spin

Parsimony is not a sufficient criterion.

(Strangely enough, the Hebrew word for oil is $MN, a cognate of which can been found in Aramaic as $MYN, "fat", and the Akkadian cognate, $amanu. A form of the Hebrew M$X does provide a term for ointment or holy oil, M$XH. The verbal form is usually closest to the root form of the idea, hence M$YX is better thought of as related to the verb.)

You cannot assume that. It is not simply a matter of age.

I gave the example of the word "head" being a cognate of the Latin "caput" -- it really is a cognate! It's just that phonological changes have hiden the relationship. Initial "c" in Latin cognates have an "h" in Germanic languages (including English), eg "cane" - "hound", "cor" - "heart", "cornus" - horn, etc. -- none of which are borrowed, but are cognates. English has lost many medial consonants, eg Segel - "sail", egen - "own". Head, huvud and haupt are all Germanic cognates of Latin "caput". Yet Latin stopped being in use before English, Swedish and New High German came to be spoken.

Words like mother and father, one, two and three can be found in all Indo-European languages and none of these languages has borrowed any of the words. They simply inherited them from before the language diverged, ie they are all cognates.

One cannot say that a relatively simple word in one language was borrowed into a related language. In fact cognates of M$X can be found in Arabic, Aramaic, Palmyrean and Ethiopian. Why should Ethiopian have borrowed the same term, if it needed it, from Hebrew or Aramaic, when it has had no direct contact? Words often come through the history of the language from before that language existed.

What do you think the Arabs of 700 BCE spoke? We have a later form and it certainly wasn't derived from Aramaic. Why should it have borrowed the word at issue from Aramaic?

The thought isn't really helpful. Arabic belongs to the same family. I can't tell you just how it fits in to the separation from the source. I know that Hebrew, being a Canaanite language is closer to Moabite, Ammonite and Phoenician than it is to Aramaic, so they all belong to one sub branch and Aramaic to another of the N-W Semitic group. It may be that Arabic fits in as yet another branch. Aramaic is definitely not older than the precursor of Hebrew and Phoenician.

I hope the issue is becoming clearer.


spin

mopc

Congrats spin for the good linguistics. I thought I was the only one here with linguistics knowledge.

judge

I don't know. Do you have anyhting from these people from this era?

OK but I am not aware of anyone claiming it was. However I'm not sure you have compelling evidence that Aramaic was not the precursor of hebrew. Do you?

Well if cognate simply means equal then yes. If you have a reference for something that shows Hebrew did not derive from Aramaic I would be most interested to look into it.

Are you saying that the Arabic came before the Aramaic or hebrew in this instance, or are you saying you don't know which came first.

Thanks again

Added in edit:
I notice you have touched on my questions.


Can you point me towards a good reference to explore this?

Chris Weimer

judge - try a basic linguistics book. Hebrew and Aramaic came from different family branches. That's like saying that English derives from Sanskrit because Sanskrit is older. You make absolutely no sense and your ignorance is showing.

What kind of shit is this? Just because something came first doesn't mean that the other was derived from it. You really need to take a beginner's course to linguistics.

That's because your questions can be answered by consulting Wikipedia on semitic languages. You're asking questions no scholar should ever ask: dumb ones.

spin

No, just the historical references.

A comparative study of the N-W Semitic group shows that Hebrew is closest to Moabite and Ammonite, relatively close to Phoenician, which is thought to be the first of the Canaanite languages to leave the fold. All these languages are closely related and further afield one finds Ugaritic (apparently as closer than Aramaic), shedding light on some of the Hebrew grammar. Ugaritic provides a written language of the 14th c. BCE, I think older than any Aramaic we have, yet Ugaritic is closer than Aramaic.

A cognate is a word found in one language which has the same source as a word in another language yet they are each native to their own language.

Did the English borrow the word "head" from some other language or does it simply derive from the same source as words in other languages? Did we borrow "mother" from the Latin mater? No, they are from the same source. They are original to their prospective languages, yet come from the same source, ie when the languages were one.

The English have borrowed the French cognate of head twice, first "chief", then a few centuries later as "chef", so both these words were borrowed from French, yet they are forms of the French cognate of "head"! (You should therefore know that "chief" and "head" came from the same source, the French through the Latin caput. So cognates don't need to appear to be the same. They just come into the language from the same source as a word in another language.

I don't have any useful books with me on the subject, but an analysis of North-West Semitic languages should draw the differences. I can only think of an Italian Semiticist's book at the moment.

You might find the page where I got this from of some use for further enquiry: "Ugaritic is not Hebrew; it is not an older stage of Hebrew; it must even be differentiated from the dialect(s) reflected in the Amarna glosses. Its closest relative is undoubtedly Phoenician; but there are marked differences between them. One might agree that Ugaritic is a North-West Semitic language, evidently standing alongside Phoenician, Hebrew, Moabite and the Amarna glosses over against Aramaic." (Mark Smith)

No. I wouldn't know ages of divergence of the languages in the family. I do know that Arabic is a cousin rather than a sibling. I do know that the Arabs of Tiglath-Pileser III's time spoke something and that the Arabic of Mohammed's time and earlier had a long history before that.

Try looking at this page, scroll down to the second table, where you'll see some .pdf files about N.W. Semitic. You might find something useful there. (The article by H.L.Ginzburg will be very heavy going due to its technical language, but it will give you the information you want, I think.)


spin

judge

But English and Sanskrit don't share the many many amny similarities Hebrew and Aramaic do.
So your analogy here is not a good one.

.

No but it may. The Hebrew bible although it may not be historically accurate at all points does, early on, refer to jacob as a "wandering Aramaen". Abraham likewise is supposed to have descended from an area that would at that time have spoken Aramaic (or something exremely close).
Thus there is a very old tradition that the Hebrews came from Aramaic speakers.
So it is quite natural to ask "How good is the evidence they are cousins and not mother and daughter?"

I wasn't aware one had to be a "scholar" to participate in this forum

Addaed in edit:
thanks for the references Spin

Chris Weimer

sorry judge, the questions seemed so basic to me that anyone should have realized the answer. I thought scholasticism is what you were trying to achieve; after all, wasn't it you who went on and on about spin's supposed lack of Hebrew and Aramaic linguistics?

judge

Yes I don't doubt at times there are things obvious to scholars but unobvious to myself. My thinking is still no doubt influenced by religious nonsense in places, but working out exactly where this occurs takes time.

In view of previous posts i guess I deserve this

Chris Weimer

Congratulations on you recognizing this and sorry for going off on you. I hope that spin's knowledge advanced you well.

Cheers,

Chris

Dharma

Well, you are correct that they are related, according to the Jewish Encyclopedia, Aramaic is the closest semitic language to Hebrew http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/vi...h=aramaic#5148

You are also correct about Abraham in that his story follows Nuzi or Hurrian laws of Syria, and it was this Hurrian/Mitanni people that later were speaking Aramaic. And some think that the Mitanni might be related to Sanskrit speaking people...so there you have it!

A historical/linguistic connection between Hurrian, Sanskrit and Aramaic and Hebrew AND Egyptian as many of the Mitanni princess's were married to the Pharoah...