Japhetic languages
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Japhetic languages. This is an obsolete pre-scientific term for the languages spoken by the descendants of Japheth, son of Noah, dating from before the discipline of historical linguistics developed. It was usually ascribed to the speakers of what we now term the Indo-European languages. It should not be confused with the Japhetic theory. The equally obsolete term Hamitic was also used, after Noah's son Ham, ascribed to the languages spoken particularly by the people of Egypt, and more generally, by peoples in Africa. The third son of Noah, Shem still gives his name to the Semitic languages, a branch of the Afro-Asiatic family of languages, for which "Semito-Hamitic" is an older, and now virtually obsolete term.
These terms have gained a second life due to the large number of out-of-copyright public domain works from the 19th and early 20th century, particularly religious works, which have been posted to the internet, and even to wikipedia.
