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From the cuneiform tablets discovered in 1887 at Tell el-Amarna (see AMARNA TABLETS) in Egypt, near Thebes, it appears that c. 1400 B.c. Babylonian was the official language in Canaan and the language of intercourse between the

Those Babylonians had before that time overTongues. run and occupied Canaan and impressed their culture on the land, so that, though Egypt then held Canaan, the Egyptian governors of the cities (among them the governor of Jerusalem) wrote to the Egyptian royal government in Babylonian, and Egyptian youth at court studied Babylonian.

Of these dialects, the following are now spoken: (1) Aramaic, by the Nestorian and Jacobite Christians in Upper Mesopotamia, near Mosul, thence eastward to the western shore of Lake Urmi, and northward in the Kurdish Mountains (N61deke, Grammatik der neusyrischen Sprache, Leipsie, 1868); and by the remnant of the Mandeans in Lower Mesopotamia (Noldeke, Manddische Grammatik, Halle, 1874). West Aramaic is now spoken only in three small villages near Damascus. (2) Arabic is the only Semitic dialect that has now any real life. It is spoken in various sub-dialects-by the Bedouin of the Arabian Desert; in Egypt, and, as ecclesiastical language, in Turkey; in the Magreb (north coast of Africa); in Syria; in Malta, where the vernacular is a strange mixture, with Arabic as its basis, but with many Italian and other words; on the coast of Malabar (the Mapuli jargon). The Mozarabic, a Spanish-Arabic jargon formerly spoken in the south of Spain, became extinct in the last century. (3) Geez: the four dialects, Tigre, Tigriiia, Amharic, Harari, are still spoken in Abyssinia. (4) Hebrew at a comparatively early date began to be displaced by Aramaic, which became the common language of intercourse in the greater part of western Asia and so the vernacular of the Jews. The earliest notice of the use of Aramaic by Jews is found in the Aramaic papyri discovered in the island of Elephantine in the Nile opposite Assuan. Here as early as the sixth century B.c. dwelt a Jewish community possessing a temple and carrying on a regular Jewish worship; their commercial and other documents are all written in Aramaic. This language gradually took the place of Hebrew in Palestine, and maintained itself till some time after the Mohammedan conquest, when the Jews gradually adopted Arabic. In general the Jews speak the language of the people among whom they dwell, keeping up, however, to a greater or less extent, the knowledge of the old tongue. Hebrew is now studied by the Jews as a sacred language, and by a few of them, chiefly the older orthodox bodies in Germany, Austria, and Russia, is to some extent written and spoken. This spoken language contains a large admixture of modern European terms. The literary Hebrew of today occupies about the same position among the Jews as Latin among us. The so-called " Yiddish " (that is, German Jewish) is a Rhineland German speech, with admixture of Hebrew and Slavic words, now spoken by Jews in Russia, Austria, America, and elsewhere in the diaspora [and printed by them in the Jewish character].

Of languages which have been strongly affected by Semitic tongues may be mentioned the Iranian Huzvaresh or Pahlavi (the language of the Bundehesh), which is greatly Aramaized; the Iranian Persian, whose vocabulary is largely Arabic, and even its syntax appears to have been somewhat Semitized; the Indian Hindustani, which, developed under Moslem influence, also contains a large number of Arabic words; and the Turkish, especially the literary and learned language of Constantinople, which in like manner, and for the same reason, has a large infusion of Arabic.

IV. Characteristics: These may be divided into formal (grammar), material (vocabulary), and stylistic (rhetoric and thought). The Semitic phonetic system has a marked individuality. It is probable that the original Semitic alphabet was nearly identical with that of the classical Arabic, containing

six gutturals (Alef, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ayin, i. Grammar; Gayin), five uvulars (Iiaf, Ta, Z, a, Sad,

linguo-dentals (Ta, Dal), two labials (Pa, Ba), six liquids (Ra, Ya, Lam, Waw, and the nasals Win, Nun), three sibilants (Sin, Sin, .Zayin), and perhaps six spirants (Kaf, dam, Ta, Dal, Pa, Ba). No existing dialect has all these letters, but there are traces of most of them in all. Thus, comparison of Assyrian and Arabic mal :s it probable that the former contained all these h-sounds (ha, ha, ha), though only one of them (ha) is now found in it. From Septuagint transliterations it appears that Hebrew possessed Gayin, as well as Ayin; the South Semitic group shows all the uvulars, and the Hebrew all the spirants. It may be, however, that the parent Semitic speech had fewer uvulars and spirants, and that the Southern group developed the former, and the Northern the latter. It is doubtful whether Hebrew Samek and Sin represent two different sounds. It is likely, also, that not all the sounds above mentioned are original, i.e., some of them may be merely modifications of earlier and simpler sounds; but here the concern is only with the consonantal material possessed by the primitive Semitic tongue, and not with the material out of which its alphabet may have been formed. The Semitic alphabet is thus seen to be characterized by fulness of guttural, uvular, and spirant consonants. In the several dialects the movement has been toward a diminution of the number of gutturals and uvulars, namely, by changing these into similar letters pronounced farther forward in the mouth. Assyrian, Galilean Jewish, Aramaic, and Mandean threw off the most of the gutturals; modern Arabic has diminished the number of its uvulars, and Geez the number of its uvulars and gutturals. This is a tendency, observable in all languages, to bring the consonants forward in the mouth and thus facilitate their pronunciation. The vowel material of the primitive Semitic was simple, consisting, probably, of the three vowels, a, i, u, with the corresponding long A, s, u. These have been variously modified in the different dialects. Assyrian has _; Aramaic, e, o; Hebrew, a, 6, e, 6, 8; modern Arabic, g, e, s (aw), 6; Geez, 6, 4~, o.

Morphologically, the Semitic languages belong to the class called inflecting, standing in this respect