The Lost Vowels of Proto-Semitic
How do you reconstruct the vowels of an ancient language when its descendants, like Hebrew and Arabic, were written without them? This linguistic detective story reveals how the chance survival…
Tag: semitic languages
The Root of the Word: Arabic’s 3-Letter System
Discover the secret behind Arabic's vast vocabulary: the triliteral root system. This elegant 'word skeleton' method allows a single 3-letter root, like K-T-B for 'writing,' to be transformed into dozens…
From Chariots to Covenants: The Linguistic Archaeology of the Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible was not written in a single moment, and the language itself is a key to unlocking its layered history. By exploring the field of Biblical philology, we…
The Alphabet That Isn’t: Unpacking the Logic of Abugidas and Abjads
Most of us learn the ABCs and assume all writing works this way, but that's just one piece of the linguistic puzzle. From Arabic's consonant-only script to Hindi's consonant-vowel units,…
The Revival of Hebrew: The Tale of a Slumbering Language
Many stories surrounding language involve the mystery of deciphering ancient codes, the valor of wartime cryptography, or the mystical origins of universal tongues. However, one...