Semitic

The Semitic languages form a branch of the Afroasiatic family, native to Western Asia and the Horn of Africa and united by a system of consonantal, usually three-letter, roots. Their earliest written records are Akkadian and Eblaite texts in cuneiform from around 2600 BC.

Aramaic, first attested in the twelfth century BC, became the lingua franca of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the eighth century BC and kept that role under the Babylonian and Persian empires.

Arabic was carried across the Near East and North Africa by the Arab conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries and became, as the language of the Quran, a literary language of the medieval world. Hebrew and Aramaic remained the scriptural languages of Judaism, Syriac served the eastern churches, and most of these languages used consonantal abjad alphabets.