Nabataean language

Nabataean
Fragment from a dedicatory inscription in Nabataean script to the god Qasiu.
Region	Fertile Crescent
Extinct	merged with Arabic during the early Islamic era.
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic Central Semitic Northwest Semitic Aramaic Western Aramaic Nabataean
Writing system	Nabataean alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3	None (mis)
Linguist list	qhy
Glottolog	None

The Nabataean language was the Western Aramaic variety spoken by the Nabataeans of the Negev, the east bank of the Jordan River and the Sinai Peninsula.

During the early Islamic Golden Age, some Arab historians applied this terms collectively to other, eastern Aramaic languages in the Babylonian alluvial plain of Iraq and the Syrian Desert.

With the collapse of the Achaemenid Empire (330 BC), the Aramaic language also increasingly lost importance as the lingua franca of the Near East. The Greek language now appeared beside it. The formerly unified written culture fell apart into local schools and the old dialects now also increased in importance as written languages. The Nabataean language was one of these local developments. The language of the Nabataean inscriptions, attested from the 2nd century BC, shows a local development of the Aramaic language.

The Nabatean language was an offshoot of Imperial Aramaic. With increasing immigration of nomadic Arab tribes, the Nabatean language became increasingly influenced by Arabic. From the Islamic era, the Arabic influence became overwhelming, in a way that it may be said the Nabataean language shifted seamlessly from Aramaic to Arabic.

Scholars used to be divided over the origins of Arabic script. One (contemporarily marginal) school of thought dates the Arabic script to the Syriac script, which also originated in Aramaic. The second school of thought, led by T. Noldeke, traces Arabic script to Nabatean. This thesis was confirmed and fully documented by J. Healey in his work on the Syriac and the Arabic alphabet. An inscription excavated in Umm al Jimal, Jordan, which dates to the 6th century, "confirms the derivation of the Arabic script from the Nabatean and points to the birth of distinctive Arabic writing forms".

Nabatean language was always linguistically influenced by its historical and geographical context. Nabatean was initially primarily used by Aramaic speakers, and therefore drew much influence from the Aramaic vocabulary and proper names. But at the beginning of the 4th century. it was increasingly used by Arab speakers, and therefore began to draw influence from Arabic. This, according to Semitists specialist Cantineau, marked to beginning of the end of the widespread use of the Nabatean language, as it became emerged in Arabic. During this process, "Nabatean seems to have emptied itself little by little of the Aramaic elements it had and to have successively replaced them with Arabic loans".