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Group of four extinct languages
the language

Old South Arabian (also known as Ancient South Arabian (ASA), Epigraphic South Arabian, Ṣayhadic, or Yemenite) is a group of four closely related extinct languages (Sabaean/Sabaic, Qatabanic, Hadramitic, Minaic) spoken in the far southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula. The earliest preserved records belonging to the group are dated to the beginning of the 1st millennium BCE. They were written in the Ancient South Arabian script. There were a number of other Old South Arabian languages (e. g. Awsānian), of which very little evidence has survived, however. A pair of possible surviving Sayhadic languages is attested in the Razihi language and Faifi language spoken in far north west of Yemen, though these varieties of speech have both Arabic and Sayhadic features, and it is difficult to classify them as either Arabic dialects with a Sayhadic substratum, or Sayhadic languages that have been restructured under pressure of Arabic.

It was originally thought that all four members of this group were dialects of one Old South Arabian language, but in the mid twentieth century, linguist A. F. L. Beeston finally proved that they did in fact constitute independent languages. The Old South Arabian languages were originally classified (partly on the basis of geography) as South Semitic, along with Modern South Arabian and Ethiopian Semitic; more recently however, a new classification has come in use which places Old South Arabian, along with Arabic, Ugaritic, Aramaic and Canaanite/Hebrew in a Central Semitic group; leaving Modern South Arabian and Ethiopic in a separate group. This new classification is based on Arabic, Old South Arabian and Northwest Semitic (Ugaritic, Aramaic and Canaanite) sharing an innovation in the verbal system, an imperfect taking the form *yVqtVl u (the other groups have *yVqattVl); Nebes showed that Sabaean at least had the form yVqtVl in the imperfect. Even though it has been now accepted that the four main languages be considered independent, they are clearly closely related linguistically and derive from a common ancestor because they share certain morphological innovations. One of the most important isoglosses retained in all four languages is the suffixed definite article (h)n, another proposed common innovation being the formation of 1st and 2nd person perfect verbal forms with k (which is also a feature of Yemeni Arabic attributable to a Sayhadic substrate). There are however significant differences between the languages, so much so that Stein proposes a relationship between Sabaic and Aramaic, with a primary split setting it apart from the other Sayhadic languages on the basis of the h/s isogloss in the formation of the personal pronouns and the causative stem further positing a closer relationship between Minaic and Hadramitic with the Ethiopian Semitic and Modern South Arabian branches. The four main Sayhadic languages were: Sabaean, Minaeic (or Madhabic), Qatabanic, and Hadramitic. Sayhadic had its own writing system, the Ancient South Arabian Monumental Script, or Ms3nd, consisting of 29 graphemes concurrently used for proto Geʿez in the Kingdom of Dʿmt, ultimately sharing a common origin with the other Semitic abjads, the Proto Sinaitic alphabet. Inscriptions in another minuscule cursive script written on wooden sticks have also been discovered. The last inscription of these languages has been dated to 554 CE, 60 years before the appearance of Islam.

Old South Arabian was written in the Old South Arabian script, a consonantal abjad deriving from the Phoenician alphabet. Compared with other parts of the ancient world, Palestine for instance, the number of surviving inscriptions is very high. Something in the region of 10,000 inscriptions exist. The Sabaean lexicon contains about 2,500 words.

+ Old South Arabian consonants   Bilabial Dental Alveolar Postalveolar Palatal Velar Uvular Pharyngeal Glottal  Non emph. Emphatic  Non emph. Emphatic Plosives vcelss. (ṭ)     (q/ḳ)   ( ʾ) vced. (g)       Fricatives vcelss. (ṯ) (ẓ) (s3 / ś) (ṣ) (s1 / s)   (ḫ)   (ḥ) vced. (ḏ)         (ġ)   (ʿ)   Nasals                   Laterals                 Rhotics                     Approximants           (y)         Lateral Fricative vcless. (s2 / š) (ḍ)

Although the inscriptions from ancient South Arabia were already known by the 18th century, it was Wilhelm Gesenius (1786–1842) and his student Emil Rödiger who finally undertook the deciphering of the script, actually independently of each other, in the years 1841/42. Then in the second half of the 19th century Joseph Halévy and Eduard Glaser brought hundreds of Old South Arabian inscriptions, possible tracings and copies back to Europe. On the basis of this large amount of material Fritz Hommel prepared a selection of texts in 1893 along with an attempt at a grammar. Later on the Sabaean expert Nikolaus Rhodokanakis made especially important steps towards understanding Old South Arabian. A completely new field of Old South Arabian script and texts has opened up since the 1970s with the discovery of wooden cylinders on which Sabaean has been written with a pen. The unknown script and numerous incomprehensible words present Sabaean studies with new problems, and to this day the wooden cylinders are not completely understood. In the German speaking world, Old South Arabian is taught in the framework of Semitic Studies, and no independent university chair has been dedicated to Old South Arabian (or Sabaean) Studies. Learning Old South Arabian at least furthers the student’s knowledge of the characteristics of Semitic by introducing him or her to a less well preserved example of the group. Students normally begin to learn the grammar of Old South Arabian and then they finally read a few of the longer texts.