The things you learn: Canaanite shift

[pne]

Someone on Quora linked to the Wikipedia article on the ‘Canaanite shift’:

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 article cites several examples, some of which I had known independently as Arabic and Hebrew forms, but I had never inferred that regular sound shift from them! (Quite possibly because I don’t really know Hebrew and Arabic.)

Interesting!

Comments

[liv]

Oh, cool, thank you for passing that one on. I have been trying to use my Hebrew to bootstrap learning some basic Arabic, and knowing that there was a specific vowel shift will be a help.

[pne]

I’m glad you found it interesting/useful/helpful, too!

[steorra]

I've read about that before but had forgotten the details.