Canaanite Languages (redirected from Caananite languages)

Canaanite Languages 

the languages of the Semites who inhabited the region between the Mediterranean Sea and Mesopotamia in the third and second millennia B.C. A number of scholars believe that the Canaanite languages included Old West Canaanite, Ugaritic, and Amorite, as well as the languages derived from them, including Hebrew, Phoenician, and Moabite. With Aramaic, the Canaanite languages form the northwestern subgroup of the Semitic languages.

The Old West Canaanite (Old Canaanite) languages comprise a group of dialects of the early and middle second millennium B.C. attested in glosses in Accadian texts from Tell el-Amarna (Egypt), in Canaanite borrowings in the Egyptian language of the Hyksos period and later, and in inscriptions written in a Sinaitic-Palestinian alphabet (Sinai). Amorite is attested in proper names in Accadian texts dating from the first half of the second millennium B.C., and Moabite is attested in inscriptions from the ninth century B.C. found near the southeastern shore of the Dead Sea. The only living Canaanite language is Hebrew.

REFERENCES

Shifman, I. Sh. Finikiiskii iazyk. Moscow, 1963.
D’iakonov, I. M. Iazyki drevnei Perednei Azii. Moscow, 1967.
Bauer, T. Die Ostkanaanáer. Leipzig, 1926.
Harris, Z. S. Development of the Canaanite Dialects. New Haven, Conn., 1939.
Garbini, G. Il semítico di nord-ovest. Naples, 1960.
Bohl, F. Die Sprache der Amarnabriefe. Leipzig, 1968.