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Canaanite
Geographic; distribution:	Levant
Genetic; classification:	Afro-Asiatic; Semitic; West Semitic; Central Semitic; Northwest Semitic; Canaanite
Subdivisions:	Phoenician Ammonite Moabite Edomite Hebrew (living)

The Canaanite languages or Hebraic languages are a subfamily of the Semitic languages, which were spoken by the ancient peoples of the Canaan region, including Canaanites, Israelites and Phoenicians. All of them became extinct as native languages in the early 1st millennium CE, although Hebrew remained in continuous literary and religious use among Jews, and was revived as a spoken, everyday language in the 19th century by Eliezer Ben Yehuda. The Phoenician (and especially Carthaginian) expansion spread their Canaanite language to the Western Mediterranean for a time, but there too it died out, although it seems to have survived slightly longer than in Phoenicia itself.

Phoenician languages - extinct
- Punic language - extinct
Ammonite language - extinct
Moabite language - extinct
Edomite language - extinct
Hebrew languages
- Biblical Hebrew language - Israelites, literary, poetical, liturgical. It has different pronunciations in different diasporas
  - - Samaritan Hebrew language - liturgical

- - Tiberian Hebrew language - liturgical
    - Mizrahi Hebrew language - liturgical
      - Yemenite Hebrew language - liturgical
    - Sephardi Hebrew language - liturgical
    - Ashkenazi Hebrew language - liturgical
- Mishnaic Hebrew Or Rabbinical Hebrew - Jews, liturgical, rabbinical,
- Medieval Hebrew language - Jews, liturgical, poetical,rabbinical, scientific, literary, lingua franca based on Bible, Mishna and neologisms forms created by translators and commentators/
- Haskala Hebrew language - Jews, scientific, literary and journalistic language based on Biblical but enriched with neologisms created by writers and journalists, a transition to the later
- Modern Hebrew language - The transformation and enlargement of the former into a spoken language which in turn emerged as the new
- Contemporary Israeli Hebrew the main language of the State of Israel, revived

The main sources for study of Canaanite languages are the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), and inscriptions such as:

in the Moabite language: Mesha Stele, El-Kerak Stela
in the Biblical Hebrew language: Gezer calendar
in the Phoenician languages: Ahiram inscription, sarcophagus of Eshmunazar [1], Kilamuwa inscription, the Byblos inscription
in the later Punic language: in Poenulus - by Plautus - beginning of 5th-Act.

The extra-biblical Canaanite inscriptions are gathered along with Aramaic inscriptions in editions of the book "Kanaanäische und Aramäische Inschriften", from which they may be referenced as KAI n (for a number n); for example, the Mesha Stele is "KAI 181".

[edit] Distinctive features

The Canaanite languages, together with the Aramaic languages and Ugaritic, form the Northwest Semitic subgroup. Some distinctive features of Canaanite in relation to Aramaic are:

The prefix 'h-' used as the definite article (whereas Aramaic has a postfixed -a). This seems to be an innovation of Canaanite.
The first person pronoun being 'ʼnk' (אנכ - anok(i)) (versus Aramaic - ʼnʼ/ʼny) - which is similar to Akkadian, Ancient Egyptian and Berber.
The *ā > ō vowel shift (Canaanite shift).

[edit] References

The Semitic Languages. Routledge Language Family Descriptions. Edited by Robert Hetzron. New York: Routledge, 1997.

[edit] External links

Some West Semitic Inscriptions