Langues sémitiques

Langues sémitiques, langues qui forment une branche du phylum des langues afro-asiatiques. Les membres du groupe sémitique sont répartis dans toute l'Afrique du Nord et l'Asie du Sud-Ouest et jouent un rôle prépondérant dans le paysage linguistique et culturel du Moyen-Orient depuis plus de 4000 ans.

Langues actuellement utilisées

Au début du 21e siècle, la langue sémitique la plus importante, en termes de nombre de locuteurs, était l'arabe. L'arabe standard est parlé comme première langue par plus de 200 millions de personnes vivant dans une vaste zone s'étendant de la côte atlantique de l'Afrique du Nord à l'ouest de l'Iran; 250 millions de personnes supplémentaires dans la région parlent l'arabe standard comme langue secondaire. La plupart des communications écrites et radiodiffusées dans le monde arabe sont menées dans cette langue littéraire uniforme, aux côtés de laquelle de nombreux dialectes arabes locaux, souvent très différents les uns des autres, sont utilisés à des fins de communication quotidienne.

Le maltais, originaire de l'un de ces dialectes, est la langue nationale de Malte et compte environ 370 000 locuteurs. À la suite de la renaissance de l'hébreu au 19e siècle et de la création de l'État d'Israël en 1948, environ 6 à 7 millions de personnes parlent maintenant l'hébreu moderne. Beaucoup des nombreuses langues de l'Éthiopie sont sémitiques, y compris l'amharique (avec quelque 17 millions de locuteurs) et, dans le nord, le tigrinya (environ 5,8 millions de locuteurs) et le tigré (plus d'un million de locuteurs). Un dialecte araméen occidental est encore parlé dans les environs de Maʿlūlā, en Syrie, et l'araméen oriental survit sous la forme de Ṭuroyo (originaire d'une région de l'est de la Turquie), du mandaic moderne (dans l'ouest de l'Iran) et des dialectes néo-syriaques ou assyriens. (en Irak, en Turquie et en Iran). Les langues modernes de l'Arabie du Sud Mehri, Ḥarsusi, Hobyot, Jibbali (également connu sous le nom de Śḥeri),et Socotri existent aux côtés de l'arabe sur la côte sud de la péninsule arabique et les îles adjacentes.

Members of the Semitic language family are employed as official administrative languages in a number of states throughout the Middle East and the adjacent areas. Arabic is the official language of Algeria (with Tamazight), Bahrain, Chad (with French), Djibouti (with French), Egypt, Iraq (with Kurdish), Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania (where Arabic, Fula [Fulani], Soninke, and Wolof have the status of national languages), Morocco, Oman, the Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia (with Somali), Sudan (with English), Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Other Semitic languages designated as official are Hebrew in Israel (where Arabic also enjoys special status) and Maltese in Malta (with English). In Ethiopia, which recognizes all locally spoken languages equally, Amharic is the “working language” of the government.

Despite the fact that they are no longer regularly spoken, several Semitic languages retain great significance because of the roles that they play in the expression of religious culture—such as Biblical Hebrew in Judaism, Geʿez in Ethiopian Christianity, and Syriac in Chaldean and Assyrian Christianity. In addition to the important position that it occupies in Arabic-speaking societies, literary Arabic exerts a major influence throughout the world as the medium of Islamic religion and civilization.

Languages of the past

Written records documenting languages belonging to the Semitic family reach back to the middle of the 3rd millennium bce. Evidence of Old Akkadian is found in the Sumerian literary tradition. By the early 2nd millennium bce, Akkadian dialects in Babylonia and Assyria had acquired the cuneiform writing system used by the Sumerians, causing Akkadian to become the chief language of Mesopotamia. The discovery of the ancient city of Ebla (modern Tall Mardīkh, Syria) led to the unearthing of archives written in Eblaite that date from the middle of the 3rd millennium bce.

Personal names from this early period, preserved in cuneiform records, provide an indirect picture of the western Semitic language Amorite. Although the Proto-Byblian and Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions still await a satisfactory decipherment, they too suggest the presence of Semitic languages in early 2nd-millennium Syro-Palestine. During its heyday from the 15th through the 13th century bce, the important coastal city of Ugarit (modern Raʾs Shamra, Syria) left numerous records in Ugaritic. The Egyptian diplomatic archives found at Tell el-Amarna have also proved to be an important source of information on the linguistic development of the area in the late 2nd millennium bce. Though written in Akkadian, those tablets contain aberrant forms that reflect the languages native to the areas in which they were composed.

From the end of the 2nd millennium bce, languages of the Canaanite group began to leave records in Syro-Palestine. Inscriptions using the Phoenician alphabet (from which the modern European alphabets were ultimately to descend) appeared throughout the Mediterranean area as Phoenician commerce flourished; Punic, the form of the Phoenician language used in the important North African colony of Carthage, remained in use until the 3rd century ce. The best known of the ancient Canaanite languages, Classical Hebrew, is familiar chiefly through the scriptures and religious writings of ancient Judaism. Although as a spoken language Hebrew gave way to Aramaic, it remained an important vehicle for Jewish religious traditions and scholarship. A modern form of Hebrew developed as a spoken language during the Jewish national revival of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Early in the 1st millennium bce, documents in the Aramaic languages appeared. Isolated inscriptions in Old Aramaic dialects date back to the 9th century bce. Under the Achaemenian Empire, varieties of Imperial Aramaic were used throughout the region for administrative purposes. As a result, dialects of Aramaic came to supplant local languages in many areas of the Middle East. Among the several forms of Aramaic that left written records were Hatran, Mandaic, Nabatean, Palmyrene, and, in particular, Syriac in Edessa. The Galilean and Babylonian dialects played important roles in the transmission of the traditions of Judaism.

In the Arabian Peninsula, written records date back to the middle of the 1st millennium bce. The kingdoms of ancient South Arabia (Sabaʾ, Minaea, Qataban, and Ḥaḍramawt) left numerous inscriptions in the Old South Arabian (OSA) languages; a descendant of the OSA alphabet was used for the composition of Geʿez (Classical Ethiopic) literature and is still used by the modern Ethiopic languages. In the northern part of the Arabian Peninsula, traces of early North Arabian languages, including Liḥyanite, Safaitic, and Thamudic, have been uncovered. Closely akin to these languages was Arabic, which, with the advent of Islam and the conquests of the 7th century, was carried as far as Spain and Central Asia. As a literary language, Arabic produced an immense amount of scholarly and artistic literature, much of which was recorded in Kūfic script, the earliest form of Arabic calligraphy. In its numerous regional dialects, Arabic came to be used as the spoken language throughout North Africa, Syro-Palestine, Mesopotamia, and beyond (see also history of Arabia).