New answers tagged semitic-languages
5
If we are looking for a Semitic parallel to IE *h₂elbh-o- > Lat. albus a better candidate might be the Semitic word for “milk”, Arabic ḥalab, Hebrew ḥālāḇ, Aramaic ḥalḇā, conceivably a Wanderwort or a very ancient borrowing in one direction or the other.
Then, at a more speculative level, one could ask whether there is some link between Sem. ḥ-l-b “milk” ...
7
Draconis is correct, but I want to add an additional note. Latin did not "chop off" the final consonant. What really happened is that we start with the word albus, which is an adjective meaning "white", and add another adjectival suffix ending in -inus (-a, -um), to get albinus, essentially "pertaining to" or "relating to ...
6
It seems to be a coincidence.
Latin albus comes from PIE *h₂elbhos, which has a lot of descendants: Hittite alpas, Sanskrit ṛbhú, etc. So if there was a borrowing, it would have been back in the PIE stages.
There may have been contact between PIE and Proto-Semitic, but the similarity between *h₂elbhos and *L-B-N is much less striking. So I'd consider this ...
3
Usually there are marks, but in casual and unofficial texts they are often absent.
The oldest lengthy Old Phoenician text, on king Ahiram's sarcophagus, c. 850 BC, has its words divided with a short vertical stroke.
The Phoenician inscription on the stele of Kilamuwu king of Bit-Gabbadi (modern Zenjirli, Syria), 9th century BC, has words separated by a dot • ...
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