Moabite language
| Moabite | |
|---|---|
| Region | Formerly spoken in northwestern Jordan |
| Era | early half of 1st millennium BCE[1] |
| Phoenician alphabet | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | obm |
obm | |
| Glottolog | (insufficiently attested or not a distinct language)moab1234[2] |
The Moabite language is an extinct Canaanite language, spoken in Moab (modern day central-western Jordan) in the early first millennium BC. It was written using a variant of the Phoenician alphabet.[3]
Most of our knowledge about Moabite comes from the Mesha Stele,[3] which is the only known extensive text in this language. In addition there are the three-line El-Kerak Inscription and a few seals. The main features distinguishing Moabite from fellow Canaanite languages such as Hebrew are: a plural in -în rather than -îm (e.g. mlkn "kings" for Biblical Hebrew məlākîm), like Aramaic and Arabic; retention of the feminine ending -at or "-ah" which Biblical Hebrew reduces to -āh only (e.g. qiryat or "qiryah" "town", Biblical Hebrew qiryāh) but retains in the construct state nominal form (e.g.qiryát yisrael "town of Israel"); and retention of a verb form with infixed -t-, also found in Arabic and Akkadian (w-’ltḥm "I began to fight", from the root lḥm.)
According to Glottolog, referencing Huehnergard & Rubin (2011), Moabite was not a distinct language from Hebrew.[2] The Moabite language differed only dialectally from Hebrew language, and Moabite religion and culture were related to those of the Israelites.[4] On the other hand, although Moabite language itself had begun to diverge, the script used in the ninth-century BC did not differ from the script used in Hebrew inscriptions at that time.[5]
While knowledge of the Moabite language is limited primarily to the Mesha Stele and a few seals, it is clear that Moabite is a dialect of Hebrew, and is closely related to Phoenician, Ugaritic and Aramaic.[6]
Alphabet
Moabite appears to use a variant of the Phoenician alphabet, much like Paleo-Hebrew. Most of the letters don't seem to have changed in appearance in Moabite context, however a few have noticeable differences.
References
- ↑ Moabite at MultiTree on the Linguist List
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Moabite". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. Search this book on
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Bromiley, Geoffrey W. (2007). Moab. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. p. 395. Search this book on
- ↑ "Moabite | people". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2018-04-13.
- ↑ "isbn:0805446796 - Sök på Google". books.google.se (in svenska). Retrieved 2018-04-13.
- ↑ "isbn:0802837859 - Sök på Google". books.google.se (in svenska). Retrieved 2018-04-13.
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