The Semitic languages are a
family of languages spoken by more than 300 million people across much of the
Middle East,
North Africa, and the
Horn of Africa. They constitute the northeastern subfamily of the
Afro-Asiatic languages, and the only branch of this group spoken in
Asia.The most widely spoken Semitic
language today is
Arabic (206 million first language speakers), followed by
Amharic (27 million first language speakers),
Tigrinya (about 6.7 million total speakers), and
Hebrew (5 million
first language speakers). Semitic languages were among the earliest to attain a written form, with
Akkadian writing beginning in the middle of the third millennium BC.
Maltese is the only Semitic Language written in
Roman script. The term "Semitic" for these languages, after
Shem, the son of
Noah in the
Bible, is
etymologically a
misnomer in some ways (see
Semitic), but is nonetheless standard.
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