Talk:Canaanite languages

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Languages, an attempt at creating a standardized, informative, and easy-to-use resource about languages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.
language Portal
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.

Bold text==Ani vs. Anoki== As opposed to the comment, as I recall, both Ani and Anoki are common Afro-Asiatic pronouns, with different theories as to why there would be two different 1st person pronouns (gender, etc). Canaanite using 'Anoki', except for Mishnaic (and later) Hebrew borrowing Ani from Aramaic. That is, 'ana/i' would be less of a AfroAsiatic 'retention'.

Ok, I'ved removed the this is a common retention from proto-Afro-Asiatic., both Ani and Anoki as present in proto-afro-asiatics, I don't remember specific non-semitic AfroAsiatics with either. There's several theories about the use, I think the popular one assumes them to be used for different gendered, but with no hard-evidence, ie, no recorded or spoken language that has both pronounes at the same period

Contents

[edit] Objection

I would like to object to the openning comment which basically states that Phoenicians spoke Canaanite. In fact all we know is that the languages of the ports which were under Phoenician control were Canaanite. The Phoenicians themselves may have originally had another language and simply adopted the language at the ports which they occupied. Could someone re-phrase it please so as not to unwittingly promote a political agenda. ThankyouZestauferov 09:14, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Whoa, political agenda not intended! But I will comb through the wording and see what I can do. - Gilgamesh 09:44, 18 July 2004 (UTC)
Just finished looking over, and I'm puzzled. Out of curiosity, what's the exact dispute? I've always been taught (academically and theologically) that the Phoenicians were northern Canaanites. I mean, Tyre and Sidon were Phoenician cities, and wasn't Jezebel from Sidon and identified as a Canaanite? Additionally, the Phoenicians themselves called their land Canaan, and themselves Canaanites, and "Phoenician" is actually a Greek name for them. As far as I ever knew, Greeks called all Canaanites "Phoenicians" until Christian times. ...Never in my dreams did I think something like this would be disputed. Could you please elaborate on your dispute? I'm not trying to be trouble or anything. - Gilgamesh 09:53, 18 July 2004 (UTC)

Certainly, no trouble at all. The dispute is the kind which surrounds all empires established by a military elite. Like for example the Huns. There are books and books describing the Huns as a germanic or slavonic ethnic group because the peoples they conquered and who later made up their armies were Germanic & Slavonic. The Phoenicians are further back and like the Hun military elite themselves left us no first-hand documents. Just as germanic & slavonic runes have sometimes been called Hunnish, so too the Canaanites and their inscriptions have been called Phoenician. But despite all the assumption the fact that all of this is based only upon a hypothetical assumption without any sound proof yet is often overlooked. No-one realy knows who the Phoenicians were or where they came from. All we can really say (besides describing their material culture if we are careful to discern what actually belonged to the conquering elite and what belonged to the subject nations) is that they conquered the Zidonian coasts and many ports throughout the mediterranean, and that in time their ethnicity came to be described as Punic. Zestauferov 13:20, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Alright, seems simple enough. I never thought of it that way before. I'll change the text. - Gilgamesh 13:49, 18 July 2004 (UTC)

[edit] IZAK's Message

Because of its importance this is reproduced for those interested in the subject: See Is Hebrew a "Cananite Language" on User talk:IZAK

The term Canaanite languages has a precise linguistic meaning. The ancient Hebrews may not have been "Canaanites", but their language belongs to the Canaanite subfamily of Northwest Semitic. This linguistic classification is not in any way controversial, and has no bearing on the ethnic classification of the Jews. - Mustafaa 04:53, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The Hebrew wikipedia agrees, by the way. - Mustafaa 04:57, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Mustafaa, having studies a course in Semetic linguistics, the term 'Canaanite' - in the linguistic jargon - is the name of a cluster of north-semitic dialects - found in inscriptions dug around 'historical cnaan' (syria, israel/palestine, jordan) - by definition.

Historically several inscriptions were found - describing the languages of Moab, Cidon, etc, after some comparative study - they were all found to be very close to Biblical Hebrew - to a degree were they're all very close and most proboably mutually comprehenciable with biblical-hebrew. Thereby, biblical-hebrew, being a dialect of the same language as other canaanite dialects, is canaanite. As Mustafaa states, this has no (direct, or automatic) implications of ethnic classification, and is linguisticly non-controversial.

As of 'modern' or 'israeli' hebrew - this is a different language, and a different matter. - for sure - a direct descendant of biblical-hebrew. 80.178.221.213 02:30, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Could someone explain _in_brief_ what's the controversy's about? what or who's problem is it labeling Hebrew canaanite?

