebody added this statement:
:Given the fact that Semitic is most closely related to the Ancient Egyptian language of all the Afro-Asiatic languages
This was obviously added by somebody who doesn't know what they're talking about. I read the whole book of Ehret and I know that most of his opinions represent only the opinions of some scholars. From my reading I can say that most scholars consider Semitic to be more closely related to Berber than Egyptian. This is even more logical on historical basis because we know that the Proto-Berbers were also nomadic like the Proto-Semites until fairly recently. I don't know when did this statement became a 'fact.' It can at best be called a hypothesis.--HD86 (talk) 07:13, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. I don't know anyone who takes Ehret seriously. However, the idea that linking Semitic and Berber makes sense because they were both nomadic is reminiscent of Hamitic. Lifestyle has little to do with language, and for all we know the speakers of pre-Egyptian were also nomadic. — kwami (talk) 09:03, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

text: The other problem with the removed sentence is the style. It looks like Wikipedia taking a position. The field has different ideas and Wikipedia should just summarize them if it can.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:41, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ignorant statements 

message: On rereading the article I noticed this: Emphatic consonants “are generally reconstructed as glottalized in Proto-Semitic.[nb 1] Thus, *ṭ for example represents [tʼ].” According to the IPA tables in Wikipedia, [tʼ] is the symbol for ejective t, not glottalized t. Are they the same thing? If not, and [tʼ] is used due to the absence of a symbol for glottalized t, shouldn't the article say so? (I would recommend [t?] for clarity, perhaps noting that it isn't standard IPA.)
The footnote [nb 1] says, “This explains why there is no voicing distinction in the emphatic series (which wouldn't be necessary if the emphatics were pharyngealized).” This is unclear. Are you saying that it is biologically impossible to distinguish voiced and voiceless glottalized consonants? (If so, maybe this should be noted in the text rather than a footnote.) Are you contrasting this situation with pharyngealized consonants? Or is the same thing true for pharyngealized? In languages where emphatics are realized in ways other than glottalization, can the voiced/voiceless distinction occur? — Solo Owl (talk) 00:55, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The modern reconstruction (when phonetically precise) is in fact as ejectives, and "glottalized" is something of a loose and possibly inexact synonym.  Voiced ejectives are presumably not "biologically impossible", but they are typologically a lot less common than voiceless ejectives.  And there's no problem with having both voiced and voiceless velarized/pharyngealized consonants -- many modern Arabic dialects have both. AnonMoos (talk) 03:00, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Emphatic consonants

message: Can someone mend it?CecilWard (talk) 23:28, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Link to Wiktionary at the end points to brokenness 

message: I think I understand that the PS sibilant reconstructions are in the process of being revised, but why list /ɬ/ and /ɬ'/ as the pronunciations for Ge'ez ሠ ፀ?  This makes this page inconsistent with the Ge'ez language page. G.broadwell (talk) 09:38, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: It was, in fact, originally pronounced that way in Ge'ez. Mo-Al (talk) 16:28, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

text: Sure. Take a look at Gragg (1997) in The Semitic Languages, edited by Robert Hetzron. On p. 243-244 he says that ሠ ፀ were originally pronounced as different than ሰ ጸ, and later merged. So although there isn't a good way to be sure of their exact phonetic values in Ge'ez, it's known that they were distinct. (I was a little hasty in saying that they "were" pronounced that way -- I think the evidence is conjectural.) I'm also not sure how this differs from the Ge'ez language article, which also uses /ɬ ɬʼ/. Mo-Al (talk) 20:28, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use of ɬ 

message: Oak are found in north Africa, and I presume that is not through planting by humans? OK, if a great source mentions this maybe we keep it but this sentence is not sourced.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:03, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: There's cold weather in Ethiopia (which is more relevant to the Proto-Semitic Urheimat problem than Algeria or whatever). AnonMoos (talk) 22:50, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: OTOH, it might be true that experts have really argued this way. Would be much more comfortable with this sentence if we had a clear source, and we could say "according to...".--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:15, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  nouns in proto Semitic that seemingly make an African origin for the language impossible – ice, oak, 

message: It's nice to try to bulk up the lead, but the detailed and inconclusive Urheimat speculations really should go somewhere else in the article... AnonMoos (talk) 22:53, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: In fact there is a sub-section for it I think? OTOH, mentioning something about it might be ok, just not too much detail?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:15, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  Well, the lede should have a basic summary of what the topic is, or is about, so mention of it would be ok (one should not get into the "nitty-gritty" in the lede, though). However, the amount of attention to its Urheimat was a little out of proportion to the rest, so I reëdited it, condensing the details more, and taking out some others. When I replaced the lede yesterday, it was in response to your (Andrew's) next-earlier edit; I took a paragraph from the Semitic article and made a few quick edits including trying to incorporate the sentence that comprised the previous lede. I didn't look too closely at the balance(proportions) of the information, though. :/ — al-Shimoni (talk) 20:05, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Urheimat speculations in lead paragraph

