The Ammonite language is the extinct Canaanite language of the Ammonite people mentioned in the Bible, who used to live in modern-day Jordan, and after whom its capital Amman is named. Only fragments of their language survive - chiefly the 9th century BC Amman Citadel Inscription, the 7th-6th century BC Tell Siran bronze bottle, and a few ostraca. As far as can be determined from this small corpus, it was extremely similar to Biblical Hebrew, with some possible Aramaic influence including the use of the verb ‘bd instead of the more common Biblical Hebrew ‘śh. The only other notable difference with Biblical Hebrew is the sporadic retention of feminine singular -t (e.g. ’šħt "cistern", but ‘lyh "high (fem.)".)
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“UG [universal grammar] may be regarded as a characterization of the genetically determined language faculty. One may think of this faculty as a ‘language acquisition device,’ an innate component of the human mind that yields a particular language through interaction with present experience, a device that converts experience into a system of knowledge attained: knowledge of one or another language.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)