  • The citation you quote from the "Hebrew" wikipedia is way off. It has almost no information and is accepting a FALSE categorization, as Hebrew is the language of the Torah, Tanakh, and Mishnah which go back for two to four thousand years. No-one knows what Ammonite, Edomite or Cananite is, as today all there is, is almost only Arabic in those areas, and Arabic is a Hebrew derivative. Hebrew is a uniquely defined language that has survived in all its fullness, whereas nothing or very little is known about Canaanites and their languages barring what the Torah (Bible) records. IZAK 05:27, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • Edomite, Moabite, and Ammonite are all known from several inscriptions, the most important of which I have linked to in their respective articles. These reveal - unsurprisingly - that these languages were extremely similar to Hebrew and to Phoenician. Because of the common geographical location of these languages in Canaan, linguists have chosen to call them "Canaanite languages". This in no way implies categorizing the Hebrews as ethnically Canaanite, any more than calling languages "Semitic" implies accepting that their speakers actually descend from Shem. - Mustafaa 05:33, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • IZAK - Arabic is most definetly _not_ a 'Hebrew derivative' whatsoever, at least not in any lisguistic sense. It's true that we do not know alot about Edomite or Moabit, and that our biggest and most fruitful record of Canaanite - is the hebrew bible. Sadly - hebrew - meaning biblical hebrew - has not survived "in its fullness" we have only one book containing 8,000 unique words, with gramatical stuctures which are still not completely clear to anyone. The study of Canaanite dialect sheds alot of new light both on our understanding of the bible, and on the theory of general Semitic linguistics. Please state what bothers you about this classification.

A citation, from Les Langues Chamito-Sémitiques" (ed. D. Cohen), Paris 1988:

[Kena`an...] est à l'origine du terme cananéen par lequel on désigne l'ensemble des langues sémitiques qui ont été en usage dans la région, soit essentiellement l'hébreu et le phénicien (avec son extension punique) et, pour ceux qui y reconnaissent une langue autonome, le moabite. (although he later includes brief entries on the less well attested languages, including that of El Amarna, Edomite, and Ammonite).
[Kena`an]... is the origin of the term "Canaanite" by which one designates the group of Semitic languages which were in use in the region, mainly Hebrew, Phoenician (including Punic), and, for those who consider it a separate language, Moabite. - Mustafaa 05:39, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

And finally, a source more familiar to non-linguists: the Encyclopedia Britannica. - Mustafaa 05:41, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

  • Ah, yes, the key phrase you use is "linguists have chosen to call them "Canaanite languages"...So now the question is, what if one rejects the notions of these "linguists" and abides instead by the notions of say, "THEOLOGIANS" or more specifically HEBREW Theologians, who would utterly reject the speculations and hypothesis of these "Linguists"? To go just by the views of "linguists" would be to violate NPOV on Wikipedia as one needs to constantly present the views of the classical HEBREWS (aka as Jews) who abide by the classical teachings of Judaism, which teach that Hebrew was the language of Creation and of all humanity at one point. It was at the Tower of Babel that all the people were dispersed and were divided by (newly) conflicting tongues, or is this too much for you to "swallow"? IZAK 05:49, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

This has been a lot of exercise today. IZAK, you need to understand, and please read because I will say this once because I am not very comfortable with long essays and paragraphs. - Linguistics is a very well-established science of comparing languages and how they split from each other, a process that never stops. I personally do not dispute the history of the Book of Genesis; I personally (by POV) believe that Terah was a descendant of Eber (founder of the Hebrews), and Abraham was Terah's son, and Lot was Terah's grandson. Ben-ammi and Moab were Lot's sons, and Esau and Jacob were Abraham's grandsons. Ishmael too, is an Eberite in a such a context. However, these distinctions do not translate into parallel linguistic splits. That does not deny that these people existed, but it's far more likely (and scholarly-accepted) that the languages that became associated with them were languages they adopted from other peoples. In the case of Abraham and his children in Canaan, they adopted the local Canaanite language for local communication. Samples of all four Canaanite languages adopted by Hebrew peoples are attested, written in early scripts related to Hebrew. Phoenician and Punic are also well-attested Canaanite languages, closely related to Hebrew, but the Phoenicians actually were Canaanites, and not Hebrews. (The Punic language survived until well into the Roman Empire, and was a favorite literary language of Augustine of Hippo. Now, the Canaanite dialects adopted by Abraham's family and Lot's family in Canaan only became "Hebrew" because they didn't stop speaking it for a very very long time, and it became the language associated with them, and the prophets of the Bible wrote in it. As for what language Abraham spoke before he settled in Canaan (the pre-Abrahamic Hebrew language), we can't say; that's why there are theories at Hebrew language. This is all well-established in the pages of the Torah and the Bible, as linguistic relations between the four Hebrew peoples and the Phoenicians and Carthaginians are well-attested in the scientific world. The truth is, people of the biblical Hebrew family adopted different languages where they settled. Canaanite languages by the children of Isaac and Lot, Arabian languages by the children of Ishmael, and later, old dialects of Aramaic, Arabic, Spanish and German by the Jewish diaspora for their daily discourse. But scientifically, the interrelated languages of Hebrews in Canaan are all Canaanite languages no more or less related to each other than the languages spoken by the ethnic Canaanites themselves, and are only also called "Hebrew languages" because they were biblical peoples in the Holy Land who spoke the same language. Since the Torah is theology, we can present it as a POV belief, but not as NPOV fact without concrete scientific proof. As such, we can't actually (yet) prove the historicity of Terah or Abraham (though we can still keep trying), and the distinction "Hebrew" remains an unscientific one. (That's why the Hebrew language articles were both in "Category:Canaanite languages" and "Category:Hebrew language", because one is scientific and the other is religious.) Now please, I understand and appreciate your religious passions, but keep in mind we can only mention theology as a POV, and that the only fact allowed in Wikipedia is NPOV science. - Gilgamesh - 05:53, 7 July 2004 (UTC)

