Northwest Semitic
| Northwest Semitic | |
|---|---|
| Levantine | |
| Geographic distribution |
concentrated in the Middle East |
| Linguistic classification |
Afro-Asiatic
|
| Subdivisions | |
| Glottolog | nort3165 |
Northwest Semitic is a division of the Semitic language family comprising the indigenous languages of the Levant. It would have emerged from Common Semitic in the Early Bronze Age. It is first attested in proper names identified as Amorite in the Middle Bronze Age. The oldest coherent texts are in Ugaritic, dating to the Late Bronze Age, which by the time of the Bronze Age collapse are joined by Old Aramaic, and by the Iron Age by the Canaanite languages (Phoenician and Hebrew).
The term was coined by Carl Brockelmann in 1908, who separated Fritz Hommel's 1883 classification of "West Semitic languages" into Northwest (Canaanite and Aramaic) and Southwest (Arabic and Abyssinian).
Brockelmann's Canaanite sub-group includes Ugaritic, Phoenician and Hebrew. Some scholars would now separate Ugaritic as a separate branch of Northwest Semitic alongside Canaanite. Central Semitic is a proposed intermediate group comprising Northwest Semitic and Arabic. Central Semitic is either a subgroup of West Semitic, or a top-level division of Semitic alongside East Semitic and South Semitic.SIL Ethnologue in its system of classification (of living languages only) eliminates Northwest Semitic entirely by joining Canaanite and Arabic in a "South-Central" group which together with Aramaic forms Central Semitic.
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