Semitic languages

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Semitic languages: distribution

cuneiform tablet

Medieval Hebrew: Sefardic script

Qurʾān: Kūfic script

Semitic language family

Distribution of the Afro-Asiatic languages.

migration of Afro-Asiatic languages

Relationships among the modern Afro-Asiatic languages.

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Semitic languages summary

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winter ice melting salt on the ground, pattern as background

Why Does Salt Melt Ice?

Parsons Weems' Fable, oil on canvas by Grant Wood, 1939; in the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. Catalog entry: The historian Mason Locke Weems, commonly known by his clerical title, Parson Weems, pulls back a curtain to point at 6-year-old George Washington. Bearing an adult head and holding an axe, George gazes blankly up at his father, Augustine, who questions his son while holding a partially cut cherry tree. All of this takes place in front of a 20th-century brick building, which Wood modeled after his own home in Iowa. The scene illustrates the fable of Washington and the cherry tree, which Weems invented in 1806 for the first president's biography. Wood playfully suggests the artifice of the tale here, presenting the story in the manner of a costumed stage play rather than a real event. Amid the action, two Black figures pick cherries in the background, a reference to Washington' slaveholding past and a reminder of of what often gets left out in historical mythmaking.

Did George Washington Really Say, “I Can’t Tell a Lie”?

Secret Service Agent Listens To Earpiece

Secret Service Code Names of 11 U.S. Presidents

bird. mourning dove. pigeon and dove. Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura) family Columbidae.

Nikola Tesla's Weird Obsession with Pigeons

The Lost Colony of Roanoke, North Carolina, where 115 people mysteriously disappeared c. 1590. John White discovers the word Croatoan carved onto a tree upon his return to the deserted Roanoke Colony in 1590

The Lost Colony of Roanoke

pg 229Nazi parade features a banner proclaiming, "Death to Marxism."The possibility of a peaceful Germany after World War I was precluded entirely by the terms of the Versailles Treaty and theintransigent hostility of France and England. Stripped of indu

Were the Nazis Socialists?

Binary Computer Code, Binary Code, Internet, Technology, Password, Data

How Does Wi-Fi Work?

Semitic languages: Related Content

Written and fact-checked by The Information Architects of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Photos

Semitic languages: distribution

cuneiform tablet

Medieval Hebrew: Sefardic script

Qurʾān: Kūfic script

Semitic language family

Distribution of the Afro-Asiatic languages.

migration of Afro-Asiatic languages

Relationships among the modern Afro-Asiatic languages.

See All Images →

Topics

Phoenician language Eblaite language Canaanite languages Amorite language Old South Arabian languages Ugaritic language Old North Arabian language Punic language Moabite language Hebrew language Cushitic languages Chadic languages Berber languages Omotic languages Egyptian language

Key People

Antoine Galland, engraving by Morel after a portrait by Hyacinthe Rigaud

Antoine Galland

French scholar

Charles Cutler Torrey

American biblical scholar

Sayce, detail of an oil painting by an unknown artist, c. 1920; in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Archibald H. Sayce

British language scholar

Johannes Peder Ejler Pedersen

Danish scholar

Wilhelm Gesenius

German biblical critic

Nöldeke, Theodor

Theodor Nöldeke

German linguist

Quiz

Buddhist engravings on wall in Thailand. Hands on wall. Hompepage blog 2009, history and society, science and technology, geography and travel, explore discovery

Languages & Alphabets