  • Gilgamesh: I appreciate your time and efforts. But really this is all "theology" as were it not for the Bible this discussion and the mere names "Ammonite", "Edomite", "Cananite" would not even be known today. The so-called POV theology has been around for thousands of years. A few years ago some academics with nothing better to do commnenced the process of chopping up anything too "religious" that came into their line of fire and proceeded to impose their arbitrary POV so-called "categories" which are just sheer nonsense and make a mockery of well-estblished religiously reliable facts. Now, there are also sometimes fellow-travelers to the anti-religious academics who latch onto the teachings of the "linguists" (in this case), and whilst having their own agenda (of promoting Jesus or Allah or whatever) claim to share the views of the secular scholars when all they really want to do is to diminish the UNIQUE role and history of the Hebrew people and their language, and in this case "Hebrew" has ALWAYS been synonymous with "Jew"...now you are coming along and telling the world in effect that "Not all Hebrews are the Jews and not all Jews come from Hebrews", which is a patent lie and attempt at distortion of the contination of Jewish=Hebrew identity which so frustrates the anti-Semites and anti-Zionists that they will do ANYTHINg to cast aspersions on the cherished traditions of the teachings of the Torah and Judaism that tell us that the Hebrews are the Jews and that the Jews are the Hebrews and that they alone spoke what we call today the Hebrew language, which they preserved for 2,000 years in the their Talmudic and scholarly texts and which they revived as a spoken language in Israel BECAUSE the Hebrew that was part of them never ceased to exist at all. IZAK 06:21, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I think Gilgamesh's point is that, since `Ivri comes from Eber, it shoudl refer to all descendants of Eber, and thus that "Not all Hebrews are the Jews" (although all Jews are Hebrews) is exactly what the Torah implies. Is your point that Ivri does not mean "descendants of Eber"? If so, could you expand on it? - Mustafaa 06:34, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Mustafaa: Also not too complicated: See: Why are the Jews called "Hebrews"?: "The word "Hebrew" comes from the Hebrew word "Ivri." Jews are called Hebrews because their ancestor and founder, Abraham, is called (Genesis 14:13) "Abraham the Ivri." The word Ivri means "from the [other] side," and Abraham came to the Land of Canaan from Mesopotamia which was "on the other side" of the Euphrates. Additionally, Abraham, with his monotheistic beliefs, was on one side while the rest of the world was on the other (pagan) side." IZAK 06:46, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)


IZAK, I don't dispute that you believe what you believe, and I never disputed that the Jews were Hebrews. But even the Tanakh says that not all Hebrews were Jews (but all Jews were Hebrews, which I never contested). But at some point religious belief is inadmissible in Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a medium of the scientific method. You're allowed not to like that, and you're allowed to speak your mind to other people and tell them how much you don't like it. I encourage it. But the rules are made by Wikipedia, not me, and facts are only admissible if the scientific method attests to them; otherwise, it's just belief and can only be mentioned as such. And even if Wikipedia were a religious discussion center, there's still the matter that nearly all religions disagree on certain points, and they would still have to compromise and cooperate in maintaining a single archive. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia for everyone, not merely an encyclopedia for Rabbinical Jews, nor for fundamentalist Christians, nor for conservative Islamists, nor even for militant Atheists. It's for everyone, and everyone is welcome to make NPOV edits at Wikipedia. - Gilgamesh 06:41, 7 July 2004 (UTC)

