instance_of central semitic languages
Ugaritic is a Northwest Semitic ___MASK31___ , discovered by French archaeologists in 1929 . It is known almost only in the form of writings found in the ruined city of Ugarit ( modern Ras Shamra ), Syria . It has been used by scholars of the Hebrew ___MASK78___ to clarify Biblical Hebrew texts and has revealed ways in which ancient Israelite culture found parallels in the neighboring cultures . Aramaic (" Army ") is a ___MASK20___ of languages or dialects belonging to the Semitic subfamily of the Afroasiatic ___MASK83___ . More specifically , it is part of the Northwest Semitic group , which also includes the Canaanite languages such as Hebrew and Phoenician . The Aramaic alphabet was widely adopted for other languages and is ancestral to the Hebrew , Syriac and Arabic alphabets . Northwest Semitic is a ___MASK55___ of the Semitic ___MASK83___ comprising the indigenous languages of the Levant . It would have emerged from Common Semitic in the Early Bronze Age . It is first attested in proper names identified as Amorite in the Middle Bronze Age . The oldest coherent texts are in Ugaritic , dating to the Late Bronze Age , which by the time of the Bronze Age collapse are joined by Old Aramaic , and by the Iron Age by the Canaanite languages ( Phoenician and Hebrew ). The ___MASK19___ of Genesis ( from the Latin Vulgate , in turn borrowed or transliterated from Greek  , meaning " origin " " Brš ", " In [ the ] beginning ") is the first ___MASK19___ of the Hebrew ___MASK78___ ( the Tanakh ) and the Christian Old Testament . Canaan ( Northwest Semitic : ""; Phoenician :  ; Biblical Hebrew / Masoretic : ["; n  an ]") was a Semitic - speaking ___MASK73___ in the Ancient Near East during the late 2nd ___MASK84___ BC . In the ___MASK78___ it corresponds to the Levant , in particular to the areas of the Southern Levant that provide the main setting of the narrative of the Hebrew ___MASK78___ , i . e ., the area of Israel , Philistia , Phoenicia , and other nations . The Middle East is a transcontinental ___MASK73___ centered on Western Asia and Egypt . The corresponding ___MASK5___ is " Middle - Eastern " and the derived noun is " Middle - Easterner ". The term has come into wider usage as a replacement of the term Near East ( as opposed to Far East ) beginning in the early 20th century . The Israelites (" Bnei Yisra ' el ") were a Semitic - speaking ___MASK85___ of the ancient Near East , who inhabited a part of Canaan during the tribal and monarchic periods . The ancient Israelites are considered to be an outgrowth of the indigenous Canaanite populations that long inhabited the Southern Levant , Syria , ancient Israel and the Transjordan . North America is a ___MASK53___ entirely within the Northern Hemisphere and almost all within the Western Hemisphere . It can also be considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas . It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean , to the east by the Atlantic Ocean , to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean , and to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea . The Central Semitic languages are a proposed intermediate ___MASK30___ of Semitic languages , comprising the Late Iron ___MASK72___ , modern dialect of Arabic ( prior to which Arabic was a Southern Semitic language ) , and older Bronze ___MASK72___ Northwest Semitic languages ( which include Aramaic , Ugaritic , and the Canaanite languages of Hebrew and Phoenician ) . In this reckoning Central Semitic itself is one of three divisions of Semitic along with East Semitic ( Akkadian ) and South Semitic ( South Arabian , and the Semitic languages of Ethiopia ) . Distinctive features of Central Semitic languages include the following : The realization of the common Semitic emphatic consonants as pharyngealized rather than ejectives : E . g . Proto - Semitic *  ( t ) and *  ( ts ) are realized as ( t ) and ( s ) in Arabic and Neo - Aramaic , in contrast to remaining ejectives in South Arabian and in Ethiopian Semitic . Additionally , Proto - Semitic *  ( k ) becomes a uvular stop ( q ) . An innovative negation marker * bal , of uncertain origin . The generalization of t as the suffix conjugation past tense marker , levelling an earlier alternation between * k in the first person and * t in the second person . A new prefix conjugation for the non - past tense , of the form ya - qtulu , replacing the inherited ya - qattal form ( these are schematic verbal forms , as if derived from an example triconsonantal root q - t - l ) . Levelling of vowels in verb prefixes . The evidence of Akkadian suggests four Proto - Semitic prefixes : * a - , * ta - , * ni - , * yi - . In Central Semitic , all prefixes have the same vowel within a given verb paradigm . This however developed slightly differently in the different languages : Arabic has generalized a in all prefixes , while Northwest Semitic has generalized either a or i , depending on the verb stem in question . Different classification systems disagree on the precise structure of the ___MASK30___ . The most common approach divides it into Arabic and Northwest Semitic , while SIL Ethnologue has South Central Semitic ( including Arabic and Hebrew ) vs . Aramaic . The main distinction between Arabic and the Northwest Semitic languages is the presence of broken plurals in the former . The majority of Arabic masculine non - human nouns form plurals in this manner ( called inanimate plural ) , whereas almost all nouns in the Northwest Semitic languages form their plurals with a suffix . For example , the Arabic  bayt ( `` house '' ) becomes  buyt ( `` houses '' ) ; the Hebrew  bayit ( `` house '' ) becomes  battm ( `` houses '' ) . The Caucasus or Caucasia is a ___MASK73___ at the ___MASK41___ of Europe and Asia , situated between the Black and the Caspian seas . The Horn of Africa (, " yäafrika qänd ", " al - qarn al -' afrq ") ( shortened to HOA ) is a ___MASK21___ in Northeast Africa . It juts hundreds of kilometers into the Arabian ___MASK71___ and lies along the southern side of the Gulf of Aden . The area is the easternmost projection of the African ___MASK53___ . The Horn of Africa denotes the region containing the countries of Djibouti , Eritrea , Ethiopia , and Somalia . Ammon was an Iron ___MASK72___ Semitic - speaking nation occupying the east of the Jordan River , between the torrent valleys of Arnon and Jabbok , in present - day Jordan . The chief city of the country was " Rabbah " or " Rabbath Ammon ", site of the modern city of Amman , Jordan ' s capital . Milcom and Molech ( who may be one and the same ) are named in the Hebrew Bible as the gods of Ammon . The people of this kingdom are called " Children of Ammon " or " Ammonites ". The Iron ___MASK72___ is an archaeological era , referring to a period of time in the prehistory and protohistory of the Old World ( Afro - Eurasia ) when the dominant toolmaking material was iron . It is commonly preceded by the Bronze ___MASK72___ in Europe and Asia with exceptions and the Stone ___MASK72___ in Africa . Meteoric iron has been used by humans since at least 3200 BC , but ancient iron production did not become widespread until the ability to smelt iron ore , remove impurities and regulate the amount of carbon in the alloy were developed . The start of the Iron ___MASK72___ proper is considered by many to fall between around 1200 BC to 600 BC , depending on the region . In most parts of the world , its end is defined by the widespread adoption of writing , and therefore marks the transition from prehistory to history . The Canaanite languages or Canaanite dialects are one of the ___MASK59___ subgroups of the Northwest Semitic languages , the other being the Aramaic ___MASK31___ . They were spoken by the ancient peoples of the Canaan region , the Canaanites , broadly defined to include the Israelites , Phoenicians , Amorites , Ammonites , Moabites and Edomites . Western Asia , West Asia , Southwestern Asia or Southwest Asia is the westernmost ___MASK32___ of Asia . The concept is in limited use , as it significantly overlaps with the Middle East ( or Near East ), the main difference being the exclusion of Egypt ( which would be counted as part of North Africa ). The term is sometimes used for the purposes of grouping countries in statistics . The Semitic languages are a ___MASK8___ of the Afroasiatic ___MASK83___ originating in the Middle East . Semitic languages are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of Western Asia , North Africa and the Horn of Africa , as well as in often large expatriate communities in North America and Europe , with smaller communities in the Caucasus and Central Asia . The terminology was first used in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen School of History , who derived the name from Shem , one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis . Shem (" Sm "; Ge ' ez :  , " Sm "; " renown ; prosperity ; ___MASK56___ "; Arabic : " Sm ") was one of the sons of Noah in the Hebrew ___MASK78___ as well as in Islamic literature . Genesis 10 : 21 refers to relative ages of Shem and his brother Japheth , but with sufficient ambiguity to have yielded different English translations . The verse is translated in the KJV as " Unto Shem also , the father of all the children of Eber , the brother of Japheth the elder , even to him were children born .". However , the New American Standard ___MASK78___ gives , " Also to Shem , the father of all the children of Eber , and the older brother of Japheth , children were born ." The Levant ( Arabic :  "") is an approximate historical ___MASK38___ ___MASK61___ referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean . In its widest historical sense , the Levant included all of the eastern Mediterranean with its islands , that is , it included all of the countries along the Eastern Mediterranean shores , extending from Greece to Cyrenaica . The ___MASK61___ " Levant " entered English in the late 15th ___MASK27___ from French . It derives from the Italian " Levante ", meaning " rising ", implying the rising of the sun in the east . As such , it is broadly equivalent to the Arabic ___MASK61___ " Mashriq ", meaning " the land where the sun rises ". North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost ___MASK73___ of Africa . The United Nations ___MASK17___ of " North Africa " includes ___MASK40___ countries and territories ; Algeria , Egypt , Libya , Mauritania , Morocco , Sudan , Tunisia , and Western Sahara . The countries of Algeria , Morocco , Tunisia , and Libya are often collectively referred to as the Maghreb , which is the Arabic word for " sunset ". Egypt lies to the northeast and encompasses part of West Asia , while Sudan is situated on the edge of the Sahel , to the south of Egypt . Central Asia or Middle Asia is the core ___MASK73___ of the Asian ___MASK53___ and stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to China in the east and from Afghanistan in the south to Russia in the north . It is also colloquially referred to as " the ' stans " ( as the six countries generally considered to be within the ___MASK73___ all have names ending with the Persian suffix "- stan ", meaning " land of ") and is within the scope of the wider Eurasian ___MASK53___ . Europe is a ___MASK53___ that comprises the westernmost part of Eurasia . Europe is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north , the Atlantic Ocean to the west , and the Mediterranean Sea to the south . To the east and southeast , Europe is generally considered as separated from Asia by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains , the Ural River , the Caspian and Black Seas , and the waterways of the Turkish Straits . Yet the non - oceanic borders of Europe  a concept dating back to classical antiquity  are arbitrary . The primarily physiographic term " ___MASK53___ " as applied to Europe also incorporates cultural and political elements whose discontinuities are not always reflected by the ___MASK53___ ' s current overland boundaries .