Old South Arabian (or
Epigraphic South Arabian, or
Sayhadic) is the term used for four closely related languages spoken in the southern portion of the
Arabian Peninsula. However, there is no doubt that there were a number of other Sayhadic lanhuages (e.g. Awsanic), of which very little evidence survived, however. All those languages were quite distinct from
Classical Arabic. There is a hypothesis, that among the Semitic groups who did not migrate to the north, a distinct language type developed which is called
Southwest Semitic. The four main Old South Arabian languages are the most ancient representatives of this language type.
The four main Old South Arabian languages are
Sabaic,
Minaeic (or Madhabic),
Qatabanic, and
Hadramitic. According to some semitologists, together with
Ethiopian Semitic languages (such as the contemporary
Ge'ez language) and the
Modern South Arabian languages (not descended from Old South Arabian but from a sister language), they form the western branch of the
South Semitic languages.
Old South Arabian had its own writing system, the
South Arabian alphabet, concurrently used for proto-Ge'ez in the Kingdom of
D`mt, ultimately sharing a common origin with the other
Semitic abjads, the
Proto-Sinaitic alphabet.
The arrival of Islam virtually disintegrated Old South Arabian, as
Classical Arabic became the
lingua franca of the region. Today, Old South Arabian exists in a few ancient texts and inscriptions. It has contributed to the local Arabic dialects of the region in much the same way that
Coptic has contributed to the
Egyptian dialect of Arabic.
Bibliography
- Maria Höfner: Altsüdarabische Grammatik (Porta Linguarum Orientalium, Band 24) Leipzig, 1943.
- Leonid Kogan and Andrey Korotayev: Sayhadic Languages (Epigraphic South Arabian). Semitic Languages. London: Routledge, 1997, p. 157-183.
- N. Nebes, P. Stein: Ancient South Arabian, in: Roger D. Woodard (Hrsg.): The Cambridge encyclopedia of the World's ancient languages Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004 ISBN 0-521-56256-2 S. 454-487 (neuester grammatischer Überblick mit Bibliographie).
See also
de:Altsüdarabische Spracheit:Lingua sudarabicahe:דרום ערביתhu:Ódélarab nyelvekpl:Język południowoarabski epigraficznyth:ภาษากลุ่มอาระเบียใต้โบราณ
