.Nostratic is an important field of research which I discuss at
http://www.lexiline.com/ e.g at
I was surprised by the comment of a reader that Germanic languages
allegedly exhibited more cognates with Semitic than any other language family of
Indo-European. This was something new to me and I asked for the source of this information - which, however, was not forthcoming.
What the writer may have been referring to are the two type of Hebrews and
their somewhat separate languages, which are Sephardic Hebrew (Oriental-rite Jews) and Ashkenazi Hebrew (Germanic-rite Jews), with the latter being greatly influenced by the period of the German diaspora. But this has nothing to do with the actual origin of the original Hebrew language. Obviously, there was much interchange between Hebrews and the Germanic peoples in their period of sojourn there.
There are other substantial differences between the Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews which are difficult to explain, see e.g.
http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/late/aptsda02.html
The assumption worldwide is that all Jews are the same, which is just not true, and the same problem applies to lumping the ancient Hebrew language into one "Semitic" pot, which is equally untrue.
Let me caution everyone about using the word "Semitic".
As one can see at my web pages at e.g.
http://www.lexiline.com/lexiline/lexi48.htm and
www.lexiline.com/lexiline/lexi15.htm,
August Ludwig von Schloezer only coined the term "Semitic" 200 years ago and it is much misused term, adopted by the clueless mainstream linguists. I try not use it myself because it presumes in the name Semitic the very thing which has not been proven, i.e. a common origin of Arabic and Hebrew, which is just not true.
Schloezer, a German, by the way, alleged that the language group he defined as "Semitic" - relying mostly on Hebrew - had a great number of similarities to Baltic, and I am not aware of such comparisons with Germanic, although of course, these too should exist, since all are related language families to the degree that the compared elements are Indo-European in origin.
Also, Schloezer unfortunately lumped together Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic in their origins.
As noted under Semitic in the Wikipedia:
"The term Semite was proposed at first to refer to the languages related to Hebrew by Ludwig Schlözer, in Eichhorn's "Repertorium", vol. VIII (Leipzig, 1781), p. 161. Through Eichhorn the name then came into general usage (cf. his "Einleitung in das Alte Testament" (Leipzig, 1787), I, p. 45. In his "Gesch. der neuen Sprachenkunde", pt. I (Göttingen, 1807) it had already become a fixed technical term. (The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIII)
The word "Semitic" is an adjective derived from Shem, one of the three sons of Noah in the Bible (Genesis 5.32, 6.10, 10.21), or more precisely from the Greek form of that name, namely Σημ (Sēm); the noun form referring to a person is Semite. The negative form of the adjective, anti-Semitic, is almost always used as a misnomer to mean "anti-Jewish" specifically.
The concept of a "Semitic" peoples is derived from Biblical accounts of the origins of the cultures known to the ancient Hebrews. Those closest to them in culture and language were generally deemed to be descended from their forefather Shem. Enemies were often said to be descendants of his cursed brother Ham.
In Genesis 10:21-31 Shem is described as the father of Aram, Asshur, and others: the Biblical ancestors of the Aramaeans, Assyrians, Babylonians, Chaldeans, Sabaeans, and Hebrews, etc., all of whose languages are closely related; the language family containing them was therefore named Semitic by linguists.
However, the Canaanites and Amorites also spoke a language belonging to this family, and are therefore also termed Semitic in linguistics despite being described in Genesis as sons of Ham (See Sons of Noah).
Shem is also described in Genesis as the father of the Elamites and the descendants of Lud, whose languages were not Semitic. [emphasis added by LexiLine]
The hypothetical Proto-Semitic people, ancestral to the speakers of the historical Semitic languages in the Middle East are thought to have been originally from either the Arabian Peninsula (particularly around Yemen) or the Ethiopian Highlands, but its homeland is still much debated and uncertain."
The most ancient Hebrew in the ancient sources is referred to as "Temple Hebrew" [these are originally the hieroglyphs] - which the priests specifically claimed was "another" language than Aramaic - with the latter being a kauderwelsh (mixed bag) lingua franca (generally used language) at the time of Christ.
As one can read at http://www.lexiline.com/lexiline/lexi65.htm:
Daniel Sivan in his article on the Northwest Semitic Vocabules
[Sivan, Daniel, Grammatical analysis and glossary of the northwest Semitic vocables in Akkadian texts of the 15th-13th C.B.C. from Canaan and Syria, Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker; Neukirchener-Vluyn : Neukirchener Verlag, 1984, xiii, 306
p., Alter Orient und Altes Testament ; Bd. 214, Szstx. PJ4150 .S59, 1984]
has isolated language changes, which in my view, when reconstructed backward, clearly make the most ancient known forms of Hebrew look like Indo-European, which I am convinced the original Hebrew actually was, for this was the language of the Old Kingdom Pharaohs, as we find in the hieroglyphs. In the course of the millennia, this was mixed with the indigenous languages of the area - to result in what we today call "Hebrew". This mixture is ancient and goes back clear to the influx of the Sumerians in the Near East - in my opinion the original Hebrews - whose language over the millennia then got mixed with the native Arabic i.e. Afro-Asiatic (Hamito-Semitic) tongue.
To put it bluntly, modern reconstructed Hebrew is of course now a "Semitic" language according to Schloezer's limited definition and as used by mainstream linguists in their studies, but the original unadulterated Hebrew - being in my opinion the original hieroglyphs of Pharaonic Egypt and stretching back to the Old Kingdom - is NOT Semitic at all.
Rather, the true "Semitic" or "Hamito-Semitic" is Arabic, previously Aramaic, which based on blood group results - see http://www.lexiline.com/lexiline/lexi23.htm - is a language resulting from the mixture of the white Sumerian immigrants and the local Afro-Asiatic indigenous populations and languages in the region of the Mid-East - a development clearly retold in the Bible regarding Abraham and his Egyptian servant Hagar, a union which allegedly gave rise to Ishmael and the Arabic peoples.
Why is it that we disregard these clear ancient sources???
The blood group analysis above supports the Biblical tale exactly.
Anyone who persists on lumping Hebrew and Arabic into one linguistic pot is just wasting their time as far as man's true history is concerned. Hence, the use of the term Semitic is similarly a waste of time.
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