The Semites. Languages, peoples, migrations, customs. Andrey Tikhomirov
Читать онлайн книгу.
and North Africa. The oldest settlement area of Arab tribes is the northeastern part of the Arabian Peninsula. In the 2nd millennium BC. Arabs spread throughout the peninsula, assimilating the more ancient population of its southern part. Already from the middle of the 1st millennium BC. Arabs penetrated beyond Arabia, and, starting from the 7th century. n e., a significant part of them moved to some conquered countries – Syria, Mesopotamia, Southern Iran, Egypt and North Africa, spreading the Arabic language there and borrowing, in turn, the high culture of the conquered peoples, and subsequently developed an independent Arab culture on this basis. As a result of the merger of the Arabs with the local population, a number of Arab nationalities formed; after the formation of national Arab states, the process of formation of individual Arab nations began to take shape. Arabs of certain countries speak different dialects of the Arabic language: Arabian, Moroccan, Lebanese, Egyptian, etc. The main anthropological type of Arabs is Mediterranean, but in Iraq and eastern Arabia, the Armenoid is predominant, and Ethiopian is prevalent in southern Arabia.
Arabic is the most widely spoken of the Semitic languages at present, and belongs to the southern branch of this language group. Arabic literary language (as opposed to dialects), formed on the basis of the North Arabic language, is spoken in Western Asia (Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, the Arabian Peninsula) and North Africa (Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, part of Sudan and a number of localities along the east coast to Zanzibar). The oldest monuments of the Arabic language are the inscriptions Namar (328 A.D.), Zabad (512 A.D.) – in the ruins of Ouabad south of Aleppo – and Harran (568 A.D.) and the area of Harran south of Damascus However, the abundant number of literary monuments in Arabic has survived only from a later time, namely, from the VI – VII centuries. These were, first of all, numerous works of poetry, which were preserved for a long time in a stable way and were subsequently recorded by Arab philologists in the 8th – 9th centuries, then the Koran (1st half of the 7th century). In these literary monuments, the Arabic language already appears as fully developed, with a well-established grammatical system and lexical composition of the tribal literary language, developed on the basis of tribal dialects and dialects and reflecting the diversity of their vocabulary. The grammatical facts and vocabulary richness of these works were carefully recorded by the first grammars and lexicographers and accepted as if as a “canon”, which was the basis for the further development of the literary language. Although subsequently many of these words or part of the meanings of these words became obsolete, especially those words and meanings that are associated with nomadic cattle breeding and tribal relations, however, they still play the role of a potential reserve, which quite often is reflected in one or the other modern writer. In its further development, the literary Arabic language, in which over the course of centuries a huge literature has been written, to a large extent created not by the Arabs, but by the peoples of Central Asia, the Caucasus, etc., has become very rich in the field of vocabulary. On the other hand, the Arabic language has had a significant impact on other languages, especially in the field of terminology of mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, trade, such as, for example, “digit”, “algebra”, “azimuth”, “alcohol”, “potassium”, “bismuth”, “coffee”, “camphor”, “shop”, “treasury”, “tariff”, “carat”, etc. In Arabic they write from right to left. Moreover, in Arabic, unlike languages with Latin or Cyrillic graphics, there are no capital letters, so proper names are spelled like any other word, as well as the first word in a sentence.
Punctuation marks are written upside down, that is, from left to right. In phonetic terms, the slave language is distinguished by an abundance of consonant phonemes, especially laryngeal, emphatic, and also interdental. There are only three vowel phonemes; they can be short or long. Grammatically, the Arabic language, like other Semitic languages, is characterized by a significant development of inflection. The root of the word consists of one consonant, usually three, less often four or five. Verb forms are highly developed. The Arabic language has a ramified verb system, the basis of which are two forms that go back to the Semitic perfect and imperfect. Derivative fundamentals are expressed: the intensity of the action, orientation and aspiration, causation, return, competition, reciprocity, etc. The number of these fundamentals reaches 15; in this regard, the Arabic language is richer than other Semitic languages, morphologically formed times – two; there are two pledges – real and passive; moods: indicative, subjunctive, conditional, amplifying and imperative; instead of the indefinite form, the system of verb names is very developed. Numbers – three both in the verb and in the names: singular, dual and plural; There are two genera – male and female. In the field of names: three hopes, which, however, have disappeared in modern dialects; plural forms (for example, collective names) have developed significantly; a combination of two names (one in the so-called conjugated form and the second in the genitive case) expresses not only belonging and close connection of concepts, but also various relations of attribution. In the role of service words are usually used nouns and adjectives in the accusative case. The syntax of the Arabic language is poorly developed subordination of sentences; subordinate clauses are replaced by a simple combination of independent clauses or special verb forms. Spoken folk language in the Arab countries breaks up into a number of dialects, significantly different from the generally accepted literary language. Currently, these dialects are as follows: Arabian, Syrian, Iraqi, Egyptian and Maghrib (in North Africa). Dialects gradually developed on the basis of the interaction of the Arabic language and the old languages of the respective countries; for example, in the Arabic dialects of Syria and Iraq the elements of the Aramaic language are very strong, in the Egyptian dialect there are quite a lot of Coptic words. However, literary Arabic is generally understood in all of these countries. Of almost all names and verbs in the Arabic language, a root consisting of consonants alone can be distinguished. Formation of words occurs mainly due to the internal structural change of the word – internal inflection. In the Arabic language there are three numbers of names: singular, dual and plural. Definitions and verbs are consistent with nouns in number. In the Arabic language, there are three so-called state names: raf”, hafd (or jarr), nasb. Often they are translated as nominative, genitive and accusative cases, respectively. In Arabic, the definition is consistent with that defined in certainty, gender, number, case. At the same time, for “rational” names (calling people) in the plural, the definitions are in the form of the plural of the necessary genus, and for “unreasonable” (calling animals, inanimate objects) in the singular form of the female gender.
Amhara is the main population of Ethiopia. Belongs to the Ethiopian anthropological type of Negroid race. Amharic (Amarinya) – a Semitic group, is the official language of Ethiopia; the common religion is monophysite-style Christianity. Most of the modern population of Ethiopia speaks Semitic languages, in addition to Amhara, these are tigers, gurages, argobba and harari. Amharic is a living semitic language of a significant part of the Ethiopian population, belonging to the languages of the southern group. In the Amharic language, only three parts of speech are clearly distinguished: name, verb, particle; there is no clear difference between the noun and the adjective, there is no line between the preposition and the union. The stress in the Amharic language is weak. The written Amharic language is Ethiopian with additional characters; Amharic writing and printing require 296 characters. The oldest literary monuments date back to the XIV – XV centuries. The heyday of literature dates back to the 17th century. The southern and eastern peoples of Ethiopia are Cushitic languages: galla (self-name of Oromo), which fall into two groups: Tulam and sword, or lyek; Somalia; Danakil speaking Afar; yeah; nationalities known under the general name “sidamo” (“aliens” in the Gallic language). Ethiopia is the birthplace of humanity, here, as well as throughout eastern and southern Africa, the formation of representatives of ancient humanity took place. In the valley of the lower reaches of the Avash River, many paleontological objects were found, the oldest 4 million years. The region of Tiyi was found more than 30 archaeological sites of ancient culture, whose age also reads millions of years, the valley of the lower reaches of the Omo River, where the oldest petrified remains of paleoanthropes were found. In the 1st millennium BC. the peoples of South Arabian civilization migrated to the north of Ethiopia.