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|mapcaption = 闪米特语言的大致历史分布

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'''闪米特语族'''，又称'''闪语族'''、'''塞姆语族'''或'''叙利亚-阿拉伯语族'''<ref name=JK>{{cite book|last=Kitto|first=John|title=A Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature|year=1845|publisher=W. Clowes and Sons|location=London|page=192|quote=That important family of languages, of which the Arabic is the most cultivated and most widely-extended branch, has long wanted an appropriate common name. The term ''Oriental'' languages, which was exclusively applied to it from the time of [[耶柔米|Jerome]] down to the end of the last century, and which is even now not entirely abandoned, must always have been an unscientific one, inasmuch as the countries in which these languages prevailed are only the ''east'' in respect to Europe; and when [[梵语|Sanskrit]], [[汉语|Chinese]], and other idioms of the [[远东|remoter East]] were brought within the reach of our research, it became palpably incorrect. Under a sense of this impropriety, {{tsl|en|Johann Gottfried Eichhorn||Eichhorn}} was the first, as he says himself (Allg. Bibl. Biblioth. vi. 772), to introduce the name ''Semitic'' languages, which was soon generally adopted, and which is the most usual one at the present day. [...] In modern times, however, the very appropriate designation ''Syro-Arabian languages'' has been proposed by Dr. {{tsl|en|James Cowles Prichard||Prichard}}, in his ''Physical History of Man''. This term, [...] has the advantage of forming an exact counterpart to the name by which the only other great family of languages with which we are likely to bring the Syro-Arabian into relations of contrast or accordance, is now universally known—the ''[[印欧语系|Indo-Germanic]]''. Like it, by taking up only the two extreme members of a whole sisterhood according to their geographical position when in their native seats, it embraces all the intermediate branches under a common band; and, like it, it constitutes a name which is not only at once intelligible, but one which in itself conveys a notion of that affinity between the sister dialects, which it is one of the objects of [[比较语言学|comparative philology]] to demonstrate and to apply.}}</ref>，是[[亚非语系]]之下的[[语族]]之一，起源于[[中东]]地区<ref>{{cite book|last=Bennett |first=Patrick R. | title=Comparative Semitic Linguistics: A Manual | url=https://books.google.com/books/about/Comparative_Semitic_Linguistics.html?id=LfruK29pVl8C&redir_esc=y |year=1998 |publisher=Eisenbrauns | location=Winona Lake, Indiana}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Hetzron |first=Robert |year=1997 |title=The Semitic Languages |url=https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Semitic_Languages.html?id=RWhvl4hD7S4C&redir_esc=y |publisher=Routledge |location=London/New York}}</ref>，其下属语言约有3.3亿人作为母语，分布于[[西亚]]、[[北非]]和[[非洲之角]]，也有亚非语系侨民生活于[[欧洲]]和[[北美]]，或[[高加索]]和[[中亚]]。