http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semite
In linguistics and ethnology, Semitic (from the Biblical "Shem", he:שם, translated as "name") was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages. This family includes the ancient and modern forms of Amharic, Arabic, Aramaic, Assyrian, Akkadian, Hebrew, Maltese, Syriac, Tigrinya, etc.
Semitic peoples and their languages in modern and ancient historic times have covered a broad area bridging Africa, Western Asia and the Arabian Peninsula. The earliest historic (written) evidences of them are found in the Fertile Crescent, an area encompassing the Babylonian and Assyrian civilizations along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, extending northwest into southern Asia Minor (modern Turkey) and the Levant along the eastern Mediterranean. (Today this same region is populated by Arabic speakers except for Israel, where modern Hebrew was reintroduced in the 20th century as the national language.) Early traces of Semitic speakers are found, too, in South Arabian inscriptions in Yemen and later, in Roman times, in Nabataean inscriptions from Petra (modern Jordan) south into Arabia.
In linguistics and ethnology, Semitic (from the Biblical "Shem", he:שם, translated as "name") was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages. This family includes the ancient and modern forms of Amharic, Arabic, Aramaic, Assyrian, Akkadian, Hebrew, Maltese, Syriac, Tigrinya, etc.
Semitic peoples and their languages in modern and ancient historic times have covered a broad area bridging Africa, Western Asia and the Arabian Peninsula. The earliest historic (written) evidences of them are found in the Fertile Crescent, an area encompassing the Babylonian and Assyrian civilizations along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, extending northwest into southern Asia Minor (modern Turkey) and the Levant along the eastern Mediterranean. (Today this same region is populated by Arabic speakers except for Israel, where modern Hebrew was reintroduced in the 20th century as the national language.) Early traces of Semitic speakers are found, too, in South Arabian inscriptions in Yemen and later, in Roman times, in Nabataean inscriptions from Petra (modern Jordan) south into Arabia.