Gilagamesh: I do not dispute what you say. When FACTS are misrepresented then it is is only right to correct them. And to accept only an "assertion" that something is so, is no subsitute for intellectual honesty. We have before us ancient TORAH texts, not "rabbinical" texts, but classical well-preserved and reliable texts revered by hundreds of millions of people, not just Jews and not just by "fundamentalists" as being reliable. This is as scientific and NPOV as a scientist looking into a petri dish which he should stick to doing as he is out of his depth when he applies "petrie dish" methods and theories to black-and white texts that say what they mean and mean what they say. A lawyer in law school would be expected to read, study and explain the statutes and laws, we would not care how well he conducted experiments with his legal ideas because that's not what you do with legal ideas and the language of law. Similarly, to chop up and insert speculations about the language of the Torah and what the words mean is not meant as a "Sunday afternoon stroll" in the hocus-pocus world of anti-religious secular academics and their cohorts. IZAK 06:59, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I'm frankly at a loss for words. This is like claiming that every biology article we write should include a Creationism section, or that every cosmology article should include a disclaimer stating that the world was created in six days - except that those doctrines are specifically claimed by the Bible, whereas Bereshit does not say which language was spoken before Babel. - Mustafaa 05:59, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

  • Darling:Just LOOK at the language of the original Torah! What is it? And of course it is HEBREW. Does it have to say "By the way, we are now speaking Hebrew" when it is obvious that ONLY Hebrew is being spoken. And yes, when touching upon Biblically related "hot-potato" subjects like the oririgins of languages and the origin of life (which NO "scientist" can "know" as there were no scientists to take notes). We can only work with the primary texts and in this case the Torah and the Tanakh are the most reliable texts we have, unless we want to look at the Rosetta stone forever.... IZAK 06:21, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Um, I don't know what you think I meant, but of course the language of the Torah is Hebrew. Who was arguing about that? - Mustafaa 06:26, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

  • This is the point:The language ALL humanity spoke prior to the Tower of Babel was the Hebrew of the Torah, it's not that complicated. That why all languages have TRACES of Hebrew in them. Linguists agree that all languages are derived from one ancient "unkown" "core language". In Judaism, this is NOT a "mystery", that one core language was the ancient Hebrew of the Torah, which subsequently becomes reserved for the Hebrew people only commencing with Abraham, as a devotee of the HEBREW God who spoke with him and it is Abraham who brought it to Canaan and NOT the other way around. Now, is that not a beauty of reason and logic, and not mere "theology"  :-) IZAK 06:38, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Yeah... The language of the Torah is Hebrew. I don't know how that can be disputable. I mean, there's a possibility other parts of it were written in other languages originally and then translated to Hebrew, but the texts as they were issued by Moses and later in written form by Ezra were in the Biblical Israelite Hebrew dialect. - Gilgamesh 06:30, 7 July 2004 (UTC)


  • Gilagamesh:Kindly restrain yourself from making up "theories", just stick to the facts as they are presented to us in the "primary documents" of the Torah, otherwise you will start to believe in Science fiction that we come from space aliens and that Steven Spielberg is writing the scripts as we speak ...IZAK 06:38, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Mustafaa's calling it a day from this discussion and so am I. But I am afraid I must be blunt here and now: If you continue to flout the rules of Wikipedia, you'll invite trouble, probably at the administration level. You need to adhere to the editing rules the rest of us adhere to, or you'll find yourself not being able to edit here anymore. - Gilgamesh 06:45, 7 July 2004 (UTC)

  • Oh I see, now you are resorting to scare tactics. I am not "flouting" the rules of Wikipedia and I never have! You have inserted your own POV and grow impatient when your categorization is changed in spite of its erroneous nature. My edit record is excellent. It's your bias that is determining your reaction as you refuse to see or consider a broader more rounded approach to the subject at hand and hence to the truth. What can you do. IZAK 07:08, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Proposal for Mediation

These conflicts have been difficult for us to discuss. I suggest we go by procedure and request a mediator to help us iron out the disputes and clarify the edit rules for everyone, you and I included. Wikipedia:Requests for mediation - I will ask first, I invite you to ask as well. - Gilgamesh 08:16, 7 July 2004 (UTC)

Ok, Gilgamesh go ahead, not a bad idea (I hope)... hopefully something good will come out it. Let me know when I should put in my two-cents worth. IZAK 08:21, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Alright, it is ready. 08:26, 7 July 2004 (UTC)

This subject is now in Mediation, see:

Request for assistance in a conflict between users regarding Canaanite and Hebrew linguistics articles. Thank you. IZAK 10:15, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)


I've removed "The prefix of the third-person plural in the Perfective aspect, is t- rather than Aramiac y-" because it's not; I'm guessing you meant to say something slightly different, but I'm not sure what. - Mustafaa 01:36, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hebrew naming conventions

Urgent: see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Hebrew) to add your opinions about this important matter. Thank you. IZAK 17:31, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Philistine

I added a (?) after Philistine. Its genetic relationship to other languages is far from certain. Imperial78