Semitism

In paleolinguistics, a Semitism is a grammatical or syntactical behaviour in a language which reveals that the influence of a Semitic language is present.

Semitic people or Semites is an obsolete term for an ethnic, cultural or racial group associated with the Middle East, including Arabs, Hebrews, Akkadians, and Phoenicians. The terminology is largely unused outside the grouping "Semitic languages" in linguistics.

The name comes via Latin from Greek Sēm 'Shem', son of Noah in the Bible, from whom these people were traditionally supposed to be descended.

Proto-Semitic broke into dialects which then became separate languages between namely: Acadian, Chaldean, Babylonian, Assyrian, Amorreu, Aramean, Phoenician, Arabic, Hebrew, Samaritan, Nabataea, Syrian, Hyksos, Egyptian, Ethiopian and Ugaritic.

Semitism is defined by language groups and ethnicity, not races that only partially overlap with religions. Case in point, the majority of Semites are not Jews and the majority of Jews are not Semites!

Worldwide, Semites are from distinct geographic regions that vary greatly in their diet, languages, dress, and folk customs. Major Semitic languages are Arabic (spoken in 22 Arab States and some in 57 Muslim States), Amharic (spoken in Ethiopia), Tigrinya (spoken in Ethiopia and Eritrea), Hebrew (spoken in Israel), Tigre (spoken in Sudan), Aramaic (spoken in Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Iraq and Iran) and Maltese (spoken in Malta).

Hebrew speaking communities are categorized into four major ethnic groups (in Hebrew, sometimes called eidot, “communities”) numbering about 16 million, namely: Ashkenazim, the Jews of Germany and Northern France (in Hebrew, Ashkenaz) numbering about 10 million; Sephardim, the Jews of Iberia and Spanish diaspora (in Hebrew, Sepharad) numbering about 2.2 million; Mizrahim, or Oriental Jews (in Hebrew. Mizrahi) numbering about 3.5 million; and Beta Israel, or Ethiopian Jews, (generally referred to as Falashas by their neighbors) numbering about 173 thousand.

Arabic speaking communities are categorized into an array of ethnic groups that vary greatly in their diet, dialects, dress, and folk customs, numbering about 475 million across much of West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Malta, and in large a diaspora of immigrant and expatriate communities in the Americas, Europe, and Australasia…

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Food for thought