Talk:Ancient North Arabian

so..first form of arabic?
hey, so would this be the earliest form or is there a variant in Yemen which is older? languages like Socotri aren't descended from Arabic right but ancient non-arabic languages...correct me i'm probably wrong..Domsta333 10:11, 4 May 2007 (UTC)


 * North Arabian and Arabic are descended from a common source, but neither is the descendant of the other. North Arabian is equally distinct from Arabic as Old South Arabian (Sayhadic) or Modern South Arabian is (MSA does not descend from OSA, by the way – I know, the terminology is ugly and confusing, but pay attention to the endings), although it seems to be more closely related.
 * It's roughly like this:
 * Semitic
 * East Semitic
 * West Semitic
 * Central Semitic
 * Northwest Semitic plus Arabic
 * Northwest Semitic
 * Arabic languages
 * North Arabian
 * Classical Arabic
 * Old South Arabian (Sayhadic)
 * Modern South Arabian
 * Ethiopic
 * Confused? You know what, I'm too. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:01, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Not enough information
It would to get more information. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.38.211.144 (talk) 08:32, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Which Dialect is the closest to biblical Hebrew. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.38.211.144 (talk) 02:32, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

It just might be wise to include some specific examples of the early inscriptions. "History is in the details." --Anaccuratesource (talk) 07:28, 12 August 2009 (UTC)


 * As I said below, we know little about these languages, so there's not very much to say. However, provided that the classification we use is correct, all Arabic languages (Classical Arabic and all the North Arabian languages) are equally remote from (or close to, respectively) Hebrew. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:49, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

example translation
The name example yhyṯʻ-nʻmt (yuhayṯiʻ-niʻmat) is translated as : ""the one who assists niʻmat". yuhayṯiʻ being the imperfect aspect of Dedanite verb stem IV (root y-ṯ-ʻ).""

In Classical Arabic (root y-ṯ-ʻ) يطع means "obey", so could yhyṯʻ-nʻmt actually mean "[he who] beys niʻmat" (يطيع نعمة)? Similar to the modern naming convention of "Abd-X" --A. Gharbeia (talk) 20:59, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Actually يُطِع is from the root طيع (ṭ-y-ʻ) meaning "to obey". yhyṯʻ is from the root (y-ṯ-ʻ) (يثع) which is a common west Semitic root meaning "to assist". In Classical Arabic, yhyṯʻ would be yūṯʻ (yūṯiʻ) يُوثِع .--Xevorim (talk) 21:22, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * actually it would be yu'thi`. Compare arabic mu'min to aramaic mhaymen. Jadhimah (talk) 18:32, 8 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Btw, the "modern Abd-X" names do appear in Ancient North Arabian.--Xevorim (talk) 21:28, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Relation to Classical Arabic
The article states that these Ancient North Arabian dialects (must) have coexisted with Pre-Classical Arabic. I understood it thus: Ancient North Arabian was a group of dialects, possibly a dialect continuum, of which the immediate predecessor of Qoranic Arabic was one (and probably one of its southernmost exponents), but that particular dialect is not attested in any inscription, or in any pre-islamic text at all. Is that correct? Steinbach (talk) 11:53, 15 December 2008 (UTC)


 * That's correct. Xevorim (talk) 21:16, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
 * No, it's not. Arabic was not part of this group, it was clearly distinct (the article is the most obvious difference). Also, there are several pre-Islamic attestations, mostly inscriptions, of Arabic. Arabic (in the south, as you say, the language of the Arabs) and North Arabian (the dialects of northern Arabia) co-existed during all of antiquity. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:30, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
 * However, it seems that North Arabian is the group of languages most closely related to Arabic (although I'm not completely sure – for example, North Arabian could be a highly conservative group of Northwest Semitic dialects, or more closely related to NW Semitic – without forming part of it – than to Arabic in any event, or equally far from both, or closer to South Arabian – there are countless possibilities the tree might be drawn, and we just know too little about these languages to classify them with confidence); Arabic and North Arabian together form the Arabic languages. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:45, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Would it make sense to include spelling in Arabic?
Interesting article, but I had some real trouble reading the example words. Would it make sense to include their spelling in modern Arabic, or some other semitic alphabet? I think this might make the article more accessible to some at least. 82.128.191.203 (talk) 23:39, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

North Arabian as an overstructure including old Arabic
Let's have a discussion about North Arabian (including Taymanitic) versus the subset, defined by isoglosses, including Safaitic and (pre)Classical Arabic. Refer to Ahmad al-Jallad's grammar of Safaitic.--Zimriel (talk) 21:55, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
 * The entire set information on Wikipedia about ANA needs to be revamped and standardized. I have begun revamping the Dadanitic and Hismaic pages, and created a page for Proto-Arabic. ANA as a valid linguistic subgrouping has now been mostly rejected by scholars, the entire concept of ANA should be restricted to the written scripts. Safaitic and Hismaic should be considered dialects of Old Arabic, but Dadanitic and Taymanitic show affinities to other Central Semitic languages. Dadanitic is archaic and has not participated in the innovations characteristic of ALL Arabic dialects. Taymanitic shows affinities to the Northwest Semitic languages including word initial w > y. I have read the majority of Dr. al-Jallad's work, and I have periodic email correspondence with him. To me at least, he has laid out the only convincing and well-reasoned theories on ANA. Therefore, I think any updates to any articles regarding ANA should at least take his theories into consideration, and unfortunately at this time the majority of articles do not. Jadhimah (talk) 18:30, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Merging Old Arabic into this article
I think the content of this article should be changed to reflect the ANA scripts, as ANA is no longer recognized by the majority of scholars as a valid linguistic subgrouping. The article "Old Arabic" should now serve the place of this article. Jadhimah (talk) 08:05, 25 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Ancient North Arabian ≠ Old Arabic. See: Roger D. Woodard. The Ancient Languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia. — Cambridge University Press, 2008. — P. 180. — ISBN 9781139469340. --Esetok (talk) 18:57, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Ancient north arabian refers to a set of scripts, not a language family Jadhimah (talk)

Ancient North Arabian is not a valid linguistic subgrouping
Modern scholarship does not view ANA as a valid linguistic subgrouping based on isoglosses. Simply put, there is no common proto-Ancient North Arabian which the languages in question descended from. The languages diverged from proto-Central Semitic. Dadanitic and Taymanitic, though written in ANA scripts are as distant from Arabic as the Northwest Semitic languages. Thamudic is not even a group of languages, it is a catch-all term for dialects of the Arabian peninsula that are unclassifiable. Furthermore, Safaitic and Hismaic should be considered dialects of Old Arabic. The family of Central Semitic should thus be divided into these subgroups: Northwest Semitic, Arabic (including Safaitic and Hismaic), Dadanitic, Taymanitic, and Ancient South Arabian. In my humble opinion, this entire article should be deleted. Jadhimah (talk)

Or simply merged with Old North Arabian (writing system) Jadhimah (talk)


 * Can you give supporting citations from people other than Al-Jallad? Macdonald's 2004 overview (Ancient North Arabian, in: Roger D. Woodard (hrg.): The Cambridge encyclopedia of the World's ancient languages Cambridge University Press, Cambridge) does not agree. For the time being, I see no evidence that most specialists agree with Al-Jallad -- his views and arguments should be discussed in the article, but so should those of people like Macdonald.--Schreiber (talk) 00:53, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

letter table
could we have a chart of the letters maybe? even a comparison to ancient south arabian and other related scripts? Matthewmorrone1 (talk) 18:03, 17 February 2021 (UTC)


 * I would very much like to see this too. 98.170.164.88 (talk) 00:42, 19 May 2022 (UTC)