In historical linguistics, the Canaanite shift is a sound change that took place in the Canaanite dialects, which belong to the Northwest Semitic branch of the Semitic languages family. This sound change caused Proto-NW-Semitic *ā (long a) to turn into ō (long o) in Proto-Canaanite. It accounts, for example, for the difference between the second vowel of Hebrew שלום (šalom, Tiberian šālōm) and its Arabic cognate سلام (salām). The original word was probably *šalām-, with the ā preserved in Arabic, but transformed into ō in Hebrew. The change is attested in records from the Amarna period, dating it to the mid-2nd millennium BCE.
Read more about Canaanite Shift: Nature and Cause, Hebrew-Arabic Parallels, Uses of The Shift
Famous quotes containing the word shift:
“They shift coffee-houses and chocolate-houses from hour to hour, to get over the insupportable labour of doing nothing.”
—Richard Steele (1672–1729)