| South Semitic | |
|---|---|
| (controversial) | |
| Geographic distribution | Yemen,Oman,Ethiopia,Eritrea,Sudan |
| Linguistic classification | Afro-Asiatic |
| Subdivisions |
|
| Language codes | |
| Glottolog | None |
 Approximate historical distribution of South Semitic languages | |
South Semitic is a putative branch of theSemitic languages, which form a branch of the largerAfroasiatic language family, found in (North andEast)Africa andWestern Asia. The grouping is controversial and several alternate classifications supplanting South Semitic have been proposed in recent decades.[1]
The "homeland" of the South Semitic languages is still debated amongst researchers, with sources such as A. Murtonen (1967) andLionel Bender (1997)[2] suggesting an origin inEthiopia and others suggesting the southern portion of theArabian Peninsula.[3]
A 2009 study by Andrew Kitchen andChristopher Ehret amongst others, based on using aBayesian model to estimatelanguage change, concluded that the latter viewpoint is more probable, with origins in Southern Arabia, and subsequent migration into the Horn of Africa around 2800 years ago.[4] This statistical analysis could not estimate when or where the ancestor of all Semitic languages diverged from Afroasiatic, but it suggested that the divergence of the East, Central, and South Semitic branches occurred in theLevant around 5750 years ago.[5] German linguistWinfried Noth claimed that the ancestors of Ethiopians spoke a non-Semitic language (or languages, such asCushitic languages) before adopting Semitic.[6] Evidence for movements across South Arabia are consistent with some recent genomic findings,[7] which find strong association with the movement and ancestry of human population groups speaking the Afro-Asiatic Semitic languages. The dates matched with the origin of the Semitic languages in the Levant, and a spread during the early Bronze Age (~5.7 KYA) into the rest of the Middle East and East Africa.[8]
According to another hypothesis supported by many scholars,Semitic originated from an offshoot of a still earlier language in North Africa anddesertification made some of its speakers migrate in the fourth millennium BCE into what is nowEthiopia, others northwest into West Asia.[9]
South Semitic is divided into two branches:[10]
The Ethiopian Semitic languages collectively have by far the greatest numbers of modern native speakers of any Semitic language other thanArabic. Eritrea's main languages are mainlyTigrinya andTigre, which are North Ethiopic languages, andAmharic (South Ethiopic) is the main language spoken in Ethiopia (along withTigrinya in the northern province ofTigray).Geʽez continues to be used in Eritrea and Ethiopia as aliturgical language for theOrthodox Tewahedo churches.
Southern Arabian languages have been increasingly eclipsed by the more dominant Arabic (also a Semitic language) for more than a millennium.Ethnologue lists six modern members of the South Arabian branch and 15 members of the Ethiopian branch.[11]
