| Thamudic B | |
|---|---|
| Region | Northwest Arabia, occasionally Syria, Egypt, or Yemen |
| Era | Mid- to late-1st millennium BCE |
| Language family | Afroasiatic
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
Thamudic B is a Central Semitic language and script concentrated in northwestern Arabia, with attestations in Syria, Egypt, and Yemen. As a poorly understood form of Ancient North Arabian, it is included in the Thamudic category. Mentions of the king of Babylon and the Nabataean god Dushara show that Thamudic B was written over a span of centuries, ranging at least from the seventh or sixth to fourth centuries BCE.
Characteristics
Thamudic B is mostly written horizontally, from right to left. Salient linguistic features include the following:
- The suffix morpheme of the prefix conjugation in the first person is -t, as in Arabic and Northwest Semitic, as opposed to the -k of Ancient South Arabian and Ethiopic.
- The dative preposition is nm, which appears to be an assimilated form of an original *lima.
- The consonant /n/ often assimilates to a following contiguous consonant, ʔṯt, from earlier *ʾVnṯat and ʔt, from earlier *.
- Imperatives are often augmented by the energic suffix -n.
References
- ^ Norris, Jérôme (2018). "Dushara dans une inscription thamoudique B de la région du Wādī Ramm (Jordanie du Sud)". Topoi. Orient-Occident. 22 (1): 185–223.
- Al-Jallad, Ahmad (2018). "The earliest stages of Arabic and its linguistic classification". In Benmamoun, Elabbas; Bassiouny, Reem (eds.). The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Linguistics. pp. 315–331.