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A UC Santa Cruz professor unearthed the oldest alphabet yet

(www.universityofcalifornia.edu)
142 points diodorus | 2 comments | 13 Jan 25 20:50 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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kittikitti ◴[17 Jan 25 18:01 UTC] No.42741252[source]▶
The article states, "symbols on the cylinders could be an early Semitic alphabet" and this is when they lost me. I guess we're just pushing propaganda now.
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jowday ◴[17 Jan 25 18:03 UTC] No.42741279[source]▶
That’s common parlance in archeology for ancient languages in that region.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Semitic-speaking_peo...

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1. jonstewart ◴[17 Jan 25 18:08 UTC] No.42741386[source]▶
And in linguistics. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_languages
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2. thaumasiotes ◴[17 Jan 25 19:55 UTC] No.42742558[source]▶
It's not specialized at all; "Semitic" is the only word for this concept used in English.

In German they still talk about Hamito-Semitic languages, but we call those Afroasiatic now.