I.

Introduction

Semitic Languages, one of the seven subfamilies or branches of the Afro-Asiatic or Hamito-Semitic language family. Of the Semitic languages, Arabic was carried beyond its original home in the Arab Peninsula throughout the Arab Empire and is spoken across North Africa to the Atlantic coast, and Arabic and Hebrew are used by Muslims and Jews in other parts of the world. The other Semitic languages are centred in a region bounded on the west by Ethiopia and on the north by Syria and extending south-east through Iraq and the Arab Peninsula, with some “islands” of Semitic speech farther east in Iran.