message: The common view currently is not that Arabia was the homeland of the Semites. The sources given go back to the early 20th century are incomparable with modern ones advanced by Edward Lipinski (Semitic Languages: Outline of a Comparative Grammar p.41-47) for example which asserts that they emigrated to Arabia and Africa via Syria and Palestine.--Rafy talk 20:55, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe a silly question, but do we need to propose that there is a consensus at all? Maybe we should just list the main theories as in Afroasiatic Urheimat. It is always very difficult to agree about consensuses in some types of subject.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:20, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The Afroasiatic Urheimat is not the same as the Proto-Semitic Urheimat, and several candidates for the former would not be very relevant to the latter.  Traditionally (50 years ago or so) I think Northeastern Africa / Southern Arabia was somewhat widely viewed as the leading candidate for the general region of the Proto-Semitic Urheimat.  But I don't know what the 21st century consensus is, or whether a 21st century consensus even really exists... AnonMoos (talk) 17:07, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed, my impression is it is on the level of individual scholars' theories and no firm consensus. --JWB (talk) 18:49, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I just came across a good article which also mentions Early Semites reaching the middle east up the Nile ans settling in the fertile crescent. The article is very intriguing when it shows that Akkadian made contact with pre-Semitic peoples from the Arabian peninsula. --Rafy talk 22:18, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: But is this relevant to this article, or maybe better discussed on another article such as Proto Semitic?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:09, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

text: Since no one seems to mind I will rewrite the origin from scratch based on modern sources.--Kathovo talk 15:40, 30 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arabian Urheimat revisited 

message: Currently, the era for the dates in the article are not consistent with each other. I would suggest using the BCE system for its neutrality, especially considering the largest number of people who use Semitic languages today are not christians, as well as most scholarly books and articles for the past couple decades use the CE/BCE system. However, it should be noted that the era first introduced into the article was not the CE/BCE system (it was that other one), and so the default should be that other system unless consensus can be made to switch to the CE/BCE system (see WP:Era). Can consensus be made to go with BCE? If not, someone needs to change it to the christian system (it won't be me). — al-Shimoni (talk) 18:20, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Date Eras 

message: What kind of brilliant idea was moving all the info about Proto-Semitic phonology into the already bloated article on Semitic languages? A description of Proto-Semitic is something one expects to find in the article on Proto-Semitic. --91.148.130.233 (talk) 21:40, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Levelly, I agree.  It is easy to check in the history that this was Benwing's doing.  I think I'll ask him.  4pq1injbok (talk) 07:35, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I just saw this.  The problem was that there was an enormous amount of redundancy between the two articles, which was rapidly leading to "bit rot" as the two copies gradually diverged.  Probably 80% of the stuff in Proto-Semitic language duplicated stuff in Semitic languages, including the vast majority of the phonology.  The Semitic languages article actually increased very little in size.  I'm not averse to moving the stuff back to the Proto-Semitic article, but I absolutely don't want to see a lot of duplication, and the problem is that a lot of the phonology does seem to belong in the Semitic languages article.  I'm welcome to suggestions of how to split things; sorry if I don't respond too often, though, as I'm busy trying to get a PhD thesis done! Benwing (talk) 05:00, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: No sweat, I'm not fast either.  Anyway, my suggestion of how to split things would be to put section "Phonology" of Semitic_languages up through the end of subsection "Fricatives" here, and leave the diachronic outcomes there.  4pq1injbok (talk) 22:25, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: This sounds reasonable. Some sections lifted from here could well use merging with certain sections previously in the main Semitic languages article, like the vocab section or the example words table on fricativ correspondences. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 23:53, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: There, how's that for a first pass? 4pq1injbok (talk) 02:55, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move 

message: The article currently starts off with BCE in the wp:lead then changes to BC. I would like to change it to consistent usage of BCE. Any comments? Editor2020 (talk) 18:46, 30 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I usually use BC/AD but since I believe my contribution created inconsistency I don't mind using the common era dating.--Kathovo talk 11:57, 1 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually the article's original era setting is the BC convention which has been partly changed by editors introducing BCE or some overtyping BC with BCE so I have reversed those to make consistent use of BC as required by WP:ERA.--CouncilConnect (talk) 10:34, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  BC or BCE 

