Sabaean language

language
name=Sabaic
familycolor=Afro-Asiatic
states=Yemen, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Eritrea, Ethiopia
region=Horn of Africa & Arabian Peninsula
speakers=Extinct
fam2=Semitic
fam3=South
fam4=Western
fam5=Old South Arabian
iso2=sem|iso3=xsaThe Sabaean (or, to be more exact, rather Sabaic) language was an Old South Arabian language spoken in Yemen from c. 1000 BC to the 6th century AD, by the Sabaeans; it was used as a written language by some other peoples ("sha`bs") of Ancient Yemen, including the Hashidites, Sirwahites, Humlanites, Ghaymanites, Himyarites, Radmanites etc. [*Andrey Korotayev. "Ancient Yemen". Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-19-922237-1 [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0199222371] .] . It was written in the South Arabian alphabet.

The South Arabic alphabet used in Eritrea, Ethiopia and Yemen beginning in the 8th century BC (all three locations) later evolved into the Ge'ez alphabet. Ge'ez language is no longer thought, as previously assumed, to be an offshoot of Sabaean or Old South Arabian [Weninger, Stefan "Ge'ez" in "Encyclopaedia Aethiopica: D-Ha", p.732.] , and there is linguistic evidence of Semitic languages being spoken in Eritrea and Ethiopia since at least 2000 BC. [Stuart Munro-Hay, "Aksum: An African Civilization of Late Antiquity". Edinburgh: University Press, 1991, pp.57.] .

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