Hadhramautic
Hadrami
Native toYemen, Oman, Saudi Arabia
Era800 BC – 600 AD
Ancient South Arabian
Language codes
ISO 639-3xhd
xhd
Glottologhadr1235
Kingdom of Hadramawt in 400 BC

Ḥaḍramautic or Ḥaḍramitic was the easternmost of the four known languages of the Old South Arabian subgroup of the Semitic languages. It was used in the Kingdom of Hadhramaut and also the area round the Hadhramite capital of Shabwa, in what is now Yemen. The Hadramites also controlled the trade in frankincense through their important trading post of Sumhuram (Hadramautic s1mhrm), now Khor Rori in the Dhofar Governorate, Oman.

Script and phonology

Incense burner, from Shabwah, Hadhramaut, c. 3rd century CE. Nude male riding a camel. Hadramitic inscription, 2 lines. British Museum

Almost the entire body of evidence for the ancient Ḥaḑramautic language comes from inscriptions written in the monumental Ancient South Arabian script, consisting of 29 letters, and deriving from the Proto-Sinaitic script. The sounds of the language were essentially the same as those of Sabaic.

Noteworthy characteristics of Ḥaḑramautic include its tendency, especially in inscriptions from Wadi Ḥaḍhramaut, to represent Old South Arabian ṯ as s3: thus we find s2ls3 ("three"; cf. Sabaean s2lṯ.)[1] There are also instances where ṯ is written for an older form s3; e.g. Ḥaḑramautic mṯnad ("inscription"), which is msnd in the rest of Old South Arabian.[2]

History

Potsherds with Ancient South Arabian letters on them, found in Raybūn, the old Ḥaḍramitic capital, have been radiocarbon dated to the 12th century BC.[3] The language was certainly in use from 800 BC but in the fourth century AD, the Kingdom of Hadhramaut was conquered by the Ḥimyarites, who used Sabaic as an official language, and after then there are no more records in Ḥaḍramautic.

During the course of the language’s history there appeared particular phonetic changes, such as the change from ˤ to ˀ, from ẓ to ṣ, from ṯ to s3. As in other Semitic languages n can be assimilated to a following consonant, compare ʾnfs1 "souls" > ʾfs1

In Ḥaḑramautic the third person pronouns begin with s1. It has feminine forms ending in ṯ and s3.

References

  1. ↑ Leonid E. Kogan and Andrey Korotayev: Sayhadic (Epigraphic South Arabian). In: The Semitic Languages, edited by Robert Hetzron.Pg. 223. Routledge, London, 1997.
  2. ↑ Leonid E. Kogan and Andrey Korotayev: Sayhadic (Epigraphic South Arabian). In: The Semitic Languages, edited by Robert Hetzron. Pg. 223. Routledge, London, 1997.
  3. ↑ Leonid E. Kogan and Andrey Korotayev: Sayhadic (Epigraphic South Arabian). In: The Semitic Languages, edited by Robert Hetzron.Pg. 220. Routledge, London, 1997.

Bibliography

  • Leonid Kogan and Andrey Korotayev: "Sayhadic Languages (Epigraphic South Arabian)" in Semitic Languages. London: Routledge, 1997, p. 157-183.
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