message: I was reading this article and interested to know more about the Urheimat of Proto-Semitic. The introduction said that Arabian Peninsula Urheimat hypothesis has been abandoned, and that's it. Seems to be quite dismissive of the whole theory. The Arabian Peninsula Urheimat theory was actually quite popular and was the predominant view, so I think its worthy of more elaboration. After all, there's always the possibility of revisiting this theory as our understanding of climate change in the peninsula improves. I think it's quite un-encyclopaedic to leave out the theory outright, so I suggest a special subsection for the Arabian Peninsula Urheimat hypothesis, on par with the sections for Levant and Africa Urheimat Hypothesis. The current status of this hypothesis can be elaborated more in its new, own section.203.82.90.104 (talk) 06:50, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Out of the Arabian Peninsula hypothesis 

message: No african semitic genetic in pre-pottery/neolithic/bronzeage syrian. That is pre-european, pre-dravidian and pre-sumer/elamite/akkad.
Semitic word-order is different from sumer, akkad, ebla, indo-iran, proto-greek/minoic and hittitic, but it is near to egypt and south-arabian.
and here is bronzeage egypt genetic. the homeland is not in canaan, libanon, syrian.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:46:D46:AAFC:80EF:D9E4:7542:FBC (talk) 22:20, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Check the genetic  

message: It seems very odd that while this article gives acres of space to how PS might have sounded, or where it might have originated, there seems to be next to nothing about vocabulary, or even word-structure.
In particular, one of the most striking things for somebody coming from a Western European language to, say, Biblical Hebrew is the almost universal construction of the vocabulary on triconsonantal roots -- to a degree that can almost sometimes makes the language seem artificially constructed. (No of course not really, but that is how it can sometimes seem, such is the degree of regularity of this).
It would be useful to discuss how far back this pattern goes.  Is the vocabulary of proto-Semitic also considered to be built over a similar pattern of roots then inflected in different ways to give different meanings and different parts of speech?  Are there particular characteristics that these proto-Semitic roots may have that should be presented here?  (eg the Semitic root article, in its (rather limited) section History, suggests that some presumably very old roots, denoting Stone Age materials, may quite often be biconsonantal; whereas materials discovered during the Neolithic apparently are exclusively triconsonantal).  It would be interesting to know more about this -- for example, how extensive a corpus are we talking about?
More generally, it would be useful to know how wide a proto-Semitic vocabulary has been hypothesised; plus, for example, what proportion of Akkadian or Ugaritic roots may go back to proto-Semitic; or may have apparent cognates in classical Hebrew or Arabic -- and how work in this area has developed.
Wikitionary gives an interesting handful of examples at :wikt:Appendix:List_of_Proto-Semitic_stems (though I'm not really sure why that is at Wiktionary -- it looks more like encyclopedic than dictionary content to me).  But a wikt page of some sporadic examples is no substitute for a more systematic and thorough overview of what vocabulary of common ancestral roots has been hypothesised.  
Besides, that reconstruction and its extent is surely also fundamental, before one can start making pronouncements about sound-shifts etc -- so it really is something that ought to be presented and evaluated here.  Jheald (talk) 20:58, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: There are a few sites that explores Semitic roots in depth:
http://www.semiticroots.net/
http://sembase.org/
https://ahdictionary.com/word/semitic.html  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.19.13.227 (talk) 02:51, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hypothesised vocabulary; & tri-consonantal roots ? 

message: I'm wondering if anyone has good information provided by reliable sources that we can use, regarding the Proto-Sinaitic script. It's a great article and I think the connections could be worthwhile and of great encyclopedic value. So far there are no leads from this article into the related script (which started later than the spoken language: around ~1800 BCE vs 3750 BCE). Best, Altanner1991 (talk) 19:57, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: The period when Proto-Semitic was a single language was almost certainly well over 1,500 years before the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions were made, so I'm not sure what the connection between the two is... AnonMoos (talk) 06:00, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed: it would have been closer to Proto-canaanite. Altanner1991 (talk) 06:20, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possible connection with Proto-Sinaitic script 

message: The reference to Semitic-language speakers coming to the Horn of Africa between 1500-500 BCE because of the Late Bronze Age Collapse is problematic given when the Late Bronze Age took place. 192.76.8.89 (talk) 11:21, 26 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Theory relating to spread  

message: It seems there should be a Wikipedia article "Proto-Semites", similar to the article "Proto-Indo-Europeans". Who were the Proto-Semites and what do we know about them? --Westwind273 (talk) 14:40, 28 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Not much.  Africa and Arabia are both proposed as homelands. AnonMoos (talk) 22:35, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Proto-Semites