Comparison tables
Wikipedia-style comparison tables: rows are concepts or sound-law features, columns are the ten Semitic languages grouped by branch (East, Northwest, Central, South Arabian, Ethio-Semitic). Cells show the primary form in the native script; toggle "Only primary orthography" to hide the romanizations.
Cardinal numerals — every family showcase in one table. The Proto-Semitic sibilants (*ṯ, *ś, *š) split three ways in the daughter languages, visible especially in 'three' (*ṯalāṯ-), 'six' (*šidṯ-), and 'ten' (*ʕaśr-). The masculine forms are given; feminine forms differ regularly.
10 rows · 10 languages
Body-part vocabulary — some of the most stable inherited stems in the Semitic family. Excellent for seeing the regular sibilant, laryngeal, and interdental correspondences at work.
10 rows · 10 languages
Basic color terms across Semitic. Shows the *l/*b root of 'white' (*labn-), the *r-w-t root of 'blackness', and how Arabic's afʕal color pattern (aḥmar, aḫḍar, azraq) contrasts with Hebrew's CāCōC pattern (adom, yarok, kaḥol).
6 rows · 10 languages
Family terms — biliteral kinship roots like *ʔab- 'father' and *ʔum(m)- 'mother' are among the most conservative vocabulary in the Semitic family.
8 rows · 10 languages
Celestial and atmospheric vocabulary. The Proto-Semitic root *šmš (sun) and *lyl (night) are stunningly stable — nearly identical across the whole family for 4,000+ years.
8 rows · 10 languages
Domestic and iconic animals. The words for dog (*kalb-), horse (*sūs-), and camel (*gamal-) are pan-Semitic; some names travelled to English through Greek and Latin (camel, gazelle).
8 rows · 10 languages
Basic verbs of motion and posture (given in the perfect 3ms — the citation form in most Semitic dictionaries). Some of the oldest and stablest roots in the family.
7 rows · 10 languages
Divisions of time. Day, night, and year use the most stable pan-Semitic roots. Words for 'week' are a later innovation everywhere.
6 rows · 10 languages
The pan-Semitic root k-t-b 'write' conjugated in the SUFFIX conjugation (perfect / past). The Semitic perfect marks person + gender + number with SUFFIXES only (unlike the imperfect, which uses prefixes). The stem *katab- surfaces almost identically across Central, NW, and Old South Arabian; Akkadian and Ethio-Semitic substitute their own preferred 'write' roots (šaṭāru, ṣ-ḥ-f).
6 rows · 10 languages
The PREFIX conjugation — Semitic's imperfect/present/future tense. This is the ancient PS conjugation whose subject-marker system is the mirror image of the perfect: person is marked BEFORE the root (prefix) and, for some persons, also AFTER (suffix). The prefixes ʔ- (1cs), t- (2/3fs), y- (3ms), n- (1cp) are near-universal across the family.
6 rows · 10 languages
The flagship Proto-Semitic phoneme correspondences. Each row picks one PS phoneme and shows how it surfaces across the family. Together they define the branch-splits — Northwest vs Central vs South Semitic — as sharply as any comparative table can.
8 rows · 